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Came to Prominence in the 1980S with a Punk Aesthetic Using Everyday Objects Such As Buttons and Bottle Tops

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Came to Prominence in the 1980S with a Punk Aesthetic Using Everyday Objects Such As Buttons and Bottle Tops Accessories designer and stylist JUDY BLAME came to prominence in the 1980s with a punk aesthetic using everyday objects such as buttons and bottle tops. Over the decades he has collaborated with a host of international designers, from Christopher Nemeth to Kim Jones at Louis Vuitton, as well as styling the likes of Neneh Cherry and Björk. Portrait Mark Mattock Words Andy Thomas “The one thing I didn’t want it to be was a nostalgia-fest,” industrial buildings sprouted shrubbery from the guttering and ‘To Let’ announced Judy Blame last November, speaking about signs from the walls.” his forthcoming exhibition at London’s ICA. “It’s called the London club culture responded with a display of creative ingenuity. It Institute of Contemporary Arts, and I want to do something was at Cha Cha, the club Blame co-hosted at Heaven with Michael Hardy contemporary, using all my different tools. So it’s going to and fellow punk renegade Scarlett Cannon, that his reclaimed jewellery be a bit of jewellery, a bit of customising, photos – we’re (made out of everything from driftwood to coat hangers and metal finding out a way of mixing all the things together. But it chains) really started to turn heads. will be me with a 2016 hat on, not a 1980s kind of thing.” One of those excited by the pieces he saw was the designer Antony It was in the 1980s, though, that Blame’s DIY creativity Price, who commissioned Blame for a catwalk show at Camden burst out of London’s post-punk scene. After running away Palace. Blame’s designs were also reaching across the Atlantic thanks from home in rural Devon when he was 17, he’d spent the to Susanne Bartsch’s boutique in New York’s Soho. Fast-forward to early punk years in Manchester meeting influential friends the men’s collections in Paris in 2015 and his beautiful bricolage such as Malcolm Garrett, designer of the Buzzcocks’ jewellery, made out of skeleton keys, brass buttons and leather sleeves. At the end of 1978, he moved to London with shoelaces, is adorning Kim Jones’s autumn/winter 2015 collection Garrett at the birth of the new romantic scene. He was for Louis Vuitton. Jones’s collection that season was a tribute to the soon hanging out with the likes of Princess Julia at Covent genius of designer Christopher Nemeth. And it was alongside this Garden’s PX boutique, and wearing his homemade pioneering deconstructionist that Blame, along with designers John accessories to the Blitz club. Moore and Richard Torry and photographer Mark Lebon, created the In a previous ICA exhibition, A Journey Through London House of Beauty and Culture collective in 1980s east London. Subculture: 1980s to Now, one image really captured the The environment around the Hackney store and workshop resulted spirit of the post-punk period. British artist Nicola Tyson in beautifully crafted pieces that worked perfectly together – Blame’s had accompanied Blame and shoemaker John Moore to salvaged jewellery finishing off a Nemeth post office sack jacket above the muddy banks of the Thames. There under Blackfriars a pair of John Moore square-toed shoes. Bridge she photographed them scavenging for old bones, It was a similarly organic process that launched Blame as one of buttons and bottle tops. “I don’t know what it is about England’s pioneering stylists of the 1980s, working with the likes of Ray England, but we’re really good at accessories,” Blame Petri’s Buffalo collective for The Face and i-D. Alongside many powerful told Iain R. Webb in The Independent in 2005. “When fashion editorials, he created the ‘Buffalo Stance’ look of his friend we haven’t got the money, we have to use our imagination. Neneh Cherry and the cover of Bjork’s Debut in 1993, both shot by I’ve never been formally trained at anything so I didn’t have Jean-Baptiste Mondino. In a world where styling is often overthought, any fear about using something that wasn’t a classical Blame strips it back to basics. jewellery material.” Collaboration has always been key to Blame’s design ethic. It’s seen Blame’s recycled pieces shared much in common with him work with everyone from Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons to the creative salvage movement, emerging during the Katie Hillier and Luella Bartley on their recent Marc by Marc Jacobs line. bleakest days of Thatcher’s Britain. In the book Cut and His work for Kim Jones’s Louis Vuitton collection is the latest in a series Shut: The History of Creative Salvage, Gareth Williams of partnerships with a big design houses, including a Paco Rabanne describes the environment in which Blame and his handbag adorned with metal keys, bottle openers, coins and buttons. contemporaries worked: “In the early 1980s, Britain It’s been quite a journey for the punk renegade, one that is to be explored seemed to be on the brink of civil war. Riots had kicked through a book published by Kim Jones’s Slow Loris imprint, currently in off in Brixton, Birmingham and Liverpool… Unemployment early planning stages. Along with the ICA exhibition it serves as a fitting had reached 12 per cent. City centre shops were boards up, tribute to one of England’s true design mavericks. J&N 61 Judy Blame Why did you decide to do the ICA exhibition now? interesting for me. And that’s how I’ve put together this exhibition for the ICA. That whole DIY environment you were working in was They asked me. I was a bit surprised to tell you the truth. I’d never I’ve gone into my archive, I’ve found things that particularly stimulate me still, a continuation from punk. Can you talk about your time thought of somewhere like that asking me. I knew [executive and then I’ve brought some of those themes up to date. in Manchester? director] Gregor [Muir] a bit, but when he asked me I was a bit I arrived there in 1977. I’d gone to London where I thought I’d like, are you sure? I’m really pleased though. It’s nice because How does your work as an accessories designer connect to your work meet loads of people but I didn’t. And the only place I knew it’s on for a few months and isn’t one of these pop-up things. as a stylist? anyone was Manchester. It had a great scene of its own so Also Kim Jones had asked me to do the book a couple of years It always starts from a jewellery idea. All of my roots start from a necklace I stayed. I knew I couldn’t go back to the countryside. People ago, so I was going through a lot of things from the past. And then that I might have made. And then I will think, why don’t I do a shoot that uses were friendlier than in London and then it had its own solid we did the Christopher Nemeth collection for Louis Vuitton that as a starting point. That is one of the things you will see with the ICA show. scene. There was a lot of stuff going on and we all went to the together. And Kim is a bit of a fan so he remembers all the work I wasn’t initially going to put a lot of the jewellery in and then I realised how same things. And in Manchester, I also had some space to and is a lot more documentary about it than me. My attitude important it is to my whole thought process. To physically sit there and learn to make mistakes. about it is that I just did it. make something. What was the main thing punk did for you? Do you think all this 1980s nostalgia can hold people back When did you first starting making things? I always say I never went to college but punk was like my college. from creating their own thing today? As a very young kid, I was always the one who was quite happy to be in his It was like the musicians, many of them couldn’t really play but I do have a problem looking backwards; I’m really not a big room drawing away or making something. I’ve got two brothers and two sisters we still went to see them. It was so daring in a funny way. It was nostalgia person. I’m one of the last of the paper, glue and and they would be outside with the rough and tumble and I’d be in my room very much, rip it up and start again. And that is what I did. For a scissors era, where you actually made something and wore it drawing and dreaming. I didn’t feel like I had to go out and throw myself around young lad from the countryside it was perfect. It really was the yourself – that’s how you used to experiment. Whereas kids and graze my knees. From a very young age, I always had an attitude that if start of my life. So I had that spirit in me. And Manchester was experiment in a different way now. They’ve got access to more I didn’t have something, I would make it. a fucking great place to do it. information. It’s too much information for me, but then I know where my taste is. I never stop and look back and rest on my Do you think that childlike thing has stuck with you over the years? Had you started making your own things by then? laurels.
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