Last night Flare celebrated its 30th anniversary with a bold-face-name filled party at the Royal Ontario Museum. Coming off the heels of its best-selling issue ever, the 260-page $1.99 special priced September anniversary issue and moving towards a more optimistic 2010 there was much to celebrate.

Vice-president and publisher Kerry Mitchell was upbeat about 2010. “The thing about Flare is that it is hot right now,” she says. “The anniversary issue has really put us on a roll. There is always an appetite for great magazines.”

Mitchell, who has been publisher at the magazine since June, says Flare’s success in the competitive fashion market for 30 years can be attributed to its staff. “I think we are lucky to have some of the county’s best editorial staff and best designers,” she says. “That has always shown through on Flare and now on Flare.com.”

Extending the magazine’s brand beyond print is something Mitchell says advertisers are looking for and something Flare is doing with crossovers on television and social media. “We are lucky to have such strong partnerships with leading advertisers in the market,” she says. “They continue to expect us to be innovative in the solutions we bring to them and to offer solutions that can extend one media platform to another.”

Flare magazine kept its spot at number seven on the Masthead 2009 Top 50 Magazines Report despite a six per cent drop in revenue from 2008. It has an average paid circulation of 149,000.