Michael Harding grew up skateboarding at a time when it was not socially accepted — when the haircuts, the clothing, and the creative anarchy of the scene only made sense to those who were truly part of it. He was drawn to photographers like Larry Clark and Ed Templeton, who captured skating’s most culturally significant moments, and that subcultural lens never left him. By the time he had built a career as a hairstylist working with publications like Dazed and i-D, the idea had crystallised: there was no beauty magazine that focused solely on contemporary beauty with a subversive edge, something rawer and more experimental than the glossy mainstream.
In 2020, together with stylist Hannah Elwell, Harding launched Altered States — a printed beauty publication about cultural innovation and authenticity. The first issue was a limited edition of 500 copies, and it sold through almost immediately. The format is deliberately loose: a collage of new editorial, photo essays, and archival photography that resists the predictable structure of conventional beauty magazines. A profile of a neighbourhood barber shares pages with a documentary on queer skaters in Hackney by Clare Shilland. Cold War-era portraits from Nathan Farb’s archive sit alongside commissioned fashion stories by Amy Troost, Elizaveta Porodina, and Samuel Bradley. Historical images and contemporary work are treated as equals, because for Harding, the continuity between them is the point.
Three issues in, Altered States has attracted contributors including legendary hairstylists Eugene Souleiman and Anthony Turner, makeup artist Lucy Bridge, and photographers like Gorka Postigo, who captured the internationally acclaimed drag collective Drag Syndrome for the magazine. The editorial voice refuses to separate beauty from the cultures that produce it — punk, skating, club life, queer communities, street fashion. Hair and makeup are not surfaces to polish but cultural languages, and the magazine reads them with the fluency of someone who grew up speaking them.
For a publication that describes every issue as “the appreciation issue,” Altered States has earned its name: it alters how you see an industry that most people encounter only through Instagram filters and product launches. The alteration is permanent.
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