The Blitz was absolutely electric. It was the dawn of the New Romantic scene and I felt like I was at the vanguard of something new. I was in my early 20s. I had graduated from St Martin’s School of Art in June 1979 and opened my first shop in Endell Street, Covent Garden – around the corner from the Blitz Club – in September 1980. Steve Strange hosted and Rusty Egan DJ’d, and we danced to tracks by Human League or Visage.
I was first taken there by my friend Dinny Hall, the jeweller. You couldn’t just turn up, no matter how good you looked. It was a select crowd, very judgmental – you would never get away with a look you hadn’t quite sorted out.
There were popstars in our midst: Boy George, Marilyn, Duran Duran. When someone as famous as David Bowie came down, of course we were very aware of him; but we weren’t really interested in other people’s fame. We wanted to do new and interesting things, for us. So, no one wanted to wear a label someone else had designed because it meant you couldn’t come up with your own.
I remember the night this photo was taken because of my outfit. It was my father’s suit, but he certainly didn’t wear it with cream gloves, a cream beret and a pussy cat bow. It was quite unusual to have something from his closet but it was either that, Oxfam or a jumble sale. I’d fallen into hat-making and I remember making that beret in my friend Fiona’s kitchen. It had cream silk on the side with a pale green tip.
I was working as a truck driver by day and living in a squat in Warren Street with about 10 other people, including Jayne Chilkes, who I am dancing with here. The other couple are Dick Jewell, a film-maker, and his girlfriend, Luciana.
The Blitz gave me my first clients. The hats were homemade; I’d loan or sell them at a discount. Quite often we’d do a trade: I’d make a hat for someone and they’d take photos for me. None of us had money but we had a certain amount of talent.
The club was also the reason I went on to open my first shop, in the basement of the destination fashion shop PX, where Steve Strange and DJ Princess Julia worked. I had no business plan but I had a wonderful collection of hats.
I still work from Covent Garden. It’s right in the middle of everything. A hat is a central London purchase and, I’ve always thought: “If you’re going to be in London, you may as well be in London.”
For me, the Blitz years were a time of great unknown; a weird time of flux where I was at the start of something new. It was scary but, fortunately, I met this group of people and entered the melee of London clubland. We considered it our duty to support one another, like a family. We’d put on a beautiful costume and it would often hide insecurities and uncertainties.
We were like any other group of like-minded people, but what made us unusual were the times we were in. We’d come out of the nanny society of the 1970s and were told that self-expression was OK. You could do your own thing.
A few years later, Aids happened and it absolutely decimated us. A quarter of the people I knew died. I didn’t know if I’d be dead within a year. In this photo, I look back at a time where we felt happy; almost invincible. We’re the survivors.
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