Fashion: Back to the Blitz spirit

Fashion's whimsy regularly requires wearers to stockpile like a chameleon, to blend in with the ever-changing milieu of what's hot and what's not. But right now, fashion has gone one step further: think like a karma chameleon, dig out your Culture Club clobber and get ready to party like it's 1979.

At the recent autumn/winter shows, designers took inspiration from London's legendary Blitz nightclub, with sculptural cheeks worthy of new-romantic entrepreneur Steve Strange at Gucci, and nightmarish blow-up doll lips and high conceptualism à la performance artist Leigh Bowery at Alexander McQueen. Perhaps a little much for the quotidian, but autumn/winter also saw the comeback of Blitz kid Pam Hogg, who showed her collection of lamé bodysuits to great acclaim in the capital.

And while George O'Dowd may have been in the news more recently for that unfortunate incident with the male escort and the handcuffs, the collections harked nostalgically back to the apogee of his beauty. At Sonia Rykiel, models wore black high hats perched above neon eyeshadow, and Topshop Unique showed snoods, bomber jackets and tribal eclecticism, topped off with fluoro woven dreads – just like the Boy himself.

The scene is echoed even in the music scene, with club-kid Lady GaGa using the heft of her Taboo-inspired shoulder pads and face paint to barge Flo Rida's hideous travesty of Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" from the top spot last week. And with the news that Spandau Ballet has reformed, you can be sure that the Blitz look isn't one that will soon, er, fade to grey.