Tag Archives: Face magazine

2025 ➤ Here’s to those Faces who created a new breed of journalism for the 1980s

Posted on 19 Feb 2025 | Leave a comment

Swinging 80s, Club Culture, Nick Logan, Steve Dagger, photography, exhibitions, London, National Portrait Gallery, Face Magazine,

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:

Swinging 80s, Club Culture, photography, exhibitions, London, National Portrait Gallery, Face Magazine,

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)

Swinging 80s, Club Culture, photography, Stephen Jones, Peter Ashworth, exhibitions, London, National Portrait Gallery, Face Magazine,

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.

Swinging 80s, Club Culture, photography, exhibitions, London, National Portrait Gallery, Face Magazine, Nick Logan, Neville Brody, Kathryn Flett

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)

Swinging 80s, Club Culture, photography, exhibitions, London, National Portrait Gallery, Face Magazine, Chris Sullivan, Ollie O'Donnell

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.

Swinging 80s, Club Culture, photography, exhibitions, London, National Portrait Gallery, Face Magazine, Neville Brody,

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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➤ Catch up on New Romantic landmarks reported here at Shapers of the 80s

Posted on 5 Oct 2014 | Leave a comment

Andrew Ridgeley,George Michael, Wham Rap, video, Face magazine, Club Culture,

Click pic to open the Wham Rap! video in another window … “Man or mouse” Andrew Ridgeley establishes his clubbing credentials – along with sidekick George Michael – in the opening shots of the Wham! video by reading this very Face cover story on Club Culture that you’re about to read!

THE MOST READ FEATURE ARTICLE AMONG 890,000 VIEWS SINCE THE LAUNCH OF SHAPERS OF THE 80s

➢ 1983, The Making of UK Club Culture — Definitive Face cover story by yours truly being read here in the Wham Rap! video. This account of how London nightlife had become an international magnet was first published as “an upstairs‑downstairs tale of two key nightspots” in The Face No 34 in February 1983. Photography © by Derek Ridgers. Reprinted in The Faber Book of Pop, 1995; and in Night Fever, Boxtree, 1997

69 Dean Street, Soho, club culture, The Face magazine, London, 1980s, clubbing, nightlife,Billys, Gargoyle,Red Studio,Blitz Kids

From The Face, February 1983

THE ORIGINAL HISTORY OF THE BLITZ KIDS

The Observer Music Magazine. Pictures © by Derek Ridgers

The Observer Music Monthly, Oct 4, 2009. Pictures © by Derek Ridgers

➢ Spandau Ballet, the Blitz Kids and the birth of the New Romantics — This much-recycled account originally penned by Shapers of the 80s tells who did what to make stars out of a club houseband, change the rhythm of the UK charts — and ultimately rejuvenate the British media. The obsessive fashionistas behind one small club in London in 1980 went on to dominate the international landscape of pop and fashion, while putting more British acts into the US Billboard charts than the 1960s ever achieved. Spandau Ballet songwriter Gary Kemp responded: “A superb piece. It will be referred to historically.”

EARLY 80s REPORTS REVISITED

➢ How three wizards met at the same crossroad in time — an inside scene-setter on the forces shaping the Swinging Eighties

➢ 1980, Strange days, strange nights, strange people: at The Blitz a decade dawns

➢ 1980, One week in the private worlds of the new young: London blazes with creativity

➢ 1980, Shapersofthe80s tells how Duran Duran’s road to stardom began in the Studio 54 of Birmingham, UK

➢ 1981, Birth of Duran’s Planet Earth … when other people’s faith put the Brummies into the charts

Romance blossoms: Drummer Jon Moss gives George a peck at Planets club in July 1981 way before Culture Club existed. Photographed © by Shapersofthe80s

➢ Three key men in Boy George’s life – In 2010 the BBC turned the pop star’s teens ’n’ twenties into a 90-minute drama of foot-stamping, chair-throwing, cry-baby tantrums over his self-confessed “dysfunctional romances”, all of which he had documented in his eye-wateringly frank 1995 autobiography, Take It Like a Man. Shapers of the 80s summarises George O’Dowd’s stormy lovelife.

➢ Ex-Blitz Kids give their verdicts on the TV drama Worried About the Boy – During and after this heavily fictionalised life story was broadcast in 2010, Shapers of the 80s canvassed this authoritative mixture of opinions on the Boy George myth and in doing so reshaped the accepted clichés about the Blitz Kids.

Chris Sullivan, club-host, deejay, Wag club, Blue Rondo, pop music,We Can Be Heroes, youth culture,

At home in Kentish Town Chris Sullivan chooses the right zootsuit for today’s mood: his wardrobe is legendary, his taste impeccable, and his influence immeasurable. Shapersofthe80s shot this for his first Evening Standard interview in June 1981

➢ 1976–1984, How creative clubbing started and ended with the 80s – “We were all kids,” says Chris Sullivan who would eventually run the Wag, the coolest club in town, for 19 years. “We went out and had a go. Empowerment is what’s important about this story.”

