SHOW AND TELL: ABOUT BOY LONDON

Posted by Melanie Rickey, Fashion Editor at Large

  The BOY London collaboration with my favourite T-Shirt label, Long Clothing (£40 each)

When I was 18 years old I can vividly recall the day my little sister Jennifer came home with a white leatherette BOY London baseball cap. I was so frickin annoyed because I wanted one, and now she had one I couldn't etc etc. Ah, the things we used to get upset about.

We didn't look at elitist, out-of-touch catwalk fashion in the early 1990s; our bible was The Face, our icons were other young people and the brands we connected with were ones we could relate to and afford with our pathetic recession-hit bank balance. Fast forward to today and I am an adult woman witnessing a fashion groundhog day, as BOY London is in the midst of a revival and club kids dress, look and act pretty much exactly how we used to, the only difference being the addition of Mac tech about their person.

BOY London was founded in the late 1970s by a fashion-obsessed lad about town called Stephane Raynor who was part of the Blitz Kid and New Romantic clubbing movements. By the time we found it, it had been worn by Andy Warhol, Madonna, The Pet Shop Boys, Boy George, and its shop on Old Compton Street in London's Soho always had queues outside. In the mid-late 1990s its popularity and its distinctive eagle and BOY logo had had its day.

Back in February though, a curious thing happened: BOY London relaunched with Selfridges as its premier stockist, with none other than its founder Stephane Raynor still at the creative controls, although this time around he has a decent backer. Amazingly it has been freshly discovered by Rihanna, Jessie J and Nicki Minaj as well as hipster Chloe Sevigny.

The result is, after a hiatus of more than a decade away from business, the brand and its founder has taken root again in a fertile ground of edgy pop stars, even edgier club kids and a recession hit economy that is creating its "own" street culture and affordable brand icons. The brand is red hot all over again.

After Rihanna wore the below outfit on Jonathan Ross' show last month, the Selfridges website experienced such an enormous sales spike they sold out of five key styles overnight. Why? Because the brand is affordable: the average T-shirt is £35, sweatshirt £55 and leggings £40; TopShop prices.

Of course, Jessie J, Rihanna, and Nicki Minaj didn't happen across BOY in Selfridges though: their stylists discovered it after they found the 90s vintage - if 90s stuff could officially be called, vintage which it can't - store Sick on Redchurch Street  in East London which is owned and run by none other than the bad BOY founder himself Stephane Raynor. Fashion in full cycle.

Me and my sister Jennifer in our BOY days back in 1990 ish

          

BOY LONDON BACK IN THE 80S AND 90S 

Andy Warhol in BOY 

 The Pet Shop Boys circa 1994

Pet Shop Boys 1994

        BOY LONDON IN 2012

Chloe Sevigny out and about in BOY 

Rihanna in BOY on the Jonathan Ross show a few weeks ago (via ohverlycritical.com) 

BOY London founder Stephane Raynor created this outfit for Nicki Minaj, outed for the first time last weekend. From his tagged Tumblr

Jessie J in BOY last weekend - Her sweatshirt costs £55, the leggings £40 

BOY London Leggings, £40 (the black version are sold out)

BOY London sweatshirt, £55 

            

For more information on Sick on Redchurch Street go here

What do you think of the BOY London revival? 

Go shopping for BOY at 

http://leavetheboyalone.com/




PS SORRY FOR FORMATTING - cant fix it!

THE WARREN STREET SQUAT: 80S CLUB LIFE WITH BOY GEORGE, STEPHEN JONES AND MANY MORE

Posted by Bethan Holt, Fashion Junior at Large

Prepare to feel like your life is very boring. Sorry, but that's how I felt when I went to a talk at the National Portrait Gallery last Thursday evening entitled "Word of Mouth from the Warren Street Squat". Given the setting in a rather proper sort of place, I sort of thought I'd be going along to a rather genteel retelling of the activities of a particularly creative, carefree community which sprung up in Central London nearly a decade before I was born. Indeed, the whole event came about as a result of the Lucian Freud retrospective- attended  by the very prim Duchess Kate when it opened- in which there are several portraits of Leigh Bowery, a key player in the clubbing scene which was a huge part of life for the Warren Street squatters.

