Taranaki touch to new erotica mag

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FLYING HIGH: Suraya Singh, who devised the erotic magazine Filament.

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An erotic magazine taking Europe by storm has its roots firmly in Taranaki.

The June issue of Filament magazine devised by Suraya Singh, 30, has barely been published but its erotica label is already attracting mountains of attention, from a full review in The Independent to "random" radio interviews in Ireland.

Ms Singh describes Filament as "the thinking woman's crumpet", comparing its content to a Playboy from the 1960s.

"It's got, you know, politics, life style, social, the arts, articles, a few laughs and some beautiful people in not many clothes," she said from her London base yesterday.

While 50 per cent of Filament is made up of "pictures of beautiful men with their tops off and some more explicit stuff", Ms Singh insists the magazine is exactly what the world's smart women have been waiting for.

"You can't get a magazine that's just for women that isn't filled with fashion, celebrity gossip and dieting advice ... Assumptions that have been made are pretty much the opposite to reality and we really want to cater to what women really want."

So how does a lass born in the 'Naki know what the world's intelligent ladies yearn for?

Research. Extensive market research has gone into the production of Filament, resulting in detailed photographic guidelines and pages of images featuring men with lovely faces.

"I've asked women in all sorts of detail what they are looking for. Direct gaze is very popular, having the person who is in the image looking straight at the camera ... most of our pictures are from a level angle or from a slightly raised angle, there is a preference for colour over black and white, erotica for women tends to be in black and white and another thing is the heads would be cut off the images, women want faces."

The magazine is an interesting career move for Ms Singh. After leaving New Plymouth Girls' High School she studied geography and environmental studies at Victoria University in Wellington and then entered the public service.

But, she said, her upbringing taught her how to not "whinge but go out and do something about it."

"That's what I've done ... I was sick of going into a magazine shop and seeing no cerebral for-women magazines. It's there for men but not for women and why not?"