On Tuesday night, TAX Magazine took over Music For A While, the subterranean listening bar in Chelsea, to celebrate the release of its sixth issue, Diverge. The crowd was a mix of actors, designers, nightlife icons, and digital creators.
If TAX has a signature, it’s the ability to turn underground energy into something collectible. The Fall/Winter 2025 issue, spanning 370 pages, continues that idea. Designed in Paris, printed in Ghent, published in Los Angeles, and distributed in London, it’s an object that crosses borders but keeps an independent pulse. Diverge explores what happens when instinct takes over instruction and how queer culture, fashion, and intimacy create their own paths and rewrite the rules as they go.
The New York launch came first, followed by an L.A. event the next night. The pace felt right for TAX: fast, global, and slightly chaotic. Inside the warm wood-paneled space, the crowd filled out quickly. Peter Do and Amanda Lepore, both featured in the issue, anchored the night. Lepore arrived in a neon-lime latex dress and yellow gloves that shimmered under flashbulbs while Do kept it understated, moving through conversations with quiet focus, talking about the issue’s evolution and the publication’s widening reach.
The night’s soundtrack came from DJ Evan Kline and DJ P_A_T, who shifted seamlessly between glossy pop and hard electronic cuts. Cocktails flowed courtesy of Gay Water, Superbird Tequila, UME Plum Liqueur (our favorite), and Ten to One Rum, a lineup that matched the magazine’s mood: bright, independent, and a little indulgent.
Across the room, conversations blended fashion, film, TikTok and design. Among the guests were Haley Kalil, Ian Paget, and Peter Demas, alongside editors and reporters from Billboard, WWD, Page Six, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Knockturnal. Photographer Anneliese Horowitz caught the details that mattered: Lepore commanding the room, Kalil in a red sweater mid-laugh, and a sea of phones lighting the space like a low-lit constellation.
TAX’s events always feel less like parties and more like moving editorials. The lighting was cinematic with streaks of red and violet reflecting off glasses and latex, creating pockets of motion that looked staged but weren’t. The energy was fluid, part club, part gallery, part social experiment.
Diverge marks a turning point for TAX. It’s their largest and most visually ambitious issue yet, built with the kind of design precision usually reserved for fashion houses, not independent magazines.
