Director: Kevin Hegge
Writer: Kevin Hegge
Stars: Judy Blame, Duggie Fields, Princess Julia
Synopsis: Rising from the nihilistic ashes of the punk movement in the late 1970s, a fresh crowd of flamboyant fashionistas, who would later be christened the New Romantics, began to materialize on the streets of London, England.
The Bromley Contingent. The Blitz Kids. St Martins College. Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane and Jubilee. David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes film clip. Squatting in a not quite gentrified London. SEX/SOCIETY. The artists on the fringe of the fringe. The best of times and the worst of times. They were kids running from austerity and making art out of themselves. They had no product – they were the product. “Wasn’t it fabulous at The Blitz? Oh please!” responds the then elder Philip Sallon. It was punk, it was post-punk, it was the New Romantics. The DIY decadents who flocked to London from their working-class homes and were artists with their bodies as the canvas.
Canadian filmmaker Kevin Hegge documents a period which started as far back as the mid 1970s with the Alternative Miss World and in many ways still exists despite many of the main players being wiped out by drugs or the tidal wave which was AIDS. Hegge primarily focuses on four voices who are the guides to the moments which defined a New Britain while the old one had quietly slipped away after the Swinging ‘60s. A world where Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren acted as punk impresarios delving into the world of bondage and provocation. 1977 at The Roxy, The Clash played. The Roxy had formerly been a gay club. Punk was queer – just no one was ready to admit it until it burned its nihilistic flame and from the shadows emerged a new light. That light was radically queer and led by John Maybury (filmmaker and artist), Judy Blame (DIY fashionista and stylist), Scarlett Cannon (a model and club kid), and Princess Julia (an iconic DJ and promoter). There were many more people: A young George O’Dowd who was the coat check attendant at nightclubs so he could steal money. The same George O’Dowd who is forever now Boy George. Steve Strange who ran The Blitz and refused to let Mick Jagger in.
John Maybury calls it a golden era of experimentation. The government was paying bursaries for people to go to art colleges. If you were happy to forgo regular meals and basic hygiene you could share a group of rundown Edwardian terraces with like-minded (or not – love and hate co-existed) creatives and be the art. Some people were already on the road to success – Siouxsie Sioux, Adam Ant, Amanda Donohoe, Mark Moore. Others connected in the community of misfits and mudlarked their fashion. New York and Berlin were epicenters of culture, but London was about to emerge once again like the ever-rising phoenix and redefine fashion, art, and music once more. Exclusive and inclusive – icons and iconoclasts in 24/7 performance mode.
Hegge’s documentary begins with a whirl inspired by John Maybury’s 1994 video art project Remembrance of Things Past which stars Tilda Swinton (a constant presence in Jarman films and a Maybury collaborator) and Princess Julia. Styled by Judy Blame and with a below the line crew of stylists and costumers who were part of the Blitz Kids generation (sadly, many now gone). There is chaos at the gates of HELL (the club), taboo breaking at TABOO. Leigh Bowery, the post gender creator who fled suburban Melbourne for London and used his day job at a fast-food chain to pay for his entry into a world of transgression. There are the neo-naturalists – the Binnie sisters writhing in body paint nestled against the classical dancers Les Child and Michael Clark (OBE).
Even the straight women and men admitted they were dressing up in a radical drag. The queer body was becoming male/female/undefined. Nipples, mounds of Venuses, cock-sure young cocks who whirled about in a Genet and Fassbinder world next to Greek and Roman deities or pirates, the Royalty of the past (Queen Elizabeth I) or Ray Petri’s buffalo dandies. Quentin Crisp stopped into cafes for ‘grey coffee’ – David Bowie recruited for his ‘Scary Monsters’ film clips. Everyone was alive with possibility, but the shadow of austerity and AIDS merged with the party stopping and starting. Heroin took some. Extremity took others. Accidents and coincidences like a perpetual cut-with-the-kitchen-knife collage brought people together and tore them apart.
“We didn’t have a product, we were the product,” Judy Blame announces. How could they monetize their existence? Some moved into fine art, some into becoming stylists, and some into music. The beautiful Marilyn, who was always with Boy George, released a hit single and then faded away for over twenty years into a crack addiction.
Many artistic and fashion movements are interrupted by war or inspired by it. For the Tramps, the war was poverty, AIDS, and fleeting fame. But what luminosity! Without the post-punk generation there would be no i-D magazine. No issues of The Face. Life would have been perpetually elsewhere in a Warhol or Studio 54 blur. Interview Magazine or Rolling Stone would still be the bastion of gonzo journalism with NME and Melody Maker fighting for British supremacy. There would be no Smash Hits magazine.
Living fearlessly came with a cost for many – John Maybury seems left in a small void of survivor’s guilt (his partner Trojan died of a heroin overdose, his mentor Derek Jarman died of AIDS, Leigh Bowery died of AIDS… so many, too many). Yet the moments in the neon lit sun or the dingy squats that became art collectives had energetic joy which came together in the BodyMap fashion shows which produced their ready to wear street couture (something we see as standard now) that included bodies young, old, of colour, and of varying sexuality.
Judy Blame says that death and poverty hold no sway. The melancholy aspect of the documentary is that Blame passed away before it was released. Princess Julia others can barely speak of the losses they witnessed. Some cracked under mental health pressures. Hegge allows that there are people who do not wish to speak at all of their time, and those who simply cannot.
“London is a shithole,” says Blame. Debt and gentrification mean that London is now a place where the creatives are in Princess Julia’s words “No longer fucking each other but fucking each other over.” It’s a little misty eyed for her and her nostalgia for a seemingly golden period. Austerity is back and life is elsewhere again. But without the ‘Lesbians, Queers, Punks, and Prostitutes’ who daily caught the Tube on their way to be ‘seen’ there is so much of culture which just wouldn’t exist. No Alexander McQueen fashion house. No BOY London. No Neneh Cherry. Kylie Minogue would still be singing about being lucky and doing the locomotion. Tramps! reminds the audience that there are those who will never Fade to Grey.
