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1982 ➤ Never a week without a fashion show

Posted on 21 Apr 2009 | Leave a comment

Eye-candy: PX swimwear opens the show. Picture © by Shapersofthe80s

In April 1982, Steve Strange orchestrated the first serious sortie by a wave of young London designers to the Mecca of the established fashion world, Paris. An act of folly – or a marker for international success? Either way, this show sounded the last rites for the New Romantics…

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➢ Video of the Paris show and its and rehearsals provided footage for the videos promoting Visage’s tracks The Dancer and The Steps from their eponymous UK Top Ten album of 1980. Sadly, these videos have recently been removed from YouTube, but the opening seconds of the Fade to Grey video show Strange arriving at Le Palace for the show:

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1983 ➤ Showdown for Worlds End, Vivienne and Malcolm

Posted on 3 Apr 2009 | Leave a comment

The creator of this website, Shapers of the 80s, was photographing the runway in Paris on the day the King and Queen of Outrage realised the end was nigh. His backstage interviews provided scoops for the London Evening Standard and subsequently for The Face magazine, “style bible” of the 80s. Again and again, the emerging stars of the new decade observed that he was “always there”…

First published in the Evening Standard, Nov 4, 1983

An Evening Standard exclusive breaks the news of an acrimonious power struggle that threatens to split the infamous couple who unleashed the punk revolution. Malcolm McLaren, manager of the pioneering punk-rock group the Sex Pistols, and Vivienne Westwood, the eccentric designer who clothed them, became King and Queen of Outrage overnight in 1976. Today they are daggers-drawn in a battle royal for control of their company, Worlds End, which has become the hottest name in avant-garde style.
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