Blitz Club Blitz Kids

Blitz Club Blitz Kidsis a series of images taken in 1980 by the photographer Homer Sykes in the famous London club the Blitz Club.

“In the 1970s Britain was still in the midst of economic depression, a three day working week, unemployment was rising sharply, there were frequent strikes and severe inflation.

Steve Strange a young Welsh entrepreneur had arrived in London, he was making a name for him self arranging gigs for punk bands. Teaming up with friend and drummer Rusty Eagan, they set themselves up as club promoters organising ‘Bowie Nights’ on Tuesday evenings in a seedy basement nightclub below a Soho brothel. By 1979 they had outgrown that venue and relocated to a down-at-heal wine bar in Great Queen Street, Covent Garden, which was decked out in Second World War posters and a photograph of Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. At the once-a-week Tuesday nightclub while Rusty played DJ, Steve enforced a strict door policy, only admitting “the weird and wonderful”. Mick Jagger was famously turned away.

The Blitz Club was beginning to make the headlines The tabloid press were predictably outraged, by the art student and clubbers, many of whom cross-dressed, and shock horror, men and women were wearing make-up! They labelled the club goers, the Blitz Kids. Importantly the new venue was situated between two of London’s most important art schools, St Martins and the Central School. It was frequented by many fashion students, who had become fed up with the punk genre. They wanted to express themselves differently and many in a much more androgynous way. The Blitz Club was a test bed for their fashion ideas, this new look later became known as the New Romantic movement.

By 1981 the verve had disappeared, the Blitz Club was just a short lived glorious bubble, where a fashion style had been born, then withered, but never forgotten; an inspiration for generations to follow.”