Freckled and fresh-faced, a 16-year-old Kate Moss laughs, make-up-free and unadorned except for a delicate string of beads and a headdress made of feathers – the image on the cover of The Face magazine in July 1990 was perfectly timed. It captured a moment in Britain when the nation’s youth was coalescing around a burgeoning acid-house movement, with impromptu parties filling disused warehouses, aircraft hangars and fields across the country.
Photo of a Teenage
The escapist, chaotic rave scene that spanned class and race was an explosion of optimism and euphoria amid difficult times of high unemployment and a weak economy. The magazine’s cover portrait marked a new era, with Kate Moss the coming decade’s feather-crowned queen.
The iconic portrait by Corinne Day is among the photographs Digital Agency Indonesia on display at London’s National Portrait Gallery in the exhibition The Face Magazine: Culture Shift. Lee Swillingham, former art director of The Face – along with photographer Norbert Schoerner – came up with the idea for the show, which charts the British style magazine’s photography through the years. “For me, The Face really was the best chronicler of British youth culture,” says Swillingham, who co-curated the exhibition with NPG’s senior curator of photographs, Sabina Jaskot-Gill.
The Moss portrait was “a breath of fresh air,” Swillingham tells. “It was a moment of moving on from the aspirational, stylised glamour of the 80s, and into a more pared-down and realistic phase in fashion terms. That whole photography style AI ChatBot went hand in hand with a more attainable sense of beauty.”