Jefferson Hack (April 2005 - April 2010) | Page 16 | the Fashion Spot

Jefferson Hack (April 2005 - April 2010)

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^Sorry for posting the same photo twice
Photos promoting RED
www.brunopress.nl
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i love those new gap photos of him, i stumbled into the gap today and saw them and they made me so happy, i had to smile my head off.he is so sexy
 
Interview about both 'Dazed and Confused' and 'Another Magazine'
homepage.mac.com/joelgethinlewis/doc/Migrations.doc
Jefferson Hack: Rankin and I started Dazed 10 years ago and it grew very organically from an explosion of young creative talent that came out of British art colleges in London, through London really. In the early 90’s a new wave of photographers, writers, artists, journalists and stylists who wanted a platform for their ideas, for their expression. There was a lot of activity... now in retrospect you can look at it as a kind of creative explosion fuelled by the ecstasy culture of post-Thatcher. A feeling of DIY culture, optimism.

There was very little going on, on the magazine shelves.… I think all of those things I have just mentioned were kind of subsidiary cultural developments. I think the core technical development was that of the Apple Mac and the DTP revolution. At that time, 1990, we were able to pretty much produce a magazine using one Mac… We were the first generation to see the transition [from traditional paste up layout to DTP]

We thought f*ck! With one designer, one photographer and one writer we can make a magazine - if we have enough creative people around us to feed in the ideas. And the reason that it took off, the reason that it became what it is today was because of the creative talent that surrounded us. We had a vision for it and we realised that the magazine could become a platform for that new wave of expression. We started with a strong photography base. With young, image conscious contributors who wanted to express themselves through photography, through art, through fashion. Visually. They were straight out of college so they weren’t hooked up with other magazines. They wanted to do documentary based stuff, fashion based stuff, art-based photography. Subsequently from that, we picked up on what then spiralled into Brit art, Brit lit, Brit pop. Those kinds of things were happening right on our doorstep. So we didn’t have to have big budgets to travel to go and interview people. We didn’t have to be hugely connected to find out what was going on, it was all happening in our backyard. People were coming to us and they saw this thing; it was being distributed in a pretty lo-fi way and they wanted to get involved.

“We’re doing something, we’re doing a show down the road, we’re doing some graphics work, we’ve got great ideas for a fashion story, we’re designing a small label – can you feature our clothes?”

It was all that kind of energy. Having the office in Soho, having people just drop in and say “Yeah, I wanna write about hip-hop. There’s all this great sh*t going on. Can I write about it?” We would say “Yes!” very encouraging, going with the flow really. It was this feeling of f*ck everyone else, we don’t want to work for other media, we want to own our own media. Express what you think is important, raise the issues that you think are important, don’t plug into what the rest of the media is – how they are trying to control the public consciousness. We felt we were very renegade and a blip on the radar. Slightly out there. We had a very strong philosophy, which was to not be purely aspiration, to build a strong inspirational element to the style magazine format. To hand over a lot of space curatorially for projects to develop, so that we were actually creating original content. We wanted everything to be original, every interview, and every photograph. Every element in the magazine was produced or rendered by the people that were working there, so every issue you got, you would have never seen the images before, you would have never read it in another environment. Everything was about having our own authentic voice. That was the Dazed&Confused hallmark. I suppose the idea for Dazed&Confused was that anything goes, there are no rules any more.

We were the first people to introduce contemporary art as something that could be a lifestyle idea. Before that art was always pigeonholed as something that was...

Joel Lewis: Something you would go and see and go home?

JH: People weren’t even going to galleries. There weren’t very many. There were just institutions. This is when Saatchi was still in advertising, when Jay Jopling was still a city boy. This was before these placed existed. This was the time that the first Frieze exhibition happened, when Damien Hirst came out of the RA and set up that exhibition. That kind of time, very different to now. It was more of a nightlife scene where a lot of people were crossing over ideas.

So this was the first time that art got put into a lifestyle context. It was the first time that we did stuff with a sense of history. We were a whole lot of young people making a magazine that was full of energy – it was all about youth culture. But we would always reference the people that we thought were the cultural V.I.P.s, the people from where the influence came from. And we were very interested in making these kind of historical connections between what was happening now and what happened in the past. By that I mean interviewing people like Terry Southern, previous generations of artists and musicians, people who had influenced culture in their own way. That was a shocking thing. People were saying: “Why are they interviewing these old guys?”- We were saying that they were as interesting as the young guys. What ended up happening and what I realised was occurring was an end of history in a way. I know that sounds like a very dramatic statement but it was this also the idea of the end of this high and low culture, the end of high and low art. The idea that everything was as acceptable as everything else. As long as it’s good and there is a message and a quality. It didn’t matter if it was new as long as it felt interesting, exciting and somehow that it was relevant to the time. Do you see what I mean?

