Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today, we're tracing
the neon padded shoulder extravagance of the
1980s back to a really unlikely starting point.
Very unlikely. Right. Because, you know, when
you picture that era, the intense theatricality,
that massive explosion of pop culture style that
basically defined a decade of fashion and music.
It feels like a look that must have been, I don't
know, focus grouped in a massive corporate design
house in London or New York. Yeah. We tend to
assume it came from the top down. Exactly. But
we are pulling from a single Wikipedia page today
that unravels a very different history. We are
going to trace that iconic aesthetic all the
way back to a single boutique on Hearst Street
in Birmingham, England in 1976. We're looking
at a fashion label called Conan Bell. And the
two women who essentially architected a global
movement from the ground up. Yeah. As we look
at the backdrop today, shifting from the gritty
DIY ethos of 1970s punk right into that bright
neon -soaked futurism of the 1980s, you really
have to recognize the mechanics behind that transition.
It didn't just emerge out of nowhere. No, somebody
had to build it. Right. And Con and Belle are
this brilliant lens through which to view this
era because their story isn't just about garments.
It is a highly revealing case study on the geography
of cool. Oh, I like that phrasing. Well, it exposes
the intense media bias that, you know, dictates
who gets canonized in fashion history. And it
explores the profound tension between. maintaining
grassroots authenticity, and succumbing to commercial
licensing. We are looking at what happens when
regional creators build an aesthetic empire,
only to find themselves completely at odds with
the establishment that wants to commodify it.
OK, let's unpack this, because the founders themselves
are a fascinating study in creative synthesis.
We're talking about Jane Conn and Patti Bell.
In 1976, they opened their shop and basically
laid the groundwork for the new romantic aesthetic,
setting the stage for that flamboyant theatrical
reaction to punk long before the London fashion
scene even caught on. But what strikes me when
looking at the sources is that their style wasn't
just loud or, you know, eccentric. It was this
fiercely specific concoction. They were pulling
from Egyptian, African and Far Eastern art, and
then they were colliding his ancient aesthetics
with pure futurism and sci -fi fantasy. A massive
risk creatively. Yeah. How did they manage to
blend all of those disparate elements without
it just looking like a messy, chaotic costume?
What elevated this to high fashion? That is the
core of their genius, really, because to avoid
falling into the trap of mere fancy dress, you
need an incredibly rigorous understanding of
tailoring of silhouette and art history. Which
they had. Kahn and Bell possessed that in spades.
They weren't just throwing rhinestones on vintage
dresses. They were constructing garments with
serious architectural intent. When you combine
the sharp geometric lines of Egyptian art with
the exaggerated proportions of 1980s futurism,
you need flawless execution. The foundation has
to be solid. Exactly. The cuts had to be immaculate.
They used heavy, structured fabrics to ground
the fantasy elements, ensuring that when someone
walked into a room wearing con and bell, they
didn't look like they were wearing a costume.
It looked like they had arrived from a different
dimension. Beautifully put, yes. And there is
a review from a design magazine called Blueprint,
published later in 1988, that paints a really
vivid picture of what that dimension looked like.
Oh, this review is incredible. It really is.
The writer describes a scene at the Zanzibar
Club, which was this legendary underground venue.
The lights are low. The music is pulsing. And
holding court in the center of the room are Kahn
and Bell themselves. Total command of the space.
Total command. The article describes them as
resplendent in leopard skin and padded shoulders,
dripping in diamante. And then the wildest detail,
they had these leather devil's tails hanging
down between their legs. It is such a jarring,
aggressive image. What's fascinating here is
the specific critical language the Blueprint
Review uses. to contextualize that aggression.
Right. They don't just call it weird. No. The
writer notes that on good nights, Khan and Belle
looked like Egyptian queens or ancient Babylonians.
But on the not -so -good nights, they resembled
Brassai's Momabijou. Unpack Momabijou for us.
So for context, Momabijou was a famous, heavily
jeweled, Parisian eccentric photographed by Brassai
in the 1930s. A figure of faded... ghostly glamour
wow yeah and then the reviewer brilliantly describes
conan bell as fugitives from baudelaire's bad
dreams that is quite a label to compare someone
to baudelaire A poet who was all about finding
visceral beauty in the grotesque, the macabre,
and the decaying urban landscape shows. They
weren't just making pretty party dresses. They
were creating walking, breathing art installations
that deliberately challenged the viewer's comfort
zone. Fugitives from Butler's Bad Dreams is such
a haunting, evocative way to describe a fashion
label. It makes me want to ask you, the listener,
what stands out to you about a style that is
simultaneously ancient and futuristic? It's a
great question. Does pulling from antiquity make
a futuristic vision feel more grounded in human
history? Or does injecting sci -fi elements make
the ancient world feel distinctly alien? It's
a profound juxtaposition. Khan and Bell were
walking a brilliant tightrope with it, and it
clearly resonated far beyond the walls of the
Zanzibar club. Because here's where it gets really
interesting. This avant -garde, highly intellectualized
style caught the eye of the music industry. Yeah,
so the big crossover. Conan Bell actually became
the go -to designers for massive bands, including
The Group Shock and, most notably, Duran Duran.
