Kings among influencers: Nick Logan and Steve Dagger, at the NPG private view. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s)
❚ AN EXCEPTIONAL CHAMPAGNE PARTY last night launched a compelling exhibition celebrating The Face magazine’s role as Britain’s “style bible” (*see below) for just over 20 years. A thorough display of photos and glass-boxed showcases of the magazine itself confirmed what a revolution in fashion and design took place between 1980 and 2004. And London’s National Portrait Gallery invited several generations of survivors to revisit their contributions, chief among them Nick Logan, founding owner and editor of The Face, as sociable yet bashful as he’s ever been, along with his partner Mia.
His gift, apart from investing £3,500 of his savings, was to put cool design and quality writing to the fore, at a time when Britain’s four weekly rock newspapers were a very narrowly acquired taste. Logan’s brief also went way beyond music into all aspects of culture and anthropology. That’s the main reason that both he and his radical designer Neville Brody – *who in five years established an inspired new visual language in print – both reject the description “style bible”, just as none of the New Romantics has ever owned up to that name dumped on them by the media.
Click any pic to enlarge in a slideshow:
Promotional poster for the NPG exhibition The Face Magazine: Culture Shift
Reporting London’s club culture: Yours Truly with my 1983 Face cover story. (Photo © Paul Simper)
Yet more influence: milliner Stephen Jones and photographer Peter Ashworth. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s)
No less a king influencer was Steve Dagger whose band Spandau Ballet changed the dreary noise of 70s pop into a new kind of dance music for the 80s. Two more such kings who helped shape the Swinging 80s were the St Martin’s graduate milliner Stephen Jones whose hats graced the heads of the first Blitz Kids then went on adding bazzazz to designer collections across the globe… And Peter Ashworth whose super-lit photographs have captured musical and fashionable excess just as far across the globe ever since.
Other vintage faces included Lesley White (the first front-desk copytaster at The Face’s various offices), St Martin’s star fashionista Fiona Dealey, clubland deejay Jeremy Healey, film-maker and musician Jamie Morgan, pioneering music journalist Paul Simper, and Derek Ridgers the straight-up photographer whose pictures illustrated many of my own nightlife reports in The Face’s early years.
NPG talk about the Face exhibition: editor Nick Logan, art director Neville Brody and from 1987 the mag’s first fashion editor Kathryn Flett. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s)
Face exhibition video display: Who’s Who in clubland reportage by Yours Truly, featuring Chris Sullivan and Ollie O’Donnell. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s)
➢ The Face Magazine: Culture Shift exhibition
(20 February–18 May 2025 at the National Portrait Gallery) brings together the work of 80 photographers, featuring 200 photographs as a unique opportunity to see many of these images away from the magazine page.
Wise words from the man who subverted graphic design. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s)
➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s:
1980, Power brokers of the fourth estate
➢ Also at Shapersofthe80s: 1980, How three wizards
met at the same crossroad in time
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