As the style bible of the eighties and nineties, The Face magazine helped shape contemporary culture.
Forty five years since its 1980 launch, its iconic covers are featuring in a new exhibition The Face Magazine: Culture Shift, at London’s National Portrait Gallery from Thursday February 20 to May 18.
One of the most recent cover girls was Lourdes Leon, whose mum Madonna was the face of The Face five times – first appearing on the cover in 1985, fresh from her Like A Virgin album success. But while her record sales gave her popular success, The Face gave her kudos and cultural influence for years to come.
Published monthly from 1980 to 2004, before being relaunched with new owners in 2019 as a print quarterly,The Face founder was journalist Nick Logan. A former New Musical Express editor, he was also behind the triumphant launch of Smash Hits magazine.
Nick wanted to create a visually arresting and intelligent music magazine where articles on dangers of Thatcherism would sit comfortably alongside fashion and film spreads—a lofty ambition, but he pulled it off – providing an alternative to music mags for teens and twentysomethings wanting to read about youth culture.
Inspired by the photojournalism of Paris Match, Nick invested £3,500 of his own money in the launch issue, featuring Jerry Dammers of the Specials, shot by the music photographer Chalkie Davies who had previously shot The Clash, The Sex Pistols and Elvis Costello.
It sold 56, 000 copies and was hailed for its inventive photography and design alongside its dryly humorous writing.
“I started reading The Face in my teens- around the time of the first Madonna cover, ” recalls the magazine’s former Art Director Lee Swillingham. “It was amazing to me that I could discover new movies, music, architecture, books – all carefully but casually curated all in one place.”
Lee, 54, and Sabina Jaskot-Gill, Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, are behind the new exhibition of “ the greatest magazine in the world.”
Lee’s tenure at The Face began in 1992 and ended in 1999. The Annie Lennox November 1983 cover was one of his favourites – summing up what he says was special about The Face.
Shot by Peter Ashworth, who had photographed The Smiths and Depeche Mode, Lee says “Annie Lennox’s cover exemplifies why The Face covers became iconic.
“It’s an amazing image of the best kind of British pop star.
“She was on the cover of The Face at exactly the right time. This is Eurythmics Annie Lennox, not solo Annie Lennox. For me, she went from being David Bowie to Sting. But the Face captured her at exactly the right time. That was its genius.”
Another favourite was David Bowie in November 1980.
The issue cover, dubbed ‘Rock’s Final Frontier’ showed the singer in white makeup as he prepared to film the single cover for single Scary Monsters and Super Creeps.
Bowie was featured in the magazine several times. “It was only when putting together this retrospective that we realised how many times David Bowie and also Paul Weller had been in the magazine. It’s a testament to how cool and popular they were and how The Face were the arbiters of taste,” says Lee.
And it was not just a barometer for who was cool musically. The Face gave 16-year-old Kate Moss her first editorial cover in May 1990 – the first step in transforming her into a supermodel.
The most iconic Kate Moss cover came, however, a couple months later – when she wore a feather headdress.
Lee says: “It’s the one that most people remember – but it’s unheard of, to be on a cover twice in three months I don’t think that has ever happened before – or since. The Face really did champion her entry into popular culture.”
That very first Mossy cover sold poorly. According to Phil Bicker, the art director at the time, it was a terrible design, because he was told there would be a free gift attached to the issue, which he made room for, but it went on newsstands without one.
Although Kate secured six covers and became “the face of The Face,” she was a total unknown for the first cover, which would have contributed to the issue’s low sales.
Lee says: “This was pre-Internet, before social media, before the algorithms took over pop culture. The things we watch on Netflix, what we listen to, the algorithms were humans picking what to be in the magazine.
“The Kate Moss cover that didn’t sell so well was because The Face were the first people to discover Kate Moss.
“When we did Oasis in 1994, that cover didn’t sell either – because nobody knew who they were. When you’re so early on picking up trends you’re six months or a year before everyone else.”
On the 1994 cover, Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher, photographed by Norman Watson, was styled in a cravat and Nehru jacket.
“Oasis sounded to us very Beatles inspired so the stylist dressed Liam as a late 60s psychedelic pop star in the style of The Beatles or The Who.”
The bold coverline below Liam reads: “Supersonic Oasis, The Next Beatles, The Next Pistols or Just The Next Best Thing?”
Lee adds: “We did Oasis again a few years later, so we did benefit in the end – but it’s funny now to think of a time when Oasis was on the front cover and nobody knew who they were.”
Knowing the next big political talking point was just as important to the magazine as the stars.
Lee says: “The Face reflected culture, but it also shaped it and challenged the status quo – such as exploring the implications of the 1988 Criminal Justice Act and the rise of Neo-Fascism in Europe. I remember as a teen reading about the nuclear debate and nuclear war in the magazine.”
When Lee joined The Face in the early nineties, it coincided with the rise of the eco-movement.
“We did articles on the new eco-warriors and also the drug aspect of the acid rave movement,” he recalls.
He also joined during a time when the publication was facing its own political unrest – when there was a serious risk his dream job would be very short lived.
In 1992 singer Jason Donovan successfully sued the magazine for alleging he was gay and lying about his sexuality.
Lee says of that turbulent time: “We were lucky that the artistic and cultural community rallied around the magazine, and they did fundraising and saved The Face.”
While The Face was saved, former Neighbours heartthrob Jason had offended his gay fans and was accused of homophobia
In his 2007 autobiography Between The Lines: My Story Uncut, Jason described his decision to sue “ as the biggest mistake of my life.”
Meanwhile, The Face grew from being a style bible for Britain’s you to being revered by world style influencers for its aesthetic eye.
In the late eighties, Jean Paul Gaultier was so impressed that he placed its then-fashion editor Kathryn Flett on the front row for his Paris Fashion Week catwalk show. “Between Catherine Deneuve and Anna Wintour…it was peak moment,” she has said.
And Tom Ford admired Lee’s art direction in The Face so much that in the late nineties he offered him a job.
In the eighties, trends moved fast—from the multiracial 2-Tone ska scene to the flamboyant New Romantics and pop and electro. In the nineties, The Face was dominated by hip hop, grunge, drum and bass, and Brit-pop.
It even celebrated pure pop.
Robbie Williams made a memorable October 1995 cover, according to Lee, who reveals: “It was Robbie’s first interview after leaving Take That. We were in the middle of the shoot in East London, and the studio had big glass windows, and I noticed there were lots of girls on the street.
“And, the crowd was getting bigger. There were lots of kids down there on the pavement, and Robbie just jumped out of the changing room and ran across the studio in his white underwear and flew himself against the glass window and spread himself out so the fans could all see him. They just went crazy.
“I didn’t like Robbie’s music, but after that, I became a fan – for his pure showmanship.”
The Face was instrumental in pushing women from various musical genres forward too- from Neneh Cherry to Missy Elliot, Elastica’s Justine Frischmann and The Spice Girls.
Of Lourdes Leon’s recent covergir status Lee says.”When the kids are on the cover of the magazines, that really is showing the passage of time in pop culture isn’t it?”
The Face Magazine: Culture Shift is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, Feb 20-May 18, npg.org.uk
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