An iconic image of Kate Moss marked an explosive moment of change in Britain – and helped to create the culture we now live in. It's among the photographs displayed in a new exhibition that celebrates the photography of The Face magazine.

Freckled and fresh-faced, a 16-year-old Kate Moss laughs, make-up-free and unadorned except for a delicate string of beads and a headdress made of feathers – the image on the cover of The Face magazine in July 1990 was perfectly timed. It captured a moment in Britain when the nation's youth was coalescing around a burgeoning acid-house movement, with impromptu parties filling disused warehouses, aircraft hangars and fields across the country. The escapist, chaotic rave scene that spanned class and race was an explosion of optimism and euphoria amid difficult times of high unemployment and a weak economy. The magazine's cover portrait marked a new era, with Kate Moss the coming decade's feather-crowned queen.

The iconic portrait by Corinne Day is among the photographs on display at London's National Portrait Gallery in the exhibition The Face Magazine: Culture Shift. Lee Swillingham, former art director of The Face – along with photographer Norbert Schoerner – came up with the idea for the show, which charts the British style magazine's photography through the years. "For me, The Face really was the best chronicler of British youth culture," says Swillingham, who co-curated the exhibition with NPG's senior curator of photographs, Sabina Jaskot-Gill.

The Moss portrait was "a breath of fresh air," Swillingham tells the BBC. "It was a moment of moving on from the aspirational, stylised glamour of the 80s, and into a more pared-down and realistic phase in fashion terms. That whole photography style went hand in hand with a more attainable sense of beauty."

It was Swillingham's predecessor as art director Phil Bicker who initially championed the emerging photographer Corinne Day and the then unknown teenage model Kate Moss. "I was searching for someone who would be 'the face of The Face'," Bicker tells the BBC – not a glossy, "aspirational" fashion muse but a natural, real one, in tune with the magazine's readership. "Kate had the Britishness and youthfulness that The Face represented – she was funny, and laughed a lot. She seemed to me a person first, and a model second." Inside the July 1990 issue of the magazine, Moss is shown on the beach at Camber Sands on the south coast of England, messing about guilelessly in a series of photos striking in their simplicity and naturalness.

It was "a perfect storm," says Bicker. "And despite Kate's subsequent global profile and extensive career, she's still associated with The Face, and that defining moment which launched her career. It was shot in a way by Corinne that allowed Kate’s personality and positive energy to come through, so that when people saw the images, they forgot they were looking at a styled fashion story, instead believing this was a portrait of Kate unadorned."

Moss nor her agency particularly liked this raw, slightly gawkish depiction of the model, according to Sheryl Garratt, then The Face editor, writing in The Observer in 2000. The shoot has nonetheless remained a cultural touchstone, embodying a moment in time. The magazine's founder Nick Logan later said: "At that time, at the start of the rave scene, I remember saying, 'let's aim it at those people dancing in fields'." The 1990 images of Moss reflected not only a new aesthetic but also a deeper cultural change in the UK, with the cover line of the magazine referring to a "summer of love", in reference to the exploding outdoor rave scene.

More like this:

• Eight striking images that define America

• The photographs that skewer British peculiarities

• The indigenous American supermodel bringing change

"It was a real moment of transition," Angela McRobbie, professor of cultural studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, tells the BBC. "It marked a shift, when a subculture moved into mass visibility. Rave culture opened its doors to a much vaster section of boys and girls who would never have gone dancing in that way before. It was a new form of leisure, and a youth culture becoming mass........

© BBC