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. Among them were Rusty Egan, Steve Strange, Boy George, his friends Marilyn and Alice Temple, Perri Lister, Princess Julia, Philip Sallon, Carl Teper 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 became a testbed for student fashion designers who set London ablaze during the 1980s. These included Stephen Jones, Fiona Dealey, Kim Bowen, Melissa Caplan, Stephen Linard, Judith Frankland, David Holah, Stevie Stewart, John Galliano, Darla Jane Gilroy, Dinny Hall, Iain Webb, Simon Withers, Willy Brown, Richard Ostell, Rachel Auburn 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.