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MR&MRS Clark
Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell
Fashion and print 1965–1974
Prato, Museo del Tessuto (17 settembre 2022 - 8 gennaio 2023)
Milano, Fondazione Sozzani (16 gennaio 2023 - 10 aprile 2023)
La mostra / The Exhibition
Enti Organizzatori
Organising Institutions
Fondazione Museo del Tessuto
Fondazione Sozzani
Promosso da Promoted by Mi Hub Agency
Con la collaborazione di with the collaboration of Archivio Massimo Cantini Parrini
E la partecipazione di And with the participation of Celia Birtwell
Lauren Lepire
A cura di Curated by Federico Poletti
Con la collaborazione di/ With the collaboration of Arianna Sarti
Patrocinio
Patronage
Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana
Comitato scientifico della mostra
Exhibition’s scientific committee
Massimo Cantini Parrini
Arianna Sarti
Maddalena Scarzella
Prestatori
Lenders
Celia Birtwell
Massimo Cantini Parrini
Bella Clark
Lauren Lepire - Timeless Vixen Polimoda library
Identità visiva
Visual identity
Claudio Dell’Olio
Adattamenti grafici
Graphic adaptations
Sara Pecchioli
Allestimento opere
Artworks display
Simona Laurini
Valentina Sonnati
Elisa Zonta
Ufficio Stampa Press office
Studio Maddalena Torricelli
Stefania Arcari, Fondazione Sozzani
Comunicazione digitale
Digital communication
Flod
Fotografie abiti
Clothes photographs
Leonardo Salvini
Traduzioni
Translations
Sarah Schneider
Fondazione Museo del Tessuto
Soci Fondatori
Founding Members
Comune di Prato
Camera di Commercio di Pistoia e Prato
Provincia di Prato
Presidente
President
Francesco Nicola Marini
Vicepresidente Vice-President
Giuseppe Moretti
Consiglio di Indirizzo
Steering Committee
Matteo Biffoni (con delega a / with power of attorney to Simone Mangani)
Alessandro Giacomelli
Paolo Nardi
Comitato di Gestione
Management Committee
Silvano Agostinelli
Silvia Borri
Federico Cecchi
Francesca Faggi
Giovanni Gramigni
Saura Saccenti
Sauro Venturini Degli Esposti
Revisore dei Conti
Auditor
Vladimiro D’Agostino
Consulente amministrativo
Management consultant
Studio BBS-Pro
Museo del essuto
Direzione
Direction
Filippo Guarini
Progetto allestitivo
Exhibition design
Arianna Sarti
Comunicazione digitale
Digital communication
Laura Fiesoli
Conservatore Curator
Daniela Degl’Innocenti
Segreteria
General office
Chiara Lastrucci
Amministrazione
Administration
Silvia Fiaschi
Servizi educativi
Educational department
Francesca Serafini
Fundraising
Anaïs Diana Di Bella
Fondazione Sozzani
Fondatori
Founding Members
Carla Sozzani
Kris Ruhs
Giovanni Frau
Sara Sozzani Maino
Presidente
President
Carla Sozzani
Vicepresidente
Vice-President
Giovanni Frau
Direttore artistico
Art Director
Kris Ruhs
Direttore creativo
Creative Director
Sara Sozzani Maino
Ringraziamenti speciali
Special thanks to Archivio Alfa Castaldi, Norman Bain, David Hockney, Inc., Iconic Images, Amanda Lear, Jim Lee, Sarah Moon, Peter Schlesinger
Si ringraziano
Thanks to
Bonaveri srl, Paolo Castaldi, Marialisa Cornacchia, Alfredo Fabrizio, Simone Gramegna, Azelia Lombardi, Marcella Mazzetti, Federica Mele, Fabrizio Orlandi, Benjamin Smith, Karin Vettorel
Si ringraziano le aziende del Museo del Tessuto Supporter Club
Thanks to the Companies of the Museo del Tessuto Supporter Club
Archè, Antilotex, Art Hotel Museo, A Zeta Filati, Brachi Testing Services, Centro Campionari, DHG, Enrico Pecci di Alberto Pecci e C., Frati Textiles, Giolica, Gruppo Colle, Hubic Marketing, Lanificio Bigagli, Lanificio Bisentino, Lanificio Nova Fides, Lido Barni, Lyria, Magniflex, Manifattura Forasassi, Marini Industrie, Mariplast, Marshbird, Piumini Danesi, Pointex, Rifinizione Nuove Fibre, Rifinizione Vignali, Tecnorama, Tessilfibre, Texmoda, Villa il Cerretino
Si ringraziano inoltre per il loro contributo alla realizzazione del libro: Furthermore thanks for contributing to the creation of the book: Andrea Cernigliaro e il suo team di Studio Cernigliaro, Leica, Alessia Caliendo
Enti organizzatori/Organising Institutions
