Image Oh You Pretty Things: The Story of Music and Fashion

This programme contains some strong language

Behind the scenes at one the biggest events of the British summer.

These boys are being made beautiful

for the Burberry Menswear Show of 2014.

It's a fabulous day for fabulous people

and some interesting hats.

But this is more than the unveiling

of the latest upmarket British fashion.

Burberry are also showcasing a new star of British music.

MUSIC: "House" by Josh Record

'I have been styled by Burberry today.

'And, yeah, to have a brand like Burberry'

wanting to associate themselves with you,

it's a total vote of confidence and a seal of approval.

# They don't see the blind tears... #

Josh Record is the latest talented young British musician

to be selected and backed by the Burberry brand.

It's so creative and it's such art

that it's amazing to collaborate with fashion and music

because you're both creating something.

# Soon they'll find their own place to hide... #

Josh is part modern pop star, part brand model.

He's a product of an era in British music when image became everything.

The 1980s was the age of the music video.

Nothing changed fashion and music as much as the video.

MUSIC: "Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol

It was also the age in which musicians strived to hit

the perfect style for their music.

I'm an obsessive, I'm always looking at new looks

and I'm always trying to improve the music.

And everyone was judged on the look they were wearing.

"You look idiotic, you don't look creative at all."

It was the most stupid haircut in the world.

More than ever, our music became a catwalk

of carefully constructed images...

from the gritty, to the glamorous,

to the geeky.

Cringeworthy.

-HE LAUGHS

-Andy with his sweater.

Our '80s music became a battleground between artifice and authenticity.

Don't you dare call us a New Romantic band,

we are serious and Northern and intellectual.

And we don't wear frilly shirts.

And the looks that went with it held a mirror to the nation.

-MARGARET THATCHER:

-You do not follow the crowd.

You decide what to do yourself.

I was called a Thatcherite.

You've got to believe that the way you're making things look

is better than everybody else.

The tunes we danced to and the styles we wore

became a vivid reflection of the country we had been,

the country we were becoming

and the country we now are.

I always knew I looked really good when my mum used to say,

"Oh, my God! What do you look like?"

MUSIC: "The Winner Takes It All" by ABBA

1980.

The beginning of a new decade was in fact the end of an era.

# I don't wanna talk

# About things we've gone through... #

ABBA, whose expertly crafted Swedish songwriting

had lifted our spirits through the '70s,

were enjoying what would be their last taste of chart-topping success.

# And that's what you've done too... #

There was nothing more to say, they were history.

Their euphoric Europop out of tune

with a nation on the verge of economic calamity.

# The winner takes it all

# The loser standing small... #

Faced with high inflation, powerful unions

and inefficient industry,

Maggie Thatcher gave Britain a dose of tough love.

How else are you going to do it?

Now just tell me.

How else are you going to create jobs?

By May 1980, inflation hit 22% whilst we suffered the biggest jump

in unemployment since the Great Depression.

But in that very same month,

a new band hit the charts whose style replicated the looks

of the hard-pressed working man.

# Back in '68 in a sweaty club

# Oh, Geno

# Before Jimmy's Machine and The Rocksteady Rub

# Oh, Geno

# On a night when flowers didn't suit my shoes... #

I remember thinking, "Right, Top Of The Pops,

"we're going to really nail this."

We knew this was the opportunity to get this look over.

"OK, let's go, have you got your woolly hat?

"You got your jacket?"

# Academic inspiration... #

Straightaway they were just there. Looked great, sounded great.

# But you were Michael the lover... #

Dexys Midnight Runners swaggered onto our screens at number one

in May 1980.

'They look completely like a gang, a team'

and usually in a line-up like this with seven or eight people,

someone doesn't quite pull it off,

but I thought it was brilliant, it blew me away.

Geno was a hymn to hardworking soul man, Geno Washington.

And with their donkey jackets, monkey boots and beanie hats,

Dexys channelled the spirit of the working-class man in a tough job.

# This man was my bombers, my Dexys, my high

# Oh-oh, Geno... #

Some of the music press thought

that we couldn't afford any different clothes,

you know, they actually thought that.

# No, I'm not being flash It's what I'm built to do... #

But Dexys look came not from the picket line, but from the pictures.

On The Waterfront starred Marlon Brando as a stevedore

on the New York docks.

On The Waterfront, that was a big influence.

No Hollywood glamour here,

this was the gritty life with gritty clothes to match.

They looked great, you know, those docker guys.

They were wearing like, you know, peacoats, those woolly hats.

Maybe like lumberjack check shirts, you know, thick belts.

It's a great look.

