On July 10, the V&A in London launched its latest fashion exhibition, “From Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s,” tracing the creative force of the post-punk, gender-bending night-crawlers orbiting Leigh Bowery and never missing Steve Strange’s Blitz club. And, how they influenced designers at the time, like John Galliano, Katharine Hamnett, Betty Jackson, Wendy Dagworthy, and a certain lady named Vivienne Westwood.

Stephen Jones, too, forged his mad-milliner identity alongside those very clubbers, in those very places, during those very years. He alludes to the carefree wildness of the time in this clip from a previous interview with Hint…

I’m told you were quite the club kid many moons ago.
Oh, yeah! I was a real club bunny. I wasn’t out every night, but almost every night.

Where did you go?
So many places, but my first love would have to be The Blitz. There were all these people absolutely dressed to the nines. I really got into it. I found all these kindred spirits, all these misfits like me. A lot of them are still my friends, like Princess Julia, Boy George, Jean Paul Gaultier and Leigh Bowery until he passed away, R.I.P.

That must have been incredible. What kind of trouble did you get into?
Oh, just being disorderly and terrorizing everyone. We were very cliquey, very exclusive, very fabulous—a real pain in the ass. You know, the hallmark of a good party in those days was if we crashed it.

Stephen Jones also features prominently in this video by Crane.tv that catches up and reminisces with some of those colorful creatures of the night…