Ossie Clark
Encyclopedia
Raymond "Ossie" Clark was an English
fashion designer who was a major figure in the Swinging Sixties scene in London
and the fashion industry in that era. Clark is now renowned for his vintage designs by present-day designers.
Clark is compared to the 1960s fashion greats Mary Quant
and Biba
and influenced many other designers, including Yves Saint Laurent, Anna Sui
and Tom Ford
. Manolo Blahnik
has said of Ossie Clark's work: "He created an incredible magic with the body and achieved what fashion should do — produce desire." Ossie Clark and Ossie Clark for Radley clothes are highly sought after, and are worn by well known models like Kate Moss
and Naomi Campbell
.
, Lancashire
, England in 1942, Raymond Clark's parents, Anne and Samuel Clark, moved to Oswaldtwistle
during the war, hence his nickname, "Ossie". Ossie's mother, Anne Grace Clark, was in labour with Ossie for seven days during an air raid in World War II. Anne had been expecting a girl and so had no name picked out for her new baby. She let the midwife name him Raymond. Ossie was the youngest of six children ( Gladys, Kay, Beryl, Sammy and John ). Ossie and his brother John sang in the church choir at St Oswald's church in Winwick
where Ossie won awards for his vocal talents.
Family and friends noted that from a very early age he was "brilliant at doing anything". Young Ossie would make clothes for his nieces and nephews. He practised tailoring clothing on his dolls and designed swimsuits for the neighborhood girls when not yet ten years old. The Art teacher at Ossie's Secondary School recognised Ossie's creative flair and gave him a large collection of Vogue
and Harper's Bazaar
magazines. Clark pored over these magazines and absorbed the glamour and cutting edge fashion.
At the age of thirteen Ossie studied architecture in school. He later said that the experience was "invaluable" The class taught him the fundamentals of proportion, height and volume. He would later go on to use all of these to great effect in his fashion designs.
Soon after leaving Beamont Secondary Technical School, Clark attended the Regional College Of Art in Manchester
, now Manchester Metropolitan University
at age sixteen. Ossie had to get up very early in the morning to make the long trip from home to college each day. Anne Clark would give Ossie prescribed pills to keep him awake and alert. This would be the start of a life-long addiction to both prescribed and illegal drugs.
While attending college in Manchester, Clark was introduced to Celia Birtwell
by a close friend and classmate named Mo McDermott. The pair started out as just good friends but that friendship soon developed into a love affair. Ossie also became good friends with artist David Hockney
during this period. Clark and Hockney took an inspirational trip to New York together while still at college where they made many valuable connections in the fashion, art and entertainment communities. The friends are widely rumored to have been lovers with a volatile relationship. Clark graduated from Regional College of Art in 1958.
Clark then attended the Royal College of Art
in London and achieved a first-class degree in 1965. While attending college in London Celia Birtwell
came to live with Ossie in his small Notting Hill
flat. Ossie's degree fashion show at the RCA was a huge success. At this time Ossie's design style was heavily influenced by Pop Art
and Hollywood glamour. The final line-up featured a dress with flashing lightbulbs down the front which was shown in every major newspaper and fashion publication the following day. The fashion press swamped Ossie with requests for photo-shoots and special order garments. In August that year he had his first feature in British Vogue
. A popular shop named 'Woodlands 21' in London's Sloane Street
was the first to begin selling Ossie Clark's clothing line.
and so taken with the young designer was she that she immediately ordered a whole collection of dresses for her boutique. Ossie presented a collection of white and cream chiffon garments that sold fast. Pollock wanted Clark's clothes to have a more organic feel and so commissioned Celia Birtwell
to produce special textiles for the next collection. In this way, one of fashions most famous collaborations was born: with Ossie Clark designing clothes and Celia Birtwell
designing prints.