MUSIC: "Dance Stance" by Dexys Midnight Runners

The docker look was a perfect fit for the soulful,

sweat-drenched performances of Kevin and the band.

# I'll only ask you once more... #

To me, they always go together.

The look somehow has to match the music.

I'm an obsessive, I'm always looking at new looks

and I'm always trying to improve the music.

But sometimes, you know, you catch a moment

and everybody's into it.

And at a moment when Maggie Thatcher seemed to have

British industry on the run,

Dexys spoke to working-class lads...

looking for working-class heroes.

Neil Sheasby was a school boy in the early 1980s.

MUSIC: "Keep It" by Dexys Midnight Runners

He'd grown up in Britain's industrial heartland,

where unemployment was rising and tension simmered on the streets.

All this was unfolding on my doorstep really, in Coventry,

and in Birmingham, so it felt very real, very real,

and there was a lot of trouble.

It was very tribal.

If you weren't a mod or a rude boy

or a skinhead or a punk, that was probably the worst thing of all

because they were outcasts, you know, they were probably picked on.

But with the tough docker look, Neil was able to survive

the polarised style politics of the playground.

I used to turn up in school in a donkey jacket.

I had a three-button fitted leather jacket as well,

so I could kind of get my identity coming across at school

in certain ways.

I mean, it was workwear, council wear, you could buy them.

They were kind of readily available.

But the docker look did have one drawback.

I'd be walking up Addison High Street like it

and they probably weren't thinking On The Waterfront,

they would probably think, "He wants a job at the borough council," you know what I mean?

Now you couldn't buy the hats, so I got my mum, she was into knitting,

so I got her to knit them, a red and a black one,

and when I started turning up to school in the hats,

loads of kids would go, "Oh, where'd you get your hat from?"

So I went, "Oh, my mum knitted it for me."

"She couldn't make me one, could she? She couldn't get me one?"

And I thought, "OK, I'll get a little racket moving here.

"So give me £2, I'll get you one sorted."

So I was spending the £2 in the record shops on the way home.

So, yeah, that was crazy,

she was busy knitting for a few weeks for sure, yeah.

But equally, on the flip side to that, six or seven kids

would turn up the next week wearing the hats

and that's when I thought, "Right, time for me to move on now.

"I need to leave this behind really

"because, you know, everyone seems to be doing it."

Fortunately for Neil, his style idols were always one step ahead.

MUSIC: "Because Of You" by Dexys Midnight Runners

We started to bring the strings into the music more, late '81, early '82.

And we knew we needed to change the look.

The person Kevin called on for his brand-new look

is one of our most respected costume designers - Debbie Williams.

Kevin played me the songs, but didn't have all the words yet,

but, you know, I could hear the violins and everything.

And then Kevin asked me would I come up with a new look

to go with it.

What Debbie conjured up was one of the most distinctive

style statements in rock'n'roll history.

So then I just kind of went away and thought about it and...

MUSIC: "Come On Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners

..then the dungarees happened.

# Come on, Eileen

# Oh, I swear what he means

# At this moment you mean everything... #

She said, "Look, why don't you dress down?"

'And she suggested dungarees...'

'..but it wasn't just dungarees, it was lots of different things.'

'You know, we had scarves, we had hats, so I was quite into that look.'

# Come on, Eileen... #

Though the dungarees were a radical style shift,

like the docker look before it,

they cleverly chimed with the times.

I was reading a lot of John Steinbeck at the time

and there was one book, The Grapes Of Wrath, about the depression.

We were in the '80s, you know, Thatcher was around,

and though it wasn't a depression, it was depressing

and on this cover of this Grapes Of Wrath,

there was a great illustration of the Joad family.

When I saw that I just thought, "Oh, that could be really good."

It just seemed to suit the music, suit the time.

Amid the gloom of the economic situation, the dust bowl denim look

reinforced Dexys' image as a band of the people.

It was a lot to do with the class system,

the class system when I was growing up was very rigid.

It was very rigid. So that kind of did create a lot of tension.

All I know is that I had a real passion to express myself

in some way.

# Attack, attack Said attack, attack

# Attack, attack Said attack, attack

# Attack, attack Said attack, attack

# Attack, attack Said attack, attack

# And I know... #

Today, Dexys continue to experiment with new looks.

Picking and choosing freely from styles of the past.

'It was obvious that Kevin was a visionary,

'he would look for the next thing,'

he wasn't going to stay immersed in one look

or one sound for too long really,

he was always looking to evolve and adapt.

# I know

# You know what I mean... #

But as Dexys channelled the collective spirit

of our industrial past,

the early '80s saw a band with a look

that seemed to reflect a new kind of Britain.

