Stephen Linard, the Blitz Kid fashion designer who made clothes for David Bowie, Boy George and Spandau Ballet, died on March 10, aged 64, after enduring painful cancer during recent months. David Johnson remembers the life and career of the man he knew:
The press called them the New Romantics and the Blitz Kids, declaring the Eighties the Age of the Pose. Art-school tutor Rosetta Brooks compared their self-consciously styled poses to “street theatre ultimately extended into continuous performance as a post-punk embodiment of Gilbert and George in one person (the individualist).” Each poser, she believed, is a ready-made. Step forward fashion student Stephen Linard, who ticked all the above boxes – a flamboyant Canvey Island boy, born March 26 1959, who attended the Southend School of Art (1975-78) and yearned to make a statement in every street or room he graced.
