“We knew we were tapping something unique,” says Armstrong. “We had hundreds of thousands of readers who had formed a real bond with us. I’d never seen such loyalty. They were the ones who said you can’t quit, there needs to be a magazine for us, for the majority of women, who are forgotten by fashion magazines.”

In May, armed with capital raised from private investors and accompanied by former Mode staffers, Armstrong launched a revamped reincarnation of Mode<\I>, Grace<\I> Magazine. The magazine’s name, Armstrong explains, was inspired by her grandmother, “who always insisted that no matter what size or shape a woman had, she could always have style and grace.” It will continue Mode’s<\I> tradition of presenting fashion for plus-size — or, as Armstrong prefers, “full-fashioned” — women, while also expanding coverage to include lifestyle and entertainment.

“One of the things Mode<\I> readers told us”, says Armstrong, “was they wanted more fun things in the magazine that reflected their different leisure time interests.” Accordingly, Grace’s first issue features sections devoted to food, wine, travel, home design, shopping, athletics, and relationships, as well as celebrities like Mia Tyler, Kate Dillon, and Carré Otis. The magazine will publish quarterly this year and go bimonthly in February 2003. Armstrong says the median age of Grace<\i> readers is 36. Initial guaranteed circulation for the first issue was 200,000.

Armstrong is confident that even with the tight scramble for ad dollars and visibility in the crowded women’s market, Grace<\I> can prevail. “If we were just a general interest fashion magazine, there’d be no place for us,” she says. In fact, she argues, the other titles out there are targeting the wrong market. “Sixty-eight percent of women are size 12 or over,” she says. “That’s tens of millions of women who are not sure where to shop and where to find the clothes and products they want. No one else is addressing their needs.”

The numbers seem to bear her out. According to Women’s Wear Daily<\I>, plus-size fashion retail sales