Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic If you were born into Gen X in the UK, growing up in the 1980s and 1990s and dressing for your tribe on the dance floor, you probably read The Face. Decades before the fickle scroll of social media, its images landed monthly, taking up residence in your house. It was a fresh visual language, developed by photographers and stylists newly fluent in it, offering discourse on counterculture. Those pages muscled their way into your psyche, which is why so many of the photographs at the new National Portrait Gallery show The Face Magazine: Culture Shift are powerfully nostalgic. There were always pop stars in the magazine, which was founded by Nick Logan in 1980, but it was its reportage of new ways of dressing, inspired by clubland movements from rap to rave, that gave it impact.The Face closed in 2004 and relaunched in 2019, albeit with a small fraction of its peak 128,000 circulation. Paul Gorman, who is working on a TV documentary about the magazine and is the author of The Story of The Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture, describes it as a unique platform established in the aftershocks of punk.“It gave freedom of expression to new waves of innovative stylists and photographers,” he says. “They successively changed approaches to image-making in fashion, starting with the arrival of Ray Petri with Jamie Morgan in 1984, then Nick Knight shooting with Simon Foxton. Photographer Stéphane Sednaoui’s work with stylist Elisabeth Djian was a precursor of digital manipulation, then we had Corinne Day’s vérité.”Those double acts forged a legacy. Day launched the career of Kate Moss with a July 1990 cover story shot with stylist Melanie Ward and the then unknown model. Moss wore a feathered crown from World, a tiny Covent Garden store that was more of an information exchange for clubland than it was a boutique, and a smile. The shoot was a lark on the beach at Camber Sands on England’s south-east coast, a breath of fresh air.There were extraordinary images captured during that golden era of the magazine, from the mid-1980s to the ascent of Alexander McQueen the following decade. McQueen’s shift from being an offbeat London sideshow to international fashion acclaim was cemented by a Nick Knight cover, with the designer in red contact lenses circa his Joan of Arc-themed collection in 1998.Other standouts from the exhibition: the 1986 shoot by fashion illustrator Tony Viramontes — a monochrome, surrealist-ballet-inspired story, featuring clothes by Rifat Ozbek, styled by Sarajane Hoare. There is also an arresting black-and-white image styled by Venetia Scott for Glen Luchford featuring a by then well-known Moss, and Kurt Cobain in a floral dress and smudged eye make-up styled by Anna Cockburn and shot by David Sims.But it was the imagery that stylist Ray Petri and photographer Jamie Morgan created that is most influential. Their look was branded the Buffalo movement, with a clique involving stylist Mitzi Lorenz and singer Neneh Cherry. It walked menswear along a tightrope of queerness and machismo. “I worked with Ray because he was the most stylish man I knew,” says Morgan. “We were making it up as we went along, but there were strong cultural signifiers — from British royalty to African kings and queens and Scottish kilts. We were acknowledging that men were dandies but making it a bit punk, using Dr Martens and leather skirts.”The image Morgan references — from the November 1984 “Men’s Where?” story, featuring model Nick Kamen — sums up Buffalo. It is the pomp of 17th-century European monarchs rendered in oils, mixed with gay disco and Jamaican rude boys.In the early days of the indie street-style press — which in the early ’80s included Blitz and i-D — advertisers didn’t dictate editorial as they often do now, expecting coverage of their products in exchange for buying pages in the magazine. This was before the rise of the big luxury conglomerates (LVMH didn’t exist until 1987), and fledgling designers could score major coverage on the strength and freshness of their silhouettes alone. One such designer was Maria Cornejo, of the now 27-year-old Zero + Maria Cornejo label, who remains independent and is a favourite of Cindy Sherman and Tilda Swinton. Her work first appeared in The Face in November 1984, when her London housemate Robin Derrick, who would become creative director at the magazine, arranged for pieces from her graduation collection to appear in a story alongside her boyfriend John Richmond’s designs as well as new-season Yohji Yamamoto and Jean Paul Gaultier. The model was Susie Bick, and the looks were put together by Helen Roberts, notably credited as “fashion” because the term “stylist” was yet to be used in the industry.“It was a really free time,” says Cornejo. “It was organic. We were making clothes for kids our age. Me and John then launched Richmond/Cornejo and had 23 shops in Japan. Magazines were influential. Now everything is immediately on Instagram, and for print [today] you need to have a mega-budget to be featured.”There is little commercial currency in counterculture today. It is celebrity alignment that generally brings heat, not the underground. Luxury brands might dip into bohemia from time to time, but it’s a marketing strategy. Stylist Judy Blame’s safety pins and buttons, first seen on the druggy demimonde of the 1980s, and frequently in The Face, are referenced repeatedly on runways, but it’s a co-opted cool. They were once authentic, when there was space to experiment and money wasn’t everything. Stylists and photographers don’t steer ships the way they used to (now the brand managers in Paris do). Today they are just lucky to be on board. “When I shoot editorial now, a brand pays for all the costs,” says Morgan. “When we did that story with Nick Kamen in the leather skirt, there was just one designer credit on that page — a Gaultier jacket. It wasn’t about representing brands. But that’s what made it influential. I remember Ray pinning an oversized Giorgio Armani jacket in a certain way, then Armani showed jackets with the same silhouette the next season. Ray was so free in the way he worked in the studio. He would grab a giant white shirt, a flag, a pork pie hat, some feathers, and then spray perfume around the room to conjure the right mood for the shoot. It was about more than what you could see, it was about creating an experience.”‘The Face Magazine: Culture Shift’ runs at the National Portrait Gallery in London from February 20 to May 18 Follow us on Instagram and sign up for Fashion Matters, your weekly newsletter about the fashion industry
