The Enduring Link Between Punk and Fashion: Keanan Duffty On The UK Scene
Pulling from his extensive knowledge of music and fashion, Keanan Duffty’s career has consisted of teetering between the two, oftentimes marrying them in perfect harmony. Hailing from the UK, Duffty attended fashion school and began trailblazing in that industry. Some of his notable projects include styling The Sex Pistols for their only American tour, and collaborating with David Bowie on an exclusive collection for Target. One of his newer endeavors is his band Slinky Vagabond. Together with bandmates Keanan Duffty and Fabio Fabbri, Slinky Vagabond pull from punk and rock influences from the 70s and 80s. Originating in 2007, Slinky Vagabond released their latest album, The Eternal Return, in 2025.
If you could just start by talking about your general interest in both fashion and music growing up? And what your perceptions were of punk and rock in its early years as well.
Well, when I was a kid, I was really into music, and there was one pop show in the UK every Thursday night called Top of the Pops, and everybody watched it. And then the next day at school, they would all talk about the bands that had been on there. It was like a chart show, but the bands that I love were the kind of glam rock bands and anybody that looked great, actually.
So anybody that looked great caught my eye. When I was a kid, I didn't realize where their clothes came from. I kind of thought they were being brought down from outer space and that was it.
As I got a bit older, I started getting interested in where the clothes came from, and I realized they were designed by people. It all seemed very out of reach. I grew up in the north of England and it's a very small coal mining town, and everything seemed out of reach
So when punk happened, that brought everything right in front of you. It also gave you permission to do stuff - to be a writer, to be a photographer, to be creative without feeling like you had to learn the skill. It kind of democratized everything. Just do it with passion and energy. And that's something that I've always really loved, whether it's music, whether it's fashion. But that was kind of the beginning of fashion for me.
So I was listening to the music, I was playing music as well. I got a guitar and thrashed around on it, played out of tune, I still play out of tune, and that was the beginning of it. And it was the style, the look of it and the sound of it. If that appealed to me, I was just into it.
It kind of led me in the direction of both fashion and music. I was in bands when I was a teenager, and then I went to college. Luckily I got into college, so I was able to get to London.
In the 80s, there was this band, Adam and The Ants, who were really big. They were kind of like the big pop stars, but they came out of punk and they had a very distinctive look. I met the guy who's their manager, and he kind of took me on. I looked very different in the 80s. I had bright orange hair and full makeup and platform shoes.
It was a very androgynous time in college. A lot of people you couldn't tell who were boys and girls. Everybody kind of went out to the same clubs and expressed themselves wearing whatever they wanted to wear. And it was kind of fascinating.
What was happening in the London scene at that time as well?
It was kind of still the energy of what had happened during punk, but it became more sort of polished, I guess because it was the 80s. It became more designed and more very image-conscious and somewhat packaged. Myself and my contemporaries, we were doing the packaging ourselves. It wasn't like we had some manager who's saying, “you have to wear this, you have to do this.” It was kind of us creating it.
What changes did you notice between the music in the 70s versus the 80s?
Well, the change was really technology. So in the late 70s, you had two guitars, bass, drums. That was it. And then the advent of keyboard synthesizers and home recording equipment that were cheap. So you could buy a synth for a relatively small amount of money. It wasn't unlike punk. It was a very do-it-yourself approach. And I was kind of putting the fashion together with the music.
And the guy who was managing me took me to the EMI Records, which is in the center of London. They had a very famous studio where they would let EMI artists record. And so we were there for a couple of days. We made a whole bunch of tracks.
Then at one point, the guy who was producing the session came to me and he said, “Oh, Freddie Mercury is in the next studio. Do you want to meet him?” And we were like, “Nah, it’s okay.” Because we were kind of young and arrogant. Of course, I never saw him again. Now I regret it. London at that time was quite small, the way you would connect with people, I mean, it was funny. Things just happened.
And so I kind of put together a little band. We did a lot of club shows. We put a record out, which was reviewed in the main music publication called Smash Hits, and the main fashion publication was called The Face. And they were the kind of two things that you wanted to be in. So I got a review of the record of the week in Smash Hits, and I got a double page spread in The Face. And so it kind of felt like, “Yeah, this is happening.”
In London were there a lot of DIY shows or clubs?
In the early 80s, there was a club in London called The Blitz Club. And a lot of people that became successful either as musicians or graphic designers or filmmakers, they came out of that scene. It's a small club, but it happened once a week. So artists like Boy George, Sade. But it wasn't just musicians, it was filmmakers. So people that went on to make kind of major films and video makers and graphic designers. It was a hive of activity.
