Living in Harsh Times
“Amy? I was speaking to her on Skype yesterday. She’s fine.” Jodie Harsh is, of course, referring to that icon of insobriety, Amy Winehouse, who is currently ensconced in St Lucia. At just 24, it’s clear that Harsh already knows a lot of people. Through her captivating appearance, she has found herself at the centre of London’s scene crowd and the surrounding circuit of faces that parallels what is so definably “in”.
Harsh is a rising face tailor-made for the 21st century. With her club night “Circus” and a guaranteed invite to all the right parties, she is a permanent fixture in the youth culture Bibles, as well as the gossip pages of red-tops and London freesheets. Whether handing out cups of tea to paparazzi outside Winehouse’s flat or upstaging Bruno at the recent Leicester Square Premiere, we are always aware that we are living in Harsh times.
Harsh’s time as a student in London was not typical of the experience we associate with post-adolescent life. A keen businessperson, she recognised that getting ahead meant getting noticed: “I went to London College of Fashion. I did Fashion Promotion which is fashion and journalism and PR. All the way through university I was working in clubs. I’ve been doing it for six years now. The whole way through I was going out all the time, meeting interesting people and making my way up to the top.”
The rise of Jodie Harsh coincided with what was interpreted in the mainstream media as “new-rave”, which led to a focus on the more niche, decorated nightlife in London. Dirtydirtydancing.com, a website chronicling the recent pictorial history of this scene, became the trend predictor’s dream and led to more interesting fashion becoming available at a mass level.
It also meant that its ‘stars’ (i.e. the people appearing in outrageous outfits at least once a week) found themselves at the centre of more high-profile attention. I asked Harsh whether she felt she owed any debt to this scene, but she remained coy: “To a degree it probably did help, but hanging out with my friends like Kate Moss and Amy Winehouse brought people’s attention to me. Also, what I do has always been quite a quality product. I’m never really trashy, despite the name, I just do a lot of hard work.”
“Yeah my lips are massive. They’re not Pete Burns big but they’re big. No girls look like me. Maybe Jordan”
For the moment, this work is centred on the fashion and music industries. Jodie has her own club night, Circus, which was a weekly fixture in the club kid’s diary until its recent closure: “We moved it to Shoreditch after Soho Revue Bar closed. I ended the weekly Circus a couple of weeks ago because I wanted a bit of a break. Everyone’s away at festivals over the summer. I want to concentrate on bigger nights held more sporadically.” Harsh’s pulling power as a host has never been in question, Lovefoxx, the Geldof girls and Roisin Murphy have all guest DJed for her. Circus’ biggest night ever is being held on the 4th July at Matter at the O2. Siouxsie Sioux, Kissy Sellout , Frankmusik and Harsh herself are teaming up with the underground Gutterslut club from Shoreditch.
Core to Harsh’s appeal is the visual performance that accompanies her DJing. She has scribed drag into the London fashion-conscience. I wondered whether she separated James (or Jay, as her friends call her) from Jodie, and whether they were two different personalities. She insists, though, that “Jodie is completely just a look, I don’t think I act any different, I’m just gilding the lily, it’s like my warpaint. I like to play around with my appearance. I’m like an exaggerated version of femininity because no girls look like me (maybe Jordan). I’ve got a really over the top girly look.” Harsh tells me what she’s wearing at the moment: “I really like JCDC [Jean-Charles de Castelbajac], I really like Ashish, Juicy Couture have done some cool stuff, they’re not just doing velour tracksuits! And Alexander McQueen of course, he’s my friend.”
How many celebrity friends can one person have? Jodie reassesses: “Some people I just bump into like I saw Peaches and Pixie last night at the Bruno premiere. I don’t hang out with them they’re not my friends or anything. Kelly Osbourne I see when she’s in London.” For regular updates on the activities of Harsh, her Twitter is a deeply candid, absolutely hilarious record of the people she meets on her travels through the world of celebrity. She recently revealed details of her new Juvederm lip fillers: “Yeah my lips are massive.” She tells me, “They’re not Pete Burns big but they’re big.”
Harsh’s future looks bright, and the drag superstar wants to move on to developing her career in music: “I’ve been doing some remixes for William Orbit [who most famously produced Madonna’s Ray of Light], I’d love to work with him on an actual original track, so you never know. Late this year or the beginning of next year things are definitely going to happen. I’m interested in producing new music because it’s got a lot of longevity and it goes well with the DJing. I doubt I’ll do drag forever. I don’t want to do drag when I’m old and wrinkly.” M
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