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Dressed: The History of Fashion
Leigh Bowery: Phantasmagoric Couturier, an interview with Fiontán Moran, Part II
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- [00:00]
April Callahan
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April Callahan
For more details Dress 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.
- [01:15]
Cassie Zachary
Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast that explores the who, what, when of why we wear. We are friends, fashion historians and your.
- [01:23]
April Callahan
Hosts Cassie Zachary and April Callahan. Welcome back, dressless Nurse to part two of our two part episode on the genre defying artist Leigh Bowery, who our guest today has described as, quote, a fashion designer, club monster, professional dandy, vaudeville drunkard, pop surrealist, human sculpture guru without a sect, clown without a circus piece of moving furniture. Modern art on legs and a monument of our times.
- [01:53]
Cassie Zachary
Wow.
- [01:55]
April Callahan
So Tate Modern curator Fintan Moran is going to join us again to discuss the Museum's exhibition Lee Barry, Exclamation Point, which is on view now and runs through August 31, 2025.
- [02:08]
Cassie Zachary
In part one of this episode, Fenton and April discussed Bowery's childhood growing up in Australia and subsequent explosion onto the London contemporary art and club scene in the early 1980s. Described as artist and art object, a thing to see, to experience, dress was Bowery's main medium of expression. Expression and April I think that like me, many of our listeners will be very surprised to learn that Bowery was pretty much self taught as both a fashion designer and an artist.
- [02:36]
April Callahan
Yes and definitely. And I think he spent like a couple months in fashion school before he.
- [02:41]
Cassie Zachary
Was like no thank you.
- [02:44]
April Callahan
And this becomes all the more poignant when you see some of Barry's creations which feature these fantastical, otherworldly silhouettes. And it's even more impressive when you know that, again, fashion school for him was only a mere dalliance. And I said in part one of this episode that Bowery truly was one of those people who put the icon in iconoclast. He was this fresh, original voice like the world had never seen, and, it.
- [03:11]
Cassie Zachary
Must be said, often controversial. So Bowery's work was entirely about provocation through dress and challenging our relationships to. To an understanding of the body. And he once remarked, quote, I want to disturb, entertain and stimulate. I like to think that I reform rather than deform the body. In the past, we have accustomed to strange shapes such as padded shoulders and crinolines. So he is a bit of a fashion history lover, perhaps.
- [03:37]
April Callahan
At least a little. Yeah, he had some knowledge.
- [03:40]
Cassie Zachary
So without further ado, we reconvene. Fenton, welcome back for part two of our conversation on Bowery's life and work.
- [03:49]
April Callahan
Now that we have discussed a handful of these specific looks, I think we will get to a few more here as we move on. But all of this begs this question. Where and in what context was Lee wearing these looks?
- [04:03]
Fintan Moran
Yeah, as suggested, the main place was nightclubs, as well as when he's doing his fashion collection shows. But really, in a way, it's everywhere, but mostly when it's nighttime. And he also talks about wearing them to exhibition openings. And then when he starts working with the Michael Clark Company, they feature on the stage. So the fact that a lot of these looks were being seen at nighttime, in part affects the materials that he's using. If you think about sequins, then the light bulb headpiece, these things that kind of attract and also reflect light, becomes a kind of element that he's thinking about. And then when he starts, I guess when. When he's becoming more in demand, his. The things that he's wearing, his everyday kind of daytime look is more quite unquote, normal. But I guess we'll get to that in a little bit.
- [04:55]
April Callahan
I like to call it day drag. I am going to ask you about that later.
- [04:58]
Fintan Moran
But, yeah, so essentially it was nightlife. And. But it's something that he did enjoy exploring the reaction that he got even from the local public. And actually the look that was with the blue face and the outer space look, he. In an interview with the British conceptual artist Stephen Willets, he said that him wearing the look was his attempt to get people to question their kind of perceived view of what that represents. And so I think there was this kind of thought going through these kind of garments that might initially be seen to be purely about getting attention and standing out from the crowd. But I think for him it was also about forcing people to question the way we think about sewn in garments and the way we think about our bodies and identity and culture in general.