Promosso da / Promoted by
Con la collaborazione di / With the collaboration of Patrocinio / Patronage
Fondazione Museo del Tessuto Soci fondatori / Founding Members
Sponsors
Con il contributo di / With the contribution of
tecnici / Technical Sponsors
Ossie Clark, courage and talent
Cristina Giorgetti
A historian, and more specifically a fashion historian, is tasked with not abiding by the memories or statements of authors or designers, instead examining every source, verifying every piece of news, even those in contemporary press, comparing the spirit of the creative with that of the time in question, but above all tracing the origins and the humus from which their creativity may have drawn.
It must be clarified that even for the creators themselves, an objective analysis of their work is often complex, chaotic and tiring. Therefore, although direct interviews are sources precisely because of their self-referentiality, they are to be examined with great care.
Inserting Ossie Clark in the so-called Swinging London and bringing him closer to the designers who inspired him is at the very least a pourparler to a period so complex that its semantic scope is still diminished. Although it is customarily often imitated, in concept it has never been eviscerated or understood in its deepest aspects, which are often elusive or taken for granted even by his contemporary protagonists.
Ossie Clark, née Raymond Clark, and his peers started from apparently common roots and ways of thinking, which then unfolded in completely different ways, and if not different by choice, certainly substantially by education and natural propensity.
For starters, we can concede that Ossie in substance did not spontaneously have a commercial soul, a sort of contradiction for true creators, whilst his colleagues closer to the designer and the industrial designer started precisely from this aspect, riding the wave of an incipient revolution that was in the air both in the philosophical and musical sense.
Oscar Wilde argues that spontaneity is not an elective character, and there are certainly reasons why one would ride the wave, whilst pure talent never follows anyone, not even public consent.
Ossie’s biography is well known–from the creative’s family origins to his first various successes at school– and has been included in every publication even before the exhibition dedicated to him at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2003 seven years after his death.
But let’s take a look at the essential traits that would lead him to be a phenomenon in his own right: born in 1942, the first few years of his life were spent displaced during England’s worst days of the Second World War. This grew into an absolute patriotism that came to characterise the spirit of the entire generation born in the early 1940s, as the children of the inhabitants of an empire which, despite being a small island, heroically and stoically survived a shower of bombs.
The most humane healthcare system came out of that hail of blows and emotional losses, and lasted until the advent of Margaret Thatcher (1979), including every charity and solidarity initiative that proudly strengthened the image and example in the world of an entire people, “the British”, an expression that in reality meant all the ethnic groups of the United Kingdom.
It is the story of a brilliant boy that everyone encouraged, and the vulgate records how from a very young age he had dressed dolls, designed swimsuits and clothes for the neighbourhood girls when he was not yet ten years old, that is, before 1952 when England, like all victorious nations struck down by the destruction, struggled to recover whilst benefitting from aids and the American “European Recovery Program”. The daily reality framing the first steps of his aesthetic inclination was therefore characterised by a shortage of goods, raw materials, money, the black market and even food problems. This is the nation where he began to form, to imagine a different world: Ossie’s world.
