Editor’s letter: autumn 2021

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

Bob Dylan once said that he was born very far from where he was supposed to be. It’s a feeling shared with anyone who grew up in the suburbs. Forever waiting to catch a train to somewhere, anywhere, more exciting than this.

The suburbs formed the basis of a conversation I had in May with photographer Elaine Constantine, as we sat outside a little Italian cafe in North London. Elaine’s work has always found magic in the mundane and her story (page 58), the very first we commissioned for the issue, is no different – an ​“epic suburbia adventure”, as Claire Marie Healy puts it in her brilliant accompanying essay. An ode to calling out around the world, and going racing in the street.

You might be wondering what suburbia has to do with a fashion issue (the fashion issue, as we so triumphantly declare it on the cover). Well, for a start, there’s our feature on Heaven, the Marc Jacobs line that is the direct result of mastermind Ava Nirui’s years spent sat in a bedroom and dreaming (very suburban). There’s the power of dressing up, as seen through the eyes of the teen siblings Herbie and Ray (clothes as a disruptive force – very suburban rebellion). There’s photographer Brianna Capozzi’s Lola Nicon story and the return of glamour after a year-and-a-half on the sidelines (because what is suburbia if not a life on the margins?). And of course there’s actor Michael Gandolfini, whose father, James, famously drove a Chevrolet Suburban in his role as Tony Soprano. (OK, that one’s a stretch, but there is something undeniably suburban about The Sopranos’ presentation of daily mob life.)

For all our readers waiting to catch that train – and those who decide to stay and make their own excitement – this one’s for you.

Matthew Whitehouse, Editor

London, August 2021