Nightlife Rebels: my new book published September 2025
❚ DURING THE SWINGING 80S two seasoned eye-witnesses watched Britain’s young ignite a glittering New Romantics revolution… As a Fleet Street journalist I explored their intriguing carnival of style-setting cults across Britain, Paris and New York, while straight-up photographer Derek Ridgers captured the libertines in their dark dens.
Our new illustrated hardback NIGHTLIFE REBELS reveals the candid history of the Blitz Club’s hedonists who insisted “One look lasts a day”. It has gone on sale in the shop outside the Blitz Club exhibition at London’s Design Museum. Alas, it is not available online, only in this shop. We hope to broaden availability soon. Contact us at Nightlife.Rebels@shapersofthe80s.com
Contributors to Nightlife Rebels: Derek Ridgers, Kim Bowen, David Johnson and John Maybury. (Photo by David Jenkins)
❚ DURING THE SWINGING 80s two seasoned eye-witnesses watched Britain’s young ignite a glittering New Romantics revolution… Myself David Johnson as a Fleet Street journalist explored their intriguing carnival of style-setting cults across Britain, Paris and New York, while straight-up photographer Derek Ridgers captured the libertines in their dark dens.
Our new illustrated hardback NIGHTLIFE REBELS reveals the candid history of the celebrated Blitz Club’s hedonists who insisted “One look lasts a day”. Featuring unseen photos, stats, a unique timeline and Who Really Was Who.
Last week the book’s four chief contributors gathered for a team picture at London’s Design Museum where an exhibition about Blitz culture runs for six months and our book is on sale in its shop – The Design Museum
WHAT EACH OF US SAYS ABOUT THE 80s
“Some nights it was like walking into Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights” – Photographer Derek Ridgers, top left
“A full night-time economy flourished around these clubs where graphic designers, artists, deejays, writers, producers and musicians of every kind refined and developed their skills by working with club-owners” – Stylist and costume designer Kim Bowen, former Queen of the Blitz, second left
“In the shabby Blitz wine bar on Tuesdays precocious 19-year-olds presented an eye-stopping collage, posing away in wondrous ensembles, emphatic make-up and in-flight haircuts. This spectacle shouted newness” – Journalist David Johnson, third along
“Being photographed served as a kind of affirmation that your particular ‘look’ set you apart as a somebody” – Video artist John Maybury, and former Blitz star, pictured right
There’s our book on the second shelf at the Design Museum: Dare we assume the two lads thumbing through the options might have been Blitz Kids back in the day? (Photo by Shapersofthe80s)
◼ PRODUCT PLACEMENT DOESN’T COME better than this! On Christmas Day we saw the first of three new episodes of Absolutely Fabulous, the award-winning cult comedy series which ran from 1992 to 2003. It depicted the fashion-addicted lives of PR Edina, played by 80s Comic Stripper Jennifer Saunders, and her best friend, Patsy, the chain-smoking sex-mad magazine editor played by 70s Avengers star, Joanna Lumley. Today, New Year’s Day, we saw a second episode and look whose brand name was being lavishly displayed as Eddie swanned around in those distinctive head-to-foot knits from the Swinging 80s — the hottest label of its day, BodyMap.
Coincidence or design? Only last July David Holah put a load of classic BodyMap outfits into the Cavalcade of the 80s catwalk show at the Vintage Festival organised by Wayne Hemingway at London’s Festival Hall — and they didn’t seem to have aged one jot. One month later, the BBC began filming the Christmas specials. It pays, as they say, to advertise.
Cavalcade of the 80s at London’s Vintage Festival in July: a striking presence on the runway is the very same BodyMap ensemble worn later in Ab Fab on New Year’s Day. Picture courtesy David Holah
BodyMap was the game-changing fashion label launched in 1982 when ex-Blitz Kids David Holah and Stevie Stewart graduated from the trendy fashion course at Middlesex Polytechnic to have their collection instantly bought by Browns, the prescient South Molton Street shop. The pair immediately injected excitement into the fashion scene with daring designs as bizarre as their controversial catwalk shows, given titles such as Querelle Meets Olive Oil, and The Cat in the Hat Takes a Rumble with the Techno Fish. In 1983 they won the Martini award for the most innovative designers of the year and rocketed to international success as the British fashion scene became international news.
Knits, prints and stretch fabrics were restructured in men’s and women’s collections to map every part of the body, itself revealed by holes in unexpected places. Film-maker John Maybury supervised their outrageous videos (here the 1986 Half World collection). Michael Clark’s dance company can also take credit for promoting BodyMap’s overtly sexual appeal. By 1989 Holah & Stewart had opened their own retail outlet but the early 90s credit squeeze forced the company out of the competitive fashion business.
Since then David Holah has continued to design as a freelance and diversify as a printmaker. Stevie Stewart works with leading names in fashion, music, film and advertising as a fashion, costume, set and production designer. Popstar clients who have commissioned her costumes for world tours include Kylie, Britney, Girls Aloud, Westlife, Alexandra Burke, Cheryl Cole and Leona Lewis.
Last week Jennifer Saunders, who writes the Ab Fab TV scripts, revealed that the forthcoming big-screen movie will be set on the French Riviera where Eddie and Patsy go to a party aboard on an oligarch’s yacht. She told New York magazine: “I’m aiming to shoot this in a beautiful part of the Riviera. I fancy the south of France in the spring.”
Stevie Stewart and David Holah: a TV interview during London Fashion Week at the height of BodyMap’s success in 1984. Photographed by Shapersofthe80s
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
➢ 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
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU at page top to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH scroll down this sidebar
❏ 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 2024
✱ 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”.
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
SEARCH our 800 posts or ZOOM DOWN TO THE ARCHIVE INDEX
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
LANDMARK FAREWELLS. . . HIT THE INDEX TAB UP TOP FOR EVERYTHING ELSE
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