This partnership would last for almost all of Clark's career in fashion. Author Judith Watt comments: "Celia collaborated with Ossie. This was a joint effort. People say that she was his muse, which indeed she was, but their work absolutely went hand in hand. It was her designs that he used to create his. I think it's unfair that she not be given that voice"
Ossie was noted, from this period on, for buying six new record albums a week, all from the newest and most popular recording artists. His love of music and art were legendary amongst Ossie's friends. Also at this time Ossie began to take hard drugs more recreationally with friend and business partner Alice Pollock. "This is when his character began to change" says longtime friend Lady Henrietta Rous.
The first full Ossie Clark collection was bought by the Henri Bendel
department store in New York. This was the first export of a talented young British designer's work. His simple, elegant dresses were widely copied by the designers on Seventh Avenue.
In the late 1960s, Clark hit a rich vein for his flamboyant clothing range. The fashion press dubbed Ossie "The King Of King's Road". Clark pronounced himself a "master cutter. It's all in my brain and fingers and there's no-one in the world to touch me. I can do everything myself." Clark's great idol was the famous dancer Nijinsky
and his love of dance inspired his clothes to be free moving and not to restrict the female form. This style of dressing became quite popular in the 1970s thanks in large part to the popularity of Clark's clothing. Ossie Clark is well known for his use of muted colours and moss crepe fabric. He also designed shoes, paper dresses, and snakeskin jackets.
While Ossie and Alice were great at creating an image and drawing in the rich and famous, they were less successful at managing a business. Many garments were given away to celebrities or just disappeared from the shop. By 1967 Quorum, the partnership between Alice Pollock and Ossie, was deeply in debt and Ossie and Alice agreed to sell Quorum to a large UK fashion house, Radley (run by Alfred Radley
). Radley took over Quorum's debts and put the management onto a sound basis. Alfred Radley was keen to maintain what made Ossie special and so he continued to support Ossie's aspirations by developing the Ossie Clark brand and funding large annual fashion shows, expanding Quorum's retail business and distributing Ossie's dresses to leading retailers around the world through the introduction of the "Ossie Clark for Radley" collections.
In 1967 Clark presented his first fashion show under the patronage of Radley at Chelsea Town Hall for Pathé News. It was a seminal turning point in the history of fashion shows which were never to be the same again. He also showed his first full collection in London's Berkeley Square
. It was also the first British fashion show to feature black models. In 1968 Clark designed his first of many diffusion lines for Radley, "Ossie Clark for Radley" that made his clothes available to a high street clientele.
Clark was not just popular in London, but also in New York and Paris. He dressed the rich and famous who inhabited the beau monde of the late 1960s and early 1970s of London. Clark got in on the ground floor of many of the popular performers and actors of the time period and was accepted in their circles when many other designers were not. This gave him many advantages to dress the rich and famous. Clark made many stage costumes for Mick Jagger
, the Beatles
, Marianne Faithfull
and Liza Minnelli
, among others.
In 1969, he married Celia Birtwell
and had two sons Albert and George, together. Clark had long hoped for a large family of his own and his children were a great joy in his life.
Clark freely adopted the hedonistic lifestyle of the 1960s and 1970s: his drug use greatly impacted on his emotional state and finances. Clark and Birtwell divorced in the 1970s. This started a slow downward spiral for Ossie, who never recovered emotionally from the separation from Birtwell and his two children. With his family structure and work stability now gone, his creative output became strained.
However in 1977 Ossie went into business with Tony Calder
and Peter Lee and for two years Ossie enjoyed a revival with hugely successful fashion shows, rave reviews and commercial stability. Fashion writer, Ann Chubb wrote ' It is great to see him right back on form again after a few years in the doldrums'.
shop on the King's Road became the most popular look and one of Malcolm McLaren’s 'Scum' T-shirt text went so far as to include Ossie Clark under the heading 'Hates'. Ossie Clark's romantic flowing gowns were no longer in fashion. His fortunes declined to bankruptcy and Clark largely stopped working commercially. Famously devoid of business acumen Ossie blamed his downfall on banks and the taxman's ruthless insistence on cashing in all his assets. His bitterness at this and a short-sighted determination to sit out the bankruptcy term, along with deep depression, meant he worked only on private commissions which were paid for by barter. A loyal band of famous clients and friends would order a dress and pay for it by loaning a holiday house in the Caribbean or paying for his sewing machine to be repaired.