The connection to the music industry is absolutely
critical to understanding their cultural footprint,
especially in an era that was just on the precipice
of the MTV revolution. The dawn of the music
video. Exactly. The 1980s became the... They
were dressing the revolution. And the ultimate
musical tribute was paid to them by Simon Le
Bon. The frontman of Duran Duran actually wrote
the song Kanada, specifically about Jane Kahn.
That is the ultimate flex. Right. When a frontman
for one of the most visually iconic bands of
the decade writes a song about you, you have
crossed over from designer to cultural muse.
It completely shifts the power dynamic, doesn't
it? It does. You usually think of the musician
as the primary mastermind, the one driving the
culture forward, and the designers just brought
in as a hired gun to make them look good. But
in this scenario, Khan and Bell are pulling the
strings. They're the architects. They are providing
the actual... visual architecture that allowed
bands like Duran Duran to fully realize their
artistal identities. They were co -authors of
the movement. The new romantic sound, which was
theatrical, synth -driven, and highly ambitious,
required a wardrobe that matched that exact frequency.
You couldn't just wear jeans. No. A band couldn't
get on stage playing futuristic synthesizers
while wearing ripped jeans and safety pins left
over from the punk era. It would have visually
clashed. They needed garments that broadcasted
opulence, romance, and forward momentum. Khan
and Bell supplied that. They gave the music its
physical form. So we have this design duo with
a brilliant... highly intellectual aesthetic.
They have rock star clientele and they are literally
writing the visual rulebook for the upcoming
decade. A powerhouse. Logically, they should
have been universally celebrated as fashion royalty
across the UK. You would think. But this brings
us to the central friction of their story, the
geography of cool. Birmingham versus London.
The Great Divide. Despite being the vanguard
of this movement, Con and Bell received shockingly
little credit from the fashion establishment
in the capital. The geographical bias was staggering,
and it is explicitly documented in the sources.
A 1981 piece in the new romantic journal New
Sounds New Styles pointed out this exact injustice.
What did they say? The journal observed that
Con and Bell were frequently one step ahead of
the designers in London. However... Due to the
intense London -centric nature of the fashion
press, when London eventually caught up and began
producing similar collections, the immediate
assumption published in the magazines was that
Birmingham had copied London. That is wild. It
was a complete inversion of reality, driven entirely
by a systemic prejudice against regional cities.
That level of institutional gaslighting has to
be infuriating. Imagine inventing the future,
watching the people in the capital city finally
catch on months later, and then having the glossy
magazines accuse you of stealing the capital's
ideas. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
we have to look at the underlying mechanics of
why the fashion press operated that way. It's
about money, isn't it? Always. In the late 70s
and early 80s, London wasn't just a city, it
was an economic machine. The major fashion magazines,
the PR agencies, the high -end boutiques in Soho,
the international advertisers, they were all
geographically concentrated in London. So they
protected their turf. Yes. The establishment
press needed London to remain the undisputed
center of the universe, to justify their own
relevance and maintain their economic power.
Birmingham, at the time, was widely viewed by
the Southern elite as an industrial, working
-class hub. A completely different world. Right.
The London establishment simply couldn't fathom,
or perhaps couldn't afford to admit, that the
most avant -garde, forward -thinking, high -glamour
designs in the country were being born on Hearst
Street in Birmingham. To acknowledge Kahn and
Bell's primacy would be to admit that the London
tastemakers were falling behind. And dealing
with that constant lack of recognition while
trying to maintain their phenomenal output inevitably
takes a massive toll. A huge physical and emotional
toll. This brings us back to that 1988 Blueprint
review, which touches on the grueling psychological
reality of their lifestyle. The review contains
this incredibly poetic description of their existence,
stating that for Kahn and Bell, identity was
a trick of the light. A trick of the light is
a profoundly revealing phrase. It suggests that
their entire persona This magnificent aesthetic
they had built was an illusion they had to actively,
physically maintain. It wasn't just natural.
No, it wasn't effortless. It required an extreme,
continuous performance to keep the fantasy alive
in a world that was often gray, industrial, and
dismissive of their origins. The review spells
out the reality of that performance. It ignites
the severe risk of burning out when you sold
clothes all day in the boutique and then actively
promoted them all night in the underground clubs.
Working around the clock. And the survival mechanism
the writer describes is striking. They wrote,
you simply let the flames lick over you and turned
the ashes into coal. Wow. Taking the literal
ashes of your own burnout and using it as makeup
to fuel the aesthetic. It is a stunning metaphor
for turning exhaustion into art, but it also
sounds completely unsustainable for a human being.
It was a recipe for immense friction. which leads
us directly into the pivotal business decisions
they made, decisions that explain why they aren't
a household global name today. Let's get into
that. When fashion historians debate why Khan
and Bell aren't mentioned in the same breath
as legacy fashion houses, the sources point to
three specific choices. First, they refuse to
license their brand. Which is how you make the
real money. Exactly. In the fashion industry,
licensing is the lifeblood of a global empire.
