If Westwood remade clothes and Michael Clark did something similar with dance, Blame worked with jewellery and fashion imagery
In his 2022 book Judy Blame’s Obituary, writer Derek McCormack has an essay about the jewellery designer and his influence. It’s called “The Shit Necklace”, named in honour of one of Blame’s creations – a necklace made out of fake turds. But it also neatly represents what was arguably Blame’s genius – the radical and fearless ability to see almost anything as jewellery, even faeces. “I’ve always been a troublemaker,” Blame said, not long before his death in 2018. In his case, that trouble was about turning the common perception of everyday items upside down, about turning what is discarded into something that could be seen as art as part of a generation of disruptors, who changed aesthetics in the aftershock of punk. If Westwood remade clothes and Michael Clark did something similar with dance, Blame worked with jewellery and fashion imagery. In a world that can sometimes seem manicured, his challenge to look at everyday things in a different way remains radical and inspiring.
Blame died at the age of only 58. It’s a cliché to say he crammed a lot in to a short life, but it’s true. Born Chris Barnes in Leatherhead in 1960, he was exactly the right age, 17 in 1977, to embrace the punk scene when he moved to London as a teenager, where he spent his savings at Seditionaries on bondage trousers (and Vivienne Westwood showed him how to do the straps). With a new name given to him by fellow club kids, he started making jewellery, sometimes using what he found mudlarking in the Thames, always with a DIY spirit.
During the mid-1980s he set up a shop with fellow designers Christopher Nepenthe and John Moore, the enigmatically titled The House of Beauty and Culture, while also working as a stylist. Famously collaborating with Neneh Cherry on her iconic Raw Like Sushi album cover and with artists including Björk and Duran Duran, as well as style magazines The Face and i-D, the found objects appeared here too. “On a creative level, it was lawless, taking high fashion garments and mashing them up with Adidas Superstar trainers and jewellery that was just cheap tat,” said Cherry about her images which formed part of the famous tough-but-chic Buffalo look. If the aesthetic and methods remained throughout Blame’s career, the budgets shifted as he collaborated with designer brands including Moschino, Comme des Garçons, Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs.
In his essay, McCormack talks about how Blame inspired him, and how he fit into his surroundings but also shaped them. “Punk created Judy Blame. He created punk too. He took its tropes and twisted them, then twisted them some more.” In an interview in 2018, Blame explained how he made an impact through juxtaposition. “If you mix two things that aren’t supposed to be together, and someone is looking at it, they have to look at it twice. So I like being a bit cheeky and mixing two opposites together,” he said. As with the shit necklace, he is skilled at creating things that stop us in our tracks. “We live in the age of surface, and then [you] click on to the next thing,” he said “whereas I like people to get caught up with the image.”
Five years on from his death, and Blame’s influence is still felt. Kim Jones designed a Dior collection in his memory in 2020 (they first met in a club when Jones was 16), and the Buffalo look that he had a hand in creating – bomber jacket, big earrings, tiny backpack – continues to ripple across the wardrobes of teenage girls. As a crucial cog in a generation of fashion talent in 1980s London, he widened fashion’s gaze from the catwalk to the street and the club.
He would no doubt be pleased that his legacy is still being felt by creatives around now. Working with Trust Judy Blame, the organisation set up in 2019 to protect his legacy, we pay him homage with our shoot, using original Blame pieces. Stylist Jasmine Hassett says it was inspired by a shift in fashion she had observed this past year. “It reminded me of Judy, the DIY original really”.
Indeed, in the context of the environmental emergency, Blame’s use of found objects and turning trash into treasure was ahead of its time, and Hassett says this struck her when working on the shoot. “[His work] is even more poignant now in connection to the climate crisis,” she says “which shows what a visionary he was, always forward thinking.”
Blame explained his disillusionment with the churn of clothes at the end of his life. “They’re so disposable now,” he said in a 2018 interview. “You know, I get asked for reviews for shows and I just have to say: ‘Landfill.’ There’s a lot of denial going on, on many different levels: on climate change, on racism. It’s a big time for the world [just] now. You’re either gonna go down the lav because you buggered it up, or you can do something about it.”
He’d be heartened to see the way his message has got through and how others are finding a new way to make something beautiful out of rubbish. For Hassett, Blame’s influence goes way beyond the actual techniques he used to make jewellery, and this is something that could be embedded in how we make fashion going forward. “I think it’s a relevant message to the youth of today to see value in the small things,” she says. “It’s about being resourceful and rebelling against consumerism. Not only are his pieces incredibly beautiful, the message is so creatively inspiring.”
Make-up artist: Anthony Preel. Hair: Joseph Pujalte. Casting director: Lisa Dymph. Models: Enya Davis at Next, Fenne Talens at Platform Agency, Peris Adolwi at IMG. Fashion assistants: Paget Millard and Aurelie Mason-Perez. Thanks to the Judy Blame Trust and Michael Nash Associates