Photo by Kate Garner
❚ A LAVISHLY DESIGNED OBITUARY of Stephen Linard written by me appears in today’s Evening Standard online and stands as a well-deserved memoir for one of my best friends…
➢ The life of Stephen Linard – A flamboyant Canvey Island boy who went on to shape the Blitz Kids silhouette in the 1980s
Posted in biography, death, fashion illustrations, journalism, London, New Romantics, Swinging 80s, Youth culture, zeitgeist
Tagged Blitz Kids, fashion, Stephen Linard
At his TFV PV: a colourful Linard with some of his early illustrations inspired by Tom of Finland. (Photo © Shapersofthe80s)
❚ NORMAN ROAD in St Leonard’s on Sea hosted more than its usual share of Eighties art fans this weekend. At Lucy Bell’s a book signing by Bowie’s travelling companion and photographer Geoff MacCormack drew fans seeking a signature on his latest title. Only yards away the newish Rogue Gallery was hosting Total Fashion Victim, an archive exhibition of one-time Blitz Kid Stephen Linard’s earliest fashion illustrations while a student from 1978 onward. As his tutor at St Martin’s Rosetta Brooks declared, he was a leader among the small pack of London fashionistas noted for their poser talents. “Each poser,” she believed, “is a ready-made,” exactly as defined by Marcel Duchamp in New York around 1914 when modernism was being born. (His own most famous ready-mades included Bicycle Wheel, Bottle Rack and the urinal titled Fountain.)
Partying with Linard – Click any pic to launch slideshow:
Here we can judge for ourselves from more than 40 pieces of artwork on sale for the next month, and enjoyed by a considerable crowd at the private view. Among them one of Linard’s designer contemporaries at St Martin’s School of Art was Corinne Drewery, later to become a pop singer with Swing Out Sister, here eye-catching in one of his flapper dresses in ikat with faded rose print which she used to wear circa 1983, “and it still fits”!!!
Linard’s previously unseen work – Click any pic to launch slideshow:
Posted in 20th century, art for sale, Blitz Kids, degree shows, exhibitions, fashion illustrations, New Romantics, stage costumes, Swinging 80s, Youth culture
Tagged Corinne Drewery, Eve Ferret, Helen Robinson, Lucy Bell, Michele Clapton, Princess Julia, Ray Gange, Rogue Gallery, Rose Hibbert, St Leonards on Sea, Stephen Linard, Total Fashion Victim, Val Byers
Having a blast: Siouxsie Sioux at Troxy, London, jaunty and relaxed and chatty. (Photograph by James Watkins)
“ There was definitely an air of expectation awaiting the return of Siouxsie Sioux live in London after a ten-year hiatus. . . Dressed in baby-blue flowing light bodysuit with voluminous sleeves, pussy bow and flared, long hair streaked with grey, this was Morticia in unexpected cocktail glamour mode. The fashion belied the opening which was the gates of hell grind ‘Night Shift’ with uncompromising refrain guaranteed to throw any new fans in the deep end (visit the live album Nocturne 1983 if you need an introduction) but sated the appetite of the rest of us.
“ We took a trip through both the Banshees’ back catalogue and tracks from Siouxsie’s solo album Mantaray and work with Budgie and The Creatures. What was engaging about this evening was how jaunty and relaxed she was on this surprise return to the live stage, more chatty than I can ever remember and because she was having a blast so were we. This osmosis between audience and artist galvanised her performance. . . that unwavering support from fans and how songs reignite so many potent memories of past teenage lives and how these songs signposted myriad experiences. . . ” / Continued at apolarisview
Posted in Concert, London, punk, Reviews, rock music, Youth culture
Tagged Andy Polaris, Banshees, Siouxsie Sioux, Troxy
An exhibition of fashion legend Stephen Linard’s archive of drawings, photographs and garments runs for a month from 8 September and provides eye-opening insights into his startling influence on the other Blitz Kids and on the fashion jetset…
Ex-St Martin’s fashion designer Stephen Linard at the height of his commercial success in 1984, when he worked for three years for Jun Co in Japan. Here pictured by Toscani for i-D magazine’s issue No 15 in “An illustrated guide to detail”. He sports a leather Confederate Army cap $15 bought in transit through Anchorage airport in Alaska. The jacket £250 over giant-collared shirt £120, and trousers £200 are all by Yohji Yamamoto. Waistcoat £180 by Gianni Versace. Artfully placed on his left lapel is a silvered bathroom tap £60 and faucet brooch £40, both from a jewellery collection for Chloe, Paris. He said: “It was worth it for the stir it caused at the Paris collections.”