In 1984 Ossie was persuaded by a friend to go back to work with Radley. He produced some beautiful garments with shoulder details based on sea shells but according to his diaries was then sacked by Radley that same year. A note written by Ossie to the DHSS (pg147) says "I did not leave my position as a dress designer with Firwool of my own accord, as stated overleaf. It was put to me that as my designs weren't selling they couldn't continue to invest in me and I was given two weeks notice on the 19th October 1984. I wasn't offered a choice of continuing to work or not - I was fired." This version of events is backed up by a friend the artist Guy Burch who recalls that Clark told him Radley had found the complicated shell patterns impossible to make commercially.
Although the 1980s were chaotic and nomadic there were brighter sides to his life charted in his published diaries. In January 1978 he had met his second long term partner Nicholas Balaban who was working as a barman at the Sombrero Club in Kensington. With Ossie's encouragement Balaban applied to the Byam Shaw art school and went on to start his own highly successful fashion business producing printed T-shirts for high street boutiques and multiples. Although most published accounts choose not to pay much attention to Clark's gay relationships his sexuality was predominantly homosexual. Unfortunately Clarke's continued erratic behaviour eventually led to the relationships collapse in 1983/84. His depression deepened even more as he obsessed over Balaban, trying unsuccessfully to rekindle the relationship. Only with Balaban's death from AIDS in 1994 and a conversion to Buddhism did he finally begin to rebuild a career and shake off the past. In the early 1990s he trained the designer Bella Freud to pattern-cut and an extremely promising new beginning was the use of Clark's mastery of pattern cutting chiffon and delicate fabrics by the Ghost label. Clark found their computerised pattern cutter a revelation, able to turn initial ideas into formers almost instantaneously.
, London
, by his then 28 year old Italian former lover, Diego Cogolato. Cogolato was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and jailed for six years.
's 1970 painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy
. It now hangs in the Tate Britain
gallery on Millbank
and is one of the most visited paintings in Britain. His diaries, which he began in 1971, were published posthumously by his close friend Lady Henrietta Rous in 1998 as The Ossie Clark Diaries. In 1999-2000, the Warrington Museum and Art Gallery held the first retrospective of his work. Another retrospective was held at London's V&A museum
in 2003. A book from this show, Ossie Clark: 1965-74, is published by Adrams Books and the V&A Museum.
In November 2007, Marc Worth, the founder of WGSN purchased the name Quorum and announced the re-launch of "Ossie Clark". The re-launched label's first collection, Autumn / Winter 2008 / 9 collection was shown at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington, during London Fashion Week in February 2008. Avsh Alom Gur, a graduate of The Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, was appointed as the Head of Design. In July 2009, it was announced that "due to market conditions" the label was to cease operations yet again.
Fashion designers influenced by Ossie Clark include Anna Sui, John Galliano
, Christian Lacroix, Dries Van Noten, Malcolm Hall
, Clements Ribeiro, Marc Jacobs, Gucci
, and Prada. The label Ghost, known for its diaphanous gowns, has also been influenced by Ossie Clark.
Original Ossie Clark pieces are in demand in vintage stores in London.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
fashion designer who was a major figure in the Swinging Sixties scene in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and the fashion industry in that era. Clark is now renowned for his vintage designs by present-day designers.
Clark is compared to the 1960s fashion greats Mary Quant
Mary Quant
Mary Quant OBE FCSD is a British] fashion designer and British fashion icon, who was instrumental in the mod fashion movement. She was one of the designers who took credit for inventing the miniskirt and hot pants. Born in Blackheath, London, to Welsh parents, Quant brought fun and fantasy to...
and Biba
Biba
Biba was an iconic and popular London fashion store of the 1960s and 1970s. It was started and primarily run by the Polish-born Barbara Hulanicki with help of her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon.-Early years:...
and influenced many other designers, including Yves Saint Laurent, Anna Sui
Anna Sui
Anna Sui is an American fashion designer. Her luxury brand retails globally in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Her clothing, fragrance, cosmetic, and accessories lines sell at Anna Sui stores in over 50 countries and are also widely distributed at leading department stores...
and Tom Ford
Tom Ford
Thomas Carlyle "Tom" Ford is an American fashion designer and film director. He gained international fame for his turnaround of the Gucci fashion house and the creation of the Tom Ford label before directing the Oscar-nominated film A Single Man.-Early life :Tom Ford was born August 27, 1961 in...