- [05:53]
April Callahan
Well, I mean, his work was so much about him crafting his own reality and his own narrative. And in 1985 he really decides to take a stake in controlling this narrative one step further. Would you tell us about Taboo and also the sort of scene that rose up around it. Who were the Taboo patrons? And also Taboo brings some very real high fashion connections into Lee's life.
- [06:20]
Fintan Moran
Yes, yes. I mean, what's fascinating for me is that Lee actually didn't instigate Taboo. It was Tony Gordon who was thinking about what does he love to do? And he thought, I love going out, so therefore I should do a club night. And he thought I need a great host. And so he asks Lee and also a woman called Angela, who had had appeared in the Frankie Goes to Hollywood Relax music video that got banned by the BBC. But very quickly Lee pushes her out and says she drinks too much or just didn't want competition. And Lee becomes the kind of host of this party. And apparently initially was really quiet and it was just friends of Lee going. But eventually, partly through a featuring ID magazine, it becomes known as, I think they call it, the hottest, sleaziest, campest, bitchiest night of the week. And it was at Maximus on Leicester Square. And apparently it was decked out for 1970s kind of clientele. And apparently Lee and friends really loved how tacky it looked to them, to their eyes, because Disco by Deng had long gone. And he enlists many of his friends. Sue Tilley, who wrote his biography, would be on the coat check sometimes. And then Mark Vautier was on the door who famously would hold up a hand mirror to people that were badly dressed and say, would you let yourself in? And. And then Princess Judah was also in the coat check. And then he got Geoffrey Hinton, who is a DJ and also a documenter of the scene. He would do the music but also project his scratch videos above the dance floor. So it created this kind of clashing aesthetic that perfectly matched the clashing of elements that Lee's designs. And it becomes, yeah, a very popular night spot and has become. There's is featured on TV and in newspapers and Boy George would be in the Toilets. And Fat Tony would be there. John Galliano, Michael Clark and his company of dancers would be doing routines. David LaChapelle, who was in London during this period, he'd be dancing on the bar. And we actually have two of the guest lists in the exhibition which Nicola preserved. And on one of them, it has Bella Freud. And then handwritten on it has Lucian Freud listed.
- [08:51]
April Callahan
Oh, nice.
- [08:52]
Fintan Moran
So I love the fact that this great artist is there at Taboo, although apparently he didn't dance, but he was there kind of chatting. Right.
- [09:01]
April Callahan
It was the scene. And apparently, apparently Lee had a little bit of a crush on John Galliano. Yeah.
- [09:08]
Fintan Moran
Yes. That's what Rachel said, I think. And he had a lot of crushes, I think. And actually, in the exhibition, Geoffrey Hinton designed a kind of section of the show which features a wide range of his videos from his archive, but also references from film and adverts that he and Lee loved. But there's a bit of John Galliano in the toilets at Taboo with his kind of floppy mop of curls, and it perfectly captures, I think, that kind of energy and essentially the community around Lee and how it was really this network of people who really cared and had an affinity for using every aspect of their life and their creativity to reimagine how we think about the things we take for granted around how we think about our body and. And also challenging the status quo at the time.
- [09:57]
April Callahan
Well, I think now a lot of people are accustomed to the presence of drag queens in clubs or spaces that host drag performances. But I also think it's important to note here that Lee himself never considered himself a drag queen. I'm curious if you might share with us a little bit about how he conceptualized the role of, quote, unquote, gender in his work.
