Category Archives: Fashion

1978 ➤ To the edge and back with the lovely Julia

Posted on 10 Jan 2010 | 1 comment

❚ PRINCESS JULIA IS A NATIONAL TREASURE. After three decades, she remains one of the UK’s coolest dance deejays, music editor at i-D and co-runs The P.i.X fanzine. She is as beautiful and immaculately attired as she was in the Swinging 80s. In those days Julia Fodor turned heads as the star sales assistant in PX, Helen Robinson’s inspirational New Romantic clothes shop in Covent Garden.

Nouvelle vague, Feb 1980: Julia outside PX, designer Helen Robinson’s home of New Romantic fashion. Photographed © by Martin Brading

Stunningly coiffed in a beehive hairdo, she could have stepped out of a French nouvelle vague movie – until she opened her mouth. “’Ello dahhlin’,” she greeted you, in broad Eliza Doolittle Cockney.

Once Steve Strange had put Julia in the cloakroom at the Blitz in 1979, her unique style ensured her a place at the centre of all the press coverage the club provoked, as well as in the Visage video for Fade to Grey. As one of the few true Blitz Kids, Julia never ventured into public without her Look.

This month, Julia began a photo-blog called The World of Princess Julia to record her nightlife activities in London and abroad – for her deejay residency at Queen in Paris, she has enjoyed being delivered to work by cross-Channel helicopter. Her first blog post introduces us to her life of what some might call notoriety. Here’s a taste, in Julia’s own words…

A lot of tinsel, that’s London, we love
our veneer, we love our sleaze

❚ I’M EIGHTEEN, ’78, [Covent Garden is] still boarded up ready for gentrification, coming down soon though. I work in a shop – PX. There’s a rehearsal space downstairs, band music bleeds up, Chrissie’s down there with her Pretenders, she tells me all about it. One day Michael Jackson came by, another time some local kids locked us in for a laugh, it was Cameron McVey and his mates.

I had a “look” then, one of many. I hobbled around in tight, tight skirts and high, high heels from Seditionaries. I took speed and learnt to smoke. I had a good beehive. What’s his name, Paul [Smith] from up north moved into Floral Street, Paul Howie and Lynne Franks had jumpers in Long Acre. There was nothing else round there then shop wise.

We had Bowie on, we played Kraftwerk, we kept a lookout for new music, new makeup, the future, futuristic. Dance moves, soul static robot. Berlin, film-noir. London ’79, cross-dressing melting vista of possibilities. No money, poverty breeds creativity, that’s what they say. Nevertheless perhaps it’s true, especially in London where people seem to gravitate towards seeking out an identity more vital than the one they’ve left behind. I did the same, left north London and headed uptown, central, on the Piccadilly line. London’s built on ley-lines, heard someone say that somewhere, I think it’s true because there’s certain energy here in London…

PX moves into Endell Street in Feb 1980: New Romantic satin gowns, Fauntleroy collars – and Julia. Photographed © by Martin Brading

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Posted in Clubbing, Culture, Fashion, London, Social trends

Tagged Blitz Kids, New Romantics, Princess Julia, PX

WELCOME ➤ TO THE SWINGING EIGHTIES

Posted on 12 Oct 2009 | Comments Off

In 1980 a youth movement began reshaping Britain.
Its stars didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did. This writer was there and these words and pictures tell the tale.

◼︎ As a decade, the 1970s spelt doom. British youth culture had been discredited by punk. A monumental recession followed the Labour government’s “winter of discontent”, threatening the prospect of no jobs for years ahead.

Yet from this black hole burst an optimistic movement the press dubbed the New Romantics, based on a London club called the Blitz. Its deejay Rusty Egan promoted the deliberately un-rock sounds of synthesised electro-pop with a beat created for the dancefloor, while drumming in a studio seven-piece called Visage, fronted by the ultimate poser, Steve Strange. He and other fashionista Blitz Kids were picked by Bowie to represent their movement in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes (above). But the live band who broke all the industry rules were five dandies with a preposterous name: Spandau Ballet.

As the last of the Baby Boomers, the Blitz Kids were concerned with much more than music. In 1980 they shook off teenage doubt to express all those talents the later Generation X would have to live up to — leadership, adaptability, negotiating skills, focus. Children of the first era of mass TV, these can-doers excelled especially in visual awareness. They were the vanguard for a self-confident new class who were ready to enjoy the personal liberty and social mobility heralded by their parents in the 60s.

