“The Face” Is Back, Baby!

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Famed British fashion magazine The Face is back from the dead. Again! Well… almost. The magazine that first brought us Kate Moss has just been acquired by C86 Holdings. The company bought the The Face from Wasted Talent Limited, which shut the publication down earlier this year.

They’ve also relaunched their website with a sign-up page for future updates.

“Some brands matter more than others, and The Face is undeniably one of them,” said Kuok Meng Ru, founder and principal of C86 Holdings, via a press release published on the company’s website this morning. “I want to thank Ian and the Wasted Talent team for trusting me with the stewardship of this very special brand as it enters its next chapter. The work now is to carry its legacy forward with the care and ambition the brand deserves.”

“Meng is someone I’ve known and respected for many years,” said Ian Flooks, chairman of Wasted Talent. “He has a rare combination of genuine passion for culture and a proven entrepreneurial track record of starting, relaunching and nurturing iconic brands, and evolving them for the future. I have every confidence that The Face is in the right hands.”

The Face was founded in London in 1980 by music journalist Nick Logan. In the ’90s, the publication helped launch the careers of fashion photographers including Corinne Day, Ellen Von Unwerth, Stephane Sednaoui, Nigel Shafran, David Sims, Juergen Teller and Mark Aleksy as well as stylists such as Melanie Ward.

In 1990 Day and Ward collaborated on what would become one of the most important and influential fashion editorials of the decade: The Third Summer of Love starring a then 16-year-old Kate Moss.

The magazine never sold particularly well, though — their best selling issue ever was October 1995 starring Brit pop sensation Robbie Williams, which sold an estimated 128,000 copies — and the magazine ceased publication in 2004.

Bauer Media Group acquired the rights to The Face in 2008 as part of a larger media deal and sold those rights to UK publisher Wasted Talent Media i n 2017. Wasted Talent then relaubched The Face in April of 2019, first online and then as a quarterly print magazine starting in late summer of that year. The first issue featured four different cover stars: Harry Styles, Dual Lipa, Rosalía, and Tyler the Creator.

The magazine once again ceased publication in April of this year, but it looks like there is no keeping good IP down. Here’s hoping C8s Holdings has what it takes to see this incredible title into the future. After all, if any magazine is worthy of a reboot, it’s The Face.