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Dressed: The History of Fashion
Leigh Bowery: Phantasmagoric Couturier, an interview with Fiontán Moran, Part I
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- [00:01]
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April Callahan
The history of Fashion is a production of dress media. With over 8 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day we all get dressed.
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Cassie Zachary
Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast that explores the who, what, when of why we wear. We are friends, family fashion historians and.
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April Callahan
Your hosts Cassie Zachary and April Callahan. Cass, as you know, I do like to begin episodes now and then with a poem and it has been some time since I have done this, so I'm going to do so today. And this little segment of a larger poem was written by a close friend of our subject today. It was read at his funeral and of his friend Leigh Bowery, the dancer Les Church Child wrote quote, I know someone beyond definition. An answer would only beg the question, is it art? Is it science? Reference to a domestic appliance or fashion.
- [02:03]
Cassie Zachary
And dress listeners, if that left you feeling a bit confused, well congratulations. You've actually grasped the essence of the mystifying and unfathomable nature of the work of one of the most original voices of the 1980s and 1990s. And I am speaking about Leigh Bowery.
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April Callahan
Bowery, who has been called a phantasmagoric couturier, is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Tate Modern in London. And all this week the exhibition's co curator Fitn Moran is going to join us to speak about the genre defying nature of Bowery's work. From his early trajectory as a self taught fashion designer to his work as a performance artist who used dress as his main medium of expression. And Bowery's sartorial provocations were equally at home on the dance floor of London's club scene, as they were in contemporary art institutions and even publicly on the street.
- [02:57]
Cassie Zachary
Bowery's lasting influence on both high fashion and also drag culture cannot be underestimated. So we are so pleased to unpack his astounding DIY creations and fictive world building in a two part episode this week. Finton, a very warm welcome to Dressed.
- [03:14]
April Callahan
Finton, thank you so much for being here today. You're joining us all the way from London.
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Finton Moran
Yeah, thanks very much for having me.
- [03:20]
April Callahan
Yeah. I just have to say that when I learned last year that the Tate Modern was doing an exhibition on Leigh Bowery, I got so excited. Our regular listeners will probably remember that before I became a fashion historian, I was a contemporary art gallerist for more than a decade. But what people do not know is that I have been in and around the club scenes in Miami and New York since the late 1990s. So I'm definitely dating myself here. I was too late to the party to have ever met Lee, but I do have friends who knew him. So my point in telling you all of this is that this topic and this episode, or probably episodes, is a very personal one for me because of this intersection of art, fashion and also club culture. All of those are very near and dear to my heart. So thank you for your wonderful exhibition. How do we even begin to encapsulate the work of our subject today? Leigh Barry, on the podcast Without Images. Of course, we're going to post a lot of those on our social media feeds this week, but it's kind of a challenge to capture the essence of someone who, I would say put the icon in iconoclast. It's really hard to sum up his work. So I'm going to quote you here to begin in the exhibition catalog you write quote, in his lifetime, he was variously described as a fashion designer, club monster, professional dandy, vaudeville drunkard, pop surrealist, human sculpture guru without a sect, piece of moving furniture, modern art on legs, monument of our time. So we have a lot to unpack today.
- [05:00]
Finton Moran
Yes, I know that there is a quotes from the actual period when he was alive from different articles that I read. And I thought them together would help to convey just the amount of ways his work and Persona was interpreted and how difficult it is to categorize what he was doing.
- [05:17]
April Callahan
Yeah, exactly. So before we get to the exhibition and before we get to his actual work, I'm hoping that you can Tell us a little bit about his childhood and maybe some of those years leading up to the point where he moved to London.
- [05:32]
Finton Moran
Leigh Barry was born in Australia, which a lot of people don't even know. And he was born in a suburb of Melbourne called sunshine in 1961 into a salvation army family. And he's got a younger sister called Bronwyn, who I was lucky enough to meet. And she said that the family weren't necessarily religious, but his mother liked to keep up with the Joneses, or kind of. It was a kind of a socially conservative environment. But from the moment he was born, he always enjoyed being the centre of attention and he really had a massive appetite to learn different things. And it was his mother who actually taught him how to sew and crochet when he was ill as a child. And while he was a trained pianist and his parents hoped he would maybe go down that route, he decided to apply to study fashion at the Mu Macpherson Ladies Fashion College that had just merged with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. But he only stayed a few months. There's two different stories. One was that he was asked to leave, which, given stories I've heard about his personality, might be true. But the other is that he decided to leave because he was bored of the kind of very basic lessons that he was being taught, which involved kind of pattern cutting and the kind of basic levels of how you design in relation to the marketplace as opposed to creative thinking. And so he decides he's already inspired by the punk scene in London as well as the burgeoning new Romantics. And he wants to go to London, and his parents insist that he has to save up enough money to go. So he works in a local department store and then finds his way to London at the end of 1980. So that's his kind of background, but I think it was an interesting family. And his sister, similarly. While she didn't showcase the same rebellious, maybe in terms of how she dressed up, she also said that she wanted to have a different kind of life to what her parents expected of her. So she traveled around. But Lee was very close to his mother and she died just a few months before he died as well. So that kind of relationship and connection to Australia is an interesting one.
