Lots 136 to 140 are from the wardrobe of the late Mark Golding (Marc Vaultier) 1966-1986. Marc was the friend and collaborator of Leigh Bowery, the outrageous performance artist, fashion designer, artist’s model and club host. Marc is photographed with Leigh Bowery in ‘Leigh Bowery’ Violette edition on pp.17, 52 (the picture is wrongly identified as Trojan) and p.62 inside the Taboo club. In 1985 the club entrepreneur Tony Gordon invited Bowery to become the public face of Taboo, which was a languishing night club in Leicester Square. Bowery transformed it almost overnight into the most outrageous and talked about club in London. The journalist Alix Sharkey described it as ‘the sleaziest, campiest, and bitchiest club in London’. The clientele included Boy George, Sade, Derek Jarman, the Bodymap crew and John Galliano. In the 1980s London clubs became the place where fashion, music, art and self-expression collided, interacted and produced a whole new creative energy.
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The young Marc Vaultier with his classic good looks became part of the scene, was befriended by Bowery and given the important role of greeter/doorman at Taboo between 1985-6. If Marc didn’t like the way you looked - you didn’t get in. You had to dress as though your life depended on it; anyone regarded as looking remotely ‘normal’ was turned away. Marc would stick a mirror in the faces of those waiting outside and say ‘Would you let yourself in?’. Bowery stated in 1985, ‘We only let in fabulous, over the top dressers and stars’. The longer the queue became - the greater the desire to get in. Leigh Bowery dressed Marc in gorgeous shimmering satins, deep soft velvets and frilled lace shirts. The proportions and cut of the clothes were large and generous (Boy George commented that Bowery’s designs made him look fat) and gave the impression of something chosen from a crazy dressing up box. Pete Silverman writing about the club in 1985 described Marc as ‘having clumped up the stairs in his high-heel wedgies. His long blonde hair falls in strands over a blue cord top with shoulders peaked to ear level and D-cup breast mouldings.”
Marc Vaultier and Leigh Bowery both died tragically young. Perhaps these clothes represent a youth spectacularly mis-spent but also hugely enjoyed. It wasn’t just a matter of exhibitionism, or trying to look interesting (although that was a part of it) the clothes were integral to the world they invented and inhabited and were taken very seriously. The fashions spawned in these London clubs went on to influence catwalk fashions and culture for the following decade.