- [10:19]
Fintan Moran
Yeah, I always think it's interesting because he is associated with drag and has had a big impact on it. And he did participate in Wigstock big drag festival that Lady Bunny started. But when he does perform there, he does his kind of birth routine. And he also purposefully sings Live Badly, which at the time, I maybe was antithesis of what was considered good drag. But I think even going back to when he was working as a fashion designer, he was quoted as saying he doesn't see the fashion industry in terms of male and female. He doesn't really care for that kind of separation. And for him, gender doesn't really come into how he thought about his designs. But then. But instead he's using elements of gender in his looks, but he's never trying to look like a woman or look like a man, but kind of really shifting the codes and making you question how we understand the body as a consistent entity. So when he's doing his taped up breasts with gaffer tape, it's not paired with like a wig and glamorous makeup. It's paired with a bald head and light bulbs. Yeah, light bulb hadpiece. And then when he's doing the merkin look, it's paired with this almost like a lampshade head piece of. I think it's called bugle beads. That looks a bit like an alien because there's these kind of raised elements where the eyes would be. So it's. It's never straightforward form of drag. And actually the main. He does wear wigs towards the end of his life when he's doing the birth performance, but really the main other time he wears wigs is in his day wear when he's presenting supposedly a kind of normal attire. But very often those wigs would be really ratty, badly cut wigs on purpose. So I think, yeah, his role in gender is kind of, is interesting, but it doesn't really conform to maybe how we think about drag culture and how drag explores gender, but in many respects embodies the idea of gender as a performance that, you know, many people theorized and spoken at length about.
- [12:28]
April Callahan
Yeah, there's a couple of contributors to the exhibition catalog that had some interesting things to say about this that I think are worth mentioning. Jess Baxter wrote, quote, he doesn't even bend gender. He scrunches it up, elongates it, twists and turns it, which I think is a really interesting way of thinking about this. And then also another contributor, Mackenzie Warrick, wrote, the work was neither drag nor fashion. He created genders that had not previously existed. With belts, tape and padding. He formed silhouettes hitherto unseen, some barely human. And I think that really speaks to this otherworldly quality of his looks. And I do want to ask you more about his quote, unquote, day drag, because this also opens the door up to something that we haven't spoken about yet, and that is Lee as a prankster and his. His rather consistent and intentional misbehavior, because this was part and parcel to this Persona that he created. Could you tell us about this?
- [13:31]
Fintan Moran
Yeah, I mean, I think it was a really big part of his personality and why a lot of people kind of loved and hated him, perhaps. And I mean, the most famous prank I think he did was when he told Sue Tilly that someone had died. And then a Few weeks later, she saw the person in a club and had a heart attack. So that shows the lengths to which he was willing to go to create drama and intrigue. And when I spoke to Princess Julia, she said she spoke about how Lee was about taking up space, but that in many respects, the rumors that he would spread were like another way of creating these kind of imaginary spaces and, yeah, creating a different world of thoughts. But lying was a kind of key part of his way of creating intrigue. And he very often kept his friendship groups apart, which in some ways was perhaps a way to control the narrative and to ensure, I guess, the tables were never turned. Which he apparently didn't like it so much when they were.
- [14:36]
April Callahan
He could dish it out, but he couldn't take it.
- [14:39]
Fintan Moran
Yeah, but, I mean, in a more kind of innocent way, he loved falling over on purpose in front of people, in the public. And he realized early on that embarrassment was a. Was a kind of feeling emotion that very few people really explore. And actually, if you can get through embarrassment, you can kind of almost get over, do anything in many respects. So he was interested in embarrassing himself, but also in the process, that would often embarrass the people around him because it would draw attention as well. And similarly, he would also sometimes, you know, like, push his wig over until it eventually would fall off and pretend he was embarrassed. But one of my favorite stories was Riffa Ospec, the designer and interior designer who knew Lee very well, said that Richard Tory lives above Old Compton street, and he would see John Paul Gaultier walking down, and Lee would shout with a megaphone for the person in the striped jumper to walk on the other side of the very door. You know, really just using every opportunity to create a scene, create mayhem. And for some people, that was really exhausting and frustrating, but it also brought an awful lot of joy into the people that knew him. And. Yeah, and was part of a key part of his pushing, I guess, of the boundaries of every element of his personal and professional life.