- [07:40]
April Callahan
Yeah, yeah. I did not know until I read the exhibition catalog that he was Australian also, too. We should point out that Lee knew that he was gay from a fairly young age. Right. He was around 12 when he realized. Because this actually does play into his work quite a bit.
- [07:56]
Finton Moran
Yes, yeah. And he would go cruising, I think, from the age of 14, I mean, to the local or toilets, near public toilets near his school. And he had a massive sexual appetite. But he did also have sex with some women as well, and some of his friends, female friends. And his sexuality is part of his work in the sense that he used the body and liked to show different parts of the body that were associated, maybe with sets, acts such as the bottom or taping up his chest to create a kind of cleavage. But equally, he also was someone that didn't like the idea of labels. One of the quotes that we've returned to a lot, which is, if you label me, you negate me. And so for him, he believed in a kind of ultimate freedom of expression and a label, for him, kind of confined that a little bit too much. So it's interesting to think about that in relation to his sexuality and come into an environment in London that was really exciting in the gay scene, but at the same time that it was still very restrictive in terms of just the way police would harass the gay community. Or then, with the introduction of Clause 28 in 1988, which banned the promotion of homosexuality in schools and other spaces, there was a kind of climate that was difficult. But he himself was someone that kind of ignored all of those restrictions, or.
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April Callahan
It could be argued, he even carved out his own space.
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Finton Moran
Yeah, definitely.
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April Callahan
When he moved to London in 1980, what were his aims for himself at this time? And what were some of those initial months in London like for him?
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Finton Moran
It's interesting. I managed to read his diary, which Nicola Rainbird, who looks after the Lee Bowie estate, has, and it's fascinating because he's 19 when he arrives, and he. You can really see the ambition that he has. He has stories of reading about what the popular club night might be, but by the time he gets there, he realizes it's closed down two weeks before, which is interesting in the age before the Internet. But in one of the entries in the diary, which we've included in our wall text in the exhibition, he talks about some of his New Year's resolutions and their four things. There's get weight down to 12 stone, learn as much as possible, Become established in the world of art, fashion or literature, and wear makeup every day and all of those things. I mean, literature, maybe he didn't become so established in. But it. I think it shows this. Yeah, a desire on his part to kind of gobble up the world and to make an impact on the world as well. And there's it. It does Take him time to kind of find his people. I'd say it probably takes a good year before he finally establishes a network of friends that he felt he connected to. And that first year or so he is spent living in different homes. He first stays in a hostel in St Premier, St Paul's Cathedral, which is just opposite Tate Modern, and then lives various kind of bedsits and squats before finally securing a council flat in East London, which still stands today.
- [11:06]
April Callahan
And he lived in said council flat with someone who was very important to him, both in his personal and his creative Life in the 1980s, and that is Trojan. Would you tell us a little bit about their relationship and their creative partnerships of sorts? I guess we could call it that, yeah.
- [11:23]
Finton Moran
I mean, Trojan was one of the most important people in his life. He was born in 1964 in Croydon, which is in South London, and he was kind of in love with Trojan, really. And they did have a brief kind of liaison, I think, for four weeks. But apart from that, they were essentially best friends. And a lot of the people I spoke to who knew Lee, especially from that period, they always spoke about them as being like a duo. They would always see them out together alongside David Walls, who was another kind of figure that was associated with the duo. And Lee Riddings kind of pushed Trojan to become an artist. Trojan had a very distinctive way of dressing and was very happy to get attention in the kind of club scene. And it was actually Trojan who, in a way, pushed Lee to also wear his designs fully out in the open. And it was because he was jealous of the attention Trojan got when Trojan would be wearing the clothes that Lee had made, that Lee then started to join in anyway. So it was a kind of very interesting symbiotic relationship. People have spoken about how Trajan's paintings, which are quite almost like cartoon, like depictions of everyday life, he once called them, as representing fights and fucks in nightclubs, but equally Lee's designs, in a way, because they're very often interested in the silhouette and they're interested in imagery that creates a very strong impact. It kind of shares an interesting affinity with Trojan's paintings, and it was a very key kind of relationship. And then when Trojan dies in 1986 from a heroin overdose, it was a very big loss for Lee. And years later, he said that Trojan was still so present that if you gave Lee two different weights, he would be able to tell you which was the weight of Trojan's hand. There was this kind of such an intimate connection that he felt, and I feel like after Trojan's death, Lee's attire becomes even more exaggerated and almost clown. Like in some ways you could see as a kind of mask of sorts.
