‘More of an attitude’: how 1985’s Buffalo look changed fashion for ever

Fashion’s historic references come and go. Currently, they might include Harrison Ford in shorts in the 1970s and 90s Oasis. But there are also some that are canon – such as Buffalo, the look masterminded by stylist Ray Petri and photographer Jamie Morgan in the mid-80s.

Shaped largely through fashion shoots for the Face magazine, the duo created a look that reflected the culture and creativity of London at the time, but gave it the classy and cinematic feel of a Marlon Brando portrait or a shot by Henri Cartier-Bresson. This beautifully lit black-and-white photography of street-cast models and people – including a then-unknown Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Neneh Cherry and Nick Kamen, who later went on to star in Levi’s famous 1985 launderette advert – went on to shape both fashion photography and fashion.

Still, defining the Buffalo aesthetic is not easy. Speaking to the Guardian, Morgan covers everything from Buffalo as “a collective” rather than a look, to the genesis of its name (they took inspiration from Bob Marley’s 1983 track Buffalo Soldier and the buffalo as used by Native Americans). “It’s grown to be more of an attitude,” he says. “It’s being independent, being authentic in who you are, being a bit of a maverick, being an outsider, not curtailing to the industry.”

Morgan is speaking ahead of the publication of a new book, 1985 Buffalo, published by Idea Books, which features images from shoots by Morgan and Petri from 1985. Naomi Campbell was pivotal in the book’s commission. “She did her exhibition at the V&A [and asked to feature these images],” Morgan says. Looking for the images, he discovered a box in his archives labelled “1985”. As well as the Campbell shots, it had “all the shoots you see in the book”. This chance discovery speaks to the time. “We never thought of a legacy,” he says. “We had no idea that [Buffalo] was going to become so much part of British culture. We were just doing our thing.”

Morgan met Petri in 1982 but he says it wasn’t until 1985 that “we were in our full flow”. As well as young supermodels, the year boasts what is probably the most iconic Buffalo image – that of 12-year-old model Felix Howard (the son of a friend) dressed in a suit, polo neck and fedora featuring a ripped piece of newspaper showing the word “killer”, staring directly at the camera. Part punk, part James Cagney via Bugsy Malone, it’s a provocative image, and it became the cover of the Face in March 1985.

“We were changing the nature of styling quite quickly,” he says. “This shoot crystallised the fact that fashion photography was not about clothes … It was about attitude, styling, DIY, [an] accumulation of ideas, cultural references, film references … I think that’s why it really resonated with so many people.”

Rather than designer clothes, Buffalo was about secondhand finds, army surplus pieces and dressing up. “We’d get a secondhand double-breasted pinstripe and then mix it with a tracksuit that we’d get from a sports shop,” Morgan says. Characters were crucial, from the gangster movies that inspired the Howard shoot to Black cowboys. “We realised they had been very instrumental in the American culture, but had been whitewashed completely,” he says. “Now with Louis Vuitton, it’s become a thing. But at the time, we were like, ‘Wow, look at these incredible Black cowboys.’”

Some of the images haven’t dated well 40 years on – a Native American headdress worn as an accessory, which could be viewed as cultural appropriation. Morgan also says he put an image of a topless Howard on social media, and was inundated with comments on how he was “sexualising young kids” with others saying, “‘What are you talking about? You must be perverted if you see that as a sexual image.”’ He concedes that doing the same picture in 2025 would have a different reaction. “Now, you couldn’t do it,” he says.

Even with these caveats, part of the lasting legacy of Buffalo comes from the diverse group of people who were involved in it. “Most of the Buffalo people were from immigrant families, strangely enough, myself being Jewish, Neneh (whose parents were from Sweden and Sierra Leone), the Kamens were half Burmese,” says Morgan. Street casting was central. “Ray would say, ‘Oh, look at that guy on the fruit and veg shop,’” Morgan remembers. “I would go up and ask him to come to the studio … Of course, you didn’t have mobile phones, you’d just hope they’d turn up.”

This approach initially came about through frustration around the fashion establishment. “When we first started we thought we’d look at the agencies and see who’s out there,” says Morgan. “We asked for Black models and the first we asked, they sent us Nick Kamen. He’s half Burmese, half Scottish. But that was the closest they could get to a Black model.”

Then came a teenage Campbell. “[She] turned up with her mum and we were told, ‘Don’t smoke and don’t swear,’” Morgan says. “It was quite difficult for us, because we’d start the day with a spliff and a reggae tune.” Immediately, they recognised she had a star quality. “She was very shy, very sweet,” he says. “But when she was in front of the camera, she had this intention … We were both like, ‘This girl’s going to do something’ … She is Buffalo in her own way. She had a hard path, she had to fight the corner of diversity pretty well singularly for many years.” Moss, meanwhile, was a “cheeky chappy”, “but also straight away, we were like, ‘Oh, this girl, she can do glamour as well.’” (The Moss images here were shot a few years later, when the model was about 14.)

Kamen had a different kind of star power. “When you walked into a room with Nick Kamen, it was just over. You didn’t exist,” says Morgan. This wasn’t, perhaps, as nice as it sounds. “He was just unbearably beautiful,” says Morgan, “and very shy. Nick had quite a difficult life, and he didn’t like being loved for his beauty, he found it quite awkward.”

If 1985 was a key year, Morgan said Buffalo was over relatively quickly, particularly after Petri died from Aids-related complications in 1989 at the age of 40. “The other kids were coming in, David Sims and Glen Luchford, and it was heroin chic and skinny white girls.”

Buffalo, he says, “went underground”, to emerge again in 2009 when Morgan worked on an issue of Arena Homme Plus dedicated to Petri, 20 years after his death. More recently, Morgan has also had newer creatives pay tribute to his and Petri’s work. “I started getting contacted by a lot of students at Central Saint Martins – Campbell Addy, IB Kamara,” he says. “A lot of gay Black kids were like, ‘I see there’s a place for me in the industry.’” Morgan went on to work with Kamara, when he was editor at Dazed, and he has since collaborated with a new generation in London, including Martine Rose. “It’s inspired so many people, and they’ve taken it into their own work and their own life,” he says. “It’s taken a life of its own.” Forty years on from that 1985 moment, it looks like Buffalo is as strong as ever.

1985 Buffalo launches on 18 September 2025 via Idea and Dover Street Markets worldwide

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