- [16:07]
April Callahan
One of the stories I loved the most was that he had apparently had multiple phone lines in his apartment, and he would use one phone line to call one of the other phones, and when someone was over, he would go answer that phone, and he would make up entire conversations with somebody, and it was usually like a famous personage or something. But this just really kind of speaks to how he was engaging in this fictive world building, not just with his dress, but his performance. And even in his everyday life, like his day drag, you know, wearing the wigs askance intentionally. He was always provoking in one manner or another.
- [16:48]
Fintan Moran
It was an element within the exhibition that I wasn't quite sure how we could convey, because that's very often situational and to do with his the words he was using as well. But we tried to give some suggestion of that through the postcards that he would send to Sue, Tilly and Nicola, which some of which are really sputty and again deal with not necessarily creating fictions, but definitely publicly sending these little missives about all of the naughty things he'd got up to, and also the kind of caustic kind of sense of humor they had between the two of them.
- [17:28]
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- [19:33]
April Callahan
Well, one of the things I thought was so brilliant about this show is the amount of documentation of his work that exists that you were able to include listeners. Remember the time periods that we're talking about here. We're talking about the 1980s, we're talking about the 1990s. We don't have cell phones, there's no social media. And Lee had a really a significant impact on other creatives in his sphere. And in turn, they were constantly looking to document his brilliance or even collaborate sometimes. And you have brought up Michael Clark several times now. Would you want to talk a little bit about that particular partnership and any other collaborations that you feel are significant?
- [20:16]
Fintan Moran
Yeah, I mean, I think the collaboration, Michael Clark was a significant one because it gave him a completely new way to think about his designs. First of all, because Michael first asks Lee to make clothing for his dance company and himself, but then very quickly notices how Lee can pick up a dance routine quite quickly and was very athletic. And so he starts to involve him in the shows. And Mike was very much informed or affected by the punk scene where he was classically trained ballet dancer. And he's noted for the way he brought those two elements together. And I think that matched Lee's own approach to making as well as them their use of humor and their work. You know, Michael's dance productions are very funny. And Lee often took on the role of the kind of court jester, pantomime dame type figure. And, and, but they had a very close friendship as well as part of that. And, and Lee, while he loved getting attention, he also really relished being part of this community of creatives. And he, while he was very competitive and sometimes could be dismissive of some people, he really supported and wanted his friends to succeed so that they could kind of continue on their own quest to be artists. And I think that was a key part of. Is a key part of his legacy. And it gave him an Opportunity to think about his designs within a kind of live, performative context and a context that was trying to challenge the conventions of the dance world. And that was done partly through references to sets, to gender, to everyday forms of dancing outside of the kind of traditional idea of ballet dance. But then equally he. Lee's really everyone that was close to Lee was kind of inspired by him and vice versa. So he did many. He did some films with them. Kerry from an Evans, who was one of his best friends, Bailey Walsh, John Mayberry. And then from 1988 through to the end of his life he undertakes an extensive photo project where Fergus documented many of Lee's looks, not every look, but that's become a key part of how Lee is known and remembered through these kind of studio portraits that Fergus Greer took and also some of the ones that Nick Knight took, I think it was in 87 and again in the early 90s. So he's someone that really was always collaborating with different people and fail from all of those people allowed Lee to bring the whole of himself and didn't really try to direct or curtail his vision. I think that was a key part of the success on both parts because they allowed each other to do the best they could do.
- [23:09]
April Callahan
Yeah. Well, speaking of portraits, we would be very remiss to not mention his work as a model for Lucian Freud. Would you tell us about that series?