JL: Not discounting anything?

JH: Discounting things that didn’t seem to have an authentic voice. Discounting things that felt P.R. driven. Things that were just about cashing in or the commoditisation of culture or that were obviously just a tool, device or gimmick – a mirage to sell something else. What we were looking for was some kind of authenticity, something a bit more punk rock, something with a bit of attitude. But it didn’t mean that it had to be made by someone who was 20 years old. It could be Werner Herzog or Harmony Korine. It didn’t really matter; they were both as important as each other. Just because the kid was 19 it didn’t mean he was more exciting.
 
Cont.
homepage.mac.com/joelgethinlewis/doc/Migrations.doc

JH: Dazed for me was all about accelerating culture, it was about speed, it was about processing things – whether they are new, whether they are old, whether they are from London, from abroad. Whether they are hip or not hip, but just processing it in a way where you are kind of driving that authentic voice from it. So you’d look at the magazine and you’d probably feel a bit dazed and confused with the mix of the content, But it was the speed.. it relied on a reader who could process that information, it needed a reader who was a bit more media savvy, a bit more 21st century thinking.

…Towards the end of my editorship in 1999/2000 I really felt that monthly magazines were all about … people who read monthly magazines were all about the latest newest thing and what happened when you kept on bringing out another issue was that you were never making a final statement with one issue. You always made a statement over a period of time. Not that anything was serialised but it was just that idea that … with a magazine where you have 200 pages jam packed with content, photography etc. you always feel like you get in a bit of a trailer rather than …
JL: The feature presentation…



JH: You know I’m not kidding myself; there weren’t any 20,000-word articles in there, [Dazed&Confused] no 40-page stories. It’s all sampling of what’s going on, it’s all a taster of different things and that was the whole point – if you liked anything you could go and discover it in more depth.

JL: Yes.

JH: If you were turned onto an artist by an eight page thing and you wanted to know about them, go and see the show, buy the book of their work, buy the video. If you liked the interview with the filmmaker go and see the movie, get deeper into it. What we were developing was a culture of taste … as a reader you could accept or deny it but it would allow you to get turned on to new things. The premise was to turn people on to things.

Monthly magazines, the psychological impact that they have on culture and on a reader is to accelerate the rate at which people consume or get turned on to new things. So every issue you’d be turning people on to 40 or 50 new things out of which they might assimilate 1-20. And every month, every month, every month you’d be doing that. So what you’d be doing was just creating more publicity for more things all the time and introducing more things into culture and trying to break down those taboos or rigid structures that say “Oh that’s not acceptable to be into that” or “Its not acceptable to talk about that” and whether that was about political issues or social issues or whether it was about entertainment culture it didn’t matter. It was just a voracious appetite for stuff!

I started feeling a little bit unsatisfied with just going faster and faster and faster... So I thought doing an opposite magazine, one that was about slowing down. Another [Magazine] really came from the idea of how do you produce print media – something that is old fashioned, make it feel new, make it feel different. But actually give it a different psychological … make it have a different psychological impact on culture – make it have a different function as media to what else is out there. The obvious thing to do is alter the frequency that the magazine comes out. To bring it out twice a year, make it really thick, make it almost like a book, have really long articles as well as the shorter ones, have more space for less stuff. Make it feel less like you are skimming the surface of culture [and] make it feel more like you are zooming in on what’s going on. Put the microscope down a little more, slow down a bit more. Get off the highway, have a look at the scenery... I thought that [the slowing of pace] would create an impact, people wouldn’t be used to doing that. To be forced to read or take something in. Its quite funny because people say to me “I got the new issue!”, I say “Did you like it?”, and they say “I haven’t had a chance to look at it properly yet!”. That’s the most common thing I get. Then they get worried and say “Don’t worry, I’ve put it to one side, I’m gonna keep it, I’m gonna get into it when I have that time to get into it”. Its quite nice because it makes people think about time … they look at it and think “I’m never gonna get around to reading it”.
JL: (Laughter)