For Britain, the Swinging 80s were a tumultuous period of social change when the young wrested many levers of power away from the over-40s. London became a creative powerhouse and its pop music and street fashion the toast of world capitals. All because a vast dance underground had been gagging for a very sociable revolution.

★++++++★++++++★

“From now on, this will become the official history”
– Verdict of a former Blitz Kid

➢ THE DROPDOWN MENUS ALONG THE PAGE TOP lead you to main topics. Choose “View full site” on your mobile.
➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates which also link to the background pages in the menu.

❏ Below: View Blitz Club host Steve Strange in all his poser glory in the promo video for Fade to Grey (1982), also starring the club’s cloakroom girl, Julia Fodor, aka Princess

➢ CLICK HERE to run the anthemic 80s video ♫ ♫ from Spandau Ballet and feel the chant:

nightlife, st moritz, club for heroes,le kilt, wag club, beat route,hacienda, cha-cha, holy city zoo, rum runner, camden palace, scala cinema, studio 21,crocs, le palace, white trash, fac51, Dirt Box, mud club, batcave, barbarella's, croc's, electro-pop, synth-pop, Chant No 1, kid creole, blue rondo, animal nightlife, visage, duran, depeche mode, ultravox, human league, gentry, ABC,soft cell, bolan,vince clarke, haysi, wham!, mclaren, heaven 17, yazoo, foxx, omd, bauhaus, phil oakey, jay strongman, Martyn Ware, martin fry ,altered images, 20th-century box, vivienne westwood, PX, axiom, body-map , foundry, sue clowes,demob, seditionaries, acme attractions, i-D, the face, new sounds new styles, Korniloff, andrew logan, kahn & bell, biddie & eve, toyah,

July 2, 1981: Shooting the video for Chant No 1 at Le Beat Route club in Soho, “down, down, pass the Talk of the Town”. Photograph © by Shapersofthe80s

❏ iPAD & TABLET & MOBILE USERS PLEASE NOTE — You are viewing only a very small selection of content, not chosen by the author. To access fuller background features and topical updates please request “PC version” and Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines which link to many blue themed pages of background articles.

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Posted in art, Chronology, Clubbing, Culture, Fashion, History, journalism, London, Media, New Romantics, photography, Pop music, Social trends, Swinging 80s, Tipping points, videos, Youth culture, zeitgeist

Tagged Ashes to Ashes, Blitz Kids, David Bowie, Julia Fodor, Rusty Egan, Spandau Ballet, Steve Strange, Visage

1980 ➤ Strange days, strange nights, strange people

Posted on 29 Sep 2009 | 2 comments

It is January 1980 – out of the blue comes Steve Strange’s call
to join the late-night party that would run for years.
It turned into the Swinging Eighties. . .

Blitz, Christine Binnie, Jennifer, Iain R Webb, Julia Fodor

Performance art at the Blitz Club’s Easter Pageant 1980: Julia Fodor leads Jennifer Binnie and sister Christine (“Miss Binnie” the artist), both clad in sackcloth, in their first performance piece at the club. The girls sing Death Where is Thy Sting?/ Oh grave where is thy victory?/, an anthem they had learned as choir girls, and are passing out Cadbury’s Cream Eggs in an act of communion. (The sack dress had won Steve Strange’s January competition at Witchity’s to predict what people would be wearing in the 80s, long before Miss B created the notorious Neo-Naturists and threw away her clothes.) The allusion to crucifixion, left, seems to nod toward St Sebastian though it does not explain how the victim, fashionista Iain R Webb, would eventually secure the fashion editorship of The Times some years after this tableau was created. Blond-quiffed, white-faced Stephen Linard (extreme right, rear) is evidently pushing the Regency fop look this season. (Photograph courtesy of http://www.homersykes.com and published in the Sunday People 15 June)

First published in the Evening Standard, 24 Jan 1980:

❚ OF ALL THE BRIGHT YOUNG TIDDLERS in one small, though turbulent London pool, Steve Strange is the Big Fish. His is the pool the new Tatler magazine calls the 80s Set whose exploits it reports after its pages on solid old pedigree Society, under the section headed The Other Society. Only under-21s qualify for the 80s Set and by day you can be anything (broker’s runner, Tesco till-girl) but by night you must put on your Look.

