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In the age before the internet, news from far-off worlds reached people like me—suburban-bred teenagers looking for something to latch on to—via the magazine shelf at chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders. And while the salad days of print media offered a plethora of options, the British titles The Face and i-D were consistent standouts, their editorial offerings an alluring mishmash of music, nightlife, culture, and fashion. Decades later, both titles are once again at the top of my mind—one for doing its best to pay respect to the past while moving forward, and one for looking back.
i-D, initially founded in London in 1980 as a hand-stapled fanzine, became known for featuring up-and-coming talent behind and in front of the camera. Its cover images featured icons like Kate Moss and PJ Harvey, always throwing the reader a wink that mirrored the magazine’s logo (a proto-emoticon, long before the age of text messaging.) In 2012, i-D was sold to the doomed Vice Media, and in 2023, supermodel and lover of “koding” Karlie Kloss and her company Bedford Media bought the magazine after Vice filed for bankruptcy. On Monday, i-D relaunched, with New York–based Thom Bettridge—an experienced editor and creative director who spent time at 032c, Interview, and most recently, SSENSE—at the helm. And rather than an A-list celebrity, the first new cover star is Enza Khoury, an 18-year-old high school student, gamer, activist, and aspiring actress from Chagrin Falls, Ohio, dressed in Gucci. There’s also a limited-edition cover featuring Naomi Campbell, whose first-ever cover was an issue of i-D published in 1986, when the future fashion legend was only about four months into her modeling career. But leading with Khoury, the winner of a nationwide talent search, is a move that feels not just progressive, but legitimately bold—particularly in a climate where countless formerly cool and cutting-edge publications have no choice but to succumb to the celebrity merry-go-round, handing over their covers to stars with a devout stan following in order to fight for attention on what’s left of the newsstand.
I was in London last week. At the National Portrait Gallery, a quick stroll (it was an oddly sunny day) from my hotel in Leicester Square, The Face—another iconic ’80s-’90s British magazine with a similar focus content-wise, founded the same year as i-D by former New Musical Express editor Nick Logan—was the subject of an exhibition, “The Face Magazine: Culture Shift,” curated by the gallery’s senior curator of photographs, Sabina Jaskot-Gill, former Face art director Lee Swillingham, and Face photographer Norbert Schoener. I am very familiar with the material, and the show organized the classics well, along with some of the more obscure images from the magazine’s heyday. It also included music, which did an excellent job of setting the tone on a mellow Monday morning in the museum. I could look at Corrine Day pictures all day, and the show is worth visiting if you love the magazine. The Face ceased publication in 2004 but was reborn in 2019 in print as well as online. They’ve done some interesting things since then, particularly putting Olivia Rodrigo on the cover shot by legendary American photographer Jim Goldberg. It was unexpected and well executed.
Magazines are meant to be thought-provoking, inspiring, and, for some, collectible reference material. (As I write this, a 215-issue lot of vintage Face issues spanning the magazine’s first 18 years in print will set you back $2,204 on eBay—arguably a bargain, even when you factor in shipping from Australia.) I have written about their importance before, and I’m encouraged to see the younger generation seemingly embracing print. The relaunch of i-D feels promising and will hopefully spur others to follow suit and remember why we all fell in love at the newsstand in the first place.