When I was in college, many of those kids were a few years older than me. They were people that I really looked up to and they were kind of having success. So you sort of felt like, “Okay, it's not that far away. I can almost feel it.” And I think it's kind of an amazing thing to have that feeling that you can do it.
Around that same time, did you notice a connection between the rise in punk music versus punk fashion? And those same connections between music and fashion going into the 80s?
Well, the main touchstone for me in fashion was Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, their shop. Before I lived in London, probably 1978, I badgered my mom and dad to take me to London because I wanted to go to the store. And when you got to the store, at that time it was called Seditionaries, the windows were blacked out. To get in, there was a buzzer. And above the buzzer, there was a bronze plaque, and it said “for prostitutes, dykes, punks and soldiers.” So my dad was like, “I'm not going in there.”
So I pressed the buzzer and went in.There was a woman who used to manage the store and she had this mad beehive hair and black eyes a bit like, kind of like a cross between the Blade Runner eyes, and just some sort of demented creature of the night. She was standing at basically where they had the cash register, and she was reading the newspaper. In the store, they had a small kind of security TV. And through the window they had a camera so they could see exactly who was coming in, so you were under surveillance.
I walked in and it was really intimidating. It was kind of the most amazing retail experience I've ever had in my life because it made you feel something. And so I walked around the store and I went to buy something, I had to buy something. And the cheapest thing was a T-shirt, which was still like 25 pounds, which was a fortune, and I'd saved up my money. So I went to buy the t-shirt, and I didn't dare try it on, cause I didn't want to ask.
She was so scary and she didn't look up from the newspaper. She said, “It's 25 quid.” And I said, “Okay, I've got cash.” And she said, “Leave it on the counter.” She didn't look up for the newspaper at all. I put the money down and I walked out the store. It was kind of really, really scary, but brilliant. I’ve never experienced a moment at retail like that ever.
When I was in college, I got a Saturday job at a shop called PX, which was kind of like the mirror of Vivienne’s shop. And that was the new romantic period, which is kind of just under punk. The woman who was the manager there was named Rose. She said to me when I first started working there, “Don't talk to anyone that comes in.” And I was like, “Why?” And she said, “Don't talk to anyone. Just let them do their thing. Don't try to sell anybody anything.” And I was like, “Oh, okay. That's interesting. Why not?” And she said, “Well, they'll find what they want, and if they like it, they'll buy it. If it doesn't look good on them, tell them, ‘don't buy that, you look terrible in it.’” That always made a big impression on me.
When my wife and I had a store on Spring Street, I told the people that worked in our store the same thing, “Don't sell people. Let them find it. Come back for more. If they feel like it's the right environment and their own special space, they'll come back for more.”
And where did you hear about some of these punk boutiques?
Oh, I mean, when the Sex Pistols happened, they were on a local London TV show, and they swore they cursed on live TV. But The Pistols were on the show and they looked fantastic. They also brought their fans, and they were sort of standing behind the band. They already had a fan base and everybody looked great, they looked amazing. Then they cursed. I didn't see it because it was only on in London, but the next day it was in every single national newspaper. And there were stories of people smashing their own TVs.
People didn't talk about the music because people hadn't really heard the music. They talked about the way these people looked. Johnny Rotten had a fluffy mohair sweater. He looked like a bee. He had really skinny legs and then a fluff of sweater and orange hair.
So the next day we all saw the newspapers and we were like, “Oh, these people look amazing. Where do they get those clothes from?” And the message of that time was to make your own stuff.
Were you making your own?
Yeah, from the very beginning.
What were some of the more popular things people were making? Did you see similarities or was it really dependent on every single person?
In the beginning there wasn't a uniform. I saw someone in a beekeeper's outfit at a show with the hat on and everything. The best thing I ever saw was a girl walking down the street carrying a kettle as a handbag. But there weren't any rules. And then it became a mohawk and Dr. Martens shoes and leather jacket and the whole thing. But before that, people would just wear whatever.
The first time I ever met gay people was at a punk show. I talked to someone and they had plastic shoes on. I said, “Oh wow, that's amazing. Where'd you get those shoes from?”
And then they would say, “Oh, when you come into town, you should come to this pub, because if you go to this pub, you won't get beaten up by the roughnecks in town.” Then I'd go to the pub and then they'd be playing Donna Summer, and everybody's dressed like a punk. I'd be like, “Wait a minute, what's going on?” And then I'd see someone who was a couple of years older than me at school, and they'd say, “Oh, didn’t you know I'm gay?” And I was like, “I don't, what's that?” I think punk was kind of a bringing together of a lot of outcast people and different people that sort of maybe didn't fit in elsewhere. It was very positive in that way.
