Imagine magazine, one of Anguilla’s top yearly publications geared mainly to the travel and advertising markets, came out with a bold new look for 2009. The magazine sports a black and white front cover of a beach scene that, true to its name, leaves room for the imagination.

Mitsou Ferrier

Magazine Editor Monique ‘Mitsou’ Ferrier also does photography and marketing for the publication. She studied Anthropology and Naturopathic Medicine. The Anguillian met up with Ms. Ferrier on the weekend to find out about Imagine and the woman behind it.

“In 1984 I was living in Venice, California, and worked for a newspaper called The Weekender,” Ferrier said, “and that started my love for publication.” She added that she lived in Barbados and Martinique where she started a magazine called Video Look around the time that videos became popular. “So it was entertainment…in French and English in two countries at the same time,” Ferrier said.

The Editor later moved to St. Martin with her family and co-started Discover magazine. While there she did the marketing for the Airport for 12 years and produced the phone book for Lands Radio, (which united information from both the French and Dutch sides of the island).

After some seven years out of the business, Ms. Ferrier visited Anguilla in 2002 to work on a local magazine for six months but fell in love with the island and has been living here ever since.

Ms. Ferrier explained that for 18 years she was raised in a French Catholic convent from the age of five after having left her home in Vietnam with the Red Cross during the Vietnamesewar. Her father was in the French Military in Vietnam and when they were leaving, it was possible for their children to go with them. She said she grew up as French and had the best possible education in her new home. The nuns at the convent named her Mitsouko.

At the convent, Ferrier’s appreciation for books grew to the point where, as a child, she preferred the written word to dolls. She said at 10 years she told the nuns to stop buying her dolls so her Christmas presents became books.

Ferrier, who has a son and daughter aged 22 and 20 respectively, said her own mother gave up her right to be a mother and sent her to France because she wanted her to live in a peaceful country. “And now I am here in a country where there is no war, no army. There was just a bloodless revolution,” she said, adding that, at the age of 18, she was reunited with her mother who was married to an American living in Denver, Colorado. The Editor noted that she always had a good relationship with her mother since reuniting in spite of their cultural differences.

Ms. Ferrier said she was familiar with the experience of segregation: when she lived in France she was considered Chinese and when she visited Vietnam she was called French. She joked that now that she was in Anguilla people call her “the white woman.” She said, “Depending on which country I go, I am what ‘they’ want me to be, but I know who I am.”

The Editor said Imagine came out of a need to make magazines more cost effective. She said when she was working on another magazine it was noticed that the cost to ship was expensive because of the weight. She said there was need for something in a practical format so Imagine was (physically) downsized. Ferrier added that the cost was 30% less to print and it could be easily packaged.
Ms. Ferrier said this particular issue had to be different because it is distributed among travel publications in Barnes and Noble. She said, “There, everybody is blue with a bathing suit on a beach, with a hammock on the beach and if you are small they are not going to look…so we needed black and white…Obama year. We needed something that everyone says wow!” With a smile, Ferrier added that her background will be all the blue of the other (well known) magazines. She said if her cover was a beach with an umbrella no one would look, adding that she had 18 covers and when people saw the one she used they said “you wouldn’t dare,” so that was the one she chose.

The front cover was shot at The Cove and features first time local model, 26 year old Damian Lloyd, and classical dancer Franckie of French and Brazilian parentage, from St. Martin. Ferrier said there was no need to import expensive people from overseas to get good pictures. She said “You can do big without spending big.”
Ferrier remarked that the inspiration for her photography comes from her surroundings when she takes her morning and afternoon walks. She said she does not try to make her pictures exceptional because everything around her was exceptional. All but three pictures in the magazine were taken in Anguilla.

The articles deal with a wide range of subjects covering culture, history and the eventual possible future in Anguilla in the area of yachting. Ferrier said there is an article in the magazine that describes Anguilla as the Greenwich Village of the Caribbean and its author explained why. There are also features of how people give back to the community. Ferrier noted the articles have an educational message: the young generation could take pride in being Anguillian and the older people can linger in the pride of being Anguillian.

An issue of Imagine usually take at least nine months to complete.

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