MUSIC: "Fade To Grey" by Visage

# Devenir gris

# One man on a lonely platform

# One case sitting by his side

# Two eyes staring cold and silent

# Show fear as he turns to hide... #

One minute 30.

# We fade to grey... #

Fade to Grey hit our screens in November 1980.

One minute 40.

# We fade to grey... #

And became the first top ten smash for electro pioneers Visage.

Its success was down to a throbbing beat combined with a stunning video.

I wasn't going to do a video which was just based on a band

playing to camera.

I actually wanted this to be a theatrical mini-movie.

# We fade to grey... #

I think the Fade To Grey video is ground-breaking and pioneering.

Steve Strange and Rusty Egan

were two of the visionaries behind Visage.

While Rusty supplied beats,

it was Steve who took control of their style and image.

Steve, I'll give him his due, he knows what to do with the fashion.

The video was a showcase of '80s avant-garde style.

Boiler suits, gilded tunics, military-style hats

and make-up, bucket-loads of make-up.

All put to together on a shoestring.

# Like an English summer... #

It still holds up as a pretty amazing video,

and everybody worked for sweet FA because they believed in me.

We were lucky, we were just indulged by each other.

# Oh, we fade to grey... #

Melissa Caplan was the designer who believed in Steve Strange.

And it's her clothes that adorn him in the Fade To Grey video.

I probably started off with things like this, which...

I believe that's the back bit

and that's actually the same design as the outfit

that I made for Steve Strange.

This is after punk really, so we'd already had that attitude where...

"Why not? I want to be a designer, why not?"

The first influence I used was Egyptian for my prints,

which is rife for being copied.

I mean, I don't think I'd studied them at school even,

but there I was finding out about ancient civilisations

because they had designs that I thought would look good on clothes.

Melissa's designs, Steve's vision and Rusty's tunes

all came together in the Fade To Grey video.

And this extraordinary meeting of music and fashion

had its origins in a single legendary place.

We are in what was originally known as the Blitz in Covent Garden.

The Blitz club was London's most exclusive underground hangout.

Sandwiched between two London fashion schools,

it was as much a catwalk as a nightclub.

That's what the club's about, it's about fashion, it's about looks.

I mean, the men dress outrageous,

the women dress outrageous.

The Blitz became a weekly feast of cutting-edge fashion.

And with it came a soundtrack

from one of the most influential DJs of his day.

We used to have a DJ just down there in the corner

and it literally was in the corner,

not where the silver booth is now, but it was literally in the corner.

That DJ was who else but Rusty Egan.

I started to find odd records that I started to play.

Elli and Jacno, Mathematiques Modernes,

which was sophisticated music.

And the music he played was as eclectic as the fashion.

Shirley Bassey, Vince Clarke and then you had Ultravox...

# Oh, Vienna! #

You know?

Soft Cell...

# Good time! #

And people came up, "What is that? What is that?

"Where can I get that record?"

Thanks to Steve and Rusty, the Blitz became the centre of a new scene,

where fashion and music danced together hand in hand.

And this marriage was given the ultimate blessing.

In 1980, the greatest icon of British music and fashion

paid the Blitz a special visit.

# There's a brand-new dance but I don't know its name... #

'And I sort of went, "Oh, fuck."'

I just went into sort of a meltdown.

# That people from bad homes do again and again... #

For the Blitz gang, Bowie was a deity and his visit came just as

he was in the midst of yet another style regeneration.

He looked Steve in the eye and said...

"I just love what you've created. It's amazing."

He said, "Look at these amazing people, the music you're playing."

And he said, "Would you be interested in being in my video?"

# Turn to the left - fashion! #

Even Steve wasn't cool enough to turn down the Thin White Duke.

The video Bowie wanted Steve to be in was a ground-breaking experiment

in style and image.

MUSIC: "Ashes To Ashes" by David Bowie

# Do you remember a guy that's been... #

He said, "You've obviously got something very special about you,

"would you choose the extras and dress all the extras?"

As one of Bowie's fantastical support cast in Ashes To Ashes,

Steve found himself in the kind of danger

he could never have predicted.

Little did I know the bloody bulldozer was going to be

pushing us on a beach with me in a long clergyman's cloak,

being caught in a fucking bulldozer and beehive hat.

# Ashes to ashes, funk to funky

# We know Major Tom's a junkie... #

Nevertheless, Steve was served up the ultimate dinner party anecdote

and the Blitz became a rally point for a new style movement -

The New Romantics.

They were wilful narcissists who took the shock of punk

and gave it frilly flamboyance.