- [13:26]
April Callahan
Yeah, and we're going to get into that here in just a second. But I do want to ask you about one other influential person in his life, one of many, and that is Rachel Auburn. And I'm also hoping that you can talk a little bit about Lee and Rachel coming to New York City at the invitation of Suzanne Barch, the legendary NYC event club promoter, who's still out there doing her thing. I saw her out on the dance floor not that long ago.
- [13:53]
Finton Moran
Great. No, I mean, Suzanne Bachch is such an icon, and Lee had such a big presence in New York as well as in London. And Suzanne Bachch was the first person to bring him over. And then he comes over again via the Michael Clark Dance Company and his friendship with the filmmaker Charles Atlas. But Lee meets Rachel Auburn. She says she saw him mincing down the road on Portobello Road in London. And she found it weird because he had to her eyes, a kind of wobbly player physique. But yet he was wearing this strange tweed clothing that had a kind of Vivienne Westwood silhouette, but then long hair on the top and shaved at the sides. And. And he eventually spoke to her at her market store and they became friends. And I think at one point, Lee lived underneath her sewing machine and she. Rachel, I should say, was a fashion designer. And Suzanne Bartch, who was in London initially, she was really struck by their designs as well as people like Bodymap. And she decides to bring them over when she moves to New York. She then decides to bring their clothing designs for her shop, but then also stage two pattern shows that were called New London in New York. I think the first one was at the Rotsy, and the second one was at the Limelight. And she describes them as being kind of chaotic and one of the first times that London fashion or British fashion was being seen in a New York context. And this kind of pinpointing that seems to happen between London and New York. And for Lee, it was really exciting and for Rachel as well. And Rachel would often find kind of old jumpers and clothing in shops, but also a share material with Lee. Sometimes their designs look quite similar, but they. And they would often model each other's clothes in the fashion shows. And Suzanne Bartch would then get Lee involved when he moves away from the fashion world. She would then get him to host the Loveball AIDS benefits that she did in 1989 and 1991. But the connection with Rachel was very important. And she appears in the Charles Atlas documentary about Michael Clarke, where they go to Lee's flat in East London, and he would then get her to DJ at his club, Taboo, even though she'd never DJed before. And she would then go on. She would then turn her back on the fashion world and became a big house DJ in the 90s.
- [16:18]
April Callahan
Yeah. And I was shocked to learn that through Suzanne's orchestration. I'm guessing Rachel and Lee had a line at Macy's at one point.
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Finton Moran
Yeah, that's what I had as well. And apparently there was. It was controversial because it was in the period where Lee's clothing, well, associated with something called the Hard Times look, which was repurposed materials or designs that kind of had exposed seams and frayed edges. And it was seen as controversial because the clothes in Macy's looked like the kind of thing a homeless person would wear.
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April Callahan
You were doing Galliana before Galliana?
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Finton Moran
Yeah. And Rachel said that there was this photo shoot of them in a trash can, both of them, to promote their presence, and it made its way onto the Evening Standard, which is a London newspaper, but she can't find the image. Still, it is interesting the way they were able to infiltrate these mainstream stores, but I think it speaks a lot to Suzanne's kind of spirited support of the people that she thought were important.
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- [19:33]
April Callahan
Well, and it's my understanding that after these sort of NYC endeavors, Lee became a little disillusioned, I guess, with being a fashion designer in a traditional sense. He didn't necessarily want to mass manufacture collections. And this is the point when he starts to turn his attention to his performance work. And two things within his performance work cannot be separated from each other. The body, which is very often his own, and the manner in which he revealed and also concealed his body with his designs. I love this quote that appears in, I think it's in the exhibition catalog. He once said, flesh is the most fabulous fabric. I like to camouflage my body because by concealing you can reveal, but you can also do the reverse. So would you tell us a little bit about some of Lee's early performance work? Where did it take place? I would also love to know a little bit about his participation in the 1984 exhibition Performing Clothes, because that is such an apt title that kind of summarizes Lee's work.