What did you notice about the shift between fashion being DIY into the uniform? Did you see that as bands became more mainstream?
Well, there was a first wave of bands, and they were basically the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Buzzcocks. That first wave was very influential. And then after that, the second kind of wave of bands were playing on the violence of punk.
And we kind of went away from it after that happened. So towards the end of 1978, it was sort of like, “Well, we don't want to be part of this anymore because it's become a uniform.” Also the newspapers were telling you what you had to wear to be a punk, and what you had to listen to be a punk. It's kind of like, well, that’s not what it's about.
After that first wave where anything goes, and any sort of form of creativity can be part of it, to being almost like, “You have to do this, you have to listen to that, and you have to wear this.” And that was when it splintered into what became all the scenes.
You styled the Sex Pistols for their American tour in the early 2000s. What was it like drawing inspiration for styling them based on punk and the current fashion trends at the time?
We had a design studio downtown, and we had a little shop on Spring Street. So Steve Jones and Paul Cook (of the Sex Pistols), they came over to our space where we worked, it was during that tour when I was doing clothes for them. And Steve said, “Oh, this is just like Malcom and Vivienne’s old place.” I had a lot of younger fashion students working for me. And he was saying, “Oh yeah, you've got all the urchins.” I mean, it was very Oliver Twist, his idea of this whole thing.
From my perspective, it was very much mirroring that DIY thing and taking these influences and throwing them all together. In the late 90s, early 2000s, I was doing a very kind of punk rock thing, but I was doing it in fashion week and in nice fabrics.
The Pistols thing came about because of a mutual friend who was a roadie for John Lydon (Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols). And when the Pistols were going to do that tour, they said to John, “Oh, you should get in touch with this guy in New York. You'd love his stuff. He's doing clothes and he's doing sneakers, and it'd be good to get clothes for the band.”
John actually called me at my studio at the end of the day, my wife said, “Oh, there's a guy on the phone. He says it's John Lydon. It's one of your stupid English bands.” But it was actually John. And he said, “Oh, I've heard about your clothes. Can I see some things?” And I said, “Yeah, sure.”
He gave me Steve's number and he said to call Steve Jones. So it was very haphazard. It was kind of like the people that influenced me, I suddenly got a chance to work with them.
Were you exclusively styling them or were you designing things as well?
I mean, there's a clip online with Glen Matlock, who was the original bass player. And then Sid was there, and then Glen rejoined again. And Glen says, “Oh, he just gave us a load of clothes.” And that's actually what happened. I sent a box of clothes to John. I sent a box of clothes to Steve. I think Steve sold the first box on eBay. And then I sent him another box of stuff. Steve's hilarious.
I'm also interested in talking about your band now, Slinky Vagabond. How did this specific band originate and become the version that we see today?
So this band started in 2007. I had been using that name Slinky Vagabond for fashion things and music things before. But in 2007, I put some music on MySpace, and this guy contacted me and he said, “Oh, I like your tunes, and if you ever want to record them properly, let me know.”
He said his name is Earl Slick, who was Bowie's longtime guitar player. And I thought it was like somebody pretending. And so I wrote back and I said, “Oh, interesting.” And then he said, “Look, I'm going to be in New York next week. A friend of mine has a show. Why don't you come and have a cup of tea and meet?” And I turned up and it was Slick.
So I said, “Yeah, I'd love to record some tracks.” And he said, “Well, I work with a studio up in Rhinebeck, and we can go up there, I've got some time.” And so I said, “What about the rhythm section?”And he said, “Well, have you got anyone in mind?” And I said, “I know Glen Matlock very well. And Glen's got a little studio in his house, so we could record up there and then send in files.”
I called Glen and I told him I'm doing this music. I wasn't sure whether to do it or not because it was a little bit intimidating. And Glen was like, “Oh, you really just do it. Go for it. I'll do the bass.”
And then a couple of days later, I knew Clem Burke through mutual friends as well. And so our mutual friend said, “Well, why don't you just ask Clem? He'll do it. He loves playing.” So I said to Clem, “Will you play?” And he's like, “Yeah, sure.” So then I called Glen and I said, “Clem's going to play drums.” And Glen was like, “Oh, I'm on a plane. I'm coming now.”
We kind of bashed out six songs in a day, and it sounded great. And then we got an offer to do the Joey Ramone Birthday Bash, which is a once-a-year fundraiser for Lymphoma research. It's at Irving Plaza, and it was supporting the New York Dolls.
And that was your first gig with this band?
That was the first gig I'd done for years. I hadn't done anything since the 80s.