When a designer licenses their name for perfumes,
sunglasses, or mass market department store lines,
they generate massive, passive wealth. It is
how you transition from a respected designer
to a global corporation. And Kahn and Bell said
no to that money. They turned it down flat. Turning
down licensing is wild when you think about the
sheer amount of capital they were leaving on
the table. It is the ultimate rejection of the
corporate fashion machine. Second, they flat
out refused to relocate to London as a duo. They
stayed anchored to Birmingham when the entire
industry was demanding they move to the capital
to be taken seriously by the international buyers
and the press. Sticking to their roots. And third,
they unequivocally would not compromise their
unique style. They didn't water down their designs
to make them more palatable for a mainstream
commercial audience. They held their ground,
maintaining their creative purity at the expense
of global ubiquity. I want you, the listener,
to pause and consider your own career, your own
art, or your passions. Would you be willing to
trade your unique, uncompromising style and your
hometown roots for global commercial success?
It's the classic artist dilemma. If an investor
handed you the keys to a global empire, but the
catch was that you had to dilute your vision
and move to a city that had previously mocked
or ignored you, would you sign that contract?
Most people would sign it in a heartbeat. But
Kahn and Bell chose their roots. But that intense
dedication, combined with the grueling lifestyle,
eventually fractured the partnership. The sources
note that the duo went their separate ways in
the 1980s. The immense pressure of sustaining
that trick of the light, perhaps combined with
differing visions for how to navigate their future,
led to their split. It's understandable. It is.
And the pads they took both split serve as a
fascinating coda to the Birmingham versus London
dynamic we've been discussing. Right, because
Jane Conn's path actually took her down south.
She did end up relocating to London on her own
after the split, and she did find a measure of
success there. But there's a catch. There is
a really poignant creative caveat in the sources.
While she was successful in the capital... She
was never quite able to recreate that truly inspirational
lightning -in -a -bottle look that the Kahn and
Bell partnership possessed. Highlights a crucial
truth about creative collaboration. Yeah. The
friction, the shared history, and the specific
environment of Birmingham created an alchemy
between the two of them that couldn't simply
be packed up in a suitcase and manufactured by
one person in a London studio. The magic was
in the partnership and the place. The context
mattered. Meanwhile, Patti Bell's path is an
incredible testament to stubborn, beautiful dedication
to her roots. Her story is amazing. After the
split, she remained a fiercely grassroots designer.
She kept her home and her base of operations
in Birmingham. But rather than retreating, she
found a new, highly direct way to reach her audience.
A very hands -on approach. Every single weekend,
she would travel down to London's Camden Market.
She bypassed the elite fashion press, the glossy
magazines, and the high -end Soho boutiques entirely,
and took her outlandish, thought -provoking collections
straight to the streets. The imagery of that
is phenomenal. Picture the visceral, chaotic
energy of Camden Lock in the 80s and 90s, and
right in the middle of it is a designer who had
dressed Duran Duran and architected the new romantic
movement, selling her garments directly from
a market stall. It's so punk rock, honestly.
It really is. And this raises an important question
about how we define success in the creative arts.
Because the profound irony of Patti Bell's path
is that she still achieved incredible international
reach. Absolutely. The sources show she cultivated
a dedicated base of clients and customers who
had traveled to see her from all over Europe,
from Southeast Asia, and from Japan. People were
crossing oceans to find her in Camden Market.
Yes. She achieved global reach without a global
sellout. She maintained complete control over
her aesthetic, bypassing the gatekeepers, and
she did it entirely on her own terms right up
until she passed away very recently in January
2024. Her passing marks the end of a very specific
era of grassroots design. She proved that you
can sustain a profound international artistic
impact without ever bending to the demands of
the corporate fashion capitals. So what does
this all mean? When we look at the complete story
of Conan Bell, we are looking at the brilliant,
uncompromising architects of a defining era in
pop culture. True pioneers. They prove that true
innovation, the kind of world -building aesthetic
that defines a generation, doesn't require the
permission of the establishment. It happens in
the regional towns, in the small, fiercely independent
boutiques, born out of the sheer willpower of
artists who refuse to blend in. And their legacy
indoors. They may have been dismissed and gaslit
by the London press, but their legacy outlived
the critics. It lives on in the music we listen
to and the enduring, globally recognized imagery
of the 1980s. They leave behind a blueprint for
absolute creative purity. And looking at their
story through a modern lens, it leaves you wondering.
In today's hyper -connected world, where every
localized trend is instantly filmed, uploaded,
and globalized on social media within hours,
is it even possible for a truly underground local
scene to incubate the way Kahn and Bells did
in 1970s Birmingham? That's a great question.
Or has the internet effectively made us all residents
of the capital, stripping away the geographic
isolation that once allowed such fiercely unique,
unapologetic creativity to develop unseen? Does
the internet destroy the very isolation that
allows genius to grow? That is a brilliant point
to leave on. Thank you so much for joining us
on this deep dive into the archives today. We
hope you walk away looking at the history of
fashion and maybe even your own creative choices
with a fresh perspective. Have a fantastic rest
of your day and keep exploring.