A fictional reimagining of the themes explored in The Clash’s 1977 song Remote Control. London, 1977. At just 21, Belinda Strong is making clothes for punk royalty and fighting for garment workers’ rights. But when her father’s illness threatens everything, a lucrative fashion contract offers salvation. What happens when the price of success is surrendering the very principles she lives by?
by Chris Harris
Belinda Strong was born in 1956 and grew up in a semi-detached house in Purley with her father and his mother. In the early 1960s, she had already discovered her passion for needlework. Her grandmother taught her to sew while she was still at primary school. Belinda loved rooting through her grandmother’s needlework and knitting boxes, fascinated by the different tools, needles, coloured reels of cotton, wool, buttons and all the wonderful things you could do with them when you fired up your imagination.
She began by making clothes for her dolls before progressing to simple skirts, sifting through Gran’s drawer of sewing patterns. Belinda chose the material and imagined the finished garment; her grandmother insisted on straight seams, level hems and doing things again when they were wrong.
By fourteen, she was buying clothes from jumble sales and transforming them. She took jackets apart to understand their construction, filled exercise books with designs and made outfits for friends who wanted something they had seen in a magazine but could not afford.
She left school at sixteen in 1972 and enrolled at the London College for the Garment Trades, which became the London College of Fashion during her time there. Her father approved. Talent was useful, but learning a trade might enable her to earn a living.
Her father was an active trade unionist. Union papers lay on the kitchen table, and politics regularly interrupted the evening news, during which he would shout at the television and telephone the BBC and ITV to complain about their establishment bias. He was particularly contemptuous of politicians who claimed to represent ordinary working people while doing precisely what big business told them.
He was enormously proud of his daughter, even if he didn’t always understand her fashion choices.
Over two years at college, Belinda studied pattern cutting, garment construction and fitting. She learned how fabrics behaved and why something that looked wonderful on paper might hang disastrously on a person. Impatient to develop her own designs, she nevertheless took pride in mastering the technical work, whilst understanding that trial and error was the bedrock of her design flair.
She also began taking a greater interest in her father’s politics. Her love of clothes and fashion increasingly overlapped with her concern for the workers who produced them, particularly the women employed in London’s garment factories.
Belinda began attending trade union meetings with her father, who, through her, had also begun to take a specific interest in the clothing industry’s practices, listening to arguments about wages, working conditions and the exploitation of women. Before long, she was distributing leaflets outside factory gates, joining picket lines and supporting machinists and seamstresses, many of them young immigrant women working long hours for pitiful wages. She was incensed by an industry that celebrated glamorous designers while treating the women who made their clothes as disposable labour. She began making banners for demonstrations, using her sewing skills to produce bold slogans and striking images. For Belinda, fashion and politics were becoming inseparable, and she was determined to challenge the industry from within.
By eighteen, she had joined a small dressmaking workroom producing clothes to order. Initially employed on alterations and finishing, she gradually earned more demanding work. The customers were comfortably off and their tastes rarely excited her, but she learned how to produce beautifully fitted, carefully finished garments. At home, she continued experimenting with her own clothes. She had already turned down an opportunity to supply a fashionable boutique after discovering that the garments would be manufactured by poorly paid workers.
Her growing reputation brought some unexpected attention. In 1975, at nineteen, she appeared on the cover of Nova, accompanied by an article about young women challenging the conventions of fashion. It was an extraordinary achievement for someone still working from her bedroom, although the publicity brought her considerably more admiration than money.
She met Darren in 1976. His band, Invasion, had secured support slots with the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned. Through rehearsals, gigs and backstage introductions, she became part of the emerging punk scene.
She made clothes for Darren and his bandmates first. Other requests followed. By 1977, she was producing individual garments for members of the Pistols, Siouxsie Sioux, The Slits and Adam Ant. She designed for men and women, and particularly enjoyed customers who encouraged her to experiment, especially Vivienne Westwood, who had become something of a mentor.
At twenty-one, people within that world knew her name. Her clothes appeared on stages and in photographs, although the money rarely reflected the attention. But she maintained her integrity as she continued to learn, develop and network; she chose her commissions, controlled her designs and dealt directly with the people wearing them. She had learned a trade and found a way to practise it on her own terms. That was what success meant to Belinda.
She had ambitions to establish her own workshop, employing a handful of machinists on decent wages and producing small collections under her own name. She approached her bank with a business plan, examples of her work and press cuttings from Nova and Vogue, which had recently published a substantial feature about her, Punk Girl.
The bank manager was impressed by the clothes and ideas, but the admiration didn’t extend to lending her any money. She had no property, no savings and no financial security. He suggested she return when she had established herself in business, which struck Belinda as rather defeating the object of asking for a business loan in the first place.