❚ THE PRESS CALLED THEM the New Romantics and the Blitz Kids, declaring the Eighties the Age of the Pose. Art-school tutor Rosetta Brooks compared their self-consciously styled poses to “street theatre ultimately extended into continuous performance as a post-punk embodiment of Gilbert and George in one person (the individualist).” Each poser, she believed, is a ready-made. Step forward fashion student Stephen Linard for ticking all the above boxes – a flamboyant Canvey Island boy from Southend School of Art (1975-78) who yearned to make a statement in every street or room he graced.
Arriving at St Martin’s School of Art in London (1978-81), Linard pushed the boundaries of excess. Annually, second-year students organised an Alternative Fashion Show but in May 1980 the college’s resoundingly prim middle-class students were out-gunned when Linard sent out his sensational Neon Gothic collection – a stark collision of Space 1999 meets liturgical Gothic meets the masonic livery which was displayed in shops serving the Freemasons’ Hall just along the street from the Blitz Club, the capital’s coolest nightspot.
The audience erupted in cheers. Strutting the runway to the Human League came the then-unknown George O’Dowd sporting a soaraway post-punk mullet atop sharp grosgrain suit with dog collar, Michele Clapton and Myra Falconer wearing risen-from-the-dead pallor beneath shaven heads, along with Fiona Dealey and Julia Fodor (today a Princess). Their vestments were accessorised with religious motifs while emanating a curiously spare chic. Finally, all in white as a “space-age pope”, came gifted Lee Sheldrick, modelling a white silk grosgrain suit with his head shaved bald to become the embodiment of Nosferatu the Vampyre. Resonances abounded for the show’s title to be adopted by the nascent Goth movement.
A stark collision of Space 1999 meets liturgical Gothic: Two robes from Stephen Linard’s sensational Neon Gothic collection in his second year at St Martin’s
One year later Linard was determined to submit menswear for his degree collection, despite the efforts of the head of the fashion department to insist on women’s wear. She actually threatened to eject Linard from the college until strong internal protests backing Linard’s pursuit of menswear ultimately prevailed. Modelled by six of his hunky clubland pals, his collection titled Reluctant Emigrés featured swishy draped cashmere greatcoats, patched pinstripe trousers and city shirts that all evinced an Edwardian air of immaculate tailoring punctuated with edgy details.
Linard’s street-savvy lads made a gasp-out-loud impact, as Fleet Street’s Suzy Menkes noted in print. Historians Alan J. Flux and Daryl F. Mallett have also written: “The clothes were instantly covetable, thoroughly masculine in an entirely new way, and electrifying as only the truly innovative can be.” Linard won his first-class Honours degree.
The fashion press feted him upon graduation. His outrageous fashion details flagged direction for the two dozen sharpest Blitz Kids who shaped the New Romantics silhouette from the Blitz onwards. Most significantly, Linard changed his own appearance daily from his foppish Fauntleroy dandy, to the Endangered Species outfit made from animal skins, to the cowboy gilded from hat to toe. Linard has admitted: “The competition pushed you on, especially Lee Sheldrick. At the Warren Street squat [where they lived] you might change what you were going to wear eight times on a Tuesday to try to outdo everyone else at the Blitz.”
Inspiration was all around. In 2020 Linard said: “The Blitz was an art students’ club. The place was choc-a-bloc with artists: Brian Clarke, Zandra Rhodes, Molly Parkin, Antony Price, Duggie Fields, Kevin Whitney and us because it was halfway between Central School and St Martin’s. People who said ‘Oh you Blitz Kids don’t DO anything’ were talking rubbish, because WE all did. We were the ones with our work in the glossy magazines long before the rest.”
Smiles from the press at Linard’s degree show: The Reluctant Emigrés wore pinstripe trousers in Savile Row fabrics and city shirts in feminine couture fabrics evoking Edwardiana. (Photo by Shapersofthe80s)
Linard’s styles had always been sought after by pop-star contemporaries from Spandau Ballet, Boy George, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Haysi Fantayzee and The Slits, to U2, the Bee Gees, Womack & Womack, even Cliff Richard and Johnny Mathis, and ultimately to the great god David Bowie himself.
In 1982 the Railway Children collection of stripey Edwardian coats and frocks for school-girls became the first of Linard’s two womenswear collections. He was one of six budding British designers taken to Paris by Blitz Club host Steve Strange to help launch his Anvil album, but also to show that the English could be as stylish as the French – staged at Europe’s coolest nightclub, Le Palace.
