First published as a body of work by British Culture Archive, Andrew Holligan’s photographs reveal the people, style and atmosphere of the influential Covent Garden club night.
Andrew Holligan’s photographs offer a rare view inside London’s Blitz Club in 1980, as a small weekly gathering was beginning to influence British music, fashion and visual culture.
The photographs were originally made in connection with a story about the emerging New Romantic scene for the German magazine Stern. Beyond that assignment, however, the images were not widely circulated and remained largely unseen for decades.
Holligan later shared the archive with British Culture Archive, which first published the surviving series as a body of work. Its reappearance brought an overlooked photographic record of the Blitz back into public view, showing the club not simply as the setting for a familiar cultural legend, but as a close social world inhabited by young musicians, designers, artists and club-goers.
The Blitz opened at 4 Great Queen Street in Covent Garden in February 1979 and ran until October 1980. Held on Tuesday nights in a small wine bar, it was established by Steve Strange and Rusty Egan after the pair had promoted an earlier Bowie night at Billy’s in Soho.
Strange controlled the door while Egan selected the music. Their regular crowd brought together art students, musicians and young people drawn from London’s punk, soul and fashion scenes.
"Steve Strange was my flatmate. We started the club on Tuesdays. He did the door, and I did the music. We spent five days and nights promoting and searching for music, and people we knew were out there, and they came, along with the music."
- Rusty Egan.
The Blitz was short-lived, but its reach was considerable. Spandau Ballet emerged from the club’s immediate circle, while Visage, Boy George and Marilyn were also closely associated with the scene. Regulars included milliner Stephen Jones, costume designer Michele Clapton, Princess Julia and writer and broadcaster Robert Elms.
What developed at Great Queen Street was therefore more than a fashionable night out. The Blitz operated as a creative network in which clothing, music, photography and graphic design were closely connected. People who met there collaborated on bands, performances, stage clothes and promotional material. Ideas moved quickly between the dance floor, art schools, studios and the pages of emerging style magazines.
Photo © Andrew Holligan, all rights reserved.
The Blitz is commonly described as the birthplace of the New Romantic movement, although the people involved did not necessarily recognise themselves as part of a single, clearly defined group.
Many had passed through punk and retained its do-it-yourself attitude and disregard for conventional taste. What changed was the visual language. Punk’s deliberately abrasive imagery gave way to historical references, theatrical make-up and a renewed interest in glamour.
Looks were assembled from charity-shop discoveries, handmade clothes and adapted vintage pieces. Some regulars were art students, while others lived in squats or had little access to established professional networks. Limited resources encouraged invention rather than preventing it.
This helps explain why Holligan’s photographs show such a broad range of personal styles. The Blitz was not populated by people wearing a fixed New Romantic uniform. Its regulars borrowed from Hollywood costume, European cinema, military tailoring, cabaret, glam rock and the clothes of earlier decades.
David Bowie remained a central influence, alongside Roxy Music, electronic music and artists such as Kraftwerk. The Design Museum’s recent exhibition on the Blitz also traced connections with punk and soul, continental cinema and cabaret culture.
Holligan entered this world as a photographer rather than as one of its regulars. Gaining permission to work inside was not straightforward.
“I met Steve Strange, Boy George, Marilyn and others in 1980. I was assisting a fashion photographer on a story about the New Romantics for the German magazine Stern. After shooting studio portraits, he needed club shots, but getting into the Blitz wasn’t simple. Steve Strange had to approve me personally because I wasn’t a New Romantic. He wanted to make sure the images captured the spirit of the scene without betraying it.” — Andrew Holligan
Photo © Andrew Holligan, all rights reserved.
That personal approval is important. The club depended on a degree of trust, particularly once press interest began to grow. Holligan was allowed to photograph a community whose members were acutely conscious of how they looked and how the outside world might represent them.
His pictures retain the intimacy of that access. The people photographed appear highly composed, but the images do not feel like conventional fashion photographs. Holligan records individuals within the physical setting of the club, surrounded by other faces, clothing and fragments of the room.
Among those identified in the series are designers Stephen Linard and David Holah. Elsewhere, the photographs preserve people whose names may be less familiar but who were equally part of the atmosphere and visual character of the night.
