This is a study for the cover of Honey magazine of August 1984.

Finding it in the mid-eighties was like stumbling across an unmarked oasis when your water had run out miles back. Single texture had not vanished completely at that point since there were what Lorraine calls minkymacs and cheap fawn rainjackets to be seen. But this Honey spread was something of a different order, a rubberised raincoat alive in the world of proper fashion, the world of Katherine Hamnett, no less! Classic mac, classic colour, and, heaven, classic brass hook and eye at the collar, the proper thing! Priced for the glitterati, at £135, in 1984 a very proper South Molton Street figure.

Inside there was more - the record of a photoshoot showing the contact strip with the rejected images scored out. So you couldn't see them!! What frustration! What money wouldn't you have given for them to have left out those vandalistic crosses so you could enjoy 8 images and not just the one!

Still, there was one, that was the important point.

On the cover the model is in fun mode, but by the time she appears again on page 66 she is getting quite punky - which of course is one way for mackintosh gear to go. The mac with its belt and buttons and wriststraps pressures her into 'wrapping up warm', but she rebels! She plants her legs astride, knots her belt, pushes up her sleeves for no reason on earth, leaves the front not open exactly but certainly not buttoned either, puts on one rubber glove (well, isn't it?), and with the other hand grasps her own lapel with brutal aggression. What if it cost £135? She couldn't care. She will wear it how she wants. She is her own person. It may be 1984 but Big Brother does not frighten her.

One more lovely thing about Honey that August, or maybe two. It showed Converse in top form, boots, half-undone rebel-style, sweetly sleek and rubbery: £16.99 from Meenys.

Canvas Converse boots, worn by the very lucky (but unnamed) model who put Katherine Hamnett's cream rubberised mac through its rippling paces.

Meenys, £16.99.

Val

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