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CHRIS SULLIVAN - i-D magazine issue 9 1981 -

CHRIS SULLIVAN - Entertainer and face about town,  former fashion student, club organiser and legendary drinker with an uncanny talent for living tomorrow´s trends yesterday talks to i-D WHAT ? -´The world fashion is a puzzle to me - it´s a bit of a redundant word more relevant to the sweeping trends of the 60´s.  I prefer the word ´style´ - finding something which suites you, and you can wear night or day.  and carrving it off the end, with conviction.´ WAY ? - ´I just wear what I fancy at the time, and when people expect me to look a certain way,  I change : I like contradiction.  Like this thing about dressing to be successful,  I´ve always been battling against that.  I don´t like conforming, even to myself.  If you have to wear something to be successful then you shouldn´t wear it.  Everyone should lead or follow their own ideas,  the whole idea of fashion is horrible - very capitalist.  Like when that Zoot Suit thing caught on ,  it was a real sham for me.  Now I´ve got nothing to return to.  Like if I was out of ideas I´d  just  fish out a suit and my  hand painted ties and stick it on.  It´ like a staple diet - If there´s nothing else it the cupboard you can eat beans´ ARE ? - ´I dont see myself as a ringmaster, not categorically, but I have been copied at certain time. For example when that space look was going down I went to the Blitz dressed as Clark Kent - I even had a Kent cigarette packet in my top pocket, and notebook in my hat.  The next week people were turning up in suits and  hats.  I couldn´t  belive it.  I only did it for a joke.

HOW ? ´I´ not really into fitness - my thoughts are healthy mind, healthy body - and not just the other way round,  I´ve got a set of weights, just for show.  I wake up in the morning, think they´re doing me good, and go back to sleep.  I think this jogging thing is really dangerous.  I saw this piece in a paper where a guy jogging had been struxk by lightning.  I think that was a sign from the gods to stay away from it. ANY ? ´I was a member of the Workers Revolutionary committee and had very definite philosophical ideas based around Marx.  But I realised the only way to change the system is from the inside out,  you  can´t in and change it,  I´ve still got definite ideas about religion,  I´m an aethestic, I don´t belive in a higher power - it´s a very vain concept, I feel life is yours and you should get on with what you want to do,  you make your own destiny.  I´m not going to base my life around a book written by manks in the 4th Century, people really belive Mathew, Mark, Luke and so on simply got out a typewriter and said : ´Right , this is what happened, it´s a killer.´

PICS BY STEVE JOHNSTON 1981

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