Meet Blondey McCoy: Burberry model, Damien Hirst collaborator and streetwear star

Just who is skateboarder-turned-designer-turned-artist Blondey McCoy? Ben Reardon finds out
Ben Reardon12 October 2017

Blondey McCoy is lounging on a beaten-up leather sofa in his Covent Garden flat, wolfing down a jam-covered crumpet in between puffs of a cigarette, which he smokes like an old-fashioned movie star, rolling it between his thumb and index finger.

A fish tank bubbles away in the opposite corner while Linder Sterling dinner plates adorn one wall and, on another, a towering spin painting by Damien Hirst looms over us.

It’s quite the collection for a 20-year-old skaterboy — but then McCoy isn’t your average 20-year-old. Aside from being a pro skater for Adidas (a role that involves travelling the world to film skate videos), he is also creative director of five-year-old fashion brand Thames, has modelled for the likes of Burberry and Valentino, and is the face of Palace Skateboards, the brand with the triangle logo that is the hottest street-wear label in the world right now (today he’s wearing a pair of its white jeans teamed with Adidas trainers, a crocodile belt by Supreme, polo shirt bearing the emblem of Soho greasy spoon Bar Bruno, cardigan by Prada and Burberry check scarf).

Oh — and then there’s his art. In 2015 he held his first exhibition, Thames AD, a collection of 34 collages at Soho’s Heni Gallery.

Clothing and jewellery, all Blondey’s own

He’s held four others including this summer’s Us and Chem at the Heni. It included a collaborative painting between him and the aforementioned Hirst, whom McCoy met in Venice earlier this year at the opening of Hirst’s current Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable show. Following a handful of lunches and studio visits they decided to work together on a giant glass spin painting titled Beautiful, Chemically Imbalanced Painting. ‘Damien is amazing,’ says McCoy, warmly. ‘He is a living legend who will be remembered forever for what he has achieved. He’s engineered his life in such a way that he can make whatever idea he wakes up with a reality by lunchtime. He is also outstandingly charming, totally genius and like a cheeky schoolboy in every way.’ More recently, Burberry commissioned McCoy to create a 50 ft-tall, 3D mural celebrating Britain, in conjunction with the label’s Here We Are exhibition on Clerkenwell Road last month.

The youngest of three, born to a Lebanese father and a British mother, McCoy grey up in New Malden and describes his heritage as ‘half and half, chips and cheese’. His parents divorced when he was around 12, an event that he saw as a fast pass to freedom. ‘I just remember thinking “This is me completely free, I can do whatever the f*** I want!”’ He mooched through Westminster School for a couple of years before being forced out due to lack of attendance, waving a final ta-ra to the school system at 16, having collected a grand total of five GCSEs.

McCoy’s 3D mural on Clerkenwell Road, commissioned by Burberry

He discovered skateboarding around the time of his parents’ divorce through the MTV show Jackass and taught himself by watching American videos on YouTube. ‘I have always felt as if my life didn’t begin before skateboarding… it introduced me to everything I know and love and everything else quickly disappeared.’ For a shy teenager who had spent his childhood drawing copies of Disney films (a favourite being Peter Pan) it was perfect: ‘It’s a solitary sport. You can do it on your own for hours and hours at a time; essentially it’s exercise and a form of escapism.’ Before long, he could be found every morning from 8am skating Southbank skate park in his school uniform. ‘Everyone had a nickname, you had Rozza, Nugget, Chewy — it was like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.’

When he wasn’t at Southbank, he’d be hanging around the legendary Slam City Skates, then located in Neal’s Yard. A melting pot of anyone beguiled by brattish skate culture, this was the go-to spot for a retail shot of covetable cool, pre-Supreme and pre-Palace. ‘It was a real hub. It was a time-killer but by no means a waste of time; it was one of the best times in my life.’

Photographs by Mike O’Meally

It was at Southbank that he met Great Yarmouth skateboarding hero Chewy Cannon, who first encouraged fellow skater and Palace founder, Lev Tanju, to gift the young upstart with some clobber from the newly launched brand. Tanju went on to become something of a mentor to McCoy, first encouraging the teenager to become a pro skater, then in 2013 choosing him to be the face of Palace. In 2015, he, along with Palace and Slam co-owner, Gareth Skewis, joined as partner at Thames, which McCoy had founded three years earlier after he started making stickers and T-shirts out of collages he had created from newspaper clippings, and selling them.

His other collaborations and endeavours appear to have come about with a similar degree of serendipity. Last month McCoy unveiled his jewellery collection in collaboration with Stephen Webster, whom he had met in 2013 via the Long Live Southbank campaign for the famous skatepark to stay put (the campaign had reached out to creatives nationwide for support). After the pair ran into one another on subsequent nights out, they decided to work together, producing a 12-piece capsule jewellery collection, Thames by Stephen Webster — a series of bold, Instagram-friendly designs.

It sounds like a charmed existence: most days start with a trip to the local spa in Piccadilly and are then spent making art or sketching fashion designs in his Soho studio — or heading off on modelling shoots. In his spare time, McCoy takes piano lessons and eats almost every day in Bar Bruno or Soho House, more often than not with his best mate, the photographer Alasdair McLellan. ‘I’m very inspired by him. He creates beautiful images and documents moments in fashion, which in itself can be quite vacuous, but he always seems to get something iconic out of it.’

McCoy, Bee Shaffer and Anna Wintour on the Burberry frow
Richard Young/REX/Shutterstock

But things weren’t always so gilded for McCoy. He spent the majority of his teenage years seeking escapism not only through skateboarding but also through drink and drugs.

‘Looking back it was clear I was going to become an addict as soon as I could get my hands on anything harder than a multipack of Dairy Milk. Drugs took over a bit and I spent the majority of 2013 indoors and wide awake doing little else apart from them.’ He managed to ‘put a cork in’ the drug addiction following a conversation with his business partner after a Palace skate trip went pear-shaped, but then ‘started drinking more — and soon enough the time between waking up hungover to drinking again minimised to almost nothing’. He remembers drinking bottles of Prosecco as if they were bottles of beer, and going out in a particular coat with pockets big enough to accommodate bottles when jaunting ‘to, from and around countless s*** parties’. Something had to give.

Blondey McCoy showing off his skills

Since New Year’s Day, he has been sober, having replaced Prosecco with green tea and fags, wine with walking, and drugs with dinners, accompanied by his set-designer girlfriend. ‘If you have an addictive personality you have to accept that is the way you are and become addicted to something that isn’t detrimental to your physical and mental health. Now I feel that same compulsion to create art.’

Acclaimed artist, pro skateboarder, designer — is anything off limits to him? ‘As corny as it sounds… skateboarding introduced me to a very free way of life,’ McCoy reflects. ‘Among skateboarders I felt that anything was possible, whether you were trained to do it or not… I make art because it keeps me sane and I will always love it and I skateboard for the same reason. I see all of my “careers” as interconnected. The skating scene made it possible for me to make clothes and I like to wear those clothes to my art shows. I just want to create something new every day.’

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in