- [20:37]
Finton Moran
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because he was involved in some performances even while he was a fashion designer. And I think the first performance was as part of an event that the Neonaturist group Art Group created at a place called the Crypt. And for that performance, I think he covered Trojan with clink film. And then at one point he pulled his nipple ring and it started to bleed, which was an accident. And then. And then they set fire to the film that was all billowing black smoke. And it was quite chaotic. But it's interesting that he was part of this community of artists that were blurring the lines between what art can be. And also fashion designers who are also thinking about how you present your collections, your fashion shows, in different ways. And so I think there's always a sense of performance to Lee's work. And his whole life was a performance in many respects. And the performing clothes project at the ICA was, for me, interesting as a museum kind of showing someone who, for many people, they usually might associate with fashion, the fact that another arts institution was doing this kind of fashion collection show was a helpful kind of frame of reference. And he was one of several designers that showed, including ritual. And apparently he was carried in on a stick like a lamb to slaughter. And apparently it was quite chaotic, the fashion show. And his friends were modeling his Mincing Queens collection. And he describes that in Interview magazine as being based on what he thought his mum would imagine a rent boy to dress like. So it had, like pink frilly. There were basically lots of pink Laura Ashley esque fabric with lots of frills on every part of the kind of garment. And then these kind of fake fur shoes and then these kind of massive hats that kind of had eyes on the brim when you folded them over. And the fact that he used these opportunities to really exaggerate the way he thought about his designs, I think speaks to his desire for fashion to connect to life in a way that speaks a lot to his first interest to the punk movement. Yeah, because he credited that as showing him that clothing could do more than just be something you put on your body, but it can actually communicate certain kind of ideologies or resistance to the mainstream.
- [23:12]
April Callahan
Well, and part of the reason why I asked that particular question about the ICA is that I think that there might be a little bit of misconception for anyone who knows of Leigh Bowery, but not necessarily about Leigh Bowery, that he was only a figure in the London club scene. But the truth of the matter is, is that he, from his early performances, was also engaging with the art establishment as well, albeit in a very characteristically subversive manner. But he actually himself remarked, I always say that I stay clear from art as much as I possibly Can I say this? Because most art has such hoity toity connotations and appeals to really boring middle class people. I don't want my stuff to do that. To be truthful, though, I do think of it as art. And when I'm dressed up, I reach more people than a painting and a gallery. So I'm putting this quote forward to ask you maybe the slipperiest question ever asked undressed. But I think this is the point in the podcast where admittedly this is a very amorphous question, but very generally, what did this idea of quote unquote, dressing up mean to Lee?
- [24:27]
Finton Moran
I mean, I think dressing up for him was an art form. And I mean, you can see the kind of performativity of dressing up even in the opening. I think it's the opening sequence of Saturday Night Fever where John Travolta lays out his clothes for the night. And. And then the new romantic scene was described as perfecting the art of dressing up. And that's why we opened the exhibition with the clip of Lee and Trojan and Rachel Auburn waiting around in their flat and getting changed that Charles Atlas made and filmed, because it really highlights how they were using clothing but also makeup to completely take on these different Personas. And with that comes the kind of bitchy repartee between. Mainly between Rachel and Leigh.
- [25:15]
April Callahan
And they were being brutal to each other in that scene.
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Finton Moran
I mean, Rachel in some ways is more crucial, but it's very much part of the humor of that time. And I would say the queer scenes. And I think for him being inspired by punk and then being surrounded by this community of people who were going to clubs to show their best look. And especially a period in the fashion industry where all the kind of underground fashion industry where people were inspired by punk and making things in a more DIY fashion. And then you also have the emergence of the style magazines like ID and the Face and also Blitz, which especially ID really foreground the idea of street style. And so there is a sense of dressing up could mean something that was different to what dressing up maybe meant in decades before, where it was maybe more associated with high society or a really special kind of location or to be attractive to another person. Because a lot of the people in the scene didn't necessarily dress because they thought they looked whole. It's because they really wanted to make an impact. And I think that then develops into him realizing this can be a form that can be. This idea of dressing up for a club environment can waffle feathers as you go into other environments, be it in the kind of dance world or the art world or literally the street. And there's many funny anecdotes about him dressed up, walking through the streets of Soho, and at one point, police stopping him.
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April Callahan
Yeah, yeah. Well, will you tell the story about when he was actually arrested and what happened when he was at the police station?
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Finton Moran
Yeah. There's actually a recording of this, him telling this story. He says that, I think it was around 1990, that he did the merkin look, which is where he was basically naked, would tuck his genitals up and then put a merkin, which was just a wig he had cut into a triangle and stuck on. And then he'd often wear a bodice and then a kind of alien like, headpiece. And he had, I think, just come from doing a show. And he was walk. He was feeling really good about himself and he was strutting down the street and. And he was like, started. He realized all the car lights were like spotlights, and he started twirling around. And then he didn't realize one of the car lights was the police car. And they arrested him for, I think, indecency, public indecency. And when they went to take his fingerprints, they couldn't because he had dipped his hands in glitter. And so it wasn't possible. And he also, in that time, had managed to charm all of the police. And so I think he was let go eventually, but it definitely wasn't the first time he was involved in some altercation of the law. But it's one that I think that story embodies. I think how he really did see every part of the day as an opportunity to kind of perform. And that also was when he was out of his kind of more glittery, kind of clubland looks as well, but in a kind of more subtle way. Yeah.
