Judy Blame
Punk stylist who designed jewellery for Boy George
JUDY BLAME, who has died aged 58, was a jewellery designer, art director, stylist and champion of the punk movement; among those he dressed were Kylie Minogue, Boy George, Neneh Cherry and the Bristol “trip-hop” group Massive Attack.
Blame, whose adopted first name was a tribute to Judy Garland, specialised in creating what the designer Marc Jacobs described as “the most extraordinary things”. These included jewellery and accessories made from buttons, safety pins, rubber bands, badges, feathers, champagne corks, paper clips, pill bottles and stamps.
Such idiosyncratic work soon got him noticed and he was in demand not only to create items to wear, but also to style models for magazine photo-shoots and musicians for television appearances.
Blame was a pioneer of the DIY ethic of making beautiful clothes from found objects, and at times could be found scavenging in bins, on streets or by the river. He always remained true to his principle of using materials that were easily available. “If you don’t have it, make it,” he would say.
He was born Christopher Stuart Barnes at Leatherhead on February 12 1960 and was five when his father, who worked in precious metals, moved the family to a small village outside Madrid. On one occasion a distant cousin caused unrest in the village by donning a miniskirt.
Christopher’s mother would leave him at the Prado museum in Madrid while she did her shopping; here his imagination was ignited by the paintings of Velásquez and Goya.
He had two brothers and two sisters, though he recalled never playing conkers because he was “too busy making a necklace out of them”.
When he was 12 the family moved to the Devon countryside, but he found it “stultifyingly dull”. Aged 17 he dyed his hair orange and headed to London. He felt out of his depth, however, and he soon caught a train to Manchester, where he acclimatised to urban life.
His first job was as a life model, “because it didn’t matter what colour your hair was, you just have to take your kit off and sit there”.
As a teenage punk Blame had gravitated to clothes made by Vivienne Westwood. “I’d say that punk was my going to fashion college without going to college,” he said of his lack of formal education.
Back in the capital by 1979, he worked as a coat-check boy in Heaven, the gay nightclub. He made his first jewellery, a necklace of huge black beads, for Scarlett Cannon, a host at Heaven with whom he later ran a club night called Cha-cha.
He recalled how the post-punk scene became a big thing. “We were all starving, living on baked beans, but we were in all the papers and magazines,” he said.
Through Heaven he got to know Boy George. “I made quite a bit of stuff for his first big tour of America,” Blame told the Financial Times, whose Weekend section he perused avidly for ideas. Soon he was also making pieces for Susanne Bartsch, a popular figure in New York nightlife, to sell in America.
The House of Beauty and Culture, an avant-garde design studio and crafts collective in Dalston, east London, opened its doors in 1985 with Blame as one of its major contributors. There, he continued his practice of reusing found materials and championing an androgynous urban style. An exhibition of his work, Judy Blame: Never Again, was seen at the ICA in June 2016.
Judy Blame, who was rarely seen without a cigarette, was unmarried but was “fairy godmother” to several godchildren. He is survived by his father and his siblings.
Judy Blame, born February 12 1960, died February 20 2018