LETTER FROM BRITAIN
1982 was the year “The Message” topped all those year’s-end polls in the U.K.—but, in the second month of ’83, one begins to wonder just who got that message. Henry Ford himself might enjoy a perambulation along the Kings Road on a Saturday; you can find anything there in any color you want, as long as you want black.
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
DEPARTMENTS
WHO GOT THE MESSAGE?
by
Cynthia Rose
1982 was the year “The Message” topped all those year’s-end polls in the U.K.—but, in the second month of ’83, one begins to wonder just who got that message. Henry Ford himself might enjoy a perambulation along the Kings Road on a Saturday; you can find anything there in any color you want, as long as you want black.
Charcoal lined and shadowed eyes and eyebrows peek out from under artificially blackened plaits (or locks of expensive synthetic hair tied into one’s own with ribbon) and wide-brimmed black hats, sometimes lampshaded with dark shawls. The boys wear baggy black trousers or dark drainpipes tucked into Richard Hell bike boots; the girls pile layers of dark skirts on top of one another, over tights and sharp black pointed boots. And instead of pulling their socks up, as the Prime Minister continually advises, everyone shoves them down ’round the ankles. It’s a fad the press attribute to the huge popularity of Fame (the TV series has been brought over from America), and it’s even kept one Nottingham knittery in business churning out legwarmers.