- [28:21]
April Callahan
One of the things that, to me, is so striking about Lee's work is his construction techniques and how good he was at creating these silhouettes that, frankly, the world had never seen before. So I'm hoping that you could tell us a little bit about his working process and potentially some of his collaborators as well.
- [28:44]
Finton Moran
Yeah. So I think, because he's had a big impact on drag culture, and contemporary drag culture maybe doesn't always make. The idea of making own clothes isn't so embedded in that. But Lee did. He designed everything he made, and he made everything he designed. But his studio was a room in his council flat, so he had the tiniest bedroom, and then he had used one of the larger bedrooms as a studio. And he would often enlist people to help with the kind of time consuming tasks. And so when he meets Nicola Rainbird, who was then called Nicola Bateman, at Taboo, the club that he hosted, she had studied fashion and textiles, and she really loved doing the kind of tedious tasks of adding sequins. And you notice from 1985 up until around 1989 that the amount of sequins in his garments increases. And around this time, he also meets Mr. Pearl, the famous corsetier. He's worked with so many people like Thierry Mugler and McQueen and made corsets with Dieter von Teeth.
- [29:52]
April Callahan
Yeah, Dita was on the show a few years ago, and we talked a little bit about Mr. Pearl and their relationship, and I was like, we would love to have him on the show. And she was like, April, he will never. He's an incredibly private person.
- [30:07]
Finton Moran
No, I only managed to speak to him on the telephone, and it took a long time. But he was very, very sweet, very self deprecating. Didn't try to in any way suggest he contributed anything to Lee's artistry. He said Lee's vision was unique and he was happy to kind of help in the creation of his looks. But at the same time, I think you can see towards the end of the 80s, this interest in the kind of a more constructed waist kind of torso silhouette. Mr. Pearl also taught Nicola about ombre, the kind of bleeding of colors, and also different types of sequins that could be sewn quicker, and so they are brilliant. Key to Lee's vision. And he would often sometimes ask their opinion on how something was looking. But he had a very strong sense of what kind of image he wanted to create. And the filmmaker and artist Bailey Walsh said for Lee that all of Lee's looks really are about the silhouette more than anything. And he was really obsessed with having his nose as flat as possible. So much so that when he was wearing these kind of masked looks, at one point he had sewn the mask on so tight that he could barely breathe and he had to be wrenched out of the costume. And then when he went into the 90s, when he starts to use foam a lot more, he works with Lee Benjamin, who was a kind of young club goer on the scene. And he helped shape the kind of foam elements that contributed to this kind of slightly more surreal, alien, like, hybrid creature aesthetic that Lee explored in the last, I would say, four years of his life. So it was very much a kind of homegrown couture house almost. But it was an expert pattern cutter and he could. Nicola said he could create a pair of gloves in a matter of seconds. But he also went from touring Michael Clark company, which often involved David Hoehler, who was part of Bodymap. He would also apparently give him, Lee a few tips on certain types of construction. Because Lee leaving fashion school so early, he hadn't had the full training that someone might do. But David, Hola said equally it meant that he approached his construction from a very personal and unusual way and it didn't necessarily negatively impact on how well the garments were made.
- [32:32]
April Callahan
Yeah, well, if you don't know the rules, you don't know that you're breaking them.
- [32:35]
Finton Moran
No.
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April Callahan
Well, I would love to turn our attention to some of these looks that you were just referencing. He used a capital L there, right? He called them looks as the title, I guess, I suppose, yeah. Because in some ways he ushered them in. In sort of seasons he would work through a theme or an idea before he would move on to something else. Would you tell us a little bit about one of his first quote unquote looks, his Spots era?