- [23:20]
Fintan Moran
Yeah. So I mean that is in many ways that's probably the way that maybe the general public know of Leigh Bowery perhaps as well as the connection with Boy George. And he is kind of reintroduced to Lucian Freud after his performance at the Anthony Duffet Gallery where he performed in front of a two way mirror over five days. And he was reintroduced by Angus Cook and Keri Van Evans, who were a couple who were posing for Lucien at the time. And they thought it'd be really hilarious to make Lucien Freud paint loads of sequins. But Lee assumed he would be posing naked. So when he went to the studio he just automatically stripped. And that began a really, to my understanding, a really significant partnership on both of their parts because apparently it pushed Lucy and paint to a bigger scale to deal with a personality and an individual who was really fascinated by the human form, just as Lucien was fascinated by how you can depict the human form via oil paint. And they also both had a very high set strive and were quite provocative in their own ways. And then for Lee it gave him this other access to another side of the art world because although he was friends with artists like Karef and Evans and John Maybery. And Lucien was part of this older kind of establishment, but was still not necessarily appreciated the way he is today. And Lucien sitting for Lucian involved multiple sittings. And even if he was painting the chair and not your body, he still would want you in the room because he felt the chair would be different without you. And this gave him an opportunity also to sit and to contemplate his body. And in some interviews he did at the time, he spoke about how posing for Leucine helped him feel more comfortable with setting elements of his physique. So there's these kind of little hints of an insecurity there, even though he was very happy to show every aspect of his body. And this in many respects connects to the quote you mentioned earlier about flesh being his favorite fabric. And I think there's something interesting about the way Lucien depicted flesh through multiple layers of oil paint. And how he starts to use flash through piercing his cheeks, taping up his chest, which he was doing in the 80s already, but also designing costumes that showed more of his flesh and thinking about what that actually means. And that can also be connected to body art movement as well of this period, which would also have been an influence in his work. So, yeah, so the Lucian Freud moment was very key. And we have a great selection of paintings among Etchen in the show. And it kind of sets up an interesting dialogue, I think, with what Lee himself was doing, this grand old master.
- [26:18]
April Callahan
Well, all of these very fruitful collaborative partnerships came to an end far too soon. Lee had found out in 1988 that he had AIDS. Right. Not HIV positive, if I'm correct. He had full blown AIDS at that point.
- [26:35]
Fintan Moran
I'm not sure. I think it was HIV positive, but I could.
- [26:39]
April Callahan
Okay.
- [26:39]
Fintan Moran
Because he. Because he dies at the age of 1994 and he doesn't go back for his diagnosis and that he receives a letter asking how he's coping. So he has another few years before he passes away. Booth biography talks about how after this moment in 88, it kind of pushes him into overdrive. Where before he would maybe lounge around the night before hungover. Instead, he would now just want to keep on working and doing more things.
- [27:04]
April Callahan
And it was pretty much kept from everyone when he found out. Right. Maybe he had told a couple people, but then later he recanted, saying that he was lying. Which because he did this so frequently, people believed him. But again, as you said, in 1994, he very quietly went into the hospital. Pretty much it was just sutily and Nicola who he had married a few months before, that knew that he was critically ill. And at the end he told one of them, I can't remember which one of them, that when he passed, he wanted them to tell him to tell all of his friends that he had gone to Papua New guinea and he was volunteering with the native populations. So this sort of fictive world building really continued to the very end of his life, which was New Year's Eve, 1994, December 31, 1994. Being that so very few people knew that he was sick, what was the reaction to his death within creative circles?