. Manolo Blahnik
Manolo Blahnik
Manuel "Manolo" Blahnik Rodríguez CBE, , is a Spanish fashion designer and founder of the self-named, high-end shoe brand.-Biography:Born to a Czech father and a Spanish mother and born and raised in the Canary Islands , Blahnik graduated from the University of Geneva in 1965 and studied art in Paris...
has said of Ossie Clark's work: "He created an incredible magic with the body and achieved what fashion should do — produce desire." Ossie Clark and Ossie Clark for Radley clothes are highly sought after, and are worn by well known models like Kate Moss
Kate Moss
Kate Moss is an English model. Moss is known for her waifish figure and popularising the heroin chic look in the 1990s. She is also known for her controversial private life, high profile relationships, party lifestyle, and drug use. Moss changed the look of modelling and started a global debate on...
and Naomi Campbell
Naomi Campbell
Naomi Campbell is a British model. Scouted at the age of 15, she established herself among the top three most recognisable and in-demand models of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and she was one of six models of her generation declared "supermodels" by the fashion world...
.
Early days and education
Born in WarringtonWarrington
Warrington is a town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. It lies 16 miles east of Liverpool, 19 miles west of Manchester and 8 miles south of St Helens...
, Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
, England in 1942, Raymond Clark's parents, Anne and Samuel Clark, moved to Oswaldtwistle
Oswaldtwistle
Oswaldtwistle is a town within the Hyndburn borough of Lancashire, England. It lies on the course of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, east-southeast of Blackburn and is contiguous to Accrington.-History:...
during the war, hence his nickname, "Ossie". Ossie's mother, Anne Grace Clark, was in labour with Ossie for seven days during an air raid in World War II. Anne had been expecting a girl and so had no name picked out for her new baby. She let the midwife name him Raymond. Ossie was the youngest of six children ( Gladys, Kay, Beryl, Sammy and John ). Ossie and his brother John sang in the church choir at St Oswald's church in Winwick
Winwick
Winwick may refer to:*Winwick, Cambridgeshire, England*Winwick, Cheshire, England*Winwick, Northamptonshire, England...
where Ossie won awards for his vocal talents.
Family and friends noted that from a very early age he was "brilliant at doing anything". Young Ossie would make clothes for his nieces and nephews. He practised tailoring clothing on his dolls and designed swimsuits for the neighborhood girls when not yet ten years old. The Art teacher at Ossie's Secondary School recognised Ossie's creative flair and gave him a large collection of Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
and Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
magazines. Clark pored over these magazines and absorbed the glamour and cutting edge fashion.
At the age of thirteen Ossie studied architecture in school. He later said that the experience was "invaluable" The class taught him the fundamentals of proportion, height and volume. He would later go on to use all of these to great effect in his fashion designs.
Soon after leaving Beamont Secondary Technical School, Clark attended the Regional College Of Art in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, now Manchester Metropolitan University
Manchester Metropolitan University
Manchester Metropolitan University is a university in North West England. Its headquarters and central campus is in the city of Manchester, but there are outlying facilities in the county of Cheshire. It is the third largest university in the United Kingdom in terms of student numbers, behind the...
at age sixteen. Ossie had to get up very early in the morning to make the long trip from home to college each day. Anne Clark would give Ossie prescribed pills to keep him awake and alert. This would be the start of a life-long addiction to both prescribed and illegal drugs.
