ARCHIVEMilitanttendenciesRobin Muir looks back at
the bold countercultural spirit of
1980s London, as shot by Albert
Watson, Vogue August 1984London, 1984. Revolt into style.
The language of rebellion. The
year the capital’s avant-garde
designers honed their craft to
perfection, “jumping from the clubs,
leaping off the streets,” Vogue declared,
in a vivid-hued conjunction of sportswear
and street theatre.
“We’re not normal people,” announced
David Holah, who, together with Stevie
Stewart, made up the wildly inventive
Body Map duo. “Who can be normal
today? The way we live is rebellious.”
Few came more defiant than Katharine
Hamnett. That year she used a Fashion
Week meeting (when Fashion Week
was still new) with Margaret Thatcher
to get her message across – wearing a
T-shirt she had smuggled into Downing
Street with “58% Don’t Want Pershing”
emblazoned across it in giant, unmissable
letters. The Prime Minister’s response
was cool if quizzical: “We haven’t gotPershing here, we’ve got cruise. You must
be at the wrong party, dear.” No matter.
The flashbulbs pinged, the picture was
all, and the point was made.
Vogue applauded the colour-blocked
rainbow parachute silks from “the jollier
end” of that season’s Hamnett collection,
adding, “No message...” Body Map’s
monochromatic starfish-patterned
Lycra knits and fin-fingered gloves were
“crazy, successful, funny”, its designers
“rethinking the face and body”.
Meanwhile, the palette of Helen
Robinson for PX was distinctive:
vermilion fake fur and padded cotton
made for a vibrant mise en sc•ne.
Revolutionary, provocative and
innovative? Certainly. But when it was
estimated that more than three-
quarters of London’s anarchical fashion
was sold to an intrigued American
marketplace, add single-mindedly
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