Princess Julia: The People’s Princess

Princess Julia is a much-loved monarch who has reigned across the past five decades of London’s subcultural and nocturnal scenes. She once admitted she’s gone out every single night, dressed up to the max, since 1976 and rightfully commands style icon status.

Julia Fodor is the original multi-hyphenate, too, long-since DJing-singing-modelling-writing-painting- teaching-performing and clubbing-clubbing-clubbing. She’s always up for a giggle and always authentic, intuitively fostering rather than following trends. Needless to say, our Hackney-born Royal Highness is great to have a natter with.

As one of the key faces in the late ’70s and early ’80s Blitz Kids movement (later rebranded by the media as the New Romantics), Julia is forever linked with this deservedly-mythologised, giddy-posey nightlife moment, which contributed to changing the course of clubs, fashion, music, pop videos, advertising and magazines in the 1980s. Photographs of her from that era show looks that morph glam vamp with proto-goth, created with total conviction on a tiddly budget. Such subversive styles unleashed 45 years ago by Julia, now 62, and her young Blitz Kids contemporaries, have now been luxuriously reimagined in SS23 collections by major fashion names: Burberry, Junya Watanabe, Versace, Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, among others.

Yes, Julia is an influencer (no, not the annoying sort). As a mid-’70s teenage trainee hairdresser, she was clad in finery from Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s Chelsea fashion boutique Sex, later renamed Seditionaries, teamed with teetering heels and a bouffant hairdo? But who was she inspired by? “I will give fulsome credit to the fabulous Jordan [aka the late, great Pamela Rooke, Sex’s notoriously intimidating shop assistant who became a punk icon], because she definitely opened a lot of doors for us in the punk era to explore these more avant-garde looks,” marvels Julia. “I mean, she’s a total queen!” She also namechecks London’s other female punk pioneers, such as “Siouxsie Sioux, [X-Ray Spex singer] Poly Styrene and The Slits.” Julia embraced a new in-your-face mood proposed by these trailblazers, refining her own maquillage – “black eyeshadow, black lips, inspired by old black-and-white films” – and reinventing herself as a total queen, too: “I was excruciatingly shy back then. But I realised I could create a look and that gave me more confidence. And my make-up was almost like a mask.”

“By 1978, the punk scene had become quite mainstream,” she recalls. “But there were people who still wanted to go out, dress up and be part of some underground thing.” Her ex-punk mate Steve Strange, with DJ and musician Rusty Egan, spawned the concept of one-off club nights, taking place on weeknights in West End bars and discos. First came a series of dressy parties for those-in-the-know at a tiny Soho dive called Billy’s. By 1979, they’d moved to a wine bar named Blitz in Covent Garden, where their regular Tuesday-nighter played host to many-a-future star of pop (Boy George, Marilyn, Spandau Ballet, Ultravox) and fashion (Stephen Jones, John Galliano, Stephen Linard, Michele Clapton, David Holah and Stevie Stewart of Bodymap, to name a few). Blitz offered escapism, through a soundtrack of Bowie-meets-Kraftwerk-meets-Iggy-meets-Roxy and a notoriously strict door policy rebuffing anyone normal or naff. “It was a mixture of people there,” says Julia. “People from the punk scene, rockabilly scene, soul scene, the gay disco scene. It was people who lived at the Warren Street squat, students from various fashion colleges. It was all word of mouth.” Regulars would outdo each other with extreme and often gender-blurring ensembles fashioned from charity shop finds, or from niche boutiques such as Helen Robinson and Steph Raynor’s PX in Covent Garden (where Julia worked part-time). Think: futuristic space cadet, ghostly silver screen siren, big-quiffed alien, yesteryear Hollywood drag icon, camped-up leather biker, swashbuckling peacock and much more. Julia, by now living in a Kensington bedsit with a rent boy pal, was in her element. “Steve Strange courted the media and enjoyed the attention. So every now and then there would be an article about the Blitz Kids’ shocking lifestyle,” she remembers, with a cackle. “Well, it was quite decadent and it just became legendary quite quickly.” Not least the rumour of Steve Strange holding up a mirror to some hapless suburbanite at the door of Blitz, asking, “Well, would you let yourself in?”

The next few years saw many new club nights and venues springing up in the capital: Hell, Cha Cha Club, Le Kilt, The Camden Palace, The Wag Club, The Batcave (one of the first goth nights, which kick-started many imitators across the UK) and, by the middle of the ’80s, the influential designer-performer Leigh Bowery’s taste-defying fashion freak-fest, Taboo. Julia would frequent all of them. She particularly loved the “crazy, hysterical energy” at Taboo and admired Bowery’s creativity: “Leigh was majorly inspiring and clever, with ideas that were so far ahead of their time. He created these beyond looks that had socially-conscious messages and statements. Do you remember when he had the yellow face with big brown dots painted on? That look represented the Kaposi’s sarcoma skin cancer caused by Aids. He could make something beautiful from something so scary.” Sadly, Bowery died from an Aids-related illness in 1994, at the age of only 33.