- [33:02]
Finton Moran
Yeah, the Spots look is probably one of my favorites. And there's a wide range of ways you can see, see where it came from. But for me, I think part of it was inspired by his love of the John Waters film Female Trouble. And in that film Divine is being injected with a substance that creates these kind of blisters or warts on the face. But then that Divine is encouraged to see them as beautiful by the hairdressers. And Lee, in some of his early actual fashion shows, he actually used I think breakfast cereal that's crushed up on the face to create this kind of boils look. And he, in one interview he said it looks wonderful. It looks like syphilis. So there's this sense that of the spot being connected to kind of disease and sexual transmission. And there's a photo where you see these kind of very hand drawn red circles all over the face which look more like measles. And then this seems to develop into the more perfected. Almost like a polka dot spot that is on his face, but then is all over the body. And very often the garments would be quite simple kind of two piece suits, but with crocheted elements at the end of the trouser. And some people interpreted that look as being a reference to Karposi's sarcoma, which by 1985 was seen as one of the first signs that you could be HIV positive. And I think there's kind of inspired by John Waters embrace of the idea of trash or abjection. He took up that mantle by really trying to think about things that you would see as unattractive and then aestheticizing them in some way until he's turned his whole body into this abstract spot motif. And it's look that he's wearing when he first starts the club Taboo in 1985 and he wears it for about, I would say probably six months.
- [35:01]
April Callahan
Yeah, and we're going to talk about Taboo here in a second, but I want to ask you about some more looks.
- [35:12]
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- [35:40]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [35:58]
April Callahan
Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com before we talk about a couple of these things, please remember that his longtime partner and later wife and now steward of his estate and archive, Nicola Rainberg, she says in the exhibition catalog she writes, Lee was about controversy, which was his art. He really could not separate himself from that. And I'm bringing this up now because some of his very early thematic explorations are not at all politically correct. They weren't even necessarily then and they certainly are not now. But would you tell us a bit about Lee's use of the swastika in its original benevolent meaning within Hinduism and Buddhism, because within that construct it really is seen as a symbol of well being and good luck.
- [36:59]
Finton Moran
Well, I think he was really fascinated by how things could have multiple meanings and he would often go to a variety of kind of art galleries and and was interested in history and with that symbolism. And so when he starts to use the swastikoma Teeth, he reverses it so it's facing the opposite way, which I believe is called the salvostika. And this apparently symbolizes the night or the tantric aspects of Kali. But equally, he was thinking about the fact that the swastika originally was a sign representing prosperity or good luck within Hindu culture. And so this was one example of him, I guess, asking you to question how you see certain symbols. But at the same time, he obviously loved provocation, and he would have definitely known the way such a symbol might be viewed. And especially nowadays, you know, it's maybe hard to fathom, but it wasn't that long ago when he's doing this kind of look, that the. The punk movement also had adopted the swastika, and Vivienne Westwood had put it on T shirts. And when I spoke to some people from that scene, they spoke about how the punk movement using the swastika was this kind of rejection of everything that society, the rejection of anything that was seen to be contentious. And it's kind of like a massive eff you to society, to parents, to a very adolescent kind of thing, of doing whatever is the most shocking to get a reaction.
- [38:35]
April Callahan
Right.
- [38:36]
Finton Moran
And. And I think for Lee, he was taking on that kind of legacy and. And I think was fascinated in the extremity associated with any kind of movement, be it positive or negative. And so I think when he's using that symbol, he's testing really the limits. And he always wanted to go to the limit, if not beyond sometimes of in his art. And obviously sometimes that I think maybe especially to today's eyes, went too far. But I think it really speaks to someone that was really interested in questioning how we think about these images, albeit kind of complicated and challenging.
- [39:14]
April Callahan
Yeah. Well, speaking of taking things too far, the next look that I would like to ask you about is his outer space look. That is not necessarily the full, full title of what Lee called it, but it contains an ethnic slur, which we're not going to get into on the podcast. But this particular look I do want to discuss because it might be the one that people are most familiar with, and it is widely documented in countless photographs. And this was a look that he performed with Trojan?
- [39:45]
Finton Moran
Yes, yes, it was a look that he first put on Trojan, and then when he saw the attention Trojan got with it, he then starts to dress himself as well as David walls up in it. And it was the basis of one of his fashion collections as well. And he. The origins of the look come from really two elements. On the one side, it's him reflecting on the 1970s Glen Rock culture and the use of synthetic, shiny kind of fabrics, using platform shoes. His interest in astrology and sci fi culture, which is where the outer space reference comes from. But then it's also a product of him living in East London in a Bangladeshi community. And he is quoted as saying, one of the great things about being here is that he's seen the most fantastic color combinations. Seeing women wearing traditional dresses, saris, but yet with a pair of tracksuit bottoms or trainers or baseball caps. This clash of cultures. He was really fascinated by what's maybe within British society seen as kind of the antithesis of high fashion or what or however that might be termed. And so his adoption of that was this strange kind of fascination and embrace with something that was different. That obviously. And then using this kind of racial slur to describe the look, especially at a time where there was the rise of the National Front a few years before there had been killings in Southall and a lot of violence against that community, suggests a lack of perhaps understanding or consideration for what. How loaded that term was and continues to be. And. But it was a look that interestingly got him noticed. It was the thing that made him and Trajan really stand out from the crowd. And it's one that, as you mentioned, was documented quite heavily by a wide range of photographers and features in the Charles Atlas documentary How the New Puritan. And I think for me this is when he's just at the beginning of his career and it comes out of him exploring this kind of wide range of references. And I think this idea of provocation isn't so embedded so heavily in his kind of artistic output the way it would be later on, where he seems to be more actively trying to provoke a reaction, very often maybe a negative reaction. I think here it's the use of the slur is very offensive. And obviously there's an element of Orientalism in the way he's adopting these kind of characteristics. There's also the complication of it being rooted in a kind of fascination and identification with this culture. Yeah, but obviously he was a white Australian guy and it's very easy for people to just dip in and out of a culture without really thinking about the symbolism and also the sacred nature of a lot of that kind of imagery and dress. So it's one that I think for us doing the exhibition, we wanted to try and talk about and not shy away from and also to think about how that situates his work within a specific time. And also the specifics of London as well.
