Authenticity Is Overrated. Ask The New Romantics.
British 80s club culture wants you to embrace change and move forward.
Hi Gatekeepers. I’m increasingly tired of the conversation around building taste. I love developing taste as a personal commodity but the frantic expectation to do so is starting to make me dig my heels in a bit.
Are we really in an arms race against AI for good taste?
While considering the above question, I’ve been researching some young people who didn’t put so much pressure on being authentic and just lived their damn lives. Today, we’ll be discussing the late 70s and early 80s aesthetic movement, the New Romantics, with a pretty packed out syllabus.
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The moment The Clash signed with CBS Records, fans in 1977 could read the writing on the wall — punk was dying. After a spectacular breakup of The Sex Pistols in ‘78, the three chord magic spell seemed to wear off and the emergence of a new underground movement (a term Steve Strange might deny) began.
Enter the New Romantics. Or if you prefer a more biblically accurate term, the Blitz Kids.
I can’t say for certain if they had better politics than the punks of the 70s or even a more refined critique of Thatcher's Britain…but they certainly held onto their penchant for men’s eyeliner. One thing is for certain though, the moment a clear aesthetic instruction manual for rebellion reveals itself to the masses, the rebellion seems to be mostly gone. For the Blitz Kids, the most important thing was innovation of the creative self.
The New Romantics were born in a small cluster of London clubs in the late 70s and early 80s, most famously the Blitz, where a 21-year old doorman named Steve Strange (host and future frontman of Visage) turned away Mick Jagger for not adhering to the dress code of “weird and wonderful” in a true gatekeeper fashion. Difficult to imagine Jagger in an outfit so incongruous that he couldn’t get into a bar called Blitz, but then again I suppose glam rock wasn’t moving forward fast enough for the romantics. Rare subculture that they were, the New Romantics protected their image perhaps a bit more than the stage itself.
Like most iconic aesthetics, the movement itself was a direct response to the grey economic misery of the era. With a government that was openly hostile to the people most affected by social unrest and mass unemployment, New Romantics responded with something equally extreme but not nearly as violent as the punks: theatrical retreat. Fabulous alien glamour and pirate ships might not be on your current mood board but they were certainly on the pioneers of the 80s. Of course, it’s difficult to plan for escapism but the logic certainly seemed to be that if the world outside was going to be genuinely awful, the least you could do was dress for a different one entirely.
Key figures include:
Boy George, who seemed to dress like a Pierrot clown crossed with a Victorian florist.
Steve Strange, who made clubbing a performance art project
Siouxsie Sioux, an early adopter of the true definition and would have hated Tiktok aesthetic labels
Adam Ant, Regency-era highway robber by trade
The members of Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran, who made the aesthetic radio legible
David Bowie, who inspired a lot of these styles and came to the Blitz in 1980 to cast dancers for the "Ashes to Ashes" video
New Romantics Fashion
The clothes were doing a lot of heavy lifting, both because of the theatrics and also because it must have been genuinely physically heavy due to how much fabric was involved in some of these looks.
Shirts with enormous ruffled sleeves and my GOD the military jackets, which are trending again of course. Do they ever really go out of style though??
Knickerbockers (loose pants that gather, meant to be tucked) with pirate boots. I would wear this now, maybe just so I can say the word knickerbocker more often. It really rolls off the tongue.
An intense amount of lace, which we’ve never really recovered from.
The color palette had no ceiling and apparently no floor either: metallics, rich jewel tones, and the occasional beige.
Your New Romantics Shopping List
This is a genre of clothing that endlessly inspires me. I love anything flamboyant, androgynous, and still wearable.
Pirate Silhouettes
Balloon Pants
But really, the signature of New Romantics was the face. They really weaponized makeup at a scale that hadn’t been seen since glam rock, and they extended it to everyone. The women, the musicians, and the kids at the club on a Tuesday night who had a day job.
What sets this aesthetic apart from something like the punks of the previous decade, is that New Romantics were interested in escaping into the style of a sort of character they created and didn’t spout many claims of authenticity. Punks wanted you to believe they all had some sort of binding connection to all the safety pins and could sniff out a poser a mile away. The New Romantics, on the other hand, were engaging in play. They also understood a lot about context, meaning they didn’t get all made up in their costumes to go out for milk.
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Modern Comparisons and The New New Romantics
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