The New Romantics were a reaction to the spaced-out slovenliness of the late Sixties and early Seventies, and also to the slashing shambles of punk. Several of the movement’s leading figures acknowledged their debt to Dirk. In his autobiography, Stand & Deliver (2006), Adam Ant (Stuart Leslie Goddard) pronounces Dirk ‘my personal hero’. The latter was one of the dedicatees of Adam and the Ants’ first album; it was titled ‘Dirk Wears White Sox’ – which had indeed been the case, even if by 1979 the garments and their wearer were exposed less often than before to the public gaze.

Like Adam Ant, David Sylvian was a fervent admirer of the work in the middle-to-late years of Dirk’s career.   Sylvian’s band, Japan, acknowledged both Despair and The Night Porter with similarly titled tracks on its two 1980 albums, ‘Quiet Life’ and ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’.   As much as anything else, he recalls today, the songs ‘shared a mood, an atmosphere, with their namesakes’.  Steve Strange, of Visage, was quoted in a magazine as saying that the person he most wanted to impress with his music was Dirk; the single ‘The Damned Don’t Cry’ (1982) was reputedly prompted by the film that marked Dirk’s first collaboration with Visconti. 
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