Arty Appetite — Blitz: the club that changed the 80s at the Design Museum

It’s a cloudy weekday lunchtime when I make my way to the Design Museum for Blitz: the club that changed the 80s, but the thumping music and slow descent down a set of narrow stairs quickly transports each step forward into the early hours of the morning — and right back to the eighties. For only eighteen months, the WWII-themed wine bar, Blitz, underwent a weekly transformation. Between 1979-1980, each Tuesday the so-called Blitz Kids would descend in their evocative ensembles, launching a creative scene that continues to influence culture today. The club night served as an incubator for originality, hatching the likes of Spandau Ballet, Boy George, Sade and Ultravox alongside a host of designers, artists and writers. 

The influence of punk’s emphasis on DIY and the looming Thatcher years seep through the exhibition from the start. ‘Before Blitz’ charts the predecessors to the all-out, gregarious eighties club spirit pioneered by the Blitz Kids, citing David Bowie and mainland Europe’s cabaret movement among their inspirations. Scrapbook albums and film posters trace early examples of the club night’s spirit — from Rock Against Racism’s feature in Temporary Hoarding magazine to The Rocky Horror Show, inclusivity and freedom of expression are inseparable from the pioneering Blitz scene. This trademark warmth and freedom are clearest in artist Nicola Tyson’s Kodak shots from Bowie Nights at Billy’s Club in 1978. Billy’s was Blitz’s punkish father, set up by Rusty Egan and Steve Strange in a Soho basement, and where many of the club kids came from. The second-world-war wine bar would be their second home. Strange and Egan took over Tuesday nights with the promise of a packed house of creatives, there to see and be seen. 

What emerged was a space of free sexual expression, community styling and a playlist curated by Egan designed for dancing. There’s an innocence and nostalgia to the exhibit, drawing stapled scrapbooks and candid shots of club-goers together. The curation does briefly nod to the ever-present threats of the decade — a short note references the ever-present risks of homophobic abuse outside the club, and sexual harassment within — but the focus is set squarely on the dancefloor. Walking past walls decorated like a teenage shrine, visitors are welcomed into heaven itself. Blitz’s infamous Tuesday night has been resurrected. A full-length screen holds familiar faces loitering at the bar, along with an exclusive Spandeaux Ballet performance, appearing on loop. On the other two walls, a stage lies covered with crushed cans and a wooden bar holds a sign proclaiming it Tuesday evening, taglined “a strange affair”. 

Despite the attempt to give it some of that uniquely soulful pub grit, there’s an uncanny cleanliness to the room. The idle figures onscreen are a familiar sight from pre-drinks at the local, while the few scattered cans don’t quite capture the excitement and hedonism of the club scene. It’s no fault of the exhibit; rather, the unavoidable absence of the beloved guest list who filled the floor and made the club what it was. There’s a singular magic that remains locked firmly in the past, during those unobtainable months of the Blitz Kids’ scene.

While the club scene, as it was, remains untouchable, its legacy is perhaps the most tangible thing the exhibition gets at. In the next room, architecture, fashion, publishing and club culture all receive the Blitz treatment. Magazines like i-D and ZG, creased and worn, feel like fitting documentation for the movement. VIZ magazine, in particular, with its vinyl record dimensions, connects the threads of a music-led cultural scene which at times seems held up with staples itself. With two hundred and fifty items on show, ranging from iconic costumes to carefully stored newspaper cuttings, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic about the freedom and expression at the heart of Blitz — whether you were there at the time or not. At the exhibit’s end, there’s an impressive guest list printed on one wall including the likes of Billy Idol, Martin Kemp and Derek Jarman. But what happened to the Blitz Kids after the club nights came to an end doesn’t feel quite as important as the hedonistic nights themselves. Blitz: the club that changed the 80s is the joyful equivalent of a bleary-eyed photo dump from the night before — you can tell everyone had a bloody good time.