Meanwhile Linard’s reputation went on growing among the international fashion set. 1983 brought his collection Angels with Dirty Faces, inspired by the Bogart-Cagney gangster movie set in the Thirties depression. It was both pretty and poignant and it sold worldwide. That year, the snappiest magazine of the day, New York, headlined a special fashion section “The British Are Here”, and selected as the UK’s five leading lights Jean Muir, Zandra Rhodes, Katharine Hamnett, Vivienne Westwood — and Stephen Linard, “one of the most creative of the young designers”.
As recently as 2018, Laird Borrelli-Persson was writing in Vogue online: “Stephen Linard deserves credit for many innovations in fashion and its presentation that we take for granted… One of the Blitz Kids whose dandyish ways had an outsize impact on 1980s style, his early work was distinguished not only by irreverence, but also by a strong sense of narrative… Linard insists his aim was not to cause outrage. ‘I was into doing couture stuff and I was ‘just making clothes,’ really, as Sonia Rykiel used to say’.”
PS: Since you ask, Total Fashion Victim was the name of the one-nighter Linard hosted at the Wag Club during the Eighties.
St Martin’s Alternative Fashion Show 1980: Linard’s Neon Gothic collection modelled by his most stylish Blitz Kid friends – from the left, Michele Clapton, George O’Dowd, Lee Sheldrick in white as a space-age pope, and Myra Falconer
Stephen Linard seen in i-D magazine’s fifth birthday issue, No 30 in 1985, as one of their gallery of creative protagonists they titled 99 People of the 80s, all photographed by Nick Knight.
Posted in art for sale, Blitz Kids, degree shows, exhibitions, fashion illustrations, Goth rock, History, New Romantics, nightlife, Swinging 80s, Youth culture
Tagged Graham Smith, Nick Knight, Rogue Gallery, Rosetta Brooks, St Leonards on Sea, St Martin’s School of Art, Stephen Linard, Total Fashion Victim
❚ THE OFFICIAL DAVID BOWIE WEBSITE has polled his fans to elect their five favourite videos by the musical genius whose career transformed pop music over 50 years. No surprise perhaps that Ashes to Ashes came out top, capturing a crucial turning point in Bowie’s own progress in 1980 and becoming his second No 1 UK single and an international hit. It was an arty track from his 14th studio album, Scary Monsters, with a funky bassline, refined lyrics reaching back to his debut single Space Oddity and its astronaut Major Tom, while its dreamy solarised visual effects also reflected Bowie’s own experiences with drugs. Several critics declare Ashes to be among Bowie’s best songs musically and for inventiveness, and the video itself stands at number 44 in Rolling Stone’s 100 best.
For both its sleeve and video, Bowie commissioned a Pierrot pantomime costume. Significantly, the video starred four overdressed figureheads (including Steve Strange) from London’s nightlife scene, which was exploding into a gloriously colourful new subculture as a reaction to the bleakness of punk. Let’s not forget that Ashes was the most expensive music video made to date, costing £35,000 (about £140,000 in today’s money) and MTV had yet to be launched. [Read the full background story behind recruiting and filming the Blitz Kids for Ashes here at Shapersofthe80s.]
The team at DBHQ doff their hats to video director David Mallet for achieving nine entries in their video top 20, more than a third.
#01 – Ashes to Ashes 1980 – David Bowie and David Mallet
#02 – Life on Mars? 1973 – Mick Rock
#03 – Boys Keep Swinging 1979 – David Mallet
#04 – Jump They Say 1993 – Mark Romanek
#05 – I’m Afraid of Americans 1997 – Dom and Nic
#06 – ★ Blackstar – 2016 – Bo Johan Renck
#07 – DJ 1979 – David Mallet
#08 – The Hearts Filthy Lesson 1995 – Samuel Bayer
#09 – Lazarus 2016 – Bo Johan Renck
#10 – The Stars (are out Tonight) 2013 – Floria Sigismondi
#11 – The Next Day 2013 – Floria Sigismondi
#12 – Let’s Dance 1983 – David Mallet
#13 – Look Back in Anger 1979 – David Mallet
#14 – Strangers when We Meet 1995 – Samuel Bayer
#15 – China Girl 1983 – David Mallet
#16 – Loving the Alien 1985 – David Bowie and David Mallet
#17 – Little Wonder 1997 – Floria Sigismondi
#18 – Blue Jean / Jazzin’ for Blue Jean 1984 – Julien Temple
#19 – Fashion 1980 – David Mallet
#20 – Wild is the Wind 1981– David Mallet
#21 – Thursday’s Child 1999 – Walter Stern
#22 – Where are We Now? 2013 – Tony Oursler
#23 – Absolute Beginners 1986 – Julien Temple
#24 – Space Oddity 1972 – Mick Rock
#25 – The Jean Genie 1972 – Mick Rock
#26 – Be my Wife 1977 – Stanley Dorfman
Adam Paramore: Great list, interesting that there’s nothing from Ziggy Stardust (IIRC, some concert clips were used as music videos), no Labyrinth tracks, no Modern Love, and no Dancing in the Street with Bowie & Jagger.