While attending college in Manchester, Clark was introduced to Celia Birtwell
Celia Birtwell
Celia Birtwell, CBE is a textile designer known for her distinctive bold, romantic and feminine designs, which draw influences from Picasso, Matisse and from the classical world. She was particularly famous in the 1960s and 1970s for prints which epitomised the glamour of the hippie era...
by a close friend and classmate named Mo McDermott. The pair started out as just good friends but that friendship soon developed into a love affair. Ossie also became good friends with artist David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
during this period. Clark and Hockney took an inspirational trip to New York together while still at college where they made many valuable connections in the fashion, art and entertainment communities. The friends are widely rumored to have been lovers with a volatile relationship. Clark graduated from Regional College of Art in 1958.
Clark then attended the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
in London and achieved a first-class degree in 1965. While attending college in London Celia Birtwell
Celia Birtwell
Celia Birtwell, CBE is a textile designer known for her distinctive bold, romantic and feminine designs, which draw influences from Picasso, Matisse and from the classical world. She was particularly famous in the 1960s and 1970s for prints which epitomised the glamour of the hippie era...
came to live with Ossie in his small Notting Hill
Notting Hill
Notting Hill is an area in London, England, close to the north-western corner of Kensington Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...
flat. Ossie's degree fashion show at the RCA was a huge success. At this time Ossie's design style was heavily influenced by Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
and Hollywood glamour. The final line-up featured a dress with flashing lightbulbs down the front which was shown in every major newspaper and fashion publication the following day. The fashion press swamped Ossie with requests for photo-shoots and special order garments. In August that year he had his first feature in British Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
. A popular shop named 'Woodlands 21' in London's Sloane Street
Sloane Street
Sloane Street is a major London street which runs north to south, from Knightsbridge to Sloane Square, crossing Pont Street about half way along, entirely in The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Sloane Street takes its name from Sir Hans Sloane, who purchased the surrounding area in 1712...
was the first to begin selling Ossie Clark's clothing line.
Early career
He quickly began to make his mark in the fashion industry, with Alice Pollock's exclusive boutique Quorum featuring his designs in 1966. Ossie had met Pollock at a party on the Kings RoadKings Road
King's Road or Kings Road, known popularly as The King's Road or The KR, is a major, well-known street stretching through Chelsea and Fulham, both in west London, England...
and so taken with the young designer was she that she immediately ordered a whole collection of dresses for her boutique. Ossie presented a collection of white and cream chiffon garments that sold fast. Pollock wanted Clark's clothes to have a more organic feel and so commissioned Celia Birtwell
Celia Birtwell
Celia Birtwell, CBE is a textile designer known for her distinctive bold, romantic and feminine designs, which draw influences from Picasso, Matisse and from the classical world. She was particularly famous in the 1960s and 1970s for prints which epitomised the glamour of the hippie era...
to produce special textiles for the next collection. In this way, one of fashions most famous collaborations was born: with Ossie Clark designing clothes and Celia Birtwell
Celia Birtwell
Celia Birtwell, CBE is a textile designer known for her distinctive bold, romantic and feminine designs, which draw influences from Picasso, Matisse and from the classical world. She was particularly famous in the 1960s and 1970s for prints which epitomised the glamour of the hippie era...
designing prints.
This partnership would last for almost all of Clark's career in fashion. Author Judith Watt comments: "Celia collaborated with Ossie. This was a joint effort. People say that she was his muse, which indeed she was, but their work absolutely went hand in hand. It was her designs that he used to create his. I think it's unfair that she not be given that voice"
Ossie was noted, from this period on, for buying six new record albums a week, all from the newest and most popular recording artists. His love of music and art were legendary amongst Ossie's friends. Also at this time Ossie began to take hard drugs more recreationally with friend and business partner Alice Pollock. "This is when his character began to change" says longtime friend Lady Henrietta Rous.
The first full Ossie Clark collection was bought by the Henri Bendel
Henri Bendel
Henri Bendel is an American upscale women's specialty store based in New York City that sells fashion accessories, cosmetics and fragrances, gifts and gourmet foods...
department store in New York. This was the first export of a talented young British designer's work. His simple, elegant dresses were widely copied by the designers on Seventh Avenue.
