DEJA MAGAZINE: BY GEN Z, FOR EVERYBODY

by Emma Riva
Photo courtesy of Lilly Kubit @ DEJA: DEJA staff and writers pose for an “office siren” photoshoot.

Young people get a bad rep. In popular culture, Gen Z simultaneously doesn’t know how to work and doesn’t know how to have fun. What other generation is framed as both incompetent in the office and addicted to their phone but also too socially awkward to have sex and too unrefined to enjoy a glass of wine? At least millennials were painted to be killing the housing market by having fun. But Gen Z is maligned to an extent that even though I technically am part of it by my birth year, I mumble that I’m a “zillennial” if someone asks me about my age.

So, it takes a lot of courage for a group of young people to create something unabashedly Gen Z, celebrating their interests and their achievements. DEJA, a new magazine based out of Oakland’s Haven music venue, is a cross between a punk zine and a glossy fashion magazine. It celebrates alternative style, underground music, and Pittsburgh’s creative community. Many brands lament how to “reach” the younger generation, and DEJA provides an example: through authenticity.

DEJA, through Bluemle’s vision, leans into the grungy, discordant fashion popular about Gen Z scenesters. Rather than leaning into “brain rot” or other “terminally online” lines of thinking, DEJA barely touches thinkpieces or jokes about the digital sphere at all. Instead, its focus is on the most analog parts of life: music, fashion, and art, things that ground the people who experience them in the moment.

Sitting in on DEJA’S meetings brought me back to working at UP Magazine as a college student, sitting in a basement apartment around a stack of half-empty pizza boxes, passing around physical copies of articles for everyone to mark up with highlighters. At DEJA’S meetings, I’ve seen the writers drink jewel-toned cans of Monster energy and eat bright orange grocery store cupcakes while parsing over the finer details of layout and line edits. In one of their penultimate meetings before the launch of their first issue, Bluemle laid the entire spread of the magazine out on Haven’s floor, a snake of paper and print matter.

“DEJA is already so unique because we have our own physical space for meetings,” Bluemle said. “The folks at Haven have been super helpful making this all happen and they’ve honestly become a big part of our story now. It’s really cool and something I haven’t seen another magazine do.”

Speaking with the staff of DEJA reminded me that journalism cannot be done alone. Reporting is a collective, communal act, even if there’s one byline. That’s, in the end, what separates it from individual creative writing. Bluemle created 47 Magazine while living in New York, and decided he wanted to bring that spirit to Pittsburgh. I got the impression that the way some people get the bug to open a restaurant and continue opening them, Bluemle has the bug of opening DIY magazines—he just seems to have a knack for it. He also is at helm of Post Genre, a grassroots music collective that runs programming at Haven. From friends and colleagues at Haven, Bluemle then assembled a team of Gen Z creatives looking for something more out of their writing careers.

“I started DEJA because I realized there is not a Gen-Z led editorial publication in the Pittsburgh, specifically Oakland, area,” Bluemle said. “I wanted to be able to create a similar space where young creative people can come together to create meaningful art.”

The magazine’s tagline is “remixing the familiar” and its title is meant to evoke something you’ve seen before that isn’t quite the same. For anyone who rolls their eyes at Gen Z for not being hardworking, let DEJA be proof that that’s not the case. “I want readers to come away from the magazine feeling joyful and creatively inspired. There’s a lot going on in the world that is nebulous, confusing and disconcerting,” Art Director Chloe Simpson said. “I want Deja to be a physical grounding mechanism, something real, something we can hold on to for dear life.”  

Though it’s all volunteer-run, the DEJA team sees it as a labor of love they hope to make their full-time work at some point. “I hope readers can see that even with little time and resources, creativity can still thrive, and there are so many interesting things going on,” Marketing Director Lilly Kubit said. Kubit works for American Eagle and uses her skills from her day job in design and branding to boost DEJA. “I love working on a publication but haven’t for three years, and I’m so excited to be back,” she said.

Part of what makes Deja unique is that it’s print-forward. Though the articles will be available online, the print magazine is the main event. “We want our readers to hold the magazine in their hands, flip through the pages, cut it up and put it on the wall, pass it around to their friends,” Simpson said. At the magazine’s launch party, Simpson hopes to include collage materials so that people can tap into their own creative impulses while there.

In a city where local media is sparse and there’s little diversity of medium or opinion in what does exist, a print magazine where you can find both a fashion photoshoot focused on boots and a profile of a local band you’ve never heard of is a welcome addition. Deja shows Gen Z as vibrant and multifaceted, celebrating youth culture while paying homage to the nostalgic value of print media. If older generations think Gen Z has nothing to say, maybe they just haven’t been listening.

DEJA’s first issue, Metalluxe, drops December 4, with a launch party at Haven (401 Atwood Street). Copies of the magazine will be available for purchase, along with local art vendors, food and mocktails, and live jazz music.

This month’s articles are produced with support from the Frick Pittsburgh in conjunction with their landmark exhibition The Scandinavian Home: Landscape and Lore. Get cozy as the seasons change with David and Susan Warner’s collection of paintings, tapestries, and sculptures from around the Nordic region. Tickets now on sale.