His studies under Professor Roy Thomas at Beamont Secondary Technical School, the art teacher of the
Norman Bain, Celia and Ossie in front of the paper dress commissioned by Nova Magazine, 1967
Collection Celia Birtwell
Norman Bain, Celia and Ossie at his apartment in East Putney, 1967
Courtesy Norman Bain/Celia Birtwell
NUOVA
After completing his postgraduate course as the only student with honours, Ossie was immediately put under the spotlight of the most exclusive fashion world. His work was photographed by David Bailey for Vogue with the model Chrissie Shrimpton, wearing one of his dresses with an artistic print by Pop Art artist, set designer and costume designer Robert Indiana. This art genre was also of great interest to him, since another of his inspirations came from the English painter Bridget Riley, a follower of Op-art. Thus his collection was on sale at the Woolland stores. At the same time he began to create for the designer Alice Pollock, co-owner of the Quorum boutique in Kensington, a shop near Barbara Hulanicki’s Biba. Just to clarify, the store Biba had made its initial fortune in 1964 by selling a single dress in a single size, which helps us understand the substantial difference with both the philosophy of Quorum and Ossie Clark. Pollock’s boutique became one of the most sought-after places in the “most exciting city in the world”, at least as American writer and journalist John Crosby called it in 1965 in an article discussing youth, talent and sexual freedom in “Swinging London”. In his writings, Ossie also remembers that store for the harmony that was created in the workshop among a team which included him, Pollock and Kathleen Coleman, who began to work as a simple machinist after training at Harrods. A tireless worker, she was technically brilliant and worked for him for 17 years, discussing every design with him and together finding all sorts of technical solutions.
London was the youngest city in the world then, just emerging from the Profumo affair, a major scandal of the Secretary of State for War, perhaps a spy, which exploded in 1963 and forced the government of the Conservative Party to resign. The new society had a centre-left Labour government, and the period was looking prosperous: unemployment was under control, exports were increasing, and thanks to the above-mentioned law every young woman was wearing the miniskirts launched in 1963/1964 by Mary Quant, but in reality only the imitated models considering the high prices of the originals.
However, whilst the dresses of the various fashion designers of the time required extremely young, wiry bodies, Clark’s dresses, whilst marked by freshness, immediately had a different logic: a lover of dance, a fan of Vaslav Nijinsky, for Ossie anything that was worn had to make the person feel at ease, the diktat of one his dresses was and remained that they were comfortable. Several times he explained: “You can make the most extraordinary models with a bias cut...” and moreover, “I’m a master cutter. I’m the scissor king.” With this in mind, in 1966 Clark created the Hoopla dress, a short, flared cut without pleats, photographed for Vogue not in the studio but in the chaos of the city whilst worn by the model Pattie Boyd. The dress was partly influenced by the loose shapes proposed by the American designer John Kloss, whose figure in the 60s was that of deconstructed dresses made of jersey and crepe which however, thanks to their cut, managed to have a tight fit to highlight the shape of the body. A mastery that Ossie could not help but notice. He tested his hand at various experiments with Celia Birtwell, including paper dresses, which greatly deceived the eye thanks to the floral prints and grain of the paper. These dresses were quite far from Andy Warhol’s 1960 “Souper Dress” with a soup can pattern repeated on a silkscreen-printed, disposable dress.
There is a great deal of talk about Ossie Clark and little that is certain, and sometimes rivalries were created that were perhaps overexaggerated by certain press. What is certain, however, is that in 1966 he managed to anticipate Yves Saint Laurent by launching the pantsuit “before” YSL, but not before Cardin who had presented it in 1964.
It goes without saying that fashion conceived as a race to the top does not make culture nor history; the important thing is not when things are launched, but how and why. And Clark thus learned from Cardin
Pag 22 Ossie Clark, Drawing for Coktail dress in black velvet and silk organza, beginning of the 60’s, Collection of Celia Birtwell
Pag 23 Johnny Dewe Matthews, Portrait of Ossie Clark at home in Linden gardens with the print flower check dress, 1970 ca
He was alone. As this exhibition also highlights, his founding contribution together with his wife Celia for the history of fashion stretches in a single decade, 1964-1974, and exploring who may have inspired and anticipated him is useless: influences are osmotic in the aesthetic field and remain ethereal and uncontrollable.
