In 2013, Canadian director Kevin Hegge met filmmaker and DJ Jeffrey Hinton at a film festival, and subsequently began assembling what would become Tramps!. The feature-length film is a deep dive into the optimism and creativity that emerged in Thatcher’s London at the end of the 70s, instigating the New Romantics and the subcultures that immediately followed.

Around that same time a decade ago, the V&A staged its knockout Club to Catwalk exhibition, celebrating the aesthetics that contributed to and were borne out of the era. Scarlett Cannon, the renowned Blitz Kid, was the show’s obvious poster girl, and consequently a photograph of her dressed head to toe in a red and black ensemble (heavy with beads and excessive prints) from BodyMap’s AW84 collection – Cat in the hat takes a rumble with a techno fish – acquired a second life. 

“BodyMap, they were a rule unto themselves,” announces photographer Mark Lebon in the new film. “It really was a fashion revolution,” adds Cannon, relaying the defining characteristics of the label, “stretched jersey, fantastic prints and fabulous shapes.” Established by David Holah and Stevie Stewart in 1982, three years after the pair met on their first day at Middlesex Polytechnic, BodyMap was less a product of the scene than an accompanying force and a principle protagonist in its own right. Disrupting the trajectory of fashion graduates at the time, the London-based duo was also responsible for rebranding lycra in a big way, employing the fabric in their high end designs to such an effect that it’s still reverberating in the industry today.

“I can’t remember how we got involved (in Tramps!), I think because of Jeffrey. And John Maybury obviously, he was a lynchpin to all these different connections,” says Holah, reflecting on the community that emerged from a squat on Warren Street in central London – at various times home to Boy George, Princess Julia, and Stephen Jones. “It was a network of friends, of fashionable, trendy people, but each had their own thing going on. Like Scarlett (Cannon), her lot weren’t really connected to what we were doing, but we all knew each other. Boy George was different from anything we were doing, (Princess) Julia, Jeffrey (Hinton), everyone had their thing.”

Linked by environment and a desire to create, these relationships manifested on the BodyMap catwalk, where Holah and Stewart manufactured parties with an audience, effectively, bringing in family and friends to showcase their “unstructured, soft styling”. Despite their aptitude and infectious energy – and the fact that esteemed boutique Browns bought their graduate collection – the label’s initial success was overseas. “The British press had to go to New York to appreciate what was actually on their doorstep,” explains Stewart. “We went to America to do the Susanne Bartsch show, ‘New London in New York’, and only then people started to sit up and go ‘hang on a minute, there's something good going on in London,” recalls Holah. 

Here, BodyMap co-founders David Holah and Stevie Stewart reflect on BodyMap’s beginnings, its connection to the London club scene, and the brand’s enduring impact on fashion today. 

You collaborated for several years before BodyMap. Was there a standout moment in transitioning from your previous projects, or was it more of an evolution? 

Stevie Stewart: More of an evolution. At the time when we were doing our final degree show, it was the fashion for graduates to go to Italy and work in the couture houses. 

David Holah: I was going to Lagerfeld, you were going to Armani. 

Stevie Stewart: We weren’t really into it, but we knew some older friends in Milan and decided to have a look and talk with them. Once we’d been, we decided we didn’t want to fit into that format and wanted to be London-based, so we had a plan to put our graduate collections together, because we knew we could work together. But it wasn’t quite that simple. For example, we’d wanted to use British fabrics, but the British companies couldn’t supply us with what we needed, lycra, so we went to a sock factory and a home fabric company in Sweden.

I was going to ask about the lycra – BodyMap obviously played an important role in its embrace by the fashion industry. 

Stevie Stewart: That was actually a mistake. We made a toile for the knitwear out of jersey to get the shapes, because we were doing sort of upside down sleeves, and one of the toiles looked really good. That was the start of it. That’s when we went to Sweden, also to make heavy sweatshirts, because you could only get one weight of sweatshirt then.

“BodyMap became well-known, because the print would be seen in the clubs, wherever you looked. When you see those club pictures, there’s BodyMap practically on every person.” – David Holah

In terms of BodyMap’s formation, did you have a specific set of objectives or intentions? I know the name came about almost via necessity…

David Holah: We were on the phone to somebody and they said, ‘what’s your name?’ and we were like ‘what is our name?’. We had a list of things from John Maybury, he was a friend of ours. “Body map” was an art piece by Enrico Job, he made this work taking parts of the body and laying them out flat and photographing them. That’s kind of the way we worked with our patterns, so it was related to what we were doing. 

Stevie Stewart: We didn’t want the label to be our names, we wanted it to be an umbrella for something that would give us an option to make accessories or do lifestyle or whatever. 

Politics largely remains on the periphery in Tramps!, however several contributors speak about the significance of higher education effectively being free at the time, enabling more people to go to art school. What was your experience of this, and how did it shape BodyMap?

Stevie Stewart: I didn’t get the grant, that’s when I started doing market stalls so that had an impact. I had to apply to loads of trust funds and grant companies and eventually I got my fees paid for, but I didn’t get a living allowance.

