Born in 1971 in Montevideo, Jefferson Hack (supposedly named after the sixties band Jefferson Airplane) is a force unparalleled in his own niche of fashion and publishing.
The son of a tobacco salesman, Hack lived in South America, Singapore, and Belgium before settling in Ramsgate, Kent at the age of 9. He attended Pangbourne College, a naval public school before he left to attend the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communication.) It was at LCP in 1989 where Hack met John Rankin Waddell, the now internationally renowned photographer. In 1992, the pair founded Dazed & Confused, financed by money from Rankin’s parents. What started as just a fold-out poster later became a staple of the nineties, pioneering new ideas and approaches to art, fashion and Brit pop culture. With Alexander McQueen as the magazine’s fashion editor-at-large, Dazed brought a voice to the young British creative types, sparking conversation about artists such as Nick Knight, Damien Hirst and bands such as Radiohead.
While Rankin acted as the publishing and creative director, Hack ran the everyday business of the magazine; drawing on his friends and contacts in the industry to bring a small, student-founded publication to battle with some of the biggest fashion magazines in the UK. Dazed (as it is affectionately known) is now an internationally recognized magazine, with editions in Japan and Australia as well as a part of the Dazed group including RANK, Dazed Film & TV, and dazeddigital.com.
In 2001, Hack passed on his title at Dazed to his then-deputy Rachel Newsome, and went on to expand the Dazed group into something more. He launched the bi-annual fashion and arts title AnOther Magazine that year, AnOther Man in 2005 and AnOther Fashion Book, published by Karl Lagerfeld’s Edition 7L, in 2009. Interviewing celebrities and it-people alike, he regularly contributes to all of the Dazed publications in addition to The Daily Telegraph, and Style.com.