Certainly for his freedom of creation, without calculating risks, supported by ever-increasing successes from an early age, he has remained an example that today’s fashion should not imitate but instead ponder. It is important to relearn the understanding that without risk there is no masterpiece, without pain there is no love, and this is what Ossie Clark embodied: he always risked, he dared as long as fortune was in his favour, for reasons that should be investigated honestly, since his story is not merely one of misfortune, and he continued to pursue the search for his ideal dress, almost impossible to construct. It is said that he was forgotten by friends and powerful people who were once his associates, which is normal, the same thing happened in Paris for Madame Grès renting her atelier. Today the clothes are treasured, but his precious dresses were thrown away then and his brand, albeit of a high level, was never again successful.
Ossie Clark was not even considered by vintage for some time. It took the intuition of a costume designer like Massimo Cantini Parrini to understand that those masterpieces would certainly re-emerge, and this fact has only the talent of the collector to thank, his talent of immediately seeing garments of worth and those which were only a fetish of the time. Parrini loved Clark quite early on, he was already following him when the creator was still alive, and then he immediately tried to acquire the garments he believed were most representative of Ossie’s work, which are the ones we see on display today. He sees value as consisting in the construction, since he is also scholar of cutting; it lies in the combination of cutting-construction-textile print.
Trying to look at Ossie from other points of view, we should follow his colourful, glittering diaries that began in 1971, tracing spirals of coloured words that discontinuously chase each other and were published posthumously by his friend Lady Henrietta Rous in 1998 as The Ossie Clark Diaries. They testify to his creative will and the spiralling swirls of text once again set the spotlight on his quest for that ideal spiral dress and the complexity of his thinking.
If we were to posthumously provide an idea of Ossie Clark’s contribution to the world of fashion, we would have to follow in the wake of the obvious and repeat a sequence of imitators, emulators and infinite quoters, but what remains of this talent is the undiscussable fact that he managed to remain original and unique in a period in which the aesthetic currents from YeYe, to Beat, to Hippy, to Freak followed each other, influencing and imitating or opposing each other. In other words, as if he were impermeable, his creed, his very personal path, has continued even among a plethora of and sometimes dramatic economic difficulties, thus conquering his place in that Olympus where only few true creators, and not stylists converted on the road to Damascus, will continue to inspire future generations over the centuries, for fashion but beyond fashion.
Pag 32
Nicky Waymouth wearing the tulip print dress photographed by Norman Parkinson for British Vogue, December 1972
to design clothes for her boutique Quorum in Chelsea. She also suggested working with Celia Birtwell, who was responsible for designing the special fabrics for the store’s collections: the collaboration between the two would soon lead to the creation of some of the most beautiful clothes of the following decade. Celia and Ossie married in 1969, before the birth of their first son Albert. Their second son George was born three years later.
Together with Birtwell, Clark experimented and invented: the lime yellow and orange garments deserve mention, as do the reinterpretation of Poiret’s designs, or the women’s trouser suit anticipating Yves Saint Laurent’s 1966 “Le Smoking”. “This same dress was purchased from Quorum in London in 1965 and brought to Paris by some of Yves’ collaborators,” recounted fashion historian Judith Watt in an interview, pointing out, “I’m not saying that Saint Laurent stole it, but he certainly drew inspiration from it.”