David Holah: I was the total opposite. I had a grant, lived in a squat, and then Stevie employed me on weekends. Things have changed, it was totally different then. Not Stevie, but the rest of us were all funded by the government to go to college. We didn’t think so at the time, but it was amazing. I don’t think we truly appreciated it – I’m sure people would these days. 

You were privy to the club scene in London – from the New Romantic era to Taboo and what followed. How did that inform what you were doing with BodyMap? 

David Holah: Life informed what we were doing. The fact that we did go to Taboo obviously had an influence, but we used different things from different parts of our lives, like a film we’d seen, or a cartoon we liked. The club scene probably informed the music more than the way we actually presented the shows; the actual design influences came from other sources.

Stevie Stewart: People equate us with the club scene a lot, but in actual fact the people that went to the clubs were wearing BodyMap.

David Holah: People would get bits of BodyMap and wear it with their own looks, because it was all about making a look from something then. We put our looks together from our collections, but people were putting things from our collection together in all kinds of different interesting ways, which we loved. When you see those club pictures, there’s BodyMap practically on every person.

What was like when you first saw people wearing your pieces? 

Stevie Stewart: It was good. I remember doing a show – I think it was Is a Comet A Star…A Sun…Aura Racoon? (SS86) – and lots of the helpers were wearing it. It was really beautiful to see those pieces being worn not at the club, but just in everyday life. 

David Holah: People had been wearing our clothes for a while, but when BodyMap came up, they were styled differently because we used print a lot. I think that’s why BodyMap became well-known, because the print would be seen in the clubs, wherever you looked. 

Can you speak about the BodyMap family? Jeffrey Hinton worked on your show music, Michael Clark choreographed, Boy George and John Maybury modelled alongside your niece, David, and your mum, Stevie – was it a conscious thing?

David Holah: It was about encompassing everyone, not just models – although models were our friends. It was about widening the net and getting people of all shapes and sizes involved. We’d invite our friends to be in the show and it became this eclectic mix of energy. Stevie’s mum and another friend’s mum just happened to be really hip, fabulous-looking older women that (we thought) should be seen in these clothes. 

Stevie Stewart: We were very diverse, before our time.

David Holah: We were. It was a sort of knock-on effect from punk and all that stuff. It wasn’t just about the normal fashion show, we wanted to instigate something new and energetic, because London was happening at the time but no one really knew about it. We tried to get as much energy onto the catwalks as we could, so it could be seen internationally.

There’s a lot of nostalgia for late 20th century subcultures today, and particularly the scene BodyMap arrived into. How do you reflect on that period?

Stevie Stewart: Fondly, and also proudly. I’m very proud of what we did, we probably took quite an enormous risk doing what we were doing, without realising it. 

David Holah: We took a leap of faith to try and make something, but didn’t take it in at the time – we just went for it, took the bull by the horns and said ‘no, we’re doing it like this’. We didn’t stick to any regimented rules about fashion or style or anything, we just did what we thought. 

Were you aware of the impact of your work at the time?

Stevie Stewart: When we were ripped off by Benetton and Miss Selfridge. But we were so busy, you couldn’t catch a breath. We were designing our collection, going to Italy to design collections for Adriano Goldschmied to finance production, coming back, and doing the show. Then we took a Japanese licence and an American licence, so we had to go to Japan and America... 

David Holah: If things were happening, like the Benetton thing, we actually did take pause for a minute to think ‘what’s going on with this, why did they do that?’. But other than that, you just surged forward, because we had so much to do. 

“We wanted to dress people from head to foot, we wanted to have the accessories and the gloves, the hats, the sunglasses, all of that. We planned to do that, and we accomplished that.” – Stevie Stewart

We mentioned the vogue for cultural nostalgia – what are some of the biggest misconceptions people today have about that period in the 80s? 

David Holah: The whole thing with the New Romantics, because actually that was at the end of the 70s. That’s sort of weird, because it all happened before we went to college, the Blitz, Cha Cha Club, all those things were prior to us finishing our degrees; we hadn’t thought about BodyMap, we didn’t know what we were going to do. But obviously it informed who we connected with, because people were dressing up in New Romantic looks. I didn’t get on board, I had my own look going on and Stevie had her thing. The New Romantic thing was a bit frivolous, but the people we were connected with were New Romantics, like Boy George. He stretched it through the 80s, so everyone remembers that look. I think that’s why it carried, because of the icons that were involved in it. 

Stevie Stewart: And they were obviously at the helm of the club scene – Steve Strange was running the clubs.

Is there a particular BodyMap look that stands out or feels especially significant for you?

David Holah: The early looks, the bold prints, and strange silhouettes that we concocted, because they were so different and changed the way people thought about dressing and about lycra. People didn’t look at lycra like that until we started doing it.

Stevie Stewart: Athleisure wear hadn’t come in, it would be your granny wearing a sweatshirt. The swimwear as well. We wanted to dress people from head to foot, we wanted to have the accessories and the gloves, the hats, the sunglasses, all of that. We planned to do that, and we accomplished that.

Watch here.