Thankfully, Julia shows no signs of slowing down. “I’ve always got something on the go!” And her presence is constantly in demand at the capital’s best clubs: “I can’t believe that I still get DJ work today,” she marvels. She’s being modest. After all, Julia has helmed the decks over the years at every tout-le-rage niterie, from Daisy Chain at The Fridge or the Star Bar at Heaven to Kinky Gerlinky and Sex at the Café de Paris. Nowadays, she has a regular Sunday slot at The Glory in East London, near where she lives, and takes on occasional stints at Adonis and Feel It. There are also DJ bookings at some of the newer, more experimental wave of LGBTQ+ happenings. Younger regulars at any of these queer spaces clearly see Julia as a supportive, super-friendly ally. (Remember Bimini’s runway tribute to her during season two of UK Drag Race?). “I think that’s what I love about clubs, why I still go to and work in them, because I love how these little scenes explode,” she says.

“I just find it really motivating. Like, there’s a really great night called Wraith, that [the artist and musician] Parma Ham does, that’s super-gothic. It’s a direct link to all things The Batcave. And there was another one I DJed at, Double Down at Dalston Superstore. I’m loving it all.”

Words, sounds and images abound in Julia’s continually inquisitive universe. In addition to being an excellent writer – penning articles for magazines galore; recently hitting 40,000 words on her work-in-progress autobiography – she has just contributed vocals to a new track produced by Kinky Roland (who has produced tracks for Boy George and Marc Almond), which is scheduled for release later in 2023. Julia likes to draw and paint, too. She admits, “I’m not super confident about my artworks, but I just really enjoy doing them.” One of her sensitively rendered paintings – “It’s a self-portrait, but it’s basically a make-up look, right?” – is included in Big Women, a new exhibition of works from 25 female artists, curated by Sarah Lucas at the Firstsite gallery in Colchester, supported by Sadie Coles HQ. “It’s, like, 25 old crones!” quips Julia. “No, it’s 25 women that are all friends, of all different artistic disciplines. It’s going to be really interesting.”

Other recent projects vary wildly. In the past few months, Julia has modelled in campaigns for Vivienne Westwood’s Worlds End line and for Gucci. She’s also starred in the video for electronic duo Jockstrap’s most recent single Greatest Hits. She’s the co-director, with the stylist and designer William Baker, of 25 London Road, a shop and gallery space in St Leonards-on- Sea: “The next thing that I’m hoping to install there is a little exhibition with Max Allen. I love his work.” In community outreach, Julia has also partnered with her friend Nasir Mazhar, the designer and founder of the Fantastic Toiles collective, to encourage creative talent at 54 The Gate, a West London community arts centre for people with learning difficulties. “We get them drawing, painting, making things. It’s a really spontaneous process that’s so invigorating for everyone involved.” Julia is involved in higher education as well, sometimes joining Central Saint Martins’ tutors to offer advice to students on its revered MA Fashion course.

Currently, she’s enjoying and wearing the designs of spirited designers including Sarah McCormack, Matty Bovan, Ed Marler and Martine Rose. “And I love what John Galliano’s doing at Margiela. I like wearing those sorts of pieces from the more underground-type designers. People like Deer Bailey, an artist who also makes clothes. I love what [the stylist] Julian Ganio does at Fendi, too. I like to keep an eye on what Kim Jones is up to, and [laughing] I hope his handbags are going to come my way!”

All of which begs the question: does Julia ever – ever! – lower her standards and leave the house in a pair of tired old trackies and some skanky trainers? “Yeah, I’ll wear trackie bottoms and trainers, but they wouldn’t just be any trackie bottoms, would they?” she says, mock-mortified. “You know that they would be Martine Rose trackie bottoms. And I wouldn’t wear any old trainers. It’d have to be, you know, a Margiela trainer… something special!”

SPOKEN LIKE A TRUE ROYAL

PRINCESS JULIA’S TOP TIPS FOR AROUND-THE-CLOCK STYLE AND GLAMOUR

HAVE A NAP
“If you have a late-night session coming up, pace yourself and have a disco siesta beforehand.”

PLAN A KILLER LOOK
“What gives me confidence to go full force into the world is, first of all, to think about a look.
Do dress up, because it’ll give you so much more confidence, and you’ll just feel fabulous from the outset!”

ALWAYS CARRY LIPPY
“My essential piece of make-up is a lipstick. In an emergency you can always use it as, not only a lipstick, but also for blusher and eyeshadow. I’m just lipstick-hooked, quite frankly!”

EMBRACE HAIR EXCITEMENT
“I do my own hair usually. But I’ve done a lot of shoots and had my hair done by some of the greats, like Guido [Palau]: amazing, amazing, amazing! One day, I hope I get my hair done by Eugene Souleiman, who does the hair at Margiela.”

AVOID POST-NIGHTCLUB NOSHING
“No, I never grab a kebab on the way home – no, no, no! In the olden days I used to have a lot of cheese on toast. That isn’t very good to go to sleep on, though. It’s all about gut health now, isn’t it?”