Not much challenged the orthodoxy of glamour in fashion and decor through the 1980s. Proliferating glossy magazines celebrated revived couture, promoted luxury goods and displayed them on perfect human specimens in ideal settings. They did not care for, or cater to, the young, poor or inventive. Youthful street daywear was not their business.
But there was another magazine world – notably the Face and i-D – which had come out of music and pop culture. By the late 80s, freelancers for these, especially the stylist Melanie Ward, just out of college, were experimenting with emphatically different clothes and the ways to wear them, to create photographs that were more than an alternative to perfection. They proposed a realism that dominated the future presentation of fashion.