Clark’s creativity, supported by Celia Birthwell’s talent, seemed inexhaustible. Palm trees, cherries, flowers and stylised geometries, his was a personal language but one which defined an era, the still unsurpassed one of swinging London. The consistent yet fluid crepe of his long, bias-cut dresses, the satin, the fringes, the most unusual colours and patterns that intertwined and blended, miniskirts and unsmiling models, are all distinctive, unmistakable signs of the Ossie Clark style. He introduced a new element with the snakeskin jacket: sensuality and street style now had access to the parlours. He was the first to confuse and mix the idea of “occasion”; indeed, for him, evening dresses could be worn during the day and vice versa, and he invented the nude look with his transparent chiffons. Today Ossie Clark would be defined a transversal character: bisexual, proletarian but a man of the world, he mixed the past and the present, the style of the
Ossie and Celia at work in thei atelier at Quorum boutique, around 1972
1930s and 40s and the most unusual and modern materials, imagining an anomalous use. He was unconventional, instinctive and unpredictable; only later would he become passionate about reading Proust, but from a very young age he visited the Portobello market and the Victoria and Albert Museum indifferently, in search of inspiration.
He was also the first designer to extend the concept of performance to fashion shows, and to propose them in the most disparate places. Like at Chelsea Town Hall in 1967 (the show would be filmed for the newsreels by Pathè News) or at the Royal Court Theatre in 1971, with the musical contribution of David Gilmore (who had been Clark’s driver before joining Pink Floyd). An account of the latter runway show was given by Suzy Menkes in an article in 2003: “May 1971. Midnight. The Royal Court Theatre, Chelsea, in the beating heart of swinging London. First comes the beanpole model Penelope Tree in a see-through chiffon blouse, with her partner, David Bailey; the restaurateur Michael Chow in a cerise satin blazer; Linda McCartney, with Paul, in blue to match her hair, and the artist David Hockney, front row. The raunchy, raucous, romantic Ossie Clark show starts at 2 a.m., the curvy models gyrating on glitter platform shoes and the Beatle wife (ed, George Harrison) Patti Boyd twirling her cape top to reveal naked breasts;”
The collaboration between Clark and Celia Birtwell would be immortalised by a famous painting by his friend David Hockney, “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy” (1970-71), still exhibited at Tate Britain. Portrayed next to his wife in his Notting Hill home, Ossie is barefoot, cigarette in hand, sitting on a chrome chair by Marcel Breuer, with the white cat Percy on his lap. The room is so consciously furnished–neutral-coloured walls,
Pag 37
Models wearing Ossie Clark from English Boy models agency in Chelsea, around 1970’s Ossie, Gala Mitchell and another model in New York, c 1974
Love for Nature and Art IN
CONVERSATION WITH CELIA BIRTWELL
Federico Poletti
Celia Birtwell’s education began at the Salford Art School in Manchester, where she earned a degree in Textile Design before moving to London in the early 1960s, where she produced the first fabrics for Op-art style furnishings. She was impressed by the exhibitions and collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, in particular by Leon Bakst and Sergei Djagilev’s costumes for the Russian Ballets and the art of the historical avant-garde. These designs, together with her love of nature passed down by her father, were fundamental inspirations for her path.
Celia’s style plays on the unpredictability of combinations: a mix of flowers and stylized leaves reminiscent of Botticelli, sometimes combined with geometric elements or references ranging from medieval English tapestries to Cubism and Pointillism. Her fabrics are made with a particular technique called discharge printing: the design is made on already-dyed fabric using a bleaching agent that removes the background colour only in the part to be printed, thus creating the design by subtraction.
The starting point for her prints are precisely her illustrations, preserved in the precious sketchbooks on display. As Celia herself recounts: “Drawing was natural and I found it almost therapeutic. I started from defining the face that had to have personality, otherwise I wouldn’t continue.”
After the autumn/winter collection of 1974, Ossie and Celia went down different paths, continuing their work independently. Celia embarked down a path of interior design, developing collections for the home and collaborations with fashion brands thanks to an aesthetic consistency which, looking back, always remains current.
I met Celia at her London home where she also keeps her archive. She told me about the incredible adventure with Ossie Clark, life partner (with whom she had two children) and at work.
How did you first meet Ossie?
