Venegas started C☆NDY in 2009 to celebrate “fashion, style and fabulosity of transversal manifestations,” feeling indebted to the community whose style and unapologetic attitude has often been shamelessly imitated by mainstream publications without any acknowledgement. “It was about time to contribute to paying back that debt,” Venegas says.

The high-end glossy has since amassed a cult following and has encouraged radical inclusion in other print publications. But despite C☆NDY’s momentous influence, Venegas chooses to stick to the limited distribution of only 1,500 copies of his title. “Being that rare makes it more precious and desirable, so it’s exciting to find an issue, buy it and treasure it forever,” the publisher affirms. “Or to sell it five times its original price on eBay.” Published by Rizzoli, The C☆NDY Book of Transversal Creativity amalgamates the best of C☆NDY’s twelve issues, bringing the trans-embracing and ever-evolving spirit of the magazine to wider audiences by broadening its limited-edition ethos.

Venegas’ collaborators and contributors include Nick Knight, Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmans and Jean-Paul Goude, to name but a few. But, “at my office in Madrid, my team consists of my iPhone, my two computers and I,” Venegas says. Behind the one-man editorial empire that he has established is a man who truly believes in the power of magazines to “inform, inspire and entertain.” As Jefferson Hack, editorial director and co-founder of Dazed Media writes in The C☆NDY Book of Transversal Creativity: “It’s Luis’s true love of magazine-making that makes C☆NDY so sweet.”