About Us

About VARONIL

Style, culture, and the people shaping both.

VARONIL is an independent magazine about the way men live now: what they watch, wear, play and listen to, and where they go. We write about film, fashion, sport, music, fragrances, travel and the wider culture that connects them, and we write about them together, because that is how they exist. An actor’s wardrobe says something about the role. A tennis player’s forehand carries ten years of decisions. A bottle on a dressing table holds the history of a fashion house.

Our curiosity moves from the screen to the wardrobe, from the court to the city street, and once a week it becomes an issue of more than 300 pages.

The Weekly Issue

VARONIL publishes a new e-Magazine every week. Each issue runs to at least 300 pages of long-form features, profiles, essays and original artwork, written, photographed, illustrated and designed by our own team. Nothing is syndicated and nothing is filler: every text is ours, and every image was made for the page it sits on.

The issue is sold on DARCKED.COM, our publishing platform, on its dedicated page, VARONIL MAGAZINE – VARONIL MAGAZINE SHOP. You can read it there in PDF, page by page, or download it and keep it.

Our Editorial Perspective

We bring together what is happening now and what gives it meaning. A new film is a reason to revisit a career. A collection on the runway is a reason to look at the house that made it and the tailoring tradition behind it. A title won on a Sunday is a reason to tell the story of the years it took. We cover the new, and we return to the ideas, works and people that explain why the new matters.

Our method is plain. Reporting is reporting, and analysis is marked as analysis. We draw on published interviews, official announcements, archives and historical records, and we credit the reporting that informs our own. When we write about a film we have not yet seen or a restaurant we have not yet sat in, we say so and write from that position.

What we give readers is context, a considered point of view, and the room to disagree with it.

Our Visual Identity

Images carry as much of VARONIL as words do. Each issue sets photography against illustration, texture, color and deliberately unfinished forms, so that a page of VARONIL is recognizable before a single line is read.

We create art from art. That sentence guides our studio. We are interested in reinterpretation: finding a new visual expression for people and subjects the world thinks it already knows. Our imagery brings together original photography, editorial artwork and AI-assisted illustration. Work made with AI tools is labeled as such. These illustrations are creative interpretations, not records of real events; where one depicts a recognizable person, it is a portrait in the editorial tradition, not a photograph of something that happened.

The People Behind VARONIL

More than fifty people make VARONIL: journalists, writers and editors; graphic and web designers; AI specialists; photographers; fashion stylists, fashion designers and makeup artists; set designers; proofreaders; fashion models; and a social media team that carries each issue to readers around the world.

We work in-house, from the first idea to the last page. The photograph, the styling, the hair and makeup, the set, the layout, the text and the proofread come from the same team, which is why an issue of VARONIL has one voice and one look.

The VARONIL Family

VARONIL belongs to a family of houses within Traverse Ltd. that share people, ideas and a point of view.

• DARCKED.COM — our publishing platform, where every issue of VARONIL is sold and read.
• HOUSE OF ILIC — our own fashion line. Its pieces appear in our shoots, and our shoots find their way back into its collections.
• ELITE MANNEQUIN — elitemannequin.com — the model agency whose faces you will meet on our pages.
• VINCULO HOUSE — vinculohouse.com — the house of the written and printed word: translators, proofreaders, screenwriters and writers, the Adobe specialists who build each issue, and the type designers who draw our fonts.
• DUSAN ILIC MEDIA — dusanilic.media — our production department, with its own studio, directors, set designers, lighting and camera crews, makeup artists, stylists and designers.

What We Explore

Film and television. Performances, directors, documentaries, adaptations, and the changing ways stories reach an audience. We look at a role in the light of a career, and at a career in the light of its time.

Fashion and style. Designers, collections, tailoring and personal expression: the relationship between what a man wears and who he decides to be. From the runway to the wardrobe, with a weakness for well-made things.

Sport. Achievement, rivalry, resilience and life after competition, with a particular devotion to tennis: its etiquette, its rivalries, its solitary discipline.

Music and culture. Artists, careers and performances, and the influence that moves between sound, fashion and the street.

Fragrances. Composition, bottle design and creative direction, and the stories that tie a scent to a style and a moment.

Travel and dining. Cities, landscapes, architecture and restaurants, and the details through which a place gives itself away.

Discover the World of VARONIL

VARONIL is for readers who enjoy looking more closely: at a familiar name, an emerging talent, a remarkable object, or a city they have yet to visit.

Find the latest issue at the VARONIL MAGAZINE SHOP on DARCKED.COM, explore the stories on varonilmagazine.com, and subscribe to our newsletter for new features in style, film, fashion, sport, culture, fragrances, music, travel, dining, and the people shaping these worlds.