MUSIC: "Mind Of A Toy" by Visage

Fiona Deely was an early adopter.

SHE LAUGHS

I always knew I looked really good when my mum used to say,

"Oh, my God, what do you look like?

"Fred, look what she's wearing!"

And I'd think, "Yes!"

Fiona was a student at fashion college in London

and she went to extraordinary lengths to stand out from the crowd.

We had huge toolboxes full of make-up,

so we'd spend a couple of hours plastering on the make-up.

We all had different looks, we all had to look individual.

I started wearing a leather queen hat which I'd wear with diamante earrings

and I started making these leather dresses,

which would either be low-cut or backless.

And there's a photograph of me here

and I really loved that look, and I really loved that hat.

Among Fiona and her friends, it was always fashion first, fun second.

If you look at all of the photographs of all of us from then,

none of us are ever laughing or smiling, are we?

We all look very, very serious.

It was a very serious business, dressing up.

But in their fierce and competitive individuality,

Fiona and her group unwittingly mirrored

the big changes sweeping British society.

-MARGARET THATCHER:

-You do not follow the crowd

because you're afraid of being different.

You decide what to do yourself.

If necessary, you lead the crowd.

But you never just follow.

On a mission to make Britain fit for the modern world,

Mrs Thatcher dreamed of creating a nation of competitive

and self-interested individuals.

And though they didn't realise it,

the New Romantics were very much in line

with this new political zeitgeist.

It was just a competition.

Once the thing that you had worn was worn by other people,

then it was like, "Mm-mm, not going to wear that again."

We would get very competitive about which magazines

our photographs had been in, I do remember that.

I think the really cool one was always Italian Vogue.

If you thought somebody had copied your shade of lipstick or your look

or any thing like that,

that was a heinous crime.

But the biggest crime of all

was trying and getting the whole thing very wrong.

Because then you could face the judgment of Steve.

I was the biggest door whore London ever had!

I would carry a mirror for the idiots that sort of

thought that they were dressed up by wearing flippers and a wet suit

and painting their face white and black and I'd say,

"You look idiotic, you don't look creative at all."

And I'd hold a mirror up and say, "The Thames is that way."

In the early '80s, New Romantic would infect mainstream pop,

where it mutated with sometimes alarming results.

# Cos you're too shy, shy

# Hush, hush, eye to eye

# Too shy, shy

# Hush, hush, eye to eye... #

Who can forget Kajagoogoo fronted by the skunk-topped Limahl?

# If I had a photograph of you... #

Or the tonsorial excess of A Flock Of Seagulls?

'You know, there were people that really got it wrong.

'You know, the guy from A Flock Of Seagulls.

'The music was great,'

that was a great song, but I couldn't play it

because of his bloody haircut.

It was the most stupid haircut in the world.

# Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon... #

For all the great tunes,

many feared '80s British pop was falling victim to fashion.

But then came the sound of a counter revolution.

MUSIC: "Enola Gay" by OMD

# Enola Gay

# You should've stayed at home yesterday... #

Cringeworthy.

Andy with his sweater...

Sleeveless tank top sweater.

# These games you play

# They're going to end in more than tears one day

# Oh-oh, Enola Gay... #

Enola Gay was a huge hit for the most pretentiously-named band

in history...

..Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark.

# Enola Gay, is mother proud of little boy today?

ANDY: 'Oh, what an earnest young man he was.

'Trying to change the world with his music.'

# It shouldn't have to end this way... #

It sold five million copies.

But beneath the uplifting melody was a darker meaning.

# Enola Gay... #

Everyone's dancing to this pop song without having a clue

that to some extent it was a celebration of the atomic bomb.

Enola Gay was the name of the aeroplane that dropped

the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

You know, it was like we're all dancing to death

in a very bizarre way.

To OMD, this song was a deeply subversive work of art.

And they were determined that nothing would detract

from this musical masterpiece.

We were pretentious 19-year-olds

and we considered ourselves to be artists, not pop stars.

There was a rush of wanting to look like pop stars

with lots of hair and big shoulders.

And, of course, this was just anathema to us, we were horrified.

And then when people started saying,

"Oh, yes, you're a New Romantic band."

We were like, "No, we're not,

"don't you dare call us a New Romantic band,

"we are serious and Northern and intellectual

"and we don't wear frilly shirts."

We wanted the music to stand on its own,

so we wanted to be completely plain

and we thought what is a completely plain ordinary look?

And we thought, "Bank clerks, that's what we should be, bank clerks."

See what we can do with a man and C&A.

A stalwart of the British high street,

C&A was the store of choice for the provincial bank clerk.

