Magazine giant Conde Nast launched its first website in 1995: food resource Epicurious. Yet the publisher’s glossy monthly The World of Interiors – which was launched in November 1981 and is nowadays is printed on the best stock in the building at Conde Nast’s London HQ – only really began its digital life in October 2022. Previously The World of Interiors did have a website but it was an interiors index with no editorial presence.
Digital director Elly Parsons joined the brand six months before its website launch and described the news website as a “quick process, but that forced us to be very decisive and clear with what we wanted”. She told Press Gazette The World of Interiors was “fashionably late” online. “I think that The World of Interiors has always been a print-obsessed product – the audience loves it, and we’re always going to have, in my mind, print being really, really central, but I think for all of us it just felt like time and it felt like there was so much experimentation that could be done to bring this kind of heritage brand online,” she said.
“And remember, it was just post-pandemic when there was such a surge in interiors and people wanting to be more expressive in their homes. I think it just felt like the right moment to bring this very niche but very beloved interiors brand online.” Yet Parsons, previously digital editor at design magazine Wallpaper* and managing editor at Refinery29, acknowledged that The World of Interiors .