The most polite one I could find....Leigh Bowery by Lucian Freud (image from www.tate.org.uk)

What actually ensued was an hour and a half long chat amongst many members of that community, including Boy George and milliner Stephen Jones, enlightening the comparatively few of us there who hadn't been around to experience it first hand. The Warren Street Squat was one of many which sprung up in the area around Tottenham Court Road and Euston Road in the late 70s. The squats were inhabited by art students, DJs, musicians and any other 'outcasts' who felt at home in what sounds like the complete, non-stop chaos of the place. Jeffrey Hinton, who did a lot of the talking, recalled a time of 'no rent, no internet and no mobile phones' which gave them the 'freedom of not dealing with real life'. In turn, this led to a 'falling apart culture' which was only exacerbated by the unstable minority Labour government and the highest unemployment figures since the war.

Boy George with Leigh Bowery (image from graziadaily.co.uk)

The lovely Princess Julia, who was on stage talking with Jeffrey Hinton

When they broke into the disused townhouse on Warren St and wired up the electricity in 1978, there began the coming together of creative minds who would eventually become some of the biggest cultural influencers of the 80s- Leigh Bowery, Michael Clark,  Bodymap designers Stevie Stewart and David Holah, Princess Julia... I could go on. I loved that so many of these people and their friends were at the event on Thursday night so rather than being a bland history lesson, the room frequently roared with debate about what really happened in the stories being told. Boy George discovered for the first time that the house actually had a working phone that he could have used. Some were disgruntled to discover that others had been to Mark Le Bon's squat a few streets away for baths (it was the only place with hot water). What made me feel boring is that wherever I was living, the bath and phone would be my first priority. It's hard to imagine being so consumed with other preoccupations that I could possibly not hunt out these facilities as a matter of urgency. It seemed that visits to drink out of date beer at  Pink Panther or nipping to the roof to delve into the bucket of poppers they kept there were more pressing.

Kim Bowen, Jeremy Healy and Stephen Jones outside the Warren St squat (image from www.fashionsmostwanted.blogspot.com)

Trojan and Leigh Bowery. An image from the insightful article which Princess Julia wrote about the NPG talk for iD

This scene is still inspiring creatives today.... During the talk a photo popped up of a clubber in full blue face paint. It looks to me like Meadham Kirchhoff almost certainly saw this picture and used it as make-up inspiration for their AW12 show.

Bodymap (image from www.dazeddigital.com)

Meadham Kirchhoff make-up AW12 (image from lloyd-evans.com)

Jeffrey Hinton's scratch videos were big highlights of the night. A lot of the footage came from the time after the squat had been closed down and all its inhabitants rehoused in smaller flats on council estates. Nevertheless, I think they gave a pretty good taster of the hedonism, sexual freedom and creativity which pervaded the scene. Hinton had become obsessed by tapes at a young age, when he would record himself then edit the tape by cutting it up and sellotaping back together different segments. Princess Julia, who seems totally brilliant, remembered how he would do a new one each week to show at Taboo, Bowery's club night. The videos were grim and vile and hilarious and beautiful in equal measure- some segments show Hinton filming his friends as they dance and snog and masturbate and banter. Spliced in with these equivalents of family footage are Hinton's genius mixes of mainstream media, clips from TV shows, adverts and even a Tupperware (the plastic tubs which every good housewife/Mother/ practical person has stowed in a kitchen cupboard) party, with scenes from horror films and underground sources which lampoon the original material. It's a whole different way of looking at the world and sells the club scene as a complete, alternative lifestyle rather than something we do on a Friday or Saturday night. 

One of Hinton's videos.... Be warned, it's pretty gruesome!



The talk ended on kind of odd note when Hinton mentioned he would be reading out the names of some of those who had been big parts of the scene but who are no longer around, many of them succumbing to AIDS related illnesses or drug and alcohol problems. There was a shouting match between two audience members who had clearly both been some part of the culture- where one questioned whether their lifestyles had been overly childish and irresponsible, the other was fuming that that subject had to be brought up at all. While the deaths of people like Bowery do cast a shadow, the fact that Hinton, Princess Julia and many more are still alive, successful and just as creative today does show that it was an experience you could live through.

I just need one question answering, does anyone know who this fab furry animal bedecked audience member is? All anyone could tell me was his name was Thierry...