Photocall: Spandau Ballet, Richard Burgess and assorted Blitz Kid designers gather for the press conference before their fashion-and-music shows in New York. Yes that is Sade towards the far right. Photograph © by Shapersofthe80s

➢ 1981, First Blitz invasion of the US – 21 Blitz Kids take Manhattan by storm with a fresh fashion show and the live new sound of London. Eye-witness words and pix by Shapers of the 80s

ROMANTIC REVIVAL OF THE NOUGHTIES

Wow! Then and now: Sade backstage in August 1983 while still seeking a recording contract and, right, as shot to launch her 2010 album. Vintage picture © by Shapersofthe80s

➢ 2010, Shapers of the 80s finds comeback Shard comfy as ‘Auntie Sade’ – Having wowed the 80s clubbing scene, in 2011 Sade’s band won a Grammy award for Best R&B Performance By A Group.

➢ 2009, Onstage, Spandau Ballet’s Hadley and Kemp finally get huggy in a mighty musical Reformation – Shapers of the 80s follows the reunion of the band who wrote the new rules for pop in the Swinging 80s.

WE ARE ALL BOWIE’S CHILDREN NOW

David Bowie, Starman, 1972, Top of the Pops, tipping point, BBC

The moment the earth tilted July 6, 1972: During Starman on Top of the Pops, David Bowie drapes his arm around the shoulder of Mick Ronson. Video © BBC

➢ 40 years since “I picked on you-oo-oo”! July 6, 1972 saw the seminal pop moment — David Bowie’s first appearance on Top of the Pops as Ziggy Stardust, the day he created the next generation of popstar wannabes

➢ Where to draw a line between glitter and glam – defining what separates Slade from Bowie, the naff blokes in Bacofoil from starmen with pretensions

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➤ Essential pop-cultural landmarks reported here at Shapers of the 80s

Posted on 24 Dec 2013 | Leave a comment

THE MOST READ FEATURE ARTICLE AMONG 720,000 VIEWS SINCE THE LAUNCH OF SHAPERS OF THE 80s

➢ 1983, The Making of UK Club Culture — Definitive Face cover story by yours truly seen here in the Wham Rap! video. This account of how London nightlife had become an international magnet was first published as “an upstairs‑downstairs tale of two key nightspots” in The Face No 34 in February 1983. Photography © by Derek Ridgers. Reprinted in The Faber Book of Pop, 1995; and in Night Fever, Boxtree, 1997

From The Face, February 1983

THE ORIGINAL HISTORY OF THE BLITZ KIDS

➢ Spandau Ballet, the Blitz Kids and the birth of the New Romantics — The much-plundered story originally researched by Shapers of the 80s tells who did what to make stars out of a club houseband, change the rhythm of the UK charts — and ultimately rejuvenate the British media. The obsessive fashionistas behind one small club in London in 1980 went on to dominate the international landscape of pop and fashion, while putting more British acts into the US Billboard charts than the 1960s ever achieved.

EARLY 80s REPORTS REVISITED

➢ How three wizards met at the same crossroad in time — an inside scene-setter on the forces shaping the Swinging Eighties

➢ 1980, Strange days, strange nights, strange people: at The Blitz a decade dawns

➢ 1980, One week in the private worlds of the new young: London blazes with creativity

➢ 1980, Shapersofthe80s tells how Duran Duran’s road to stardom began in the Studio 54 of Birmingham, UK

➢ 1981, Birth of Duran’s Planet Earth … when other people’s faith put the Brummies into the charts

Romance blossoms: Drummer Jon Moss gives George O’Dowd a peck at Planets club in July 1981 way before their band Culture Club existed. Photographed © by Shapersofthe80s

➢ Ex-Blitz Kids give their verdicts on the TV drama Worried About the Boy – During and after its broadcast in 2010, this authoritative mixture of opinions on the Boy George story reshaped the accepted clichés about the Blitz Kids.

➢ 1976–1984, How creative clubbing started and ended with the 80s – “We were all kids,” says Chris Sullivan who would eventually host the Wag, the coolest club in town, for 19 years. “We went out and had a go. Empowerment is what’s important about this story.”

➢ 1981, First Blitz invasion of the US – 21 Blitz Kids take Manhattan by storm with a fresh fashion show and the live new sound of London. Eye-witness words and pix by Shapers of the 80s

ROMANTIC REVIVAL OF THE NOUGHTIES

Wow! Then and now: Sade backstage in August 1983 while still seeking a recording contract and, right, as shot to launch her 2010 album. Vintage picture © by Shapersofthe80s

➢ 2010, Shapers of the 80s finds comeback Shard comfy as ‘Auntie Sade’ – Having wowed the 80s clubbing scene, in 2011 Sade’s band won a Grammy award for Best R&B Performance By A Group.

➢ 2009, Onstage, Spandau Ballet’s Hadley and Kemp finally get huggy in a mighty Reformation – Shapers of the 80s follows the reunion of the band who wrote the new rules for pop in the Swinging 80s.

WE ARE ALL BOWIE’S CHILDREN NOW

The moment the earth tilted July 6, 1972: During Starman on Top of the Pops, David Bowie drapes his arm around the shoulder of Mick Ronson. Video © BBC

➢ Where to draw a line between glitter and glam – defining what separates the naff blokes in Bacofoil from starmen with pretensions

FRONT PAGE