The nearest clothes shop was C&A

and we would just buy off the shelf,

you know, plain, boring clothes.

So, nerd, we went nerd,

and so we just used to go around all the shops in Liverpool

looking to find the nerdiest, most bank-clerky things we could find.

The classic OMD look was a shock of the dull.

Monochrome shirt...

..a sensible side parting...

..and a nice tie.

That's exactly what we wanted to look like,

we wanted to have no definitive style.

But OMD were not content to look like total bankers.

For the release of their 1981 single Maid Of Orleans, the band decided

to explore a new range of ordinary.

Christmas jumpers!

# ..had a heart... #

I just happen to have the very jumper, but it's so dull.

It's spectacularly nondescript. And that was what we were trying to say.

It's still got my dinner on from the photo shoot.

For OMD, these were the perfect clothes in which to present

a new kind of music for the coming digital age.

MUSIC: "Genetic Engineering" by OMD

OMD had emerged at the dawn of the consumer electronics boom.

# Changing, designing, adapting our mentalities... #

Theirs was a sound of bold simplicity.

It matched the binary code at the heart of the digital revolution.

It didn't matter if you had any technical ability

and Andy and I certainly didn't have any technical ability,

so it was just... It was very much two-fingered kind of...

Two-fingered playing and two fingers up at the establishment.

# The future in our hands

# When all God's children... #

I think we were considered to be outsiders and intellectuals,

and in some respects,

we were the embodiment on the Top Of The Pops stage

of the tortured, lonely, intellectual,

spotty-boy artist in his bedroom,

so I think those are the people who gravitated towards us.

# ..will ever more be saved. #

There was a certain amount of irony in the fact that actually

by trying to not look like pop stars

and not create or follow any particular fashion,

we created one that impressionable teenage boys followed.

One of those boys, whose bedroom became a shrine to OMD,

was Neil Taylor.

OMD continually stood out.

They didn't fit into the mould

and I really related to this, you know.

In the early '80s, Neil worked on the very frontiers of computer technology.

At that point of my time, the jobs I was doing, a very early adopter

of semi-computerised equipment

and this a very geeky job that I was doing

and I was very proud of doing.

And I quite enjoyed the geeky look.

I'm still a bit of a geek, even nowadays, so it's carried on.

Very dodgy moustache,

which I somewhat regret now.

For Neil, OMD were the first band ever to make geek chic.

Erm...

We have some cringeworthy video from my youth.

Unwatched for over a decade,

these pictures record the night of Neil's 21st birthday party.

As far as I can recollect,

of my generation, there was only actually myself who's got a shirt

and the skinny tie.

I'm making a fashion statement,

going, "Look, I'm not a New Romantic.

"I'm cooler. I like Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark."

Though Neil was alone in his look,

his clean-cut image had some unexpected consequences.

You were dating girls and

you just wanted to be clean-looking,

and if you went in with a sort of tie on and a buttoned-up shirt,

you got a little bit of respect from the actual parents as well,

which was quite good with some of the young ladies

that were about at the time.

It did the job, let's put in that way.

For Neil, OMD had produced a sophisticated sound

and style of the future.

But the real floor-filler at Neil's disco came from a band

who dismissed the pretentions of OMD

and embodied the go-getting excess of '80s Britain.

It's all very much a time warp.

It's the girls with all their frilly stuff dancing to Duran Duran.

MUSIC: "Rio" by Duran Duran

# Moving on the floor now, babe, you're a bird of paradise... #

Released in November 1983,

Duran Duran's Rio gave us a view of what '80s success would look like.

Much like a textbook example of what one could do

with video in the 1980s.

# You know you're something special... #

Rio was five minutes and three seconds of '80s glamour on steroids.

It's everything that the period was about.

I used to think, "One day, I'm going to go there for a holiday."

It was absolutely amazing views.

But I still haven't been there to this day.

# And when she shines she really shows you... #

Glamour on a boat, it's just completely mad.

As you can imagine, salt water is not particularly good for silk.

Recently I went out on a day sailing and the instructor kind of said,

"If any of you want your Rio moment at the front of the boat, feel free,"

so even today, over 30 years later,

people are still referencing that video.

# I've seen you on TV... #

With their slick, pastel-coloured suits,

Duran Duran were yuppies before yuppies had really arrived.

# It means so much to me... #

You've got to believe that the way you're making things look

is better than everybody else.

With that sort of cockiness, you get away with things.

The designer who helped Duran Duran get away with it on the Rio video

was Antony Price.

One of the country's most sought-after designers.