Then Slick had a birthday party in 2009 or 2010, and we did a show there as well with one of the guys who plays in New York Dolls and a couple of other people.
I mean, basically that band was great, but as soon as we started doing stuff, it was the 30th anniversary of the Sex Pistols album, and they were going to do some reunion shows. And they were big shows. So Glen was off doing that. Then Blondie started touring again kind of properly, and they were going to do a whole load of festival shows. So it sort of drifted apart.
But we are all very good friends, and Slick and I played together a lot. Glen actually wrote a song on this new record, and Slick wrote one as well. So we kind of still work together, but just not as a band per se.
Who are some artists that really inspired your songwriting and your sound?
Those guys. I mean, literally Bowie when I was a kid, Pistols, Blondie. I'm totally blessed because I have the chance to work with people that you really admire, and I really like them.
One of my favorite recent releases is “Strange World.” I was just curious about how the lyrics were written.
I found a book called Strange World in a second hand record shop. It's kind of, I guess a sort of 60s version of conspiracy theories. And that was kind of the beginning of the idea for the lyrics. Then just the idea of, we are in literally a strange world. There's so much weird stuff that goes on politically, economically, globally, in a societal way. So that's really what informed the lyrics, just the kind of bizarreness of everything.
Sonically, who worked on instruments on this single?
So in 2017, I was invited to do a lecture in Florence, Italy. I asked them if I could bring somebody with me for the lecture. And the dean of that fashion school was a big music fan. And he said, “Yeah, who is it?” And I said, “Glen Matlock from the Sex Pistols.” And we did this talk about working. So he talked about working in Vivienne’s shop. I talked about working in PX, because we were trying to tell fashion students how important it is to work at retail. That's the way you find your community, and that's how you interact with people that might like what you do in a real way, tangible way. And it ended up being Glen telling all his stories about working with Vivienne and me asking questions, which is fine. But afterwards, this guy, Fabio Fabbri, came to me. He'd been sitting in the lecture and he came to me, and I knew he was trying to meet Glen really. But he said, “Hi, I'm Fabio and I have a recording studio, and would you guys like to come and play?”
We were on a very short timeline. And I said, “I'd love to, I can't speak for Glen, but I'll be back in a month.” And he was like, “Oh, okay.” So a month later I came back and he invited me to a studio. And we've kind of played around on a few tunes, which I don't really like jamming. It's not my thing at all. But he's an excellent guitar player, excellent musician. And what we found was a great friendship. I mean, that was the basis of it. So we started writing music together that became that first record, and then it's now another record. I pull in people who I love their playing, and I kind of know them and I want to add what they do to the mix of what we do.
What's been one of the proudest moments in your career so far?
Well, I got to work with Bowie. So I mean, it's not a music thing. I got to work with him on a fashion line. We met in 2006 to discuss it. And then the clothes went into the store in October of the following year, so 2007. I had a line at Target, which was a deal for three years. And I pitched it originally to David's manager. And then David and I met to talk about it, and he was interested. It just kind of grew from there.
As a kid when I was growing up, I mean this was the person who was on TV, like a total idol. So to actually get to work with him, there'll never be anything for me that would be better than that, I know. I feel very grateful to the universe for delivering that. He's really a nice guy, and he's very witty, very intelligent, and just a pleasure to work with. He knew what he wanted, so it wasn't just like, “Oh yeah, you go and do whatever.”
I mean it was a very organic sort of partnership. When I first met him, he did what I've seen other very famous people do, which is he made it feel like it was completely normal that you were in the room with this massive star. I've seen other movie stars do that too, where they have a way of diffusing it. Because if they don't, it's really weird and it feels awkward.
So that was the divine moment for me.
What's coming next?
I just had a book published in September. So I'm actually actively promoting that through next year and going to Mexico to do a big trade show there in January. As one project is ending, another one's starting. I keep telling my wife, I want to slow down, but I don't know if it's going to happen.
If you work in the creative industry, not everyone gets a chance to do what they love during the day. They're usually doing something that they don't want to do. And then they're kind of making the time to find the other thing. So if you're doing something that you love, you kind of have to embrace it.
What advice would you give a young person who's trying to build up their career?
I mean, I always say, just have a go. Don't let your own preconceptions about what you should or shouldn't do, or how talented you are, or how talented you are not, don't let that be an obstacle for you. Don't let other people's impressions of what you should do and where you should fit in and what you should create, just have a go.
Find Keanan Duftty on Instagram and his website. Listen to Slinky Vagabond’s latest release here!
All photos via Tori McGraw (@afterr.hourrs)
