A Wink and a Smile
i-D Turns 30
As Richard Buckley points out in his foreword to Taschen's new tome celebrating 30 years of i-D, the magazine has launched a hundred careers. It was where photographers Nick Knight, Mario Testino, Juergen Teller, Craig McDean, Ellen von Unwerth, and Wolfgang Tillmans published their early work, where Madonna, Björk, and Naomi got their first covers. There they all were, winking on the wall at last night's book launch party—it's a signature quirk that every i-D cover star has had one eye closed, a visual correlative of the magazine's name, geddit? (Turn the logo on its side if you're still having trouble.) Even as guests partied, Josh Olins was downstairs adding to the gallery, shooting Kristen McMenamy for an upcoming cover.
Eleven-time cover girl Kate Moss didn't show up, but Buckley's partner, Tom Ford, came with Elizabeth Saltzman Walker (when Ford fronted an issue with his fox terrier John, even the dog was having a good old wink). And he was just one of a crowd of 450 fashion heavyweights and nightlife legends, an impressive cross section of the characters who helped make i-D the definitive style primer of the past three decades. "The bible," Dries Van Noten proclaimed unequivocally. "You looked at The Face, but you read i-D."
The party was a hoot as hordes of London's bright youngish things—Alice Dellal, Richard Nicoll, Jonathan Saunders, Erin O’Connor, Lara Bohinc, Hannah Marshall—surrendered to Champagne and vodka. But the moments a completist like this reporter relished were these: nightlife royalty Princess Julia skating round in search of Steve Strange (now there's a Blitz minute for you), or genius illustrator François Berthoud picking the cover of issue no. 8, featuring club queen Scarlett, as his favorite, just as the woman herself appeared in front of the poster. Then, she was the intimidatingly chic teen who ran the door at the Cha-Cha and the Camden Palace, the girl who took the fledgling Leigh Bowery under her wing and taught him everything she knew about self-invention. Now, she's a social worker with an impressive waist-length mane of white hair and a disinclination to mythologize. "We didn't think about it," she said with the fierce here-and-now pragmatism of all true originals. "It was our life."
Words that would ring true to i-D's perennially humble founder, Terry Jones. The turnout was the truest testament to his achievement. For three decades, wife Tricia and he have presided over a whole style subculture, Ma and Pa to brilliant misfits. Terry's favorite cover? Issue no. 2, September 1980. "Because it meant I didn't stop at no. 1." Curiously, it's the only back issue he himself can't find. So now you know just what to give Terry Jones for Christmas.
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