The making of this special 100th issue started nine weeks ago when Stylist launched the first of a series of competitions for readers to take part in the birthday issue. The editorial team challenged aspiring photographers, illustrators, writers, foodies, stylists and more to get involved and received 2,966 submissions, with the competition to write one of Stylist’s features alone attracting 915 entries.
The team sent four readers to try out amazing country cottages, invited three readers to come into the office and style the fashion pages and turned four readers into models for the issue’s beauty shoot. One reader was even dispatched to Number 10 to interview David Cameron about adoption.
One of the most popular competitions, unsurprisingly, was the chance to design Stylist’s 100th issue cover: 336 readers entered the competition – 223 of whom came along to the Stylist office to hand in their cover in person and meet the Stylist team at a special reader open day.
Lisa Smosarski, editor, says: “This is a genuinely exciting first for Stylist. No other magazine has done a reader takeover to this scale but we were confident we had the right readers with the right talents to ensure this was as good as every other issue of Stylist. It’s fair to say we were nervous handing over the cover of our entire print run to just one reader as no other women’s weekly in the UK has ever done that before. Luckily we were blown away by the number of brilliantly creative covers we received from our readers, and eventually agreed that Yasmeen Ismali’s model really captured the celebration theme of the issue.”
Yasmeen Ismali (pictured), winner of the Stylist cover competition says: “It took me about two weeks to create the 3D model for my Stylist cover. All the elements were painstakingly hand cut with a scalpel and scissors then assembled with glue, tape, wire and pins. I spent a lot of time covered in glue and pricking myself with pins! When I think about how many people entered I can’t believe I actually won. When I go to the Tube station next Wednesday and see my cover I know I’ll get a real pang of emotion. I’ve only told a few people but my closest friends and family all said that they knew I could do it. Winning this cover challenge has finally given me something to show off about.”