Pag 54
Celia and David Hockney at his flat in Powis Terrace, Notting Hill photographed by Peter Schlesinger, 1969
Pag 55
Celia in her interiors shop, 1984
I studied at Salford Art School while Ossie was at Manchester College of Art. A great friend of mine, Mo McDermott, introduced me to him. He was quite eccentric with a Beetle haircut and a pullover in brown leather with a V-neck. He was very stylish. And I came down for summer holiday to London, with the intention of going back to Manchester, and I never went back. Ossie said he had a little flat in Ladbroke Road, off Ladbroke Road, above a bicycle shop. So he said why don’t you come and stay with me there and the rest is history.
How was your professional collaboration?
Well, it was curious because I’d only done textile design and he was a mastercutter anyway, and I think my first memories of that was always keeping my sketchbooks going because I’d always kept the sketchbooks which he would look at and I guess his work was very structural. He was great at making
shapes–three-dimensional shapes–which I’ve never been able to accomplish. I do flat patterns. I can’t draw in three dimension and so he could make shapes and volume which I think is a talent which I don’t have. My work was possibly more fantasy-like and will never be constructed because I wouldn’t have been able to make them work. He would look at my drawings and then he would soften up his broader and hard-edged line that he used to have in his drawings even and so he could encapsulate my kind of fantasy drawings and make them real. So that was the kind of marriage of the two ideas. And it was a great fusion. I really admired what he could do. I didn’t know designers before him but he obviously looked at 1930s V&A and people like that and looked at people drawing up working on the bias. But he could do all that on his own.
What is your first memory of Alice Pollock?
He met her outside the Albert Hall and told me: I’ve met a woman who shares the same birthday as me, June the 9th 1942, and she wants to do a collection with me. So, I went to a tiny Boutique in Chelsea where she’d made clothes out of lace curtains. Ossie went in there and just showed a bit of his magic. She could see immediately that he had a very unusual talent.
What could be Ossie’s most iconic dress?
There’s so many to choose from but I’m proudest of the ones with my prints on. He could make a plump woman look as well as a slim model shaped person because he knew all about structure. He also knew how to do like a Botticelli dress like the one I wore when we got married. He made me lots of great skirts and little sweet jackets that I could zip myself up into. The shapes were quite controlling but they didn’t feel like courses, in fact they were very feminine and never vulgar which was a bonus.
How catwalk shows changed in his days?
He was the first person to put music to a fashion show and use people from different background to perform, including black and oriental models. During the 50s, when I was teenager, catwalk shows were very awkward and proper instead, people would walk on the stage rather correctly. Ossie created a vibrant multicultural show and started off a whole movement. Music was also a big part of that. He was great friends with Rolling Stones, John Lennon and George Harrison as we were all starting off at the same time. People always say “you must have had a great time in the 60s” and it was actually true.
What do think about Ossie’s muses?
His choice in models was really inspiration. Gala Mitchell was one of my favourites but I also liked Pattie Boyd and Carrie Anne Jagger. They stayed fairly loyal to him though he was difficult to work with. I think he would have been happier as a pop star because in fashion you have to keep going all the time. So, when he got rather famous, he should have had somebody looking after his business properly but he became very arrogant and nobody could have controlled him. As his caring side diminished, I got fed up with it. I think he was like those stars that shine bright but they never last too long.
How did you start creating a new collection?
He’d let me use whichever print I wanted to. I’d go to the printers and choose an assortment of different fabrics, then I’d drive back and take them to his studio. Sometimes he’d phoned me or sent me a telegram to tell me they were beautiful and he would start working. He’d be so excited about a new sleeve or a new way of cutting a top. I really liked that part of the process because that’s when he was the most creative. He also worked with this wonderful person called Kathleen Coleman who would stand by him like a saint to develop the collection.
Celia sketchbook with some of her iconic designs and other patchwork of prints, Celia Birtwell Collection, 1968
Which is the the feature that made Ossie’s fashion unique?
Ossie’s clothes were beautifully cut and very feminine. We might say that they were quite classic and timeless in a way, but they were never vulgar, which means that they used to produce photographs of his transparent clothes with slight bosom showing. This is true for the “The Sun” newspaper. The press was very enthusiast and jumped on slightly bosomy girls who wore transparent blouses.