King of the posers: London club host Steve Strange in Willy Brown workwear with Vivienne Lynn. (Photograph by © Derek Ridgers)

Steve was born with his (at 20, he resembles Marc Bolan’s baby brother), so he emerged as a natural arbiter of who has the Look and who hasn’t. And for a couple of years he has been positioned on the doors of the Right Places vetting entrants and ensuring exclusivity for the 80s Set.

At Billy’s in Dean Street he fronted a David Bowie lookalike night. Then the Blitz wine bar in Covent Garden gave him Tuesdays, which he still calls an Electro-Diskow where everyone has to dress to high-tech standards and create new dances to electronic music.

Witchity in Kensington kept imploring him to stage a party a month for them but that place, he says, “looked like a coal-cellar”, so he demanded, as Big Fish should, that they smarten up and improve their sound system. Triumphantly, next Thursday, Steve hosts an 80s prize ball there (admission £2, plus your Look).

Tonight, however, he begins a wild new night at the Blitz. Thursdays from now on will be cabaret night on a strictly Liza Minnelli level (a Bowles Club, perhaps?). Everyone must dress in Berlin/Pigalle/Vegas style and the band, Spandau Ballet, will attempt to combine vocals akin to Sinatra with “dance music for the future”. Believe it or not, Frank Sinatra and Shirley Bassey, says Steve, are very big with under-21s.

“We’ve already booked a fire-eater and what I want are more acts like strippers and jugglers,” he says, urging aspiring acts to contact him at the Blitz.

Understandably, our Big Fish’s ambition has really been fired and in his next breath he’s saying: “Two nights a week at the Blitz aren’t enough. London is just waiting for a good Saturday place – I mean, where do kids spend their Saturday nights? The Scala Cinema. I’m ready to start somewhere like New York’s Mudd Club. I’m only looking for the right backer…”

Second date at the Blitz: Spandau Ballet pictured on 24 Jan 1980 (by Derek Ridgers)

Spandau Ballet,Evening Standard, Blitz Club, New Romantics, Steve Strange

Steve Strange’s first interview with the Evening Standard, 24 Jan 1980, telling us of his new cabaret night on Thursdays

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Posted in Blitz Kids, Clubbing, Fashion, London, New Romantics, Pop music, Tipping points, Youth culture

Tagged Blitz club, Blitz Kids, Christine Binnie, Derek Ridgers, Evening Standard, Iain R Webb, Julia Fodor, Spandau Ballet, Steve Strange, Swinging 80s, Vivienne Lynn, Witchity

1980 ➤ One week in the private worlds of the new young

Posted on 14 Sep 2009 | Leave a comment

First published in the Evening Standard, 16 October 1980

THE CYNICS may have written off London as dead in 1980 but somewhere under the skin a dozen small worlds are struggling to prove our swinging capital is not yet finished. Each private world has its own star system and its own code of conduct. Some steer a scenic route through the maze of being young, broke and having energy to spare

Judi Frankland in one of the clerical cassocks from her degree show summer of 1980, pictured by Derek Ridgers. Style commentator Perry Haines, by Simon Brown

◼ LAST THURSDAY was as typical as any. At about the time 5,000 fans from Disco World were leaving The Crusaders concert at the Royal Albert Hall, 1980’s new London underground was coming to life. On the door of a Covent Garden club called Hell, Chris Sullivan, in monocle and Basque beret, and Judi Frankland, in the home-made clerical cassock that she’d worn in Bowie’s video for his chart topping Ashes to Ashes, were posing for an Italian magazine photographer. Inside, playing box-office and wearing his own modish Stephen Jones hat and all too visible makeup, sat the ubiquitous Steve Strange, 21, Hell being the twice-weekly off-shoot of his much reported Tuesdays at the nearby Blitz club. For him, he said, dressing up is a way of life. “I don’t do it to get attention.” . . . / Continued on our inside page

➢ Read on inside Shapers of the 80s:
A rich slice of London life in 1980 – one week, a dozen prodigies setting the town ablaze, none of them over 22

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1982 ➤ Never a week without a fashion show

Posted on 21 Apr 2009 | Leave a comment

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…

➢ Click here to read on

➢ 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: