No history-defining look is full with out hair and make-up, a sentiment that London’s ‘Blitz Youngsters’ pioneered to the intense throughout the late Seventies and Eighties. Spearheading this motion was Australian efficiency artist and clothier Leigh Bowery, who had a strictly enforced code of entrance for his short-lived however notorious Soho nightclub, Taboo: ‘Gown as in case your life is dependent upon it, or don’t hassle.’
Yesterday (4 October 2024) Outlaws: Style Renegades of 80s London opened on the Style and Textile Museum in Bermondsey, paying tribute to Taboo and people who inhabited the world round it. Alongside Bowery, they included the likes of John Galliano, Pam Hogg, Stephen Jones and Judy Blame; musicians Steve Unusual, Rusty Egan and Boy George; dancer and choreographer Michael Clark; and clubbing royalty Princess Julia, Philip Salon and Susanne Bartsch.
How Leigh Bowery and the Blitz Youngsters outlined Eighties subculture with make-up
Trojan and Mark at Taboo, 1986
(Picture credit score: © Derek Ridgers courtesy of Unravel Productions)
Taboo was held in a dimly-lit nook of Leicester Sq. between 1985 and 1986. It adopted within the footsteps of Covent Backyard’s Blitz Membership, the place the New Romantics and Blitz Youngsters originated.
The membership’s identify was significantly ironic, contemplating that completely nothing that went on inside was thought-about as such, with Bowery injecting an intoxicating mix of avant-garde sleaze, intercourse and chaos into the area. His rule for loud, all-out seems to be was enforced by the infamous doorman Mark Vaultier, who would maintain up a mirror to these vying for entrance and ask: ‘Would you allow you to in?’
‘Gown as in case your life is dependent upon it, or don’t hassle.’
Leigh Bowery
Gaynor at Matthew’s flat
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Gaynor Prior)
The Style and Textile Museum exhibition is curated by Martin Inexperienced and NJ Stevenson. Inexperienced, who was an everyday on the Eighties membership circuit, is the co-founder of Duovision Arts, a Liverpool-based organisation which produces exhibitions by undervalued artists, photographers and designers engaged with the LGBT+ group. Stevenson, is a style curator, writer and lecturer at London School of Style.
Collectively, they’ve additionally produced a e book to accompany the present titled Outlaws Style Renegades of Leigh Bowery’s Eighties London, which delves additional into the position that make-up and hair performed in shaping London’s counterculture.
Mike Nichols and Matthew Hawkins
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Joan Burey)
‘Make-up grew to become one other software within the quest for reinvention and individuality. Clubbers practised at house till they reached skilled ranges of software and experimentation.’
NJ Stevenson
‘Charles Fox, the theatrical costumier in Covent Backyard, stocked Kryolan make-up which produced Aquacolour – a staple of membership seems to be,’ says Stevenson. ‘Within the early Eighties, Charles Fox had an enormous sale and the Blitz Youngsters snapped up interval items which raised the bar of membership dressing up. Leigh Bowery used Aquacolour for his excessive seems to be at Taboo; the drips look was Copydex glue blended with pigment.’
‘Make-up grew to become one other software within the quest for reinvention and individuality. Clubbers practised at house till they reached skilled ranges of software and experimentation,’ she continues. ‘Competitors and rivalry meant nothing was too excessive.’ This may vary from artist Matthew Glamorre portray his enamel with nail polish to the experimental work of Swedish make-up artist Jalle Bakke, whose diaries are on present within the new exhibition. Bakke, who died of AIDS in 1996 on the age of 35, introduced the avant-garde aesthetic of Taboo to Michael Clark productions, covers of I-D and The Face and music movies for ABC and Neneh Cherry.
Make-up artist Jalle Bakke
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Corrine Charton)
‘Do you wish to be a Nineteen Thirties starlet or do you wish to be Victorian punk? Make-up is the car in that. It’s so necessary when turning seems to be,’ says icon of New York nightlife, Susanne Bartsch. Born in Bern, Switzerland, Bartsch moved to London as a teen throughout the late Seventies, changing into a key participant on the Soho scene.
It’s noon within the Large Apple once we communicate over a name and the 59-year-old Bartsch is planning her search for a celebration she’s internet hosting later that night time. ‘I usually plan the make-up first. I’ll do the make-up after which I’ll see what I’ve in my closet,’ she says, with a Siouxsie Sioux-inspired wig on the prepared.
David Partitions, Leigh Bowery and mates in London, 1983/4
(Picture credit score: © Michael Costiff)
Bartsch has lived in New York for the reason that Eighties. On her return from London, she noticed a niche available in the market for the mischievous, maximalist spirit of the Blitz Youngsters. ‘Individuals weren’t doing seems to be in New York. Should you had a flower in your hair you had been dressed up. It was very Calvin Klein, very minimal, very stylish. Individuals had been effectively dressed but it surely wasn’t vibrant and expressive,’ she says.
By beginning her weekly underground events impressed by the power of Taboo, the town’s personal membership child motion was born, of which Amanda Lepore, Michael Alig and James St James had been an element. ‘I feel I introduced that complete motion to New York, by means of what I skilled in London with Blitz and the New Romantics,’ says Bartsch.
‘I first met Leigh in his residence. His face was painted blue and he had off-centred, summary lips.’
Susanne Bartsch
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Joan Burey)
She additionally launched New York to London’s most extravagant membership child of all, Bowery, who was by then a detailed pal of hers. She vividly remembers Bowery’s singular seems to be, which ranged from these signature drips of colored Copydex working down his bald head like candle wax to absurdly spiked wigs and gimp masks with lightbulbs for ears.
‘I first met Leigh in his residence. His face was painted blue and he had off-centred, summary lips,’ she remembers. ‘We simply clicked. I requested to purchase a few of his stuff and so he began making issues for me. I took him to Japan, then I launched him to New York. [His look] was very robust. His character and charisma had so much to do with it. However the look was very new to me, I hadn’t seen something that was put collectively like he put it collectively.’
Leigh Bowery and mates at Taboo
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Scarlett Cannon)
The necessary position that Taboo performed within the time of Thatcher’s Britain can’t be overstated. LGBT+ individuals confronted rampant homophobia and discrimination, the AIDS pandemic was sweeping the globe, and the introduction of the 1988 Part 28 legislation stopping councils and colleges from ‘selling the educating of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended household relationship’ was on the horizon.
Areas like Taboo supplied a darkish, dingy, however beloved queer utopia. Those that had been unable to precise their truest self throughout sunlight hours might grow to be whoever they wished to be below the quilt of nighttime. By style, make-up and hair, wearers had been in a position to experiment with totally different – and maybe extra correct – representations of their inside beings, with a significant sense of playfulness.
Jeffrey Hinton, Lanah Pellay and Richard dancing at Taboo
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Scarlett Cannon)
Although Bowery died in 1994, his and The Blitz Youngsters’ affect on tradition has endured to at the present time. Make-up artist Val Garland has steadily referenced his overdrawn lips and fearsome face paint in runway exhibits for Alexander McQueen, Rick Owens and Gareth Pugh. Dame Pat McGrath – who as a twentysomething used to observe Bowery, Unusual and Boy George down the King’s Street in awe – has devoted make-up palettes from her namesake magnificence line to the membership youngsters of the Eighties and past.
‘It’s an artwork type; it’s embracing your self and utilizing your physique as a canvas,’ says Bartsch, of the ritual of dressing up. ‘It’s plenty of work placing collectively a glance, then executing it’s like making a sculpture. It’s a option to present your skills and have enjoyable. The underside line is that it’s enjoyable. You’re reinventing your self and seeing how far you possibly can go.’
Outlaws: Style Renegades of 80s London is open on the Style and Textile Museum from 4 October 2024 to 9 March 2025.
fashiontextilemuseum.org
Princess Julia and Scarlett Cannon
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Scarlett Cannon)
Supply: Wallpaper