Her tender age, firebrand politics and association with Vivienne Westwood had nevertheless brought her to the attention of the wider fashion industry. Clothing chains began approaching her, offering sums of money that seemed extraordinary compared with what she earned making individual garments. She batted them away, convinced that the clothes would inevitably be manufactured in sweatshops.
One of the most persistent was Buttercup, a clothing chain with more than ninety large shops dotted around Britain. Its customers were predominantly younger people, and the company liked to present itself as a progressive alternative to the rather fuddy-duddy world of Marks & Spencer, Debenhams and C&A.
Punk fashion was becoming commercialised. Not the hardcore ripped T-shirts, bondage trousers and anarchic creations worn by the movement’s hardcore followers, but toned-down garments that could be sold to teenagers whose parents might otherwise have objected to their appearance.
Buttercup wanted a slice of the action, and its directors had decided that Belinda Strong was precisely the person to provide it. During a joint interview with Darren for Honey magazine, Belinda revealed that Buttercup had approached her several times. She wasn’t unilaterally opposed to working with a large clothing company, she explained, but she certainly wouldn’t do so while its garments were being produced through exploitation.
Buttercup insisted that it was a progressive employer with excellent working conditions. Belinda remained sceptical, particularly after hearing complaints from union contacts about the company’s Sutton factory.
Meanwhile, her father had suffered a serious stroke. The family wondered whether years of stress and political indignation had contributed to it, although nobody could say for certain. Initially, the doctors suggested that he might make a full recovery, but the reality was proving anything other than encouraging.
His mother, now in her late seventies, was struggling to cope with caring for him. Belinda was a true daddy’s girl and was heartbroken by the lack of progress in his recovery. Additional physiotherapy, specialist assistance and regular nursing support might make an enormous difference, particularly if they could keep him comfortably at home. Unfortunately, the family couldn’t afford the level of private help they wanted.
Belinda worked every available hour; she was exhausted, worried about her father and increasingly conscious that her grandmother was becoming overwhelmed. Darren was being cruel to be kind when he suggested her talents and integrity did not lend themselves to a sound business model. With a heavy heart, when Buttercup approached her for the umpteenth time, she finally agreed to sit down with its directors.
You have to remember that Belinda was only twenty-one years old and had virtually no business experience, other than an established talent for not charging enough for her work.
The meeting took place at Buttercup’s head office, where the managing director, a jovial man in his fifties, welcomed her as the future of British fashion. He confessed that he didn’t know much about punk rock. The marketing director was considerably more knowledgeable, or at least had read several articles about the subject. He explained that Buttercup wanted to capture the rebellious youth market without frightening the parents who were paying for most of the clothes.
Belinda would produce a range of soft, punk-inspired garments aimed at fifteen to thirty-year-olds. Buttercup would manufacture, distribute and promote the collection through its nationwide stores. Most importantly, the directors promised her complete creative freedom. She could design whatever she wanted, they assured her. They weren’t interested in interfering with her artistic vision. Their job was simply to bring her creations to the widest possible audience.
The money was extraordinary. The initial payment alone would cover months of additional care for her father, and further payments would be tied to the collection’s success.
The designs themselves would be a doddle. To be honest, Belinda reckoned she could produce most of them in a couple of days. Her problem was the factory. She insisted on visiting Buttercup’s Sutton premises before signing anything, explaining that she wanted to speak directly to the workers and make sure the company practised what it preached.
At Sutton, she was introduced to the factory manager and several employees. The premises were clean, the machinery modern and the workers appeared reasonably content. She spoke to machinists and other staff, asked about their wages and working conditions, and was reassured by what she heard. Even the union representative acknowledged that conditions had improved considerably following earlier disagreements with management.
What Belinda didn’t appreciate was that the factory was largely concerned with printing, finishing and packaging garments. The company had shown her a perfectly respectable part of its operation without explaining where the clothes themselves were manufactured.
Satisfied that her fears had been unfounded, she signed the contract.
Her first collection was launched under the slogan, “Belinda Strong. Clothes for a Generation That Refuses to Be Told What to Do.” She thought it was rather good. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before she discovered that the supposed creative freedom meant something slightly different to Buttercup’s marketing department.
One of her designs featured a striking illustration of some women with banners and the slogan, Fight the System. The directors loved the artwork but considered the political message unsuitable for their customers. They removed the slogan and replaced it with the words Rebel Girls.
Belinda was furious, but the marketing director explained that the original message was too confrontational and that customers wanted the appearance of rebellion rather than a lecture about industrial relations. The T-shirt became the company’s biggest seller.
