In honour of the new series of Ashes to Ashes starting tonight (I’m currently pausing for a moment to resist the urge to bounce around….oh what the hell, bounce bounce bounce!) here are some random early Eighties images….if you like that kind of thing!
Mmmmm…..gratuitous soggy Durans shot…..
Did anyone see the BBC1 Queens of Pop programme the other night? Neither did I. Now I know I don’t watch a lot of telly these days but, when I do, I see every other show being trailed to death. Yet I had no idea this had been on. Luckily I was able to use iPlayer, so hopefully any other UK readers who might have missed out can get to see it.
It’s not exactly earth-shatteringly interesting, more a fluffy bit of eye candy. But oh what eye candy! It was almost quite John Bates-tastic, what with Dusty Springfield in her empire line beaded hobble skirt gowns, and Sandie Shaw wearing what I’m certain is a Bates here.
They also briefly touched on the Sandie Shaw Boutique, even showing some clips of the opening and the designs. My eyes nearly popped out of my head. There’s hardly any information around about this little venture, so to suddenly have the footage was fabulous. I have one, very groovy, Sandie Shaw dress which I recently had cleaned’n’pressed and shall photograph’n’blog about very soon.
So team Dusty and Sandie, with Marianne, Suzi, Siouxsie and Kate….and you’ve pretty much got a perfect line-up of awesome music and even more awesome (what? I’m a fashion girl…not a musician….) clothes and make-up.
Today, George Harrison would have been 66. So here are some photos of the (IMHO) most beautiful and talented Beatle in honour of his birthday.
I have decided that Yasmin Le Bon is Beatle-wife-gold-standard. Of course it helps that she’s impossibly beautiful and wealthy, but she seems really sweet in the interviews I’ve seen. Strong but feminine, and goofy enough that you don’t hate her for being impossibly beautiful and the wife of a Duran. She still looks incredible, and I love the colour of her dress here at the British Fashion Awards.
(She’s also wearing FAUX fur, FAUX fur – yes I’m glaring at a photo of Mrs John Taylor, Gela Nash, in a huge REAL fur jacket at the launch of the latest Juicy Tat Couture launch. Naughty Duran wife, naughty!!)
I’m sure it’s a modern take on a Thirties-style evening gown, but this is proper glamour. Some of the other people on the red carpet that night would do well to take heed. Black tights and smock mini dresses are adorable, but they’re not red carpet. They’ll also be dated within a year. In fact, I thought they already were? Anyway, this is how you work it…..
Found just now on my stats:
duran duran video where they have all the make up on
Errrr……this IS Duran Duran we’re talking about!
I think that covers any video Nick Rhodes might be in and pretty much any video of all of them from the first album.
The most make-up-tastic ones for all the boys are probably Careless Memories and Planet Earth though, in case you’re still looking.
Made me smile anyways…
….In the “those sadly no longer with us category”.
Clark Gable. Not so much for Gone With the Wind services, but for It Happened One Night which is one of my favourite films of all time. The sexual chemistry between Gable and Claudette Colbert is crackling, and it renders him totally irresistable. I was umming and aahhing between Gable and Gregory Peck for the ‘old school’ filmstar Vintage Bloke, but decided Peck (though gorgeous and wonderful in Roman Holiday particularly) was far too clean and smooth looking for my tastes.
Gareth Hunt in The New Avengers. I’ve had a soft spot for poor Gareth Hunt (poor because the man became rhyming slang for something unrepeatable) for years. But seeing him in his youth more recently in The New Avengers. Rowrrrrrrrrr!! He’s a proper blokey bloke, but very sweet with Purdey (the luminous Jo-Lum) and well, it’s inevitable I’d like him isn’t it? He’s so Seventies it hurts!
Marc Bolan. Le sigh. Pretty pretty pretty!! He wore ladies clothes with great aplomb and had the most phenomenal hair. He’s just indescribable, so I’m not going to try…
George Harrison. Seems I chose the right Beatle for my favourite (John Lennon is the only one who has never been my favourite, I think he’s a bit too prickly for me to love him unconditionally). And now he’s sadly left this world, he can’t ruin it all and taint our view of him like Paul and Ringo regularly do. His songs are also my favourite of all Beatles songs, and I think his solo career has been my favourite too. Soulful eyes, beautiful hair and that mystical, serious, quiet persona. If I can still love him after reading Pattie’s autobiography, which is incredible but so sad it can be very hard to read at times, then it must be true love.
Oliver Reed. If I had known Olly in his youth, or at any point quite frankly, I know I couldn’t have put up with him. I’d have probably thumped him one on a regular basis, if he didn’t thump me first, and knowing that he liked his women to have ‘traditional’ values he probably couldn’t have put up with me either. But the man was a walking chunk of sex. If you’ve never quite ‘got’ the Oliver Reed thing, just watch The Assassination Bureau with Diana Rigg. Trust me. I know I still haven’t ever recovered.
I may have to break my Topshop embargo for this Duran Duran t-shirt, it’s exactly the one I described to a friend the other week when I said I wanted a Duran t-shirt and probably wouldn’t be able to find what was in my head. I’m fairly certain they must have a tap on my flat after the whole Kate Moss thing, and this was their ruse to get me back….
Damn you Topshop!!! Damn you to hell for making me want your stuff again.
Then, sucked into the site, I also found this. How freaking adorable is this cardigan???
I need to have a lie down and try to resist the temptation…..
Join me (and Duran Duran) in celebrating (with a banana) the fact that Miss Peelpants has finally rid herself of the most vile HP computer on Planet Earth and is now enjoying excessive speediness on her lush new (well, nearly new) Philips one.
So hopefully I can start to be as productive as I want to be, now that it doesn’t take two hours for programs to load and my computer doesn’t randomly switch itself off!!
Nothing can stand in my way now!! Well…..nothing except Duran Duran and chocolate biscuit-type distractions but anyway…..
Is it wrong to worship Dhani Harrison as some kind of reincarnation of his beautiful father? I’ve always resisted before now, because it seemed very, very wrong.
Well, if it
was wrong before I don’t suppose it can be wrong now he’s gone and let himself be photographed AS his beautiful father. Although the supermodel he’s posing with can’t hold a matchstick, let alone a candle, to the magnificent Pattie Boyd. She looks like a prize prat for even trying. But Dhani…..*sigh*….just look at him, let the beauty wash over you and pray that they get around to cloning all the Beatles for every generation.
One time Hot Gossip dancer, member of Steve Strange’s Visage, long term girlfriend of Billy Idol and the gyrating topless blonde in The Chauffeur video, Perri Lister is an absolute icon of all that was fabulous about the early Eighties.
With those huge, feline eyes always made-up beautifully to the hilt and her angular but still feminine figure…oh, and that insanely frothy, madly coloured hair, she is the very essence of the New Romantic ethos.
No mere arm candy was she though. As well as being a talented dancer, she co-wrote many of Billy’s biggest hits and provided vocals for him, for Visage and for her own short-lived group, Boomerang.
She’s also still completely beautiful and seemingly hasn’t aged a bit since her Eighties heyday. Perri, we salute you…and request personal make-up lessons immediately!
The Chauffeur. Lack of Durans are slightly made-up-for by fabulously evocative and stylish video (and Perri of course!)
On Italian TV with Visage performing Fade To Grey
Liz Eggleston 