How did you work on prints? Why are they still modern today?
All the chiffons were printed at a place called “Ivo prints” and that’s where I worked all of my career. The technique I used was called pigment printing. Pigment printing means printing on the table and, if it’s chiffon, you have to pull it off because it sticks to the table. We wouldn’t be allowed to do it now because the inks and everything we use would dye. It might be used for furnishing fabrics but not for dress fabrics since techniques have changed so much. When I printed at this place called Ivo Prints in Southall, which is in London. I loved that part of the process because I could experiment with colour. I had a sample table where I could try all the colours and that was a very creative period. I take credit for being modern because my prints have got an innocence that is also part of me. Mystic daisy was created in five minutes and Al Radley used to say “just bake more mystic daises.”
How did you start working with Alfred Radley?
58-59
Celia sketcbooks showing her flair for balancing different designs harmoniously, 1968
When Ossie had a studio in Burnsall Street in Chelsea, Alice Pollock met Alfred Radley–he was known as Al Radley–and immediately realised his talent. I suppose he was from the rag trade and had a big soft spot for Ossie. He thought he could do a diffusion line under his name and they both could benefit from it but
La terra dell’abbastanza (Boys Cry), Favolacce (Bad Tales), America Latina, to Andrzej Wajda for Walesa, the man of hope. We met with him to learn more about his passion for collecting clothes and in particular those by Ossie Clark, a designer as fragile and cheeky as his creations. With his wife Celia Birtwell, Ossie Clark not only shaped the aesthetics of Swinging London, but his modus operandi also reverberated with subsequent designers including Yves Saint Laurent, John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, Walter Albini: a combination of languor and boldness, eroticism and candour, decadence and innocence. A kind of life-mimicking-art or the opposite, where he fell from the most famous runways and divas in the world into a spiral of drugs, vices, sex and addictions that brought him to live in a council flat in Notting Hill in the 80s. As reported by journalist Georgina Howell in 1987, he lived in squalor with a Buddhist shrine consisting of packs of Sobranie cigarettes and roses stolen from nearby Holland Park. And gradually, spiralling even further until his tragic and romantic death: stabbed by his lover Diego in 1996. Clark’s goal was to create beautiful clothes, never seeking to guarantee posterity, and perhaps that’s what marks his meaning. But his contempt for members of the fashion industry, instead preferring to woo his friends and a few, volatile celebrities, meant that his legacy would be difficult to preserve, and few examples of his work became part of museum collections. We start from precisely this point.
Antonio Mancinelli What difficulties have you faced finding and especially preserving Ossie Clark’s clothes in your collection?
Massimo Cantini Parrini I had already acquired conservation experience before I became passionate about collecting; so I already knew some of the basics of the techniques for conserving and protecting textiles.
A. M. How did you ‘meet’?
M.C. P. Many of his garments could be found in London at the end of the nineties. Or rather: his name was well-known among those who love costume, but even then he was considered an elite phenomenon. His pieces had not yet reached very high prices, at least for the time. I have loved his creations more and more since then, and I began to study him up to the point of collecting his work, a choice that later turned out to be correct, also because the originals are now almost impossible to find, or they are quite ruined, or they have absurd costs. What happens in contemporary art or in any object that is collected is now happening with Clark: when a name becomes known, it develops an upward trend in economic terms.
A. M. Do you agree that the demand for his clothes–evanescent, romantic, hippie chic, which were linked to pre-Raphaelite painting as well as to the demands for women’s civil rights– today gives Clarke’s fashion an eminently political value, that is, the opposite of what the punks claimed, who judged him overly sappy and disconnected from reality?
M.C.P. Absolutely. His clothes, Botticelli-like if you will, not only reference to the Pre-Raphaelite painters, but above all to the lines in his cuts and in the 1930s and 40s proportions, a revival of that art deco style that was so in vogue in the beginning of the 70s. The knowledge he had, his attendance with the intellectual milieu
Pag 70
Ossie Clark, detail from a Dress, ca. 1969, Collection Massimo Cantini Parrini