Other designs were similarly modified. Political slogans disappeared, provocative images were softened and anything considered too controversial was quietly removed. Belinda protested repeatedly, only to be reminded that the company had promised her freedom to design, not necessarily freedom to decide which designs went into production, and that the contract’s full independence applied to design, not the content of the slogans, which they remained in control of. “We have to protect our brand,” a condescending marketing executive kept reminding her.
She also discovered that Buttercup’s public relations department expected to approve her interviews, photographs and public appearances. Journalists were encouraged to submit questions in advance, and she was provided with carefully prepared statements about the company’s progressive employment policies.
Darren found the whole business hilarious, although Belinda was becoming increasingly irritated. She had spent years fighting against precisely the sort of corporate interference that was now beginning to dictate her professional life.
Nevertheless, the money continued arriving, and her father’s condition was gradually improving. The additional nursing care and physiotherapy seemed to be working as a tonic. He was becoming more mobile; his speech was improving.
Belinda told herself that the compromises were relatively minor. After all, young people who couldn’t afford individually designed clothes were now able to buy something fashionable at a reasonable price. Surely that was better than allowing expensive boutiques to monopolise the latest styles?
Meanwhile, her growing commercial success brought increasing media attention. Her face appeared in newspapers and magazines, and Buttercup’s publicity department enthusiastically promoted the remarkable story of a twenty-one-year-old designer who had gone from making clothes for punk bands to supplying one of Britain’s largest clothing chains.
Her success eventually brought an invitation to appear on BBC One’s Nationwide, the popular early evening current affairs programme.
The producers were fascinated by her story, and Buttercup’s publicity department considered the invitation an excellent opportunity to promote the collection. Belinda was delighted, particularly as her father was now well enough to watch from home, where his mother had arranged a small gathering of friends and neighbours.
The interview began pleasantly enough, with the presenter congratulating her on her remarkable success and asking whether punk fashion hadn’t rather sold its soul by appearing on the high street.
Belinda laughed, explaining that she saw nothing wrong with ordinary young people being able to afford fashionable clothes, provided the workers making them were properly treated.
“Which brings us rather neatly to Buttercup,” the presenter continued. “You’ve been very outspoken about the exploitation of workers in the clothing industry, haven’t you?”
“Absolutely. I’ve always said I wouldn’t work with a company that exploited its workforce.”
“And you visited Buttercup’s factory in Sutton before signing your contract?”
“Yes, I did. I met the workers, saw the conditions and satisfied myself that they were being properly paid.”
“Well, that’s rather interesting, Belinda, because we’ve been making some enquiries ourselves. The Sutton factory doesn’t actually manufacture the garments, does it? It prints the designs and packages the finished products.”
Belinda looked momentarily confused.
“The actual garments are manufactured in India, in factories where workers are paid a fraction of British wages. We’ve spoken to people involved in their production, and the conditions they’ve described are rather different from those you saw in Sutton. Were you aware of that?”
For the first time in her short but increasingly celebrated career, Belinda Strong had absolutely nothing to say.
“And given your very public opposition to precisely this sort of exploitation, don’t you think you’ve been rather badly misled? Or perhaps you simply didn’t ask the right questions?”
She stared at the presenter, suddenly conscious of the cameras, the studio lights and the millions of people watching.
Somewhere in Purley, her father was sitting in front of the television, watching his daughter discover that everything she had fought against had become the foundation of her success; in truth, the pride he felt at the start of the interview turned, in an ugly manner, to contempt towards himself for being too ill to advise her.
Buried amongst the clauses she had barely understood when signing was a three-year exclusive agreement preventing her from designing clothing for competing manufacturers. Buttercup retained the commercial rights to the designs she had supplied and could continue manufacturing and selling them throughout the contract period.
It was a bitter lesson. Without her father, Darren had begged her to use a solicitor, but Belinda was too young and punk to consider lawyers, reading what she wanted to see and failing to acknowledge that a large clothing chain’s modus operandi was to look after itself and its shareholders through contracts worded to screw over the likes of Belinda Strong.
Belinda couldn’t afford the legal fees to fight the contract; besides, it was watertight. She couldn’t down tools and go on gardening leave, as she couldn’t afford to lose the money and jeopardise the care that was finally helping her father recover.
Now her name was appearing in shop windows across Britain in a chain of stores she loathed, her designs were being manufactured in factories she had never visited, and a group of businessmen she barely knew were deciding what she could make, where she could work and what she was allowed to say.
Belinda Strong had become a brand that Belinda Strong no longer controlled, one instead worked by the remote control from the Buttercup boardroom.
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Something About England: Amazon.co.uk: Harris, Mr Christopher, Turner, Louise: 9798181129351: Books
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