“ He’s scarcely seen out in public and is known for his somewhat reclusive lifestyle. But David Bowie made a rare appearance with 12-year-old Lexi – the star’s daughter with supermodel wife Iman – as they were spotted hopping on board a Venetian taxi boat to explore their holiday destination… And Bowie looked a far cry from his usual zany stage appearances in his holiday outfit… ” / Continued at Mail online
Bowie the holidaymaker: green button-down shirt, jeans, trainers, straw fedora, dark shades and man bag slung across his shoulder
❚ DAVID BOWIE IS A LIVE NATIONWIDE cinema event at 7pm on August 13 as the finale to the V&A’s successful exhibition, when special guests offer insights into the stories behind the artefacts from the Bowie Archive.
It is to be screened in 19 UK cinemas named today by Picturehouse Entertainment. Members’ priority booking started from today Monday June 24, and the public get what’s left on Friday June 28. So if we are to judge from the V&A’s track record of Bowie-related talks and special events at the Museum itself, this will mean none at all.
V&A Director Martin Roth is deluded if he thinks – as his quote suggests in today’s announcement – that he is reaching “the widest possible audience” when tickets to these 19 tiny cinemas are on sale for four priority days to V&A Members and Picturehouse Members, before being offered to Joe Public.
The biggest cinema at Greenwich Picturehouse, for example, seats only 174 people! “Wide” that is not.
❏ Update June 24 – the Victoria and Albert Museum replies: “We will be announcing further cinemas on Friday when all tickets go on sale. It will be screened at over 200 cinemas nationwide – the first 4 days of booking are Picturehouse Cinemas only. Do check back on the website for new cinemas as we confirm them.”
❏ Shapersofthe80s comments: At a generous estimate, then, going by the Greenwich auditorium, this event might eventually be seen at 200 cinemas by up to 4,000 people. The V&A claims that the Bowie exhibition itself has received nearly 200,000 visits – so it’s an absurd imaginative leap to suggest that a further 4,000 people represent “the widest possible audience”. His marketing department should choose museum Director Martin Roth’s sound-bites for him with more care.
Tickets for Joe Public are apparently only available direct from participating cinemas – not online – from Friday 28th priced £10–£14 and do not yet appear on the museum’s map. Fans lucky enough to be in fulltime employment on Friday will thus have to wait till Saturday morning to hightail it to the selected cinema in their nearest big town. Do any of these museum people lead real lives?
Monica Curtin’s 1985 pic of Scarlett Cannon as “key identity” for the V&A Club to Catwalk show… Outfit by BodyMap’s AW 1984 collection, Cat in the hat takes a rumble with a techno fish. Stylist John Derry-Bunce. Background painting Simon Josebury. Hair and makeup Jalle Bakke
❚ “FASHION???” SCOFFED THE FASHION EDITOR of a leading women’s magazine who shared my flat in 1980, after meeting one of the more ornamental Blitz Kids over our breakfast table. “Those aren’t even clothes!” Yet within five years she was as keen as every other editor to be featuring BodyMap, Galliano, Jones, Auburn, Hogg, Hamnett, Bernstock Speirs et al. Scroll forward 30 years and London’s world-beating decorative arts museum, the V&A, weighs in with a necessary exhibition reappraising the UK’s style revolution of the 80s. What’s coming under scrutiny in its dedicated fashion galleries are the unique silhouettes of that extravagant shape-shifting decade and the clubland forces that moulded them. Only two weeks to go before Club to Catwalk, London Fashion in the 1980s, and there’s one crucial tipping point at its heart: the moment fashion became style.
Let’s hand over to fashion guru Iain R Webb, one of the central figures who defined his generation and whose impressive book As Seen in Blitz was published last month. Here’s a taste of the mighty personal essay he has written for the summer issue of the V&A Magazine…
V&A Magazine summer issue: the 80s deconstructed by Iain R Webb
Webb writes: “ The 1980s were all about being photographed. We dressed as if every day were a photo shoot and every night a party (it usually was). But there was another revolution happening.
The advent of the stylist who approached fashion as an artistic construct was something new. Alongside the contributors to BLITZ, The Face and i-D (Ray Petri, Judy Blame, Caroline Baker, Helen Roberts, Beth Summers, Simon Foxton, Mitzi Lorenz, Maxine Siwan and Caryn Franklin among them) were two thought-provoking arbiters whose importance is often overlooked. Michael Roberts at Tatler and Amanda Grieve at Harper’s and Queen added a subversive edge to their respective glossy titles. Roberts poking fun at old-school mores while Grieve (later Harlech) befriended St Martin’s graduate John Galliano and helped create the romantic whirlwind that shaped fashion for decades to follow.
The images produced by all these stylists merged fashion and art, questioned the accepted ideals of beauty and social status and enjoyed a sense of experimentation. Their vanguard imagery often highlighted specific issues such as the superficiality of fashion and consumerism with humour.
“At that time there was a group of stylists who were as creative as the designers, if not more so,” remembers PR Lynne Franks, who represented BodyMap, Katharine Hamnett and Wendy Dagworthy. “It prompted the question: What came first, the styling or the clothes? It was very spontaneous, like playing dress-up.”
Stefano Tonchi, editor of W magazine, then editor of Westuff, an alternative style periodical published in Florence, says: “Fashion was no longer fashionable. Style was used to describe many areas of the creative arts that came together. It made for a new category. Music dictated a lot of the emerging trends and there was experimentation in both photography and graphic design, but fashion was where these exciting changes were most evident. Think of the BodyMap fashion shows, they weren’t just about the clothes but involved music, graphic design and theatre… ”
“ John Wilson talks to leading performers and songwriters about the album that made them or changed them. Recorded in front of a live audience at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios in two episodes, Wilson initially quizzes the artist about the album in question, and then the audience puts the questions.
“ Thirty years ago Spandau Ballet released their third album True. It peaked at number one in UK on May 14 and became a worldwide smash hit featuring tracks such as Gold, Pleasure, Communication and the title track, which spent four weeks at the top of the charts. Singer Tony Hadley and Gary Kemp, the man who wrote all of these songs, both went to the BBC Maida Vale studios last Thursday to discuss their inspiration and influence.
“ Released in 1983, True became one of the stand-out albums of the New Romantic movement. It was recorded at the Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, where producers Steve Jolley and Tony Swain gave the band a slicker, more R&B sound aimed at squarely at the charts. The B-side of the programme, where it’s the turn of the audience to ask the questions, can be heard on Tuesday June 25 at 3.30pm. ”
➢ Tony Hadley will release a DVD + CD package titled Live from Metropolis Studios in September, recorded in front of only 100 fans. A deluxe limited edition features pictures and an authentic signed picture for pre-orders before July 26.
❚ THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY launched the 2013 Summer Reading Program by setting a new world record for the longest book domino chain. The 2,131 books used by 27 volunteers to make this chain were either donated or are out of date and no longer in the library’s collection. They are now being sold by the Friends of the library to help raise money for its programs and services. No books were harmed during the making of this video. Filmed by Playfish Media.
➢ Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines linking to many blue themed pages with background article
MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
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❏ Header artwork by Kat Starchild shows Blitz Kids Darla Jane Gilroy, Elise Brazier, Judi Frankland and Steve Strange, with David Bowie at centre in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes
VINCENT ON AIR 2026
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch up on Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ 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
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UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ 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
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ 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
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