Rock goddesses don't grow old, they just get more iconic. Happy 80th Debbie Harry

Telegraph

a day ago

Safe to say, Debbie Harry, who turns 80 today, is as unconventional as ever. At the Gucci show last autumn, she turned up in eight-inch red leather platform loafers, a pencil skirt and a red leather jacket, her upside-down W of a mouth painted to match (she wears lipstick most days). Don't look to her for tips on how to mouse your way apologetically into your later decades.
Other clothes she finds herself drawn to include 'rubber hotpants and fishnet stuff' – and the unpredictability of Lady Gaga's style. She still tours (she played Glastonbury in 2023). Millennials and Gen Zs earnestly dissect every step of her make-up routine on YouTube (it involves copious amounts of black kohl and metallic shadow). Fashion designers frequently cite her as an influence and in 2020, Miley Cyrus released a cover of Heart of Glass and spoke of the debt her generation of female singers owes Harry.
Last year Gucci anointed her the face of an advertising campaign, shot by Nan Goldin, for a hobo-styled shoulder bag called – what else? – the Blondie. She told me at the time she was flattered (who wouldn't be?), but seemed most excited about working with the experimental Goldin. As for the Blondie Bag, been there, done that. It reminded her of a saddle bag she'd been wearing decades ago when someone tried to mug her in New York, but failed because the straps were so strong. This anecdote is on the tamer side of the biblical horrors that befell her in her first half century – we're literally talking fires and plagues. Not that she's one to dwell.
Back in the mid-1970s, when she formed Blondie with her then-partner Chris Stein (who named it after Harry's tousled mane – she put the bed into head) was ascendant, I would have devoured all those 'How To Harry' tutorials. The only style nugget I ever remember her dispensing back then was never to wear those broderie anglaise petticoats that were all the rage one summer. 'Droopy' was the word I recall her using. Not that there was any YouTube to corroborate this.
Succinct is the word I'll use to describe her sartorial advice at that time. That's what the 1970s were like before celebrities learnt how to monetise their every nano-thought. She's become more loquacious on the subject in the past decade or so, probably because she's had to work harder to look after those blessed genes, so there's more to share. Back in the day, that famous blonde mane was inspired by the old school Hollywood sirens – particularly Marilyn Monroe, with whom she was obsessed – and it was often a DIY job.
'I'd colour it myself, so couldn't always reach the back,' she said of the dark patches which gave the otherwise pristine silver-screen image a far more rebellious inflection. Sometimes, on a whim, she'd shave the sides. Grace Kelly this was not.
Nowadays she has to treat her locks more circumspectly. She no longer uses ammonia to dye them. 'It burns my hair terribly. But I've had to bleach my hair for, well… a very long time, so it's not done too badly considering. I swear by Viviscal hair vitamins and Wen's cream conditioner that doesn't contain soap.'
Good tips. Amazingly, there are more where this came from. She avoids red meat, dairy and gluten, performs what she calls old lady exercises most mornings, walks her two dogs (Russian Chins since you ask) every day and gets a reasonable amount of sleep (although she does it in two shifts, which sounds far more sensible than lying awake fretting that she's not getting an eight hour block). Her style might be the definition of specific, but some of her dilemmas, in spirit if not in detail, are universal.
Like many women in their seventh and eighth decades, she is challenged by having so few examples to follow. 'I'm sort of at a crossroads right now,' she said in 2013 when she was a mere 68. 'I don't know if I'm making myself look foolish if I wear some of the clothes I feel comfortable wearing. And so that's my predicament'. Often when she's thinking about rubber and fishnets, she'll find herself wondering whether she shouldn't be wearing a Chanel jacket. I for one would love to see how she'd style it.
It's this internal tussle that makes her relatable to millions who are also navigating the ageing process. The fact that she seems to have fun – viz. that red outfit she wore to the Gucci show – while trying to work out some kind of route map is encouraging. She knows that punk and ageing are a delicate negotiation – or as she puts it, 'I don't want to look like an idiot, but I love costume. In fact I love clothes'.
Her wardrobe sounds major – everything from Saint Laurent to Comme des Garçons to Marc Jacobs and Manolos – and those are just the items she wears on a daily basis. She mentioned to me last year she's archived all her clothes from the past five decades. 'It's surprisingly organised,' she added. She told Elle magazine she finds getting rid of old clothes impossible. 'Vintage pieces like my Stephen Sprouse collection from the Seventies and early Eighties are too special to part with… I still wear a lot of his pieces. The stuff that fits anyway'.
If it irks her that her looks are still at least as pored over as her music, she's too pragmatic not to play the game. Hence the facelift she confessed to having in 2019, 'for business reasons'. She also remarked that Botox and filler are akin to having flu jabs, which in some circles they probably are. In Face It, her candid 2019 memoir, she writes, 'getting older is hard on your looks. Like everybody else, I have good days and bad days and those s--t, I-hope-nobody-sees-me days'.
Mind you, that's true whatever your age, although possibly not if you were Debbie Harry in the days when she appeared to view her God-given beauty with spectacular throwaway detachment . She was – is – blessed with spectacular genes. What the rest of us can learn from her is a positive, embracing attitude.
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