Blitz Kids

Blitz Kids

The Blitz Kids were a group of young people who frequented the weekly Blitz club-night in Covent Garden, London in 1979-80, and are credited with launching the New Romantic subcultural movement. Steve Strange and Rusty Egan co-hosted Tuesday nights and imposed a strict dress code. Among core attendees were Boy George, Marilyn, Alice Temple, Perri Lister, Princess Julia, Philip Sallon and Martin Degville (later to be the frontman of Tony James' Sigue Sigue Sputnik). Crucially, the club lay between two art colleges (St Martin's School and Central School) and it became a testbed for student fashion designers who set London ablaze during the 1980s. These included Stephen Jones, Kim Bowen, Fiona Dealey, Stephen Linard, David Holah, Stevie Stewart, John Galliano, Darla Jane Gilroy and more. The Blitz began making headlines thanks to its outrageous styles of clothes and make-up for both sexes, subsequently documented by Gary Kemp in his 2009 first-person book, I Know This Much. Andrew Czezowski (ex-manager of The Damned) and Susan Carrington who started The Roxy club with Barry Jones are said to have introduced Strange and Egan to the Blitz. After coming together at Billy's nightclub in Soho in 1978, the post-punk generation found themselves bored with the whole nihilist punk genre. Strange and Egan introduced regular Roxy Music and David Bowie nights at Billy's and, in an effort to find something new and colourful, the denizens took to wearing bizarre home-made costumes and clothing and emphatic make-up, presenting a highly androgynous appearance. After three months, this group of kindred spirits moved on from Billy's – which had effectively formalised the once-a-week club-night – to another every Tuesday at the more elitist Blitz wine bar in Great Queen Street, which is widely considered as home to the New Romantic movement and prompted the "Blitz Kids" epithet in mainstream newspapers, led by the Daily Mirror on 3 March 1980.

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