JH: That reaction is quite nice because it makes them think “if I can’t get around to reading that, when I am going to get around to actually having time to think for myself, doing the stuff that I want to do, to sort out my internal stuff, whatever”. It’s good because when they do get around to reading it I think they read it in a way that’s different to other magazines. – It’s not just something that you can just balance on your knee on the tube and kind of flick through an article and then feel like …
JL: You’ve found that little snippet of something



JH: You’ve found that little snippet of something. It’s a different approach. So that’s where the idea came from, the frequency came from that, the way we are putting it together came from that. All the sections in it are devised very specifically to not give you information in the way that other magazines do. The way that the upfront section divides, there’s a literary section in there, a bookmark.
 
Another interview with Jefferson, this time focusing on Dazed Digital
From www.jcreport.com
Interview

January 12, 2007
Dazed, Confused, and Digital
London
http://www.jcreport.com/mailer/issue108/popups/501.html
Dazed and Confused has been one of the seminal style publications of the last decade. it's been a go-to for cutting-edge visuals and probing copy covering everything from Ragga culture to MAKIRAMA to Raf Simons. In its continued surveillance on youth culture, Dazed has turned its attention to the Web with the launch of Dazed Digital, a platform for even more unique content. Editor-in-Chief Jefferson Hack tells us of online flirtation, his open call for writers, and why the current club scene in London is so energized.

JCR: Distinguish Dazed Digital from Dazed and Confused.

JH: DD is an ideas sharing network. We are opening up the flow of ideas to contributors from all around the world, enthusiastic young people to influence and direct the content on the site. DD is its own content platform, sharing the same ideology as the magazine but with its own program of contents.

JCR: Do you see Dazed as a British magazine or is it international?

JH: Dazed is a UK magazine with an international outlook and reach.

JCR: Any fears that the digital pub will supplant the physical one?

JH: I don't believe that print is dead. Magazines just need to react to how people are changing the way they consume their media. I think it's a great time for print. There hasn't been much innovation in magazine design since the mid-'90s, and now it's really exciting as the web is pushing editors and designers to really hone their points-of-view as competition for people's attentions gets more intense.

JCR: Why now for a digital play? Are other pubs in the Dazed family planning a big online push as well?

JH: We wanted to wait until we could control it all in-house. We don't want to work with any third parties on the design, programming, implementation, etc. That means we can react to changes immediately and it all comes from the same office, retaining the attitude and feel that makes Dazed so influential.

JCR: We're fascinated by the new club-kid era in London, the dressing up, the Leigh Bowery influences, etc. What do you think is going on?

JH: It's about self-expression and identity. Color, bold haircuts, and a playful attitude to mixing styles and influences have always been a core part of UK street style. The club kid era is now very fashion-influenced. From a Dazed perspective, I see a young, fearless generation coming through that isn't overshadowed by those in power. It takes a couple of generations to establish this, and the current crop is looking to the '80s influencers like Leigh Bowery, Judy Blame, Steve Strange, Westwood, etc.

JCR: What else defines the fashion pulse of London at the moment? Who are some of the talents grabbing your attention?

JH: London is about an openness to mixing styles and being open to influences. So it's less about talent that is born from here, and more what is allowed to nurture here. You see a lot of US and European artists and musicians settling here, or using the UK as a base from which to explore an international perspective. In terms of actual names that are the next generation of influencers, you will have to read Dazed Digital.


This interview was conducted by Jason Campbell
 
OMG! i love himmmm so much.
he's very cute and looks very kind.
he and kate moss made such a great couple...
 
I saw him tonight at Alexander McQueen show in Milano, but was too shy to introduce myself haha^_^
 
Oh my gosh, he is gorgeous. I would also like to know what those silver shoes are. I also want to know what the white shoes that he always wears are.
 
either he's looking for s.o either he doesn't want to do the queue... or he's looking for s.o to help him not to make the queue...
 
yourbestfriend said:
He seems to wear those silver shoes often..
What are they? Dior Homme?
They look like the ones Demeulemeester did last season.

Favourite look is the bulky grey woolen gloves onto the camel coat. Clever play on the ubiquitous slick black gloves and tailoring 'hitman' look that the Italian designers are so fond of.
 
Hope this hasn't been posted, I love Jefferson's expression! :lol:
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{Flickr}
With Irina Lazareanu :woot:
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{Flickr}
 
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