Magazine of the Week

Hi, everybody!

blitz-cvr

This week’s title is an older one, which we received through gifts. Begun in 1980 by a pair of Oxford students, Carey Labovitch and Simon Tesler, it was a monthly title, focused on the pop trio: music, fashion, and culture. Styled by artists and design students, it aimed to fill a gap between teen magazines and Vogue.

blitz-81

 

Blitz was a voice for the British Invasion music and style of the 1980s, featuring such popular musicians as Boy George, Duran Duran, Bauhaus, Simple Minds, Morrisey, and Debbie Harry, as well as designers Zandra Rhodes, Katherine Hamnett, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Vivienne Westwood. The editorials put them alongside the artists and stylists they hung around with after hours, and helped the magazine create it’s signature androgynous, graphic, and iconoclastic style.

 

 

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The issues we have run from April 1985 through July 1987. The magazine succumbed to the recession of 1990-91.

Blitz Magazine UK

Blitz was one of three magazines begun in England around that time. These helped create the the genre of the “fashion-culture-music-club scene” titles that have become so prolific since (think Sassy, Fader, XXL, V, and Wonderland). These three titles evolved   into major style expressions of the 1980s: i-D, the Face, and Blitz. We have i-D and the Face as well.

 

For a better look at the styling over the magazine’s life run, check out this title, compiled by Blitz‘s first fashion editor, Iain R. Webb.

As Seen in Blitz: Fashioning ’80s Style