Beyond the M25

>> Next year, I’ll be embarking on a project that will take me properly beyond the M25, outside of London to go and find fashion scenes, local designers and creators that choose not to base themselves in the big smoke.  The rot has set in apparently.  Over the summer, a slew ofarticles proclaimed that a mass creative exodus from the capital was underway.  “London, it’s over, and it’s not me, it’s you,” some say.  It would take a lot for a born-and-bred Londoner to starting having that break-up conversation with the city but I am keen to broaden my horizons.  Even a Londoner like myself finds all the London-centricity a little bit tiresome.

On my research trail, I found this photograph taken by pop cultural writer and street style expert Ted Pohelmus.  It’s of Patti Bell (left) and Jane Kahn (right).  Together they were Kahn & Bell and they sold their designs from what Boy George called “a freaky clothes shop” on Hurst Street in Birmingham.  Opened in 1976, the pair of friends combined their pattern making skills and collective imagination to mix up the futuristic and the fantastical, creating the sort of eclectica that had punk bleed into New Romantic style.  Here is what Blueprint magazine had to say in 1988:

“Kahn and Bell had particular impact. Holding court at the Zanzibar (a now defunct nightclub in Birmingham), resplendent in leopardskin and padded shoulders, dripping diamonte with leather devils’ tails hanging down between their legs, they looked on good nights like Egyptian Queens, like Ancient Babylonians. On not so good nights, they resembled Brassaï’s Moma Bijou -‘fugitives from Baudelaire’s bad dreams’, and even then they looked magnificent.  For Kahn and Bell and those who followed their lead, identity wasn’t something you nailed yourself into in late adolescence. It was a trick of the light, and if you were to avoid burning yourself out (a real risk this, when you sold clothes all day and promoted them all night), then you simply let the flames lick over you and turned the ashes into kohl.”

Not sure anyone could paraphrase that sort of eulogic description.  Combing through clippings and archive photos on the always-useful The Blitz Kids, it’s easy to purely associate the don’t-give-a-fuck out there aesthetic with the best of the underground London club scene (Billy’s, Le Kilt, Taboo etc)  and indeed, eventually, Kahn left Birmingham to try and make it in London alone with her own line Kahnivorous.

However short lived the venture was, Kahn & Bell’s presence in Birmingham did manage to stir up commentary that still stands today in the media’s lopsided coverage of the capital city as seen in this New Sounds New Styles piece published in 1981:

“Lack of money is not the only irritant they’ve had to endure in their time together.  Apart from a loyal local following and the occasional refugees from London ( Hot Gossips for example), until 12 months ago Kahn & Bell were often one step ahead of the capital without recognition for it.  On the contrary when similarities to London designers were spotted in their collections it was assumed that Birmingham had copied London

In recent months however, following the establishment of a Kahn & Bell outlet in the Kings Road’s Great Gear Market, fashion editors in the national press have begun to sit up and take notice.  That’s London for you.  It is part of its rich cultural tradition to ignore life north of Watford unless it jumps up and bites it in the face.

Birmingham need the Kahns and Bells of this world to help beat the image of drab uniformity it persists in showing to the rest of thee country.  Jane and Patti are well aware of this, but they have to be realists too.  They need money.  Money to establish proper facilities in both London and Birmingham so they can meet big orders and don’t have to stand by and watch wholesalers simply copy their designs.  And money to put some of their more extravagant idea into practice. “

It’s a sentiment that is still ringing true for all risk-taking young creatives across all fields.  In 1981 in a West Midlands indie magazine called Splash, Bell was quoted to say: “What I like is the warmth of of West Midlands people.  I get on fine in London, but it must be very difficult for shy people to break into London circles.  It’s also less of a ‘rat-race’ here. “

As many today contemplate exiting the city’s ‘rat-race’ for a more affordable and sustainable way of life, it remains to be seen whether the nucleus of the British fashion industry can also spread out beyond the M25.  I look forward to my 2016 journey of discovering other Kahn’s and Bell’s around the UK.

Patti Bell at Kahn & Bell shop on Hurst Street, Birmingham

Photographs and scans from The Blitz Kids