The decorated British milliner Stephen Jones has created headgear for everyone from Princess Diana to Rihanna, collaborated with some of fashion’s greatest houses and contributed to exhibitions around the world. This week he talks to Liam Freeman for Vogue about his glittering career. . .
Rihanna sports Jones at the 2018 Met Ball (Getty)
“ It’s 40 years since Stephen Jones – one of the fashion industry’s most prolific and inventive milliners – entered the hat game. Does it feel like yesterday? “No it doesn’t,” the 62-year-old replies. “It definitely feels like I’ve had a career doing this. But the thrill and the terror of making a hat is just the same as when I started.” Why the terror? “You’re dealing with a piece of white paper, you’re working with a [insert: often world-famous] client, a high-profile designer, and you do learn how [to do it], but in a way you don’t because every hat is opening night… ” / Continued at Vogue online
Stephen Linard’s 1980 Neon Gothic collection modelled by Myra Falconer and Michele Clapton: one wears a lace hat, the other a skullcap, both by Stephen Jones. (Photo by Graham Smith)
“ FASHION’S BIGGEST NIGHT OUT” is the Met Gala. As a pinnacle of iconic style, this annual fundraising benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, welcomes celebrity stars, young creatives, and industry paragons alike.
The British designer Stephen Linard deserves credit for many innovations in fashion and its presentation that we take for granted in 2018. 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’s 1981 St Martin’s graduation show, Reluctant Emigrés, was a smash success. “The clothes were instantly covetable, thoroughly masculine in an entirely new way, and electrifying in the way that only the truly innovative can be,” historians Alan J Flux and Daryl F Mallett have noted.
The collection Linard presented a year earlier at St Martin’s unofficial Alternative Show was a pot-stirring presentation titled Neon Gothic – clothes with an ecclesiastic twist. Captured in the image above are models Myra Falconer, who shared a squat with Linard, and Michele Clapton, now an Emmy Award-winning costume designer. Their jewellery, upside-down crosses and menorahs of black-painted wood, was made by a friend of Clapton’s. The headpieces are by Stephen Jones, who graduated ahead of Linard, and has stayed in the spotlight. Linard recalls the audience reaction: “Everyone stood up and gave it a standing ovation and my models wouldn’t get off the catwalk…” / Continued at Vogue online
Linard’s 1981 degree show Reluctant Emigrés: classically tailored menswear with eccentric twists. . . Traditional pinstripe trousers had contrast patches at the derrière, solid dark waistcoat fronts and shadowy organza backs. Striped city shirts had curious underarm patches, and all were concealed beneath swirling black greatcoats. And modelled by his masculine pals among the Blitz Kids. (Photo: Shapersofthe80s)
A humanoid alien comes to Earth with a mission… What a spooky coincidence that David Bowie played the alien Thomas Jerome Newton in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth
Today’s Times: the masks and the man behind them
◼ ALL 10 BRITISH NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS filled their front pages today with the death of David Bowie at 69 – and so did scores of newspapers overseas. The last pop star whose death justified such deification was Jacko in 2009; and the last British pop star to do likewise was John Lennon, in 1980. The Times of London dedicated 18 pages including an outer broadsheet wrapper to honouring Bowie, plus an editorial comment as blessing. The Guardian topped that with 20 pages, plus the most enlightened editorial comment of them all. Not only did this misfit megastar and cultural icon radiate consummate flair as a performer but he displayed “an instinctive affinity with his times”. He had a “way with the zeitgeist”.
All media, notably social media, captured the dominant sentiment of generations of fans suddenly plunged into mourning. Again and again they claimed: He changed my life. . . He taught me how to be myself. . . David was my inspiration. . . David was my tutor. And most could quote their own favourite song lyric expressing their faith: Oh no, love – you’re not alone. . . Don’t tell them to grow up and out of it. . . It’s only for ever, not long at all. . . All you’ve got to do is win. . . We can be heroes just for one day.
Blanket coverage: Bowie on all UK front pages… Image updated 14 Jan to include news magazines
There goes her bob: editor Anna Wintour gets dowsed. Click pic to view video at Vogue
◼ WHO WOULD HAVE PREDICTED the stern-faced Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour would have played ball with the #icebucketchallenge sweeping America to raise funds for the ALS charity? Well, having been dared to get freezing-wet by her daughter Bee Shaffer, here’s the proof that Anna and her immaculately coiffed bob are good sports. The big question: Will the wet look make it to the September issue?
Following the rules of the challenge, La Wintour obligingly nominated Roger Federer, tennis champion, and Dominic West, star of the TV drama series The Wire, to get themselves dowsed within 24 hours.
However, before either of them could muster enough supermarket ice-cubes, zat crazee Froggy, Jean Paul Gaultier, led the charge for the international brigade of couturiers. (So far fashion had been represented only by models such as Cara Delevingne and Suki Waterhouse.) Here is JP being given the big freeze by some handpicked hunk in speedos…
MEANWHILE BACK ON THE FASHION RUNWAY
❏ Fabulous fashion footnote: You have until Monday 25 August to catch the extraordinary and witty retrospective of JPG’s madcap couture creations in The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier at London’s Barbican Art Gallery: 165 cutting-edge garments that boggle the imagination, up close and theatrically displayed in a touring exhibition from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
No, not JPG himself sporting a mink Marinière, and greeting us in English and French. This is one of many custom-made mannequins at London’s Barbican exhibition, brought flirtatiously to audio-visual life by the UBU/Compagnie de création of Montreal and Jolicoeur International of Quebec. Photographed by Shapersofthe80s
Alexa Chung: British TV host, Vogue contributing editor and former model
❚ MULBERRY AND VOGUE EDITOR ALEXANDRA SHULMANwill co-host London Fashion’s Night Out on September 6 with a joint private party. It is a grand curtain raiser for London Fashion Week when the British label is known for hosting starry soirées and past guests have included Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst and Alexa Chung.
Thursday’s Night Out, which Vogue calls “the sartorial equivalent of Christmas”, is a shopping extravaganza centred on Mayfair but embracing London’s other smart shopping areas. The biggest names throw street parties and promote great offers and exclusive merchandise for that night.
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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 2022
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm in 2021… 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
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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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