photography LUCAS JONG
styling CLOUD CHOI
art direction CLIFFORD LOH
text GRACE HONG & LESLEY CHEE
The year is 1983. The Thin White Duke graces our shores with the Serious Moonlight World Tour, bringing with him a riotous mix of classicism and modernism; wide-legged suits, upturned collars, and artfully-undone bowties; and a heady, intoxicating dose of film noir and theatricality. His enamoured subjects throng the concert halls, and, embodying their worship in emulation, overflow into the temples of youth—the shopping malls, transforming these once-humdrum symbols of urbane urban life into a spectacle of ruffles, frills, silk, and taffeta. These Far East Kids and Centrepoint Kids, as they were knighted, luxuriated in a wild, reckless abandon—going nowhere fast, but looking damned good as they did. Fast forward to 2019. These New Romantics find a resurgence in the gender-blending flamboyance that is Gucci’s Spring/ Summer 2019 collection. Pictured here in their natural, rightful habitat, we pay homage to the pursuits of the original Kids, which were later immortalised in the photographic book Ricochet—an intimate documentation of their Royal Highness on tour. “I am supposed to say something to the children in the Singapore audience,” David Bowie muses. “These children who are doomed to ride the up escalator forever.”
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