Tag Archives: romance

1980s ➤ The Ridgers lens lays bare the pursuit of love

Posted on 18 Nov 2015 | Leave a comment

The Others, Derek Ridgers, Idea Books, youth culture, nightlife, London, Swinging 80s, Dover Street Market, photography, style,

London 1984: if this is you, come to the party! Photo © Derek Ridgers

◼ IF THIS PHOTO SHOWS YOU perfecting the horizontal jig in a London club in 1984, you’ll find yourselves immortalised in the latest book by photographer Derek Ridgers, titled The Others. The collection captures young love in all its clubland guises and if you spot yourself in this gallery why not email info [a t] idea-books.com and ask to come to the London launch this Thursday, 19 Nov?

Between 1980 and 1986 Ridgers and his candid lens couldn’t help following the pursuit of romance among the lovers, the loveless, the lonely and the last to leave in nightclubs as disparate as Gossip’s, Planets, Great Wall, Batcave, Feltham Football & Social Club, Flick’s, Lyceum, Le Beat Route, Camden Palace, Taboo and many more.

These snogging couples represent Britain’s many subcultural tribes who expressed distinct affinities in the early 80s through personal style and musical tastes. The book’s foreword says its intriguingly contradictory title describes the “other” clubbers who had enough attitude *not* to get rejected by the greeters on the doors of London’s finest clubs. It would make more sense to call these kids The Chosen Ones. Once inside a club, however, they got their priorities right and relegated posing into second place behind the down-to-earth goal that was really on their minds.

The Ridgers images capture all the fun and frailty and the frissons of exploring your youthful identity among like-minded tribalists in ways the publisher was probably trying to nail: a sense of “otherness” that characterised many subcultures in that austere and intolerant era. Whether brave or tentative, outsiders or players, they were helping shift attitudes in dark and stylish cellars across the land. They re-energised Britain by mobilising the talents in which the young excel: through music, clothes, haircuts and romance.

The Others is priced £35 for 124 pages in a limited edition exclusively available at Dover Street Market London and New York, Ginza and the Comme des Garcons Trading Museum in Paris, as well as Marc Jacobs’ Bookmarc stores in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Tokyo. And online from Idea Books.

Big hair, 80s-style: Mohican and his captive. Photo © Derek Ridgers

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➤ “Warrior of the night” Frankland bounces back with London Fashion Week in her sights

Posted on 26 Apr 2011 | 1 comment

Judith Frankland, Manny More,The Woman Who Likes to Say Hello, fashion ,

Blitz Kid, Judith Frankland, fashion,The Woman Who Likes to Say Hello

Punk power: Judith Frankland models her own design Dare To Wear Fur from her collection for The Woman Who Likes to Say Hello. Photography by Denise Grayson. Above left, Pink Power, for the woman who holds her own in a man’s world. Illustration by Manny More

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❚ THE GLOVES ARE OFF. Onetime Blitz Kid Judith Frankland aims to return to the couture fashion scene at London Fashion Week in September. During two decades spent abroad, she mixed bespoke design with nightclub promotion which in Italy won her membership of i guerrieri della notte — the warriors of the night.

Today in her fashion blog at The Swelle Life, she declares that ultimately “my passion is for fashion” as she unveils yet another outfit in her new collection designed for “The Woman Who Likes to Say Hello”.

She writes: “The seven outfits are part of a work in progress to be finished very soon in anticipation of presenting a small collection next Fashion Week in London. It is the first I have undertaken in eight years.”

Alongside Judith’s latest chapter in her progress back into fashion, Denise Grayson shoots her in the bold jacket (above) that eyeballs the woman who dares to wear fur (or at least, who dares to fake it).

Regular readers know Judith as one of the faces in the masthead atop Shapersofthe80s — grabbed from Bowie’s 1980 Ashes to Ashes video when she was dressing like a singing nun. So it’s no surprise that the new fur-woman silhouette evokes a more subversively punk spirit in contrast to previous separates in the new collection which combine power motifs with hints of romantic vulnerability. Manny More’s delicious illustration (above left) affirms the feminine bows and understated lace dress of a powerbroker’s outfit for the woman in a man’s boardroom — while the tightly knotted kipper tie provides a slap in the eye for the male chauvinist who is deceived by the notes of pink prettiness.

Judith’s designs demand high standards of tailoring and her ambition is to collaborate with an experienced cutter. She says: “I want to explore the possibilities this can create. I would love to work with a professional pattern cutter and, frankly, I feel they do not get the applause they deserve. We can all play with and drape fabric, but boy, it takes talent to bring that to life.”

In the short-term, Judith’s mini collection is likely to turn a few heads during Newcastle’s first Fashion Week (May 14–21), a citywide initiative to champion the Tyneside Business Improvement District. Then it’s London’s turn.

➢ Review: Judith Frankland experiments with power and femininity

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Tagged 2011, Judith Frankland, London Fashion Week, Newcastle Fashion Week, power, romance

1944 ➤ “Go to work, Slim” — Lauren Bacall offers a musical treat for Valentine’s Day

Posted on 13 Feb 2011 | Leave a comment

❚LAUREN BACALL WAS 19 AND GORGEOUS when she was introduced to tough guy Humphrey Bogart on the set of the war movie Passage to Marseille in 1944. Within the year she was making her Hollywood debut opposite the star in the much under-rated gem, To Have and Have Not. This too was a war movie and it made an overnight star of Bacall. It also brought her love, even though Bogie was 45. Within another year he was divorced and remarried to Bacall. They were separated only by Bogie’s early death in 1957.

Fashion editor Diana Vreeland had discovered Bacall’s photogenic qualities and turned her into one of the hot models in Harper’s Bazaar. Today Bacall still exudes the sensuality we see in her first screen role of Marie “Slim” Browning, the sassy adventuress who sings in the bar where Bogart as Harry “Steve” Morgan hangs out. Her opening line in that silky voice “Does anyone here have a match?” set the screen ablaze. But it was the song in the video clip above, How Little We Know, that announced a star is born. As a Hollywood epithet, Bacall became simply “The Look”.

Made during the second world war and wonderfully crafted by director Howard Hawks, this loose adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s novel is a sensitive morality tale. It centres on Morgan as a hard-boiled American with a past he seeks to forget by captaining a sports-fishing boat on the Caribbean island of Martinique. For the duration of the war this overseas region of France, and an integral part of the Republic, is under Vichy control.

The couple’s real-life romance is electric, and caught on-screen for all to see. It is beautifully nuanced in the playful pet names the pair adopt for each other, when “Slim” as a resistance sympathiser persuades “Steve” to compromise his neutrality and help transport a fugitive on the run from the Nazis.

♫ Maybe you’re meant to be mine.
Maybe I’m only meant to stay in your arms a while
(As others have done) ♫

The clip above has the fine pianist Hoagy Carmichael as Cricket accompanying “Slim” as she sizzles her way through How Little We Know. The film’s music contributes toward a piece of pure entertainment which grows with every viewing. It contains some of the best lines of its day — almost in the Casablanca league — including these:

➢ You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?

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