Totally Stockholm 1
homes in west London and Stockholm) and the notor
ious Chelsea Hotel in New York and back again. It’s a much picked over, formative period — thick with tales of Miles Davis plying a young Neneh with Toblerone. But it wasn’t until Cherry decided to move to London as a 15-year-old (and found a career in bands ranging from femme-punk agitators The Slits to neo-jazz collective Rip Rig + Panic) that she truly felt she had found home. “Obviously my parents worried,” says Cherry now. “But I think they were honestly kind of relieved that I found my path.” Her eyes glimmer and her smile widens as she remembers the vitality of the early 80s scene - her job making punk merchandise in Better Badges on Portobello Road, witnessing ‘the rebellion’ of a reggae sound system for the first time, even the ‘support network’ of friends that helped her when she had her first daughter, Naima, at 18, with drummer ex-husband Bruce Smith. It’s no accident that this period - and that posse of musicians, artists and designers - is occupying Cherry’s thoughts at the moment. In February, Judy Blame - the male jeweller and fashion icon who had been Cherry’s stylist, friend and creative sounding board for more than 30 years - died of cancer. It was Blame, alongside the late Ray Petri, who popularised the rugged, mismatched ‘Buffalo’ style (cycling shorts with puffer jackets, trench coats and combat boots) that appeared in magazines such as The Face and i-D, birthed a loose, multicultural collective and was, of course, namechecked on Cherry’s breakout single. Today - as she idly fondles the Judy Blame badges pinned to her jacket and remembers laughing with him near the end about the fantastically impractical Philip Treacy orb hat he wore to her and McVey’s 1990 wedding - she is keen to stress the guiding influence the maverick stylist still has over her look. “My collaboration with Judy was about us not repeating ourselves,” she says. “We were not into being nostalgic but there was always a thread of fearlessness to what we did. I still feel his presence here. And what I’m wearing in the Kong video feels very Buffalo to me.” Blame was the one who dressed Cherry for her indelible, pregnant appearance on Top of the Pops in 1988, with her gold medallion swinging and black Lycra pulled tight over her sevenmonth bump. And - as the 1989 promotional campaign for her Brit-winning debut album Raw Like Sushi coincided with the birth of her second daughter, Tyson - it was Blame who conceived outfits that often had to combine the Buffalo aesthetic with the ability to nip backstage and breastfeed. “I’ve talked about it so much that I’m not sure what else there is to say,” Cherry says of the TOTP moment. But in light of Cardi B cancelling a planned tour with Bruno Mars to prolong her maternity leave, I wonder how Cherry reflects on her own time balancing motherhood with the bullseye of her late-80s fame. “I felt in that time that I had to do it,” she says, after a moment’s pause. “Because the expectation was that I would go away and I would never be seen again and that would be it. So me being the person that I am, I just wanted to take it the opposite way. I knew that I could do it and I wanted to.” She stops again, carefully selects her words. “But I also know it was really crazy and really busy and somewhere in that time it started to feel like a 10