The Blitz became notorious for its selective door policy. Steve Strange assessed potential guests according to their appearance and whether he believed they understood the spirit of the night.
The policy helped create its exclusivity and mythology, but Rusty Egan has also explained it in more practical terms:
“We started the night at Blitz because of homophobic thugs and violence against anyone different. The door policy was only to ensure the right people were in.” — Rusty Egan
The distinction matters. Although the Blitz was not exclusively a gay club, many of its regulars were gay or were exploring different forms of gender and sexual identity. In London at the end of the 1970s, an unconventional appearance could attract abuse or violence.
Inside the club, clothing and make-up became means of self-invention. The controlled door helped protect an environment in which that experimentation could take place. Recent institutional accounts of the Blitz have similarly interpreted its exclusivity as both an aesthetic decision and a form of protection for its regular crowd.
Photo © Andrew Holligan, all rights reserved.
Photo © Andrew Holligan, all rights reserved.
The historical value of Holligan’s photographs does not rest only on the presence of people who later became famous.
They show the Blitz while it was still a working club night rather than a polished chapter in the history of the 1980s. The room is crowded and imperfect. Elaborate clothing sits against an ordinary interior. People watch one another, pose for the camera and occupy the edges of the dance floor.
The photographs also record the wider community around the recognised names. This is important because retrospective accounts of influential scenes can become dominated by a small number of successful figures. Holligan’s archive returns attention to the group itself: the people who made the night distinctive, whether or not they later entered public life.
Since British Culture Archive first published the series, the photographs have prompted recollections from people who attended the Blitz and recognised the club, its regulars and its atmosphere. These responses have added another layer to the archive, connecting Holligan’s photographs with the memories of those who were there.
Photo © Andrew Holligan, all rights reserved.
Photo © Andrew Holligan, all rights reserved.
The Blitz occupied a particular moment between the aftermath of punk and the arrival of a more image-led pop culture.
Magazines including The Face and i-D helped carry the ideas developing in London’s clubs to a wider audience. Music video then provided a new international platform for performers whose clothes, make-up and visual identities were as carefully considered as their music.
David Bowie’s visit to the Blitz and his recruitment of several regulars for the Ashes to Ashes video gave the scene one of its most visible early appearances. Spandau Ballet drew on the same network, with people from around the club contributing to the band’s stagewear, lighting and graphic identity.
By the early 1980s, the influence of this small Covent Garden crowd could be seen across record sleeves, magazines, fashion and television. What had begun as a Tuesday night gathering was absorbed into the mainstream culture of the decade.
The subsequent success of some of its regulars can make that outcome appear inevitable. Holligan’s photographs suggest otherwise. They take us back to the point before reputations had settled and before the term New Romantic had flattened a diverse group of people into a single recognisable style.
Photo © Andrew Holligan, all rights reserved.
Made during one assignment and then largely absent from public view, Holligan’s photographs occupied a marginal place in the established visual history of the Blitz.
Their first publication as a body of work by British Culture Archive revealed the extent of the surviving series and restored it to the wider story of British club culture. The photographs now stand as evidence of a brief but unusually productive meeting of people, music and style.
Recent exhibitions and research have confirmed the Blitz’s importance across fashion, design, film and popular music. Holligan’s work contributes something more immediate: a view from inside the room, made while the culture being documented was still taking shape.
British Subculture, 1970s: Photographs by Virginia Turbett
Photographs spanning punk, mod revival, Rock Against Racism and New Romantic style, including Stephen Linard at the opening of The Wall Club in 1981.
British Subculture, 1970s–1980s: Photographs by Janette Beckman
Janette Beckman’s photographs document punk, ska, mod revival and the fans whose style helped shape British youth culture around the turn of the 1980s.
1980s Britain: The People’s Archive
Personal photographs recording everyday life, music, fashion and youth culture across Britain during a decade of considerable social and cultural change.
The Haçienda, Manchester, 1986: Pre-Acid House
Photographs by Andrew ‘Beezer’ Beese recording another influential British club before its reputation became inseparable from the mythology that followed.
Explore Subculture Prints
Limited-edition photographic prints documenting British youth culture and subculture, published by British Culture Archive.
Design Museum, Blitz: The Club That Shaped the 80s, exhibition, 20 September 2025–29 March 2026.
