A Weekend with BLITZ Magazine

We are delighted to celebrate the launch of Iain R. Webb's new book As Seen in BLITZ: Fashioning '80s Style with a series of special events. Over the weekend there will be a pop-up show in the ICA Theatre curated by former fashion editor Iain R Webb, a series of talks with special guests, and film screenings.

As Seen in BLITZ: Fashioning '80s Style focuses on 1980s style and culture and includes a wealth of stunning visuals, text and interviews celebrating the deeply influential pages of BLITZ.

In London at the start of the 1980s, three new style magazines emerged to define an era. It was a time of change: post punk before the digital age and at the dawn of a hedonistic club scene that saw the birth of the New Romantics. On the pages of BLITZ, The Face and i-D, a new breed of young iconoclasts hoped to inspire revolution. As BLITZ magazine's fashion editor from 1982-87, Iain R. Webb was at the centre of this world. His images manipulated fashion to explore ideas of transformation, beauty, glamour and sex. The magazine's arresting, subversive fashion pages, and its profiles of disparate designers and creative types, let the imagination run free.

The cast of characters and contributors include Leigh Bowery, Amanda Cazalet, Boy George, Princess Julia, Nick Knight, David LaChapelle, Paul Morley and Anna Piaggi. Featured designers include Bodymap, Judy Blame, Dean Bright, Comme Des Garçons, Jasper Conran, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Katharine Hamnett, Hermès, Pam Hogg, Marc Jacobs, Stephen Jones, Calvin Klein, Andrew Logan, Issey Miyake, Franco Moschino, Rifat Ozbek, Antony Price and Vivienne Westwood.

'We're thrilled to be hosting the launch of As Seen in BLITZ. It's incredible to think who passed through the pages of BLITZ magazine - Malcolm McLaren, Madonna, Daniel Day-Lewis... I couldn't have survived the 80s without it.'
Gregor Muir, Executive Director, ICA

Iain R Webb is an award winning writer and Professor of Fashion at Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins. He now lives in Bath where he consults for the Fashion Museum and muses over his life in frocks. He studied fashion design at St Martin's School of Art (now Central Saint Martins), graduating in 1980. During his career he has been fashion editor/director of BLITZ, The Evening Standard, Harpers & Queen, The Times and Elle, while contributing to various publications including New Musical Express, Saturday Telegraph, The Independent and Vogue. He won the Fashion Journalist of The Year Award two years running in 1995 and ‘96. A respected fashion writer, he is the author of Bill Gibb, Fashion and Fantasy; Foale and Tuffin: The Sixties. A Decade in Fashion, and Postcards From the Edge of the Catwalk. He acts as a consultant at the Fashion Museum in Bath and is Professor of Fashion at Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins.

Saturday 18 May

BLITZ Magazine Display Selected by Iain R Webb
11am - 6pm
Theatre
Free

BLITZ Magazine Events Programme

As Seen in BLITZ: Fashioning the 80s Style
12pm
This talk is an opportunity to relive the seminal decade of the monthly media, fashion and pop culture magazine with those who were there at the time. From the models and make-up artists to the designers and photographers, each speaker will offer their particular BLITZ experience. Chaired by journalist Hywel Davies, the panel includes Barry Kamen, BLITZ’s ‘poster-boy’, Stevie Stewart and David Holah of Bodymap, and make-up artist Louise Constad, among others.

Fashion & Style Magazines: Then, Now, and the Future
2pm
At the forefront of 1980s counter-culture, BLITZ arguably paved the way for the boom of fashion and style magazines in the 1990s. This panel discussion will explore the influence of BLITZ, charting a legacy over the past decades; will reflect on what is popular now and will consider how magazines must shift as publishing moves away from print towards the digital. Led by journalist Hywel Davies, the talk will also include Penny Martin, editor of The Gentlewoman, Max Pearmain, editor of Arenna Homme Plus and Carey Labovitch, publisher of BLITZ magazine, among others.

Special Film Screening: Liquid Sky introduced by Iain R Webb
4pm
A pleasure-seeking alien lands in downtown New York and gets caught up in a world of casual sex and heroin abuse by insinuating itself into the lives of androgynous hipsters Margaret and Larry (both played by Anne Carlisle). This effortlessly cool 1982 time-capsule features plenty of early '80s fashion, a vivid colour scheme and a weird, pulsing electronic score.

Dir. Slava Tsukerman, US 1982, 112 mins, cert. 18

Cinema 1
£25 / £20 concessions / £12 ICA members

Sunday 19 May

BLITZ Magazine Display Selected by Iain R Webb
11am - 6pm
Theatre
Free

With thanks to ACC Publishing Group.