Today, Antony is still is in the glamour game,

making clothes for a high-end beauty parlour.

I was asked to do the uniforms for these girls to wear.

They have to look quite stylish and couture and simple,

but they have to be washed as well.

But it's pretty classic.

It's a work outfit, it's better than an overall anyway, that's for sure.

Mrs Overall!

When they came along, they said,

"we want you to do our clothes for this Rio shoot."

We decided to do these in certain colours for them

and as I had experience of the Caribbean, we thought, "Well..."

and off we went.

The Rio video really was just a series of chaotic accidents.

Film crew arrives,

"Well, what are we going to do?"

You know, we've got a boat, we've got a beach here,

we've got a girl. It just sort of got made up as we went along.

The one thing we did have, that we knew we wanted to wear in the video,

was the Antony Price suits.

So here, courtesy of Antony Price, we have a very fine silk jacket.

My guess is that it's probably from 1982 by looking at the fabric

and the choice of lining.

Very wide shoulder pads.

Antony was the king of shoulders.

He can take them all the way in, bring them all the way out,

but at this period, as you can see, they were quite wide.

And I don't know, I suppose

somehow he had this instinct for old-school glamour.

MUSIC: "Virginia Plain" by Roxy Music

# Take me on a rollercoaster... #

Antony had made his name in the '70s

creating a look for style pioneers Roxy Music.

We'd seen a lot of the things he'd made for Roxy Music, for sure.

They had a look that no-one else had ever had before.

So the first thing I actually really wanted to do was

get something from Antony Price.

Duran Duran were definitely more interested

in the garment side of it.

They saw it as majorly important

because it had been that important to them

and that's why they'd gone into the music business, to do that,

so to come and have wonderful clothes made

was the first thing they wanted to do.

MUSIC: "Hungry Like The Wolf" by Duran Duran

# Blood drumming on your skin, it's so tight... #

Duran Duran were one of the first bands to grasp

the importance of style and image in the age of the video.

While bands like The Beatles and The Small Faces had made movies

as a way to showcase their music, the video was something else.

# I'm lost and I'm found... #

Nothing changed fashion and music as much as the video.

# Straddle the line, it's discord and rhyme... #

And no band took to the video like Duran Duran.

# Mouth is alive, all running inside

# And I'm hungry like the wolf. #

On heavy rotation on MTV and Top Of The Pops,

their high-budget videos seemed to showcase all the wonders

that aspirational 80's values might one day bring.

Exotic adventures in far-flung places,

sun and sex,

material wealth.

And all this had a profound effect on impressionable young minds.

We thought, "Duran are cool, they're like number one."

We worshipped the ground they walked on, didn't we?

-They were just like...

-Yeah.

-We lived, ate and breathed Duran.

MUSIC: "Girls On Film" by Duran Duran

Julie Bird and Lisa Carroll were school friends in the '80s

and their hearts had been captured

by the sight and sound of Duran Duran.

When they released Girls On Film,

I saw Duran and their image, the clothes they were wearing,

it just really appealed to me,

so that was it, really, I was hooked.

# Heads turning as the lights flashing out are so bright... #

Just like their heroes, the girls were obsessed with image.

# Walk right out to the four-line track, there's a camera rolling... #

If we were going to see Duran Duran,

we always had to dress up to see them. It was an event.

If we were going to see Simon to stand outside his house

or if we were going to Heathrow Airport or whatever,

we had to dress up.

MUSIC: "Is There Something I Should Know?" by Duran Duran

And every time a new look came out, it was instantly copied.

# Tried to find my mountain hideaway... #

When they brought out the Is There Something I Should Know video,

they wore blue shirts, white tie and black trousers,

and I can recall thinking,

"Well, that's the new look, I need to dress like that."

This picture is me recreating that look, and to get that look,

it was like, "Hey, my Girl Guide blouse is the right colour."

So ripped off all my badges and put it on

and even had the little shoulder epaulettes on it and it was perfect.

And I felt like, "Wow, this is the part."

# Before I had to say... #

MUSIC: "Ordinary World" by Duran Duran

Dressing up as the boys was an attempt to have

a little of the celluloid glamour for themselves.

They showed us a world that we'd never seen before,

through the videos.

The Rio video just seemed, you know, outrageously glamorous.

# Thought I heard you talking softly... #

You know, you'd want to have a piece of that life.

I can recall going on holiday on the Norfolk Broads, boating,

and my sister and I, we would walk along the boat,

thinking, you know, "Wow, this is cool, we're like Duran Duran."

For us, that was like having a piece of that exotic life in the UK.

