Royal Mail Salutes Duran Duran’s 45 Years of Pop Perfection and Style Bravery with Commemorative Stamps and Medals
There are bands people love, bands people will have heard of but couldn’t quite name a tune, and bands people will laud for decades to come. Then there’s Duran Duran: a band whose music will continue to echo in your head for the rest of your life, and will likely be listened to by your children in a decade or two as they suddenly realise, “Wow, now I know what Mum saw in them.” Say a prayer that retro-mix radio doesn’t die, and that the kids on Spotify get a chance to hear pop-historic smashes like Save a Prayer, The Reflex, Union of the Snake, Come Undone, A View to a Kill, Ordinary World, maybe even Lady Xanax. The oeuvre runs deep and the songs are electro-rock classic. Now, it seems even the Royal Mail thinks so.
To celebrate 45 years since the band formed, Royal Mail is releasing eight First Class stamps featuring some of Duran Duran’s most memorable album artwork, spanning their self-titled 1981 debut through to 2021’s ‘Future Past’. And, really, if any band deserves to have its artwork travelling around around Britain and beyond on tiny pieces of gummed paper, it’s Duran Duran. Paper gods, indeed.
The Royal Mail is also publishing a miniature sheet featuring classic tour posters – adding another visual reminder of just how important the band’s image has always been, always part and parcel of even their live performances, but never overshadowing the real stars: the songs.
From the immaculate tailoring and swooping hair of the early ’80s to their ever-evolving reinventions, Duran Duran understood long before most that pop music was as much about looking fabulous as sounding fabulous. Even today, Le Bon and Co put on a dapper wardrobe with shards of pop (or at least a great slogan tee to stand out from the somewhat more doldrum modern-day limelight hunters), that still goes good with the guitar grinds of Rio or swirling syth stylings of Secret Oktober.
Frontman Simon Le Bon has described the stamps as a “massive visual validation” of the band’s history – an understandably proud moment for a group that progressed from Birmingham bars and sticky-floored clubs to becoming one of Britain’s biggest global pop exports. Whose very logo, in our book at least, is still as stylish as the the interlocking Cs on the inside neck of one of nick Rhodes’ blouses).
The stamp sets are available for purchase via pre-orders now, with the stamps officially going on sale September 17.
Joining the likes of The Beatles and Queen in receiving the Royal Mail tribute treatment, Duran Duran continue to tour, record and, remarkably, remain as stylishly relevant as ever.
Forty-five years on, they’re still Rio-running, hungry like the wolf and showing absolutely no intention of growing old gracefully.
The Duran Duran Stamps and Medals will be officially available from September 17, 2026.
Also available is a set of commemorative medals.
Preorder through the Royal Mail website here.
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