In the 30yrs issue Ovivier Zahm writes:

We wanted to create a magazine that was radically different, that would reflect who we were and the way we wanted to live. The idea was to conceive a magazine like a film, an exhibition, and an art project.

Oliver Zahm launched Purple in September 1992. Originally titled Purple Prose, it was founded by the art collector Elein Fleiss – she was only 21 - and the art critic Olivier Zahm, 26. It was an independent publication made by artists for artists.
The magazine shouldn’t have any geographic or genres frontiers. So, they began working with a team of artists, asking different people to participate, no matter from they were coming from, or whether they were 20 years old or 70, known or unknown. They included music, architecture, fashion, science, philosophy, or any subject an artist might want to write.

The name of the magazine was chosen because Elein Fleiss wanted a colour name; she liked the word “purple” and she liked that colour. Therefore, suggested by the New York artist and friend Dike Blair, they chose Purple Prose: in literacy criticism, it refers to an extravagant style of writing, but also apparently used to qualify press about celebrity romances and sex in old Hollywood.
Fashion grew in the pages of the magazine little by little and in the 1995, they published Purple Fashion #1 as a catalogue of an exhibition they did in an art gallery in Switzerland, without realizing, they were starting a fashion magazine. In the same year, they started with the publication of Purple Fiction, a literary and photography magazine.
In 1998, Purple Prose, Purple Fashion and Purple Fiction became Purple.
While the magazine was growing and evolving, Elein Fleiss decided to stop working with Purple magazine, and by the end of 2003 she started another project, Purple Journal, a low profile magazine with photography, literature, fashion and politics, but without the struggle of the fashion system.
Purple is the avant-garde reference for fashion, style, and contemporary culture.

In the 30yrs issue, 30 chapters tell the story of the magazine through a selection of artists, concepts and cities that gave the magazine its identity.