# Gone away

# But I won't cry for yesterday

# There's an ordinary world... #

Like gold at the end of the rainbow,

many found the glamour of Duran Duran to be out of reach.

But for others, it gave the band their lasting allure.

# To the ordinary world

# I will learn to survive. #

The '80s was a decade when music and fashion seemed to mirror the changes

that we all felt.

The collective spirit of the working man was under attack.

And the ethos of individualism was all.

This was the dawn of the computer age,

when making money became easier than ever before.

But at the end of the decade

there came a man who was a prophet of our own times.

# Back to life

# Back to reality

# Back to life

# Back to reality

# Back to the here and now, yeah

# Show me how

# Decide what you want from me

# Tell me maybe I could be there for you... #

Classic.

# However do you want me, however do you need me... #

Yeah, this is just a beautiful period of time.

I remember looking at this and thinking,

"Who are all these people, man?"

I didn't realise Jazzie knew people who could play the violin.

# However do you need me... #

This funky group, with vivid head wraps and African medallions,

were a collective known as Soul II Soul.

They got the summer of '89 started

with their seductive number one Back To Life.

I remember this so vividly, it was just like, "Wow!"

Kind of like, this is... It was kind of like, this is UK,

this is dance, this is hip-hop, and this is us.

# Until you're ready... #

This is a sophisticated package that they've put together here.

That's how smart he is and how smart he was at that time.

He made it totally work. The dancers, I mean, it's amazing.

Ah, there's some great styling in this video, for real.

It was fresh, it was new, vibrant.

We were the first voyagers out there doing this sort of thing.

Jazzie B was the mind behind Soul II Soul.

And the clothes he wore said everything about who he was

and wanted to be.

Let me show you some pieces.

Jazzie's wardrobe is a treasure trove of items from the '80s -

a strange mix of the casual and the formal.

Why is it all black?

HE LAUGHS

And it's a style epitomised in one jacket.

So this is the style that we were wearing during the '80s

and even into the '90s, actually.

What was so appealing about this stuff was the fact that

it had this gentrified look, with a bit of anarchy

and it sort of really symbolised us, what we were aspiring to.

These adaptations of the classic business suit were fitting.

Because Jazzie wasn't so much a pop star, more an entrepreneur.

As aspirational and astute as they come.

Here we were in the '80s, you know?

Things were changing, we were carving our way.

The last explosion that probably happened prior to that was punk

and that really changed the game.

I mean, the whole attitude and, you know, the idea of the punk thing,

it enabled us, it slightly empowered us.

MUSIC: "Just Keep Rockin'" by Double Trouble and Rebel MC

Jazzie made his name as a DJ running a sound system in North London

called Soul II Soul.

With custom-made super-strength speakers,

and playing a blend of reggae, hip-hop, house and funk,

Soul II Soul parties soon gained a reputation on the underground scene.

And their parties were legendary.

It was a beautiful time.

Obviously certain substances may have had an affect, shall we say,

on proceedings. But, er, generally, it was just a wonderful time

and there was a kaleidoscope of music, and a kaleidoscope of people.

Jazzie's diverse range of music

appealed to a diverse range of people, and Soul II Soul parties

soon became a byword for multicultural London.

Aware he was creating a powerful scene,

Jazzie wanted everyone to know just who was at the heart of it.

# Dance, let's go crazy... #

Back in the early days as a sound system, we had to find a way

for the public to identify who was running the dance.

Jazzie's idea was to come up a T-shirt for his crew to wear.

And it was emblazoned with a logo that would become legendary.

This originally was how you identified us.

The imagery was designed by Derek Yates.

This is essentially what I drew,

with the bad typography and all that stuff...

HE LAUGHS

Yeah, so the little goatee beard,

short dreadlocks, the sort of round glasses.

Obviously Soul II Soul is plugging music into his ears.

And that was the start, as it were, of the journey of the Funki Dreds.

I was just a kid drawing a picture and just thinking, "That looks cool."

REGGAE MUSIC

When this T-shirt came out, I was just completely blown away

by the reaction to it. We were going to the Carnival

and seeing loads of people wearing the T-shirts and thinking,

"Wow," it's like, "That's my drawing, that's my rubbish drawing!"

With an instinctive understanding of supply and demand,

Jazzie seized on the popularity of his T-shirts

and decided to create an entire fashion label.

We bought our own little place to make the T-shirts up and everything,

and started to buy the T-shirts,

and so we moved on from the ideas of this,

we had a market stall in Camden,

which moved onto shops,

and in those shops, like we used to do in the dances,

we'd sell our merchandise.

We were selling the music we were playing,

in some cases, some bootlegs of what we were playing,

and all the other delights, as it were.