- [43:15]
April Callahan
Yeah, Well, I think that particular look dates to around 1983, 1984. And this is one of the first looks in which he employed all over body paint. Yes, yeah, yeah. He and Trojan painted themselves typically blue, like a bright turquoise blue for this particular look. But this all over face paint, body paint begins to be more and more prevalent in Lee's works. Moving forward, would you also tell us about his iconic dripped look? How did he achieve that?
- [43:48]
Finton Moran
Yes, I mean, I was really excited because when I was reading some of the interviews he did, because he didn't often talk heavily about exact references or especially not meanings behind his creations or his performances. But the dripped look, which a lot of people called the cracked egg look, apparently was inspired by the film Staircase, this 1969 film directed by Stanley Doonan, which has Richard Burton and Rhetts Harrison playing a gay couple. And there's a bit where I think Vets Harrison calls the other forehead as looking like a cracked egg because of the. I think it's maybe like some kind of ink or toupee or something. So that kind of stayed with Lee, and he decides to shave his head. And he was someone who. That went bald or his hair thinned very young. So in terms of. If you think about people like Andy Warhol, who, you know, also lost his hair quite young and took towards wearing a wig, Lee's kind of embrace of his kind of bald head and then using that as another canvas for me was interesting. And he creates this kind of paint drip look by mixing glue with a variety of paint colors. But in one interview, he did mention how it was partly inspired by this blue paint that he saw in Tokyo that was associated with samurai warriors, where the color indigo was often associated with kind of healing powers, and it was used to then dye the clothing. So there's these kind of little references to how he's soaking up these different ideas and then using that to create these crazy, very iconic looks. And for me, I think the dripped look was a perfect kind of lead image for the exhibition. Just in terms of how we hoped to think about Lee's work more seriously, about a form of art and applying makeup as the form of painting, which many other artists have done, such as Cindy Sherman and Eleanor Anting, thinking about the role of makeup in the construction of the self. But with Lee, it's very much using the whole body as a canvas and then doing a variety of things, not necessarily thinking too much about the facial features and those kind of demarcations.
- [46:04]
April Callahan
Well, and we should, for our Listeners describe that what he was doing basically was mixing paint in a very specific way that it would dry and he was pouring it over the top of his head and then these very distinct drips around his forehead and all around his head. So it was very striking. Hard to miss.
- [46:24]
Finton Moran
Yeah. And his face was painted, I think, white and head to add the effect. And I think it was often paired with very long white eyelashes, fake eyelashes, and then you kind of block two different colors for each of the lips. But interestingly, the garments that he wears when he's. He's doing that look are quite, I guess, relatively tame. It's cut very often a kind of jacket, almost Vivian Rusford esque jacket with the pants or some kind of skirt.
- [46:55]
April Callahan
Yeah. So before we transition on to where in the world these looks might be being worn, I do want to touch on one additional particular look. You're going to know it immediately because it was photographed by Jean Claude Legres in Paris in 1988. And I want to describe it to our listeners because obviously this is an audio format. But just imagine a white cutaway tail coat. It has these sort of extra broad, structured shoulders. The front is short and it fans out, descends back, and it's scalloped at the center front edges, and it pulls into a train in the back. It is also held out by this very structured skirt of giant copper sequins, which Nicola probably sewed on. And that skirt ends about 8 inches above Lee's knee. Beneath this, he's wearing shiny fuchsia spandex tights. He has on fuchsia gloves to match. And his head is covered, for lack of a better term, I'm going to call it a white gimp mask. And the pattern on this mask matches the pattern on the jacket, which to me, as a fashion and textile historian, reads as a sort of 17th century floral motif. And when I first saw this look, I was stunned because if you happen to know anything about 18th century ballet, or particularly men's ballet costumes in the 18th century, it's this exact same silhouette. And that was staggeringly obvious to me. And I'm curious, what do we know of Lee doing research per se? Was he looking to fashion history? Because that particular reference to me is very specific. Do we even know if he was doing research at all?