- [27:58]
Fintan Moran
Yeah, I mean, I think it was obviously a sense of shock and great sadness that especially for someone that was so out there and so in your face and for whom there was no taboo, the fact that he had kept this very serious reality a secret from so many was difficult and also was very, for some, very hurtful because I guess they would hope that he would be able to tell them if they were so close. And I mean, when he was in hospital that some did, you know, Lucian Freud did go and car from Evans did go. So there was a few of his close friends were able to kind of say their goodbyes. But it was really very much a surprise to the scene. And I imagine because this was a period where the community were losing a lot of people from this to fees. And so it may be also might not have been necessarily a complete shock because there was always. They were all living under this cloud, dark cloud. And that was also coupled with a lot of the community dying from drug overdoses or other issues. And it was obviously a very dark time that wasn't helped by, I would say, the kind of lack of action by the government as well. And also the climate of fear that was created through that. And even within factions of the. The queer community, where there was a certain sense of how you're meant to behave if you're trying to fight this disease. And I think Lee didn't fit into that either in terms of trying to conform to a social group consensus. But what was really, for me very moving was speaking to so many of his friends and seeing what a loss his passing has been for their life and how much joy, despite him being antagonistic, sometimes upsetting them. He was someone that was very much loved and brought a great deal of joy and humor and excitement to their life. And some of them said for them, in many respects, he hasn't gone at all because his presence looms in some ways even larger now than it did when he was alive. And the creations that he made are so memorable. They kind of always stay with them. Yeah, yeah. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird.
- [30:49]
April Callahan
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Fintan Moran
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- [30:56]
April Callahan
Of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com this episode is brought to you by TikTok. Summer tastes like Tic Tac. Tantalize your taste buds this sunny season with Citrus Adventure and Orange, two everyday flavors that bring summer in every Tic Tac. Citrus Adventure is a yummy, vibrant medley of lemon, lime and mandarin. And Tic Tac Orange is the perfect mix of tangy and sweet. Visit us at Tic Tac USA on Social to refresh your summer with Tic Tac. Well, I don't want to end our conversation on a maudlin note, so I would like to ask about the exhibition itself, which is really a celebration of his life and career. And it's comprised not only of specific ensembles that Lee designed, but also documents, sketches. There's countless photographs in the exhibition. Might you tell us a little bit about a couple of your favorite ensembles in the exhibition or perhaps any other objects that you feel our listeners should know about?
- [32:07]
Fintan Moran
I mean, there's so much my co curator kept telling me off or trying to add some more things, but it was a challenge trying to contain really Lee. And I hope that we've somehow tried to not contain him too much, but in terms of his clothing designs that we have in the show because there were, we had quite a few to choose from and we tried to focus on ones that really worked well in, in reality and on mannequins and that kind of thing. But I, I really love this jacket he designed for Blitz magazine with loads of curvy hair grips.
- [32:41]
April Callahan
I love that one. I was so hoping that you would talk about that one.
- [32:45]
Fintan Moran
And then he uses the hair grips again in a kind of bodice garment that's kind of like a bra. And what I love about that is for me the hair grip is almost like a camp version of the safety pin. You know what? The safety pin was for the punk movement, the hair grip was for Lee.
- [33:01]
April Callahan
And I just want to interject we should point out that hair grip is basically what we would call like a. A bobby pin. Like a. A hairpin here in the U.S. yeah, yeah.
- [33:11]
Fintan Moran
And because it's an everyday item and it's very. Just like the safety pin, it's very diy. The fact that he used hundreds of these to cover this Levi's jacket, or hundreds of them to cover this bodice, it meant that when he moved, actually shimmered and created this kind of glistening effect. But it's made up of this kind of very cheap, everyday material. And it, for me, it speaks to his. The very homegrown nature of his creations, but also how fantastic and effective those were. So that's one of the things I love. There's also this brown jacket that he used to wear in his day to day life that is kind of a patchwork of different materials. I mean, it has these boot laces coming out in the. Where the patches meet. And Les Child, who was a dancer in the Michael Clark Company, said he hated that jacket. He was. He was wearing it all the time. But for me, I just thought it's so. It just seems so fiddly to have made this garment with these laces poking out every kind of stitch. And I think that especially in terms of his everyday garments being supposedly drab on purpose, this garment, this jacket, is the meeting point between the drab in terms of the brown colour and the boot laces. But then this slight sense of frisson that's created again because the laces would obviously move as teeth kind of moved quickly. But there's obviously the full head to toe looks that are really amazing to see in reality and still convey something of his physicality. And then in the last scene, we have the harness that Nicola was strapped into when they did the birth before performance, she was strapped upside down, which Rick Owens referenced in one of his fashion collections by having models strapped to other models. And it's made of. I think it was white satin, but because Nicola was covered in red body paint, it was over time stained this kind of beautiful pinkish reddish tone. And for me, it has just as an object has this really beautiful, effective quality.
