This year, some exhibitions are opened about the Punk movement in Holland. My friend owned a club, De Koer, in Amsterdam during those days and was asked to contribute to the exhibitions and the book written about the period. His club was my favorite hang-out and I have great memories of the nights I spend there…
Two openings and a presentation were on the agenda and my friend asked me to be his arm-candy at these occasions. We would go all-the-way punk and I started thinking about ‘what to wear’..
A few years ago I went to the ’20 years ELLE magazine’- party in a dress I made out of Union Jacks. These days I started collecting flags and I still had a plastic bag full of them. This time I didn’t want to make something out of Union Jacks again, although it seemed obvious (to me). I decided to make a coat of my collection American flags.
It was a lot of work, because I had to strengthen the flags with a cotton layer; they got very delicate during their days waving in the wind. The end-result was pretty damn good…! I send some pictures to my friend, although I had a feeling the coat wasn’t finished. He came up with the idea to bleach the coat to make it look more punky. I bleached the coat and then put it in a tea-bath.
The day of the book presentation I was ill (again), but a few weeks later we went to the museum in Utrecht for the opening of the exhibition there. My friend wore leather motor-pants, a t-shirt I made of an old Joy Division shirt, a red boiled-wool Comme Des Garçons jacket and pink fluor socks I got at Topshop. I wore my American flag coat, a black slipdress-with-petticoat, black lace hold-ups and Vivienne Westwood platform shoes.
In the car, on the way over there we listened to punk music and had a lot of fun already because of our over-the-top appearances. We both have a great sense of humor and self-mockery, thank God!
The car was parked in front of the museum and got out. We looked around and noticed we were the only ones who dressed up/wore punk outfits, the rest of the people wore their everyday clothes. My friend looked at me and said: ‘Here we are, Sid &Nancy arrived’…. I have a vivid imagination and couldn’t get the picture of Sid&Nancy defrosted that morning and coming back to life in 2012 out of my mind…, they would have looked like we did…hi,hi. My friend started introducing me as Nancy (instead of Netty), nobody understood that joke except us…
After the boring opening speech and visiting the exhibition we drove back to Amsterdam. We had a great day together….
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