- [48:38]
Finton Moran
I think he was kind of always doing research as part of his daily practice in a way an artist would, or I guess any creative does. And so he really loved going to museums. And I know he from Rachel Orban, she said he loved the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin and also discovering the Viennese actionists at the Stage Museum in Amsterdam. And he spoke in his diary about going to the National Gallery and things like that. But I don't know how much he was directly attempting to emulate another historical kind of costume design. But his work with the Michael Clark Dance Company does inform his understanding of construction and having the armpit area separated so the dancer can move more easily, for instance. And that garment that you described, the kind of cruel wool fabric, was one that he bought. And he didn't sew those flowers onto the fabric, but then Nicola added additional sequins on top. And I think his use of that look potentially was connected to him being involved in Michael Clark's production, I Am Curious Orange, which was a commission for Michael Clark to do something in response to William of Orange. So there is this kind of interesting, kind of cool aesthetic, and the kind of gimp mask element is interesting because it. In some ways, I initially was thinking about it in terms of certain representations of the men that would behead people.
- [50:16]
April Callahan
Oh, interesting.
- [50:17]
Finton Moran
But then another journalist said it makes them think of Ira Balaclava's. And Nicholas spoke about how him using this very beautiful floral fabric to create a mask that maybe some will associate with kind of S and M sexual practices was exactly the kind of array of contrast that he really liked. So there's a wide range of ways into the work, but it's not so clear how much he was looking to specific examples. But I know he was very inspired by kind of African dress and jewelry and had a book, that kind of photo book that documents many indigenous kind of tribes. And you can see some of the influence in the way some of the silhouettes are quite exaggerated in some of his designs, not all. So there's a wide range of references. And obviously, as I mentioned, kind of the locality of where he's living and the amount of museums in London that you have that can inspire you from the VA through to the British Museum.
- [51:23]
Cassie Zachary
Thank you so much so much for this engrossing peek into the world of Leigh Bowery, which was very much a world unto his own. And listeners, we are not done yet. Fenton will be back on Friday when he and April chat about exactly where some of these looks were worn, the London club scene and Bowery's work with the famed painter Lucian Freud. And of course, if you find yourself in London this summer, you can check out the exhibition Leigh Bowery, exclamation point, which is up now at the Tate Modern and runs through. Through the end of August, August 31st to be exact.
- [51:56]
April Callahan
Can't make it to London in the next couple of months. Well, there is also a spectacular exhibition catalog with hundreds of images of Bowery's work and essays and remembrances of Bowery contributed by dozens of his friends. We have put the exhibition catalog up on our dressed bookshelf@bookshop.org and I cannot recommend it enough. If you are already a fan of Bowery's work or if you want to learn more, it really is this sort of definitive examination of his career which was cut far too short by AIDS on New Year's Eve 1994. It goes without saying that you are definitely going to want to check out our Instagram this week to see examples of Bowery's work, which was like none other. To do so you can use the hashtags dressed542 and hashtag dressed543. I think that does it for us Today Dressed Listeners, may you ponder where a little bit of chaos resides in your closet. Next time you get dressed, please head over to essedpodcast on Instagram Ordcast without the underscore on Facebook to check out the visual content associated with each week's episodes.
- [53:05]
Cassie Zachary
Remember, we love hearing from you Dressed listeners, so if you'd like to write to us, you can do so@hello dresshistory.com Dresshistory.com is also our website where you can sign up for our monthly newsletter, our in person tours and online fashion history courses. And there you can also check out whatever else we have up our finely tailored sleeves.
- [53:23]
April Callahan
We get so many questions from you all about our recommendations for fashion history books so if you're interested you can always find a link in our show notes to our bookshop.org bookshelf so that address is bookshelf shop.org shop forward/dressed and there you will find over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles.
- [53:45]
Cassie Zachary
Do you love Dressed but want to skip the ads? We are so excited to now be a part of the Airwave Network and their premium ad free history subscription Airwave History plus and this is available on Apple Podcasts and the subscription brings you our podcast as well as 27 other popular history podcasts. Podcasts ad free for 599 per month. More information is available at the link in our bio.
- [54:10]
April Callahan
Thank you as always for tuning in and more Dressed coming your way soon. Dressed the History of Fashion is a production of Dressed Media.