British GQ - 09.2019

EDITOR’S LETTER

I

was one of the lucky ones. Having left

Saint Martin’s School Of Art in 1981,

having spent three years studying design

and photography (and, if I’m honest,

studying rather a lot of clubbing too),

a year after I left, I was not exactly punching

above my weight. I was living in a housing

association apartment in South East London

(Peckham, actually, which bears almost no

relation to the gentrified postcode it is now),

getting up as late in the day as possible (the

trick was to only eat one meal a day) and then

watching Channel 4 for a few hours before

getting dressed and going out to a club. I

wasn’t proud of my existence, but I was grad-

ually slipping into a dissolute lifestyle that

revolved around The Night.

Of course, the night was exciting, especially

in London at that point. London nightlife had

really moved up a gear in 1978, when Steve

Strange and Rusty Egan started a “Bowie”

night at a grotty subterranean club called

Billy’s in Soho. Every Tuesday, a bunch of

extravagantly dressed teenagers who had

become disillusioned with punk would pitch

exactly the same way as Steve Rubell at Studio

54 in New York (which had opened in April

1977): they would nod people through or

point or tap them on the shoulder, barring

entry to anyone they didn’t like the look of.

If you were wearing the wrong clothes, had

obviously drunk too much or simply looked

like you were there just to gawp, you wouldn’t

be let in. These clipboard guardians weren’t

necessarily trying to patronise those on the

outside, more often they were trying to protect

those on the inside.

But while it was an intoxicating envi-

ronment, there were still a lot of hours to

fill between 2am and 9pm each day. After

leaving Saint Martin’s I threw myself into

photography, although in my heart of hearts

I’m not sure I thought I was any good. I’d

photographed a lot of my friends on the club

scene and I’d photographed a few pop groups

and had started to work a little in television,

but I was reluctant to pursue anything that I

wasn’t completely in love with. Frankly, this

was a strange combination of arrogance and

inertia. The only jobs I pursued were ones >>

up at Billy’s (which was sandwiched between

a dodgy restaurant and a brothel) and dance

to a mixture of David Bowie, Roxy Music and

electronica. Strange and Egan opened the Blitz

a few months later and the New Romantics

were born (not that anyone involved in the

scene ever liked that description).

Suddenly, London clubland was alive. The

Blitz scene was one big playpen, where a wait-

ress from Catford could dress up as Carmen

Miranda or an art student from Saint Martin’s

could pretend to be a pirate or a dandy high-

wayman. It was a very small world, rather a

feminine world, and one that immediately

alienated anyone outside it because it was

so difficult to break into. The doormen and

women at the New Romantic clubs acted in

In conversation, mentors and protégés (from left) Samuel Ross, Virgil Abloh, Kim Jones, Edward Crutchley, Andreas Kronthaler and Matty Bovan

No one climbs the

ladder alone. That

is why mentoring

Photographs is so important

Nikolai von Bismarck; Vincent Flouret; Lucy Alex Mac

09-19EditorsLetter.indd 37 11/07/2019 16:57

SEPTEMBER 2019 GQ.CO.UK 37