To Lisa and Rick from the movie Casablanca it always remained Paris. Gucci, under the creative guidance of Sabato De Sarno, will also have the rest. «London, but not only: Milan, New York… I believe that this campaign is international, a voice for the world», reflects Debbie Harry about We’ll Always Have Londona photo story produced by De Sarno and directed by the photographer-activist Nan Goldin, with the setting of the most swingin’ city, (obviously) Gucci costumes and two stars of exceptional homonymy. But there is no risk of confusing Blondie-bag, legendary model from 1971, with Blondie-frontwoman, post-punk legend of music and style. De Sarno had an ear for connecting the dots: giving Blondie what was practically already Blondie’s. The same revolutionary and eternal, classic and avant-garde spirit for two masterpieces.
A photo of Debbie Harry, singer of the group Blondie, in the Gucci campaign directed by NAan Goldin
Sitting at a table on the Terrazza Triennale in Milan, a few floors from the recently concluded Gucci show, Debbie Harry holds her Blondie in her hands. Perfect nail polish, perfect black pencil skirt, ivory hair like the shirt with a complicated neckline, also the perfect one. Impeccable, despite the same stainless rebellious charisma. She was an ante-brat, that girl who left Miami with a suitcase full of talent (highly underrated as a lyricist who wrote to the music of her partner Chris Stein) and an explosive appearance. It was a cross between past and future, between Marilyn and Kate Moss, it enchanted the artists of the from New York to London Factory and the CBGB club audience. «At the beginning I was the opposite of “fashionable”», she admits. «Back in the day, everything you wore torewe tore, we tore… It became a style manifesto. I think it was more of a state of mind.” But there is no nostalgia for that period in which talent, real talent, created the new: «They were different times. There were wars then too, but more restrictions, bans… People tried to get around them and escape, we were always on the run. And, returning to Casablanca, there was a conflict there too, today I would like to go there, I have never been there! Friend of Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Andy Warhol, she was much more than one factory girl: it was the image and face of a band, his, which contributed to creating new wave. She was beautiful, photogenic, had an artistic and aesthetic sense. «I dressed myself, taking inspiration from the 60s, from Paul Weller, even a little from hippies but in small doses. I think fashion is this: layers of time and layers of ideas that, for some reason or collision, go in a certain direction.” They go all over the world, in fact. So even couture realizes the potential of that blonde cyclone capable of passing by Rapture a Heart of Glass o Call Me.
Debbie Harry (Photo by Chris Gabrin/Redferns per Getty) in uno scatto del 1978
The first designer to focus on her was Stephen Sprouse. “Adorable. Do you know him? We lived in the same apartment in the Village. At the time he was already working for Halston and when he told me “I want to dress you” that’s when the upgrade happened and my style became more sophisticated.”
Zebra-print dresses, belts over briefs, t-shirts with provocative messages… She wasn’t a pioneer just because she sang reggae or rapped. Among the memorable looks, the favorite is «a short black dress that I wore with high boots and a Bonnie hat, the one with Clyde. I felt very good.” Accessories, bags that have made their mark, from the era? “Certainly never anything like this,” he says, caressing the black skin of his Blondie. «I remember one, obviously unsigned, that I bought in a small leather shop in the West Village where they made everything by hand. I still have it.” We ask her what she keeps in her Gucci now and she doesn’t hesitate to show us the contents of her beloved, decidedly essential: the iPhone, the powder “inseparable for me” and a lipstick. The voice of the world always travels lightly.
The band Blondie, in a photo from 1979. From left, clockwise, Chris Stein, Debbie Harry, Nigel Harrison, Clem Burke, Frank Infante and Jimmy Destri. (Photo by Maureen Donaldson/Getty Images)
Chris Stein (with the torn shirt), Jimmy Destri (with the gray t-shirt), Debbie Harry, Gary Valentine (in black) and Clem Burke (with a polka dot shirt) of the band Blondie pose at the Bel Air Sand Hotel in Los Angeles in 1977 (Photo by Suzan Carson/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
A photo of Blondie taken in New York, New York in the seventies (Photo by Anthony Barboza/Getty Images)
