The Face Magazine - a reflection

The Face features throughout many of these SUB>SUMED essays, underpinning ideas and departures that were often instigated by photographs and looks. Here are a collection of random thoughts celebrating the magazine and its role in my subcultural nurturing.

I was 14 years old in May 1980 when The Face launched. I felt it was the magazine for me, even though I was busy going to lots of punk gigs at the time as that was the main fare in Derby. Punk was all but over, and post-punk was taking on myriad forms. The Face, and founder-editor Nick Logan, answered this call blurring boundaries between style culture, pop culture and post-punk musical experimentation. Logan understood that performance and artifice were re-emerging as a post-punk currency, and he narrated this new sensibility through the pages of The Face.

I meticulously kept (and still have) the first 36 issues, in a specially made pair of boxes, with sheets of paper between each issue. I don’t think Neville Brody’s challenge as graphic designer was under threat, and there was no calling for an untaken career in design for me…

The homemade box and first issue

Where was I in 1980? Starting with gigs in earnest due to a good scene in Derby and Nottingham, still a bit punk, but very much open to ideas, wanting to get a look.

What were these looks? We associate The Face at the time of its inception with new romantic culture, but it would not be until the November 1980 issue when 'the cult with no name' was formally christened by upstart and pretender to the throne Robert Elms. The first six or so issues of The Face were a joyous mix of 2-Tone, rockabilly, mod, post-punk – cut and paste from multiple pasts, cross-pollination in the present. I pored over the magazines, looking for new styles and niche subcultures. I tried various styles – new romantic, punk-rockabilly, new-pop soul-boy.

However, the new romantic scene soon took a firm hold - almost pushing the magazine off the precipice of sensibility. Sometimes it felt like too much – this fashion spread from issue 8 showcasing the work of Kensington Market designers Phrantik Psycho is a great example.  At this point in time (the end of 1980), Spandau Ballet had made the charts with their much-hyped first single and brought to the screens an image of dandy gladiators draped with highland blankets. The first thing I did, as an enthusiastic teenager, was to find an old pair of 'Birmingham Bags' (a high-waisted multi-buttoned, wide cut trousers) and sew in a line of distanced press studs below the knee. Fastening the press studs instantly transformed the trousers into jodhpurs – a new romantic staple (as illustrated in the Phrantik feature).

Phrantik Psycho feature from issue 8

Often inspired by the overnight success of Adam and the Ants, many bands went for the full treatment throughout 1981, getting kitted out in multicoloured clothes, blankets and rags, with random string ties around legs, arms and waists. The Scars were a great band, with a sinister Scots angle of lyrics and vocal enunciation, but they killed their career opting for a Spandau-copy look in summer 1981 (issue 14).

New romantic image maker Peter Ashworth photographs The Scars

By 1982 image culture was changing from month-to-month. Following the ‘anything goes’ excess and silliness of new romantic you had specific looks such as hard times, beachcomber, prairie (sheep-rustler chic), and all sorts of oriental and ethnic styles before cultural appropriation became a no-no. Bands were often kitted out with an image before even releasing a record, and would get a box feature in the magazine. This photograph of then-unknown (and, frankly, never known) Scottish band Set the Tone is a case in point. Clearly over-riffing on A Certain Ratio, you have all the punk-funk sartorial ticks: an industrial Hacienda type setting, two looking at the camera while two look away but all have that forced nonchalance, tamed wedge cuts, pedalpusher trousers in (presumably) white or pastel colours, cap-sleeved or roll-sleeved tee-shirts tucked in to canvas belts, thick sports socks in white squeezed into espadrilles. Style over substance.

The unknown Set the Tone is summer 1982

Let’s change focus to a bit of deep material culture. I got my magazine from the newsagent in the ‘top shops’. This was not some mod type code word, just a bunch of shops at the top of our estate, as opposed to the ‘bottom shops’ which were (you guessed it) at the bottom of our estate. The top shops were generally a better option as they had a chippy and also Sid’s (or Sid the Rob-Dog as we called him). Sid was an archetypical old-fashioned shop owner with a bald head, white apron and bacon-slicer, and was the main target for shoplifting biscuits and sweets or buying cigarettes.

The newsagent was also colloquially known as Ray’s, as he was the owner. I must have seen The Face advertised in advance - I can’t recall – as I got the magazine from the start. As far as I knew, I was the only customer for this magazine, and Ray would sometimes take the piss as it was clearly a bit ‘weird’. From around issue 9 it started to have my name pencilled on the cover, so I assume there might have been another or other customers. This small incursion into the relatively unblemished state of the magazines after nearly 45 years of being stored in my special box probably devalues them slightly. There’s also other marks of ownership, such as filled-in crosswords.

My name added by ‘Ray' the newsagent’

Surprisingly good crossword skills from issue 1

Many years later Ray moved onto the same close as my parents, taking a house that shared a boundary with the back field. When my dog Barney got old he often spent a holiday type week with my parents, where he would be given excessive attention and snacks. He could get into the back field and on occasion get into another garden. Famously, he once got into Ray’s garden, and then into the house undetected, and then found the dining room with scraps of food still on the table. He was discovered siting upright in a chair tucking into food, like something from an oversized Walter Potter taxidermy tableau.

Barney in his later years, around 2000.

Walter Potter’s squirrel scene

I’m not sure why I stopped getting The Face, but I did, after three years; so mid-1983. By this time it didn’t speak to me so much. It was less subcultural. Street styles in the original sense had given over to high-end branded clothing. The onset of Comme, Yohji plus UK designers like BodyMap and Crolla. In 1983 we had post-punk goth up north, which had my attention. The Face didn’t care for or cater for this scene.

Sheffield, October 1988

The above photograph is from October 1988. I’m moving around various friends’ houses in Sheffield, summer over, unsure what to do with myself, out of University and not really ready for a proper job. Acid House culture is all over Sheffield, and I’m also heavily into the look of skateboarding… so fashion as purveyed by The Face is not really connecting with me. I’m reading NME, and you can see an advert for Crisis, indicating the fashion crossover of comics that took hold in the late 80s. However, The Face is on the table, with Bomb The Bass’s Tim Simenon just visible as the cover star. It’s what should be issue 101, but is numbered as volume 2, issue 1. So, it links back to issue 1 as the opening a closure of an era. For me, it’s not really closure, or a re-opening, or anything, just a chance inclusion. I’d not bought The Face since 1983, and would not buy it again until the magazine became extinct.

In spring 2004 The Face staggered to a final end. There was a ‘party’ in Sheffield, in the space of the old National Centre for Popular Music, with local DJs and musicians. I can’t remember why, but I got an invite and attended – even though at the time I’d probably not looked at the magazine for over 10 years. The date is significant for me, because shortly after this I discovered shops like Pollyanna and reignited my interest in clothing. Prior to that, through the mid-to-late-90s, I was just dressed in dog walking and gardening scruffs – as in the doorstep photograph with Barney.

There’s a final bit more to this. In autumn 2022 I purchased a box of The Face magazines covering issues 1-100 but incomplete. A serendipitous encounter in the North Yorkshire town of Malton, and a huge bargain. It felt weird to start reading again from where I left off, like going back in time and picking up an alternative path of life.