Editor’s letter: winter 2023

Taken from the new print issue of THE FACE. Get your copy here.

Olivia Rodrigo is exactly the kind of artist we love at THE FACE. The kind whose pictures cover bedroom walls. The kind whose music will, in some distant future, remind millions of people how they felt when they were a teenager.

As Deputy Editor Olive Pometsey finds out in her brilliant piece on the happiness of girls in Britain, it’s not easy being young. And it’s not often treated with the appropriate seriousness either, as seen in the under-reporting of issues facing the UK’s student population. We hope to have rectified that in some small way with our feature on life as a first-year in 2023, passing the mic to five student newspaper journalists from around the UK for their takes (we should be less fearful of AI taking our jobs and more of these lot).

Young people have big dreams and deserve big representation, like the kind highlighted in Style and Culture Editor TJ Sidhu’s portfolio of British South Asian talent. There, 13 stars of art, literature, fashion, football, stage and screen offer a burst of cultural excitement, as well as inspiration for the young, brown talent of the future, as they come of age and find their place in the world.

It isn’t easy being young, but it doesn’t last forever. In fact, getting older isn’t all that bad either. As Olivia tells Assistant Editor Jade Wickes in our mega, Jim Goldberg-shot profile of the pop star, ​“I feel myself growing and understanding so much. I have more confidence, I’m more self-assured. I know who I am and what I want a little more. It seems I get a little happier every year.”

As someone ending the year immeasurably happier than I started it, I wish the same for each and every one of you.

Matthew Whitehouse, Editor

London, November 2023