The Decadent-New Romantic
The Decadent-New Romantic is the youth movement and lifestyle and wardrobe
The Decadent-New Romantic is a youth movement and lifestyle and wardrobe. New Romantic, Cult with No Name, Thermidoriens (so according to the French who read the watermark against the light), Blitz kids. These are just some of the names to indicate the Decadent-New Romantic that took hold in London between 1978 and ’79 and exploded the following year.
Many early punks, including Marco Pirroni, Chris Sullivan, members of the Bromley Contingent, Jordan and Debbie (models and assistants to McLaren and Westwood in the various incarnations of their shop), have a long experience as spontaneous stylists and, before that the outside world realizes that punk is over, give rise to a new whirlwind of surrealism and experimentation. The Bowie Nights are inaugurated, by Steve Strange and Rusty Egan.
Steve Jones becomes the Mad Hatter for everyone
Steve Jones becomes the Mad Hatter for everyone, with creations worthy of what Dalì did for Schiaparelli. Vivienne Westwood creates a pirate collection, for new Bow Wow Wow protégés. And the corsair of style at that point seems to be London’s jeunesse dorée. Nothing seems too much: 18th-century Macaronis ladies, pirates, futurism with references to the costumes that Thais Galitzy wore in Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s films, new glitterati (made up) and new zoot-suiters: in short, everything as long as stylized and without immediate references to the context external.
It is precisely at that moment that the Decadent-New Romantic and the fragmentation of the street style that still existed at the end of the 1900s took place. Contrary to most of the fads that preceded them, neo-romantic do not prescribe any regulated wardrobe. There is no kit; if not the certainty of living in an interregnum area where there are no other rules to respect than obedience to one’s ghosts.
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