- [35:12]
April Callahan
Yeah.
- [35:13]
Fintan Moran
And also just reminds us of Lee as a maker of these extraordinary garments.
- [35:18]
April Callahan
And the scenario that you're describing here is Nicola would be strapped upside down. Lee would come out intentionally appearing to.
- [35:26]
Fintan Moran
Be pregnant or to look, he was really fat because he was known to be. People thought of him as a fat person or big body person. And the performance originated from Divine. In Female Trouble, he gives birth to her own child and break and cuts the umbilical cord of her teeth. And Lee dresses up as in the same outfit as Female Trouble for that performance. But then the. The act takes on a new life where it becomes part of his routine at Rick Stock and then it becomes part of his band Mentee, their performance of Useless Man. And yeah, and. And when he does that, it's almost like this Chanel esque kind of two piece out scat seat. And that's when he's wearing a wig and then he's wearing a unitard underneath over the Nicola and the harness. And then in the unitard there was a Velcro element in the crotch and Nicola would have to undo the ribbons from underneath that were holding her in place and then push through the crotch. And she had a string of savaloy sausages around her neck that Lee would then bite in half to break the cord and. Yeah. Give birth to his friend. And for me, in a way, that's the kind of most fascinating example of him playing with how we think about gender and production of an idea and a world might mean in terms of him being able to produce his own kind of vision of his artistry.
- [36:53]
April Callahan
Vinton, this has been so fun. Thank you so much. Not only for the exhibition itself, the wonderful catalog and sharing all of your research and knowledge about Leigh Bowery with us. Again, this was a very personal episode for me. And part of the reason is because when I was in grad school doing my curatorial studies degree in Fashion Textile Studies, originally I had wanted to write my master's thesis on the club kids, the New York club kids, which is how I got in touch with Michael Alig while he was in prison. If any of you have seen the movie Party Monster, the character that's played by Macaulay Culkin is Michael Alec, based on Michael Alec. And he was in prison at this time for murdering his drug dealer. We're going to skip over that, but because I was thinking about writing my master's thesis on this, I was like, okay, who do I want to interview? Obviously I want to have primary sources and speak to all these people who can connect me to everyone. And of course, my answer was Michael Alex. So I wrote to him in prison and we started up with this back and forth correspondence and he would like send me little drawings and the letters and everything. But I put a kibosh on that because he gave my address out to other inmates and they started writing to me as well. And not thinking this through entirely. I had actually given him My actual address. So I had to stop. I was like, perhaps this is not a good idea, but I still have those letters between him and I somewhere stashed in my apartment. He was very nice. He was like, I'll introduce you to everyone. Yeah, he was very amenable to it, but that's my mind.
- [38:37]
Fintan Moran
And what perspective did he give on. I mean, in terms of what you were interested in? Did he give any kind of insight into that time period in terms of design and dressing up?
- [38:49]
April Callahan
Well, what was really interesting is what you said earlier about Lee, not necessarily really explaining references or his motivation behind his work. That was kind of Michael's take too. This is just what they did. Right. And there wasn't necessarily so much thought or pre planning that went into it. He's like, you know, a lot of times we were making the outfits that day that we were wearing out that night. So, yeah, that was kind of his takeaway too. So.
