Small is beautiful when it comes to the inventive mini-edition of The Gentlewoman, a greatest hits package celebrating the exemplary British magazine’s “10 years of fabulousness”.
During that time (after all print had been roundly declared as “dead” in 2010), editor Penny Martin and her team have consistently confounded expectations around independent print publishing and the traditional editorial stances of periodicals aimed at female readers.
In my twin capacities as “biographer” of The Face and curator of last year’s British independent magazine exhibition PRINT!, I’ve been asked publicly and privately for my thoughts on the imminent online relaunch of the title (the plan is that the quarterly physical edition will follow in August, carrying a September dateline).
So here they are:
It’s interesting that the greatest anticipation for the magazine’s return is being generated for and by the fashion community. The PRs, writers, stylists and students who kept the flame alive after the publication’s 2004 demise are now busily banging the drum in response to the relaunch’s oddly one-note Instagram branding exercise, filling their feeds with excited content.
This summer I am staging PRINT! Tearing It Up, an exhibition at central London’s Somerset House which investigates and celebrates the power of independently produced British magazines and journals.
//Athenaeum has done the book proud with this splendid window display. Photo: Athenaeum//
The Story Of The Face is coming to Amsterdam on Friday (December 15).
In an event at the city’s NewWerktheater organised by leading Netherlands bookshop Athenaeum Nieuwscentrum, I’ll be making a visual presentation about the magazine that changed culture.
Afterwards I’ll talk about the enduring influence of The Face and my new book The Story Of The Face with Gert Jonkers, founder of Butt and Fantastic Man and publisher of The Gentlewoman and COS Magazine.
If you’re in town please come along. Tickets from aanmelden@athenaeum.nl
Apologies for not posting for a while; I am currently focusing energies on my book Legacy: The story of The Face, which is published by Thames & Hudson in autumn 2017.
Launched in 1980 by print publishing pioneer Nick Logan – the editor of the NME during its ’70s glory years, the man who also founded Smash Hits, Arena, Arena Homme Plus, Frank and Deluxe – The Face magazine brought the news on the dizzying developments of popular culture for two decades.
| Paul Gorman is a writer. This is his blog: art, books, conversation, cults, dancing, design, encounters, environments, events, film, galleries, groups, individuals, invitations, magazines, music, opinions, performance, photography, places, press, privacy, spaces, style, thoughts + views. |
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