The Soul II Soul Basement Store in North London was packed with records

and an extensive range of Jazzie's casual streetwear.

MUSIC: "People" by Soul II Soul

# Walking down the street watching people go by... #

The shop sign said it all.

"An Amalgamation of Music and Fashion".

So this is when they had two shops, one in Camden

and one in Tottenham Court Road.

# Feel the need... #

The classic Soul To Soul look was baggy tracksuits, big trainers,

and, of course, the oversized T-shirts,

all bearing the Funki Dred logo.

Jazzie's den of street music and street fashion became a destination

for those who couldn't get enough of their casual clothing.

Favourites - the ones that are on my feet,

the Jordan III, very well executed sort of version of this shoe.

One of my favourite shoes of all time.

In the late '80s, Kish Kash was one of those who made a regular

pilgrimage to Jazzie's shops.

These are rare ones.

I'm from Aylesbury, which is 40 miles out of London,

so I was coming up on the train,

erm, and, you know, seeing all the graffiti along the lines,

you know, which was fantastic,

it was just so vivid, it looked so beautiful.

Every time you came in into London on the train line, it was wicked.

For Kish Kash, Jazzie's shops represented the very cutting edge

of British music and fashion.

I think the Soul II Soul shop was a place to kind of be seen.

Kind of ahead of its time, actually, because it was

a record store and it was a clothing store and it was their own brands

as well as other brands in there, so it was kind of revolutionary.

MUSIC: "Jazzie's Groove" by Soul II Soul

A sound system, club promotion, chart-topping records

and now a thriving fashion label -

Soul II Soul became a multi-faceted brand

with an instantly recognisable logo.

And with his flair for business,

Jazzie B became the most unlikely poster boy for the Iron Lady.

-MARGARET THATCHER:

-In future, employment will come from

new small business, expansion of smaller business,

and all of these things which we look to

to create the jobs of the future.

The relationship between Jazzie and Maggie Thatcher is brilliant,

you know, and he still, much to my horror,

still sort of talks about her as an important influence.

We were just technically working-class kids

looking for an opportunity, and as outrageous as this may seem,

when Margaret Thatcher came into power, I was called a Thatcherite.

And the entrepreneur in Jazzie is still alive

and always looking for new markets.

Babygrows for the young and for the old.

Soul II Soul,

Thinking about my grandchildren, possibly.

That's an interesting thought.

In Soul II Soul, Jazzie had created something that was extraordinary

in the story of British music and fashion.

Because Soul II Soul was neither music nor fashion,

but a seamless fusion of both.

Fast forward through the years to Berlin 2014.

Beyond our own shores is a celebration of everything

that's great about British music and fashion.

On show are some priceless artefacts.

It's a very delicate handling with this kind of object.

They're iconic pieces of our pop history.

They require a very clean space, a very quiet space.

They're the clothes that belong to David Bowie.

Is he a boy? Is he a girl? Is he from Earth or from outer space?

MUSIC: "Sound and Vision" by David Bowie

David Bowie's career has spanned the decades.

And in him, the great pillars of our pop culture - music and fashion -

have come together as high art.

And as his exhibition tours the world, it's a showcase of

some uniquely British talents.

Eccentricity...

..the restless search for reinvention,

and limitless creativity to knock out a cracking pop tune,

and find a style that matches.

The fashion and the music together is what is crucial,

sound and vision at the same time.

# Waiting for the gift of sound and vision... #

But these talents are not Bowie's alone.

They define the story of British music and fashion.

MUSIC: "Itchycoo Park" by The Small Faces

From the pop pioneers of the '60s...

# To rest my eyes in shades of green... #

..the fantastical creations of the '70s...

# I got high

# What did you feel there? #

..to the celluloid heroes of the video age.

But this isn't just a story of megastars and maverick designers.

It's a story that touches us all.

# It's all too beautiful

# It's all too beautiful... #

Through sound and style, we expressed ourselves like never before.

They helped us rebel...

Certainly it shocked the grandparents!

..explore other worlds...

Excuse me while I kiss the sky!

..spice up our lives...

We'd go to charity shops

and we managed to pick up something with a bit of glitter on it.

..and rip up the rule book.

It says "Absolute filth". And I wore that quite a bit.

But most of all, our music and fashion has given us moments

in our lives when the world was made a little more colourful

and a little more exciting than it had been before.

If you got wolf whistles from the building site, you know,

you knew you looked good.

Cut!

-# It's all too beautiful

-Beautiful

-# It's all too beautiful

-Beautiful

# It's all too beautiful

# It's all too beautiful. #