- [39:19]
Fintan Moran
Yeah. And I think in trying to do an exhibition of Lee compared to a more traditional artist, I had to remind myself that a lot of what Lee's doing is it's being made very quickly, sometimes all night long. And it's also being seen in these club environments where there isn't necessarily the same discourse or space for reflection that you have in art context. You know, it's not being asked of the creatives to justify or explain their look. And so some of the areas where it's maybe more challenging, it's maybe not surprising because it's a culture that's designed to outdo each other and shock each other. And I think it's interesting to think about these kind of moments and especially the club environment that creates this very dynamic creative scene. But it is a very different register from how we think about even. Even a fashion. The way a fashion collection is put together, which is also frantic. But you have, obviously the critics of a fashion collection, you have the critics of an art show, but you don't necessarily have the same critics of a drag show or club night.
- [40:25]
April Callahan
Yeah, there's. There's a sort of inherent temporality to it, I guess. Right? Yeah, yeah.
- [40:32]
Fintan Moran
And it's made to be kind of disappear in many respects, which is. Even though these people are very well documented by magazines and club photographers, but it being a culture that's local and designed mainly for that audience, really.
- [40:48]
April Callahan
Yeah. Finton, thank you so much.
- [40:52]
Fintan Moran
Thank you. And it's a real pleasure talking to you. And thanks for all of the insight you brought and the research that you did as well.
- [41:00]
April Callahan
Oh, I mean, it was honestly a true pleasure.
- [41:03]
Cassie Zachary
Fenton, thank you again so much for not only joining us on Dressed all this week, but also for this fantastic exhibition Leigh Bowery, which is up now and runs through August 31, 2025 at the Tate Modern in London. Seems that Bowery is really getting his flowers as of late for his tremendous influence on high fashion, on drag culture. As the Fashion and Textile Museum in London wrapped this past March, their exhibition Outlaws fashion renegades of 1980s London, which centered on the now legendary club night Bowery hosted called taboo during the mid-1980s.
- [41:40]
April Callahan
Yes, and fashion designers including John Galliano and Lee McQueen have widely acknowledged Bowery's influence on their work and have even directly referenced it in their very own collections. As we talked about in these episodes, Galliano and Bowery knew each other. They were friendly. Bowery had a bit of a crush on John Galeotto that seems was unrequited. And there are also photographs of Lee McQueen attending a performance by Bowery's band Minty not long before Bowery's passing in 1994. More than a few fashion critics have made this connection between McQueen's now infamous low slung bumpster pants, which revealed a portion of the wearer's derriere, with Bowery's own and it must be said, far more extreme bum revealing looks. Those looks created by Bowery were never intended for mass production. They were for performance purposes only.
- [42:36]
Cassie Zachary
And of course, if you cannot make it to London in person this summer to check out the show at the Tate Modern, there is a fantastic and fantastical exhibition catalog with hundreds of images of Lee's work and performances. And we of course put this up for you on our Dressed package bookshelf. So head to dressbookshelf.org dressed if you want to check that out. And you are definitely going to want to check out our Instagram this week for our mind bending Bowery content. To do so, you can search the hashtags dressed542 and dressed543.
- [43:07]
April Callahan
I think that does it for us this week. Dress listeners. May you consider engaging in a little bit of sartorial provocation next time you get dressed? Please head over to Dressed Underscore podcast on Instagram or Podcast without the Underscore on Facebook to check out the visual content associated with each week's episodes.
- [43:28]
Cassie Zachary
Remember, we love hearing from you dress listeners, so if you'd like to write to us, you can do so@hellorusthistory.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 check out whatever else we have up our finely tailored sleeves.
- [43:46]
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 bookshop.org shop dressed and there you will find over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles.
- [44:08]
Cassie Zachary
Do you love dress 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 ad free for $5.99 per month. More information is available at the link in our bio.
- [44:33]
April Callahan
Thank you as always for tuning in and more dressed coming your way soon. The History of Fashion is a production of Dressed Media.