It was 21 years ago this year - on 10th March 1984 - that the seminal gay anthem It's Raining Men first entered the UK charts. The record stayed in the chart for 8 weeks, just missed the number 1 spot and introduced the Weather Girls - Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes Armstead - to a new mainstream audience. And, with its success, reconfirmed the cult gay status they had first acquired by their association with Sylvester - 70's San Franciso' s screaming drag disco queen in his sequined gowns and feathered boas.

And it was so popular that the Girls recut it as the winter camper Dear Santa Bring Me A Man This Christmas - although only real Weather Girls aficionados will remember that one.

The tune was covered by Geri Halliwell in 2003 but, even though the then-anorexic ex-Spice Girl belted it out, she could never hope to even come close to the big-black-chicks-in-your-face appeal of Martha and Izora.

So what's this mean for us today? There's no re-release; no glitzy, glam 21st birthday party.

But there is a new piece of art celebrating that iconic pink event from the 80's: 40-something, but still blond, bubbly and up-for-it, British textile artist Mary-Clare Buckle has produced a witty, ironic take on the song's title in celebration of that distant event. It's Raining Men places digital images on a paradoxically conventional textile landscape, to produce a large piece of textile art which confirms her position as a leading, innovative UK textile artist.

And it seems that the mainstream art world has recently taken on felt as a fashionable art medium, as seen in the - currently showing - Joseph Beuys exhibition at Tate Modern.

So what inspires her? Mary-Clare explains: "Some of my main inspiration comes from pop culture and the clubbing scene: the outré fluorescent clothes (including my own favourite glowy hotpants and fluffies), glow-sticks, lasers, flashing coloured lights and the visuals projected onto screens behind the Djs. I also like to play around with - and subvert - cultural icons and song titles."