From 20 February until 18 May 2025, this national museum will be showcasing over 80 photographers of The Face, alongside its extravagant works reflecting its iconic status as a powerhouse of style.
The publication ran through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s when its founder, Nick Logan, the former Editor of NME, discovered a gap in the market and then this media outlet was born.
The Gallery writes: “The Face pushed its influence beyond music, spearheading the influence of stylists in magazine photography, and it was soon proclaiming itself ‘The World’s Best Dressed Magazine’.”
In the early Noughties, The Face Magazine was based in Farringdon, just a few minutes walkaway from the iconic designer Alexander McQueen.
At the age of seventeen I was catching a train out of London, I went to a magazine store and chose my reading material for the day which was the magazine with the namesake.
Not knowing what I wanted to do, I vowed to myself that I would one day work there. Just a few years later when studying at London College of Fashion I sent a letter to the magazine and after an interview I found myself being Second Assistant to the Fashion Editor.
Upon my first assignment, they were doing a photoshoot, restyling Charlotte Church for the cover. They sent me to Cornucopia, a vintage clothing store to pick out some shoes for the shoot.
Fashion returns were a big part of my job and there I was in the fashion cupboard storing the many, many shoes that I brought back. A colleague made me feel better, “I picked out too many on my first job, you will get used to it”.
My first fashion show was through The Face. One of the editors could not make the Paul Smith Show at London Fashion Week and so I went in her place. I kept the invitation for years and prided myself on my new career in fashion.
The office where we worked was with wooden floors and DJ decks. The theme was very cool for someone in their early twenties. Some time after the magazine moved to an office on Shaftesbury Avenue and in 2004 the magazine folded.
Years later, I was in a magazine store and saw that the magazine was on the stands. The Face was brought back to life.
Sabina Jaskot-Gill, Senior Curator of The National Portrait Gallery said: “The Face has been a trailblazing title since 1980, not just documenting the contemporary cultural landscape, but playing a vital role in inventing and reinventing it. Within its pages, The Face has produced some of the most innovative fashion and portrait photography of its time – the magazine always allowed its contributors the creative freedom to react against the prevailing mood, to create a shift in culture. I’m delighted to bring together the most comprehensive survey of the magazine’s photographic imagery to date, and would like to thank my co-curators Lee Swillingham and Norbert Schoerner for all their work in making this possible.”
My experience of The Face was a pleasurable memory, and this exhibition is a tribute to the great craftsmen of its time.
