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Princess Julia and Steve Strange at the Blitz club, February 13, 1980
WHEN he asserts that Blitz, the London club that ran for 18 months between 1979-80, created the 1980s, Robert Elms makes a bold claim. He is, as a former dandy of that underworld, aware of the absurdity of the boast, even as he suggests that “a musty Second World War-themed wine bar in the Covent Garden became the centre of the universe”.
Certainly, it became the centre of Elms’ cosmos, as well as the second home of around 150 “overdressed, undervalued youngsters” whose ranks included Boy George, Gary Kemp, Siobhan Fahey, Sade, the artists Grayson Perry and Peter Doig, dancer Michael Clark and fashion designer John Galliano. Elms calls the Blitzerati “macaronis”, an 18th-century pejorative term for “a fashionable, overdressed fellow”, and insofar as the Blitz club had a purpose beyond celebrating the brilliance of its denizens, it can be located in a steadfast commitment to overdressing. This was not fancy dress, the author stresses.