Anthony LeBaron: One notably absent video from the list I would add is No Plan. Released a year after his passing, it captures the enormous loss and despair I still felt at losing him.
Rudy Fuentez: Ashes to Ashes is probably his best video, but to me his best song is too hard to decide. Cat People (Putting out the Fire), Always Crashing in the Same Car, Young Americans, Absolute Beginners, This is not America… too many songs. Might as well ask what do you think is the brightest star in the heavens.
Andrew Seear: I agree. Always Crashing in the Same Car I think is an astonishing piece, even by Bowie’s standards. I’ve never heard despair expressed so elegantly.
Stacey Rich: Coolest thing was cycling to Pett Level [where Ashes was filmed] – totally unchanged on the day, a little overcast, the beach empty. Grew up in America & never realised it was an actual place but had shown my partner the video and he recognised the beach immediately. Actually teared up.
Stephen Oldfield: The lyrics and music on this track [Ashes] are stunning. The closing synthesiser must be the greatest on any song ever.
In December 1979 Saturday Night Live aired the most immaculate performance of TMWSTW by Bowie, Klaus Nomi, Joey Arias, Stacey Hayden on guitar and Jimmy Destri on keyboards, which some say was the night “he transformed live television”. This nine-minute clip also includes brilliant versions of TVC 15 with Bowie in skirt and heels, plus a hilarious performance of Boys Keep Swinging where he sports a life-sized nude puppet costume. Click on the picture to view, though don’t be surprised if you cannot reach the video. For rights reasons, this unrivalled video keeps being removed from the web by its broadcaster, so we stay on our toes scouting for alternative postings!
❏ I TOTALLY AGREE with the first three videos topping this DB poll, and draw special attention to Mick Rock’s remarkable promo for Life on Mars. Another that haunts my imagination is 2014’s Where are We Now? Moving on, I’d urge those who haven’t seen two other very special performances by Bowie to seek them out. One is an exquisite interpretation of his enigmatic song The Man who Sold the World which some claim “transformed live television” [pictured above]. Admittedly this is not a promotional video and yet it was uniquely choreographed and costumed for live performance on American TV’s Saturday Night Live in 1979 before its audience of millions. Idiosyncratic backing singers Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias provide immaculate support, while carrying Bowie forward as a kind of giant pierrot, clad in an oversized black plastic dinner jacket over a tapered tubular body – all inspired by artist Sonia Delaunay’s designs for a subversive Dadaist play from 1923. When written in 1970, the lyrics and the singer were evidently sharing an identity crisis and since his death Rolling Stone has regarded this number as “essential”.
❏ HERE’S A SECOND profoundly affecting video that’s often ignored yet it reveals the extraordinary range of Bowie’s singing voice. Possibly the purest experimental jazz number of his career, the nerve-tingling Sue (or in a Season of Crime) was created in 2014 during a session with 17 jazz soloists including saxophonist Donny McCaslin, all improvising under Maria Schneider’s guidance and running beyond seven minutes. The role of jazz in Bowie’s musical temperament seldom gets discussed, though his producer Tony Visconti says the jazz influence had always been there in the music but beneath the surface. The haunting four-minute video was directed in monochrome by Tom Hingston to promote Bowie’s “best-of” collection, Nothing Has Changed.
All taking place as Bowie was being diagnosed (discreetly) with liver cancer, Sue evokes a discomfiting tale of infidelity inspired by the poet Robert Browning, in which the narrator murders his wife and the last verse begins with the phrase “Sue, I never dreamed”, the title of the first song he recorded in 1963. Such a weepie. (An edgier, punchier, superior re-recording of Sue followed on Bowie’s final album Blackstar, released two days before his death.)
➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s:
12 January 2016, David Bowie is dead
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
➢ Search for all on Bowie here
at Shapers of the 80s
✱ “I’m not a rock star” Bowie often said – No, David, you were a messiah – Obituaries and key videos on the godlike one
✱ Prince Rogers Nelson RIP: ‘A funny cat’ and ‘sole authentic genius’ of the 1980s
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 