When you love images, music and elegance, you’ll love the most recent exhibition on the Nationwide Portrait Gallery. The Face Journal: Tradition Shift options greater than 200 prints from the cult publication. Like many who grew up within the Eighties, my curiosity in model really began with a teenage appreciation of music. Earlier than the style business, as we all know it right this moment, even existed, we had our favorite bands ( The Conflict, Pleasure Division, Echo & the Bunnymen, Blondie) to look as much as. And, with a little bit of DIY and making-do may recreate a glance. Typically I’d go clubbing in a mixture of garments purchased at jumble gross sales, gadgets nabbed from my dad or youthful brother, and stuff I’d stitched collectively (badly) by hand. The Face journal captured the spirit of the time. Based by Nick Logan ( a former NME editor and the creator of sweet sixteen magazine Smash Hits) in 1980, The Face was the very first model journal. It was vastly influential.
The Face Journal: Tradition Shift exhibition on the Nationwide Portrait Gallery.Picture: © David Parry/ Nationwide Portrait Gallery
The exhibition highlights what a artistic interval the Eighties and 90s was – and the way way more freedom photographers, stylists and journalists had again then. Stylists, akin to: Ray Petri, Isabella Blow, Judy Blame, Karl Templer, Sarahjane Hoare, Melanie Ward, have been a comparatively new phenomenon; collaborating carefully with photographers to carry a narrative to life. The phrase ‘stylist’s personal’ got here into being at a time when garments have been grabbed from right here, there and in every single place, and solely sometimes from a style PR’s workplace. And, relatively than anticipating contributors to work for a pittance ( or totally free), magazines had cash to spend on images and journalism. Sadly, charges have nosedived since I used to be on the masthead of {a magazine}. Now we have lived by way of one other tradition shift ( make that: industrial revolution); it’s all about on-line, now. The Face Journal: Tradition Shift exhibition is nostalgic, vibrant and joyous, it made me hanker after the nice outdated days once we weren’t ruled by algorithms and massive manufacturers.
Voici Paris picture by Stéphane Sednaoui, styled by Babeth Dijan, June 1988
Alongside all of the energetic images, the captions written by contributors are informative and attention-grabbing – not the standard artspeak gobbledy-gook.
The Face Journal: Tradition Shift exhibition on the Nationwide Portrait Gallery.Picture: © David Parry/ Nationwide Portrait Gallery
And The Face Journal: Tradition Shift made me realise: I have to accessorise a bit extra….
Ms Dynamite picture by Gemma Sales space, Might 2001
Photographed by Jamie Morgan and styled by Ray Petri, Jan 1984. The Sade entrance cowl can be by Jamie Morgan ( April 1984)
On leaving the exhibition we had a beautiful chat with a few style-magazine-super-fans. Avid collectors of again problems with The Face journal, Abigail Masters and Josh Silero have been outdoors creating content material. The brand new technology of style-lovers. (The Face closed down in 2004 and relaunched in 2019, in print and on-line).
Picture: Neil Mackenzie Matthews
The Face Journal: Tradition Shift exhibition is on on the Nationwide Portrait Gallery till 18 Might 2025.
Extra outfit inspo HERE and elegance buys HERE.