Peak: 1965-1974
The period from 1965 to 1974 is regarded as his zenith, during which time he had many famous clients.In the late 1960s, Clark hit a rich vein for his flamboyant clothing range. The fashion press dubbed Ossie "The King Of King's Road". Clark pronounced himself a "master cutter. It's all in my brain and fingers and there's no-one in the world to touch me. I can do everything myself." Clark's great idol was the famous dancer Nijinsky
Nijinsky
Nijinsky can refer to:*Vaslav Nijinsky , ballet dancer and choreographer*Bronislava Nijinska , dancer, choreographer and teacher*Nijinksy , starring Alan Bates Harry Saltzman as Vaslav Nijinsky*Nijinsky II, race horse...
and his love of dance inspired his clothes to be free moving and not to restrict the female form. This style of dressing became quite popular in the 1970s thanks in large part to the popularity of Clark's clothing. Ossie Clark is well known for his use of muted colours and moss crepe fabric. He also designed shoes, paper dresses, and snakeskin jackets.
While Ossie and Alice were great at creating an image and drawing in the rich and famous, they were less successful at managing a business. Many garments were given away to celebrities or just disappeared from the shop. By 1967 Quorum, the partnership between Alice Pollock and Ossie, was deeply in debt and Ossie and Alice agreed to sell Quorum to a large UK fashion house, Radley (run by Alfred Radley
Alfred Radley
Alfred Radley was a British clothing manufacturer best known for his association with the Quorum Boutique and fashion designer, Ossie Clark.-Biography:...
). Radley took over Quorum's debts and put the management onto a sound basis. Alfred Radley was keen to maintain what made Ossie special and so he continued to support Ossie's aspirations by developing the Ossie Clark brand and funding large annual fashion shows, expanding Quorum's retail business and distributing Ossie's dresses to leading retailers around the world through the introduction of the "Ossie Clark for Radley" collections.
In 1967 Clark presented his first fashion show under the patronage of Radley at Chelsea Town Hall for Pathé News. It was a seminal turning point in the history of fashion shows which were never to be the same again. He also showed his first full collection in London's Berkeley Square
Berkeley Square
Berkeley Square is a town square in the West End of London, England, in the City of Westminster. It was originally laid out in the mid 18th century by architect William Kent...
. It was also the first British fashion show to feature black models. In 1968 Clark designed his first of many diffusion lines for Radley, "Ossie Clark for Radley" that made his clothes available to a high street clientele.
Clark was not just popular in London, but also in New York and Paris. He dressed the rich and famous who inhabited the beau monde of the late 1960s and early 1970s of London. Clark got in on the ground floor of many of the popular performers and actors of the time period and was accepted in their circles when many other designers were not. This gave him many advantages to dress the rich and famous. Clark made many stage costumes for Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
, the Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....
and Liza Minnelli
Liza Minnelli
Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
, among others.
In 1969, he married Celia Birtwell
Celia Birtwell
Celia Birtwell, CBE is a textile designer known for her distinctive bold, romantic and feminine designs, which draw influences from Picasso, Matisse and from the classical world. She was particularly famous in the 1960s and 1970s for prints which epitomised the glamour of the hippie era...
and had two sons Albert and George, together. Clark had long hoped for a large family of his own and his children were a great joy in his life.
Clark freely adopted the hedonistic lifestyle of the 1960s and 1970s: his drug use greatly impacted on his emotional state and finances. Clark and Birtwell divorced in the 1970s. This started a slow downward spiral for Ossie, who never recovered emotionally from the separation from Birtwell and his two children. With his family structure and work stability now gone, his creative output became strained.
However in 1977 Ossie went into business with Tony Calder
Tony Calder
Tony Calder is an English rock and roll record manager, impresario, talent-spotter, Promoter and Public Relations agent...
and Peter Lee and for two years Ossie enjoyed a revival with hugely successful fashion shows, rave reviews and commercial stability. Fashion writer, Ann Chubb wrote ' It is great to see him right back on form again after a few years in the doldrums'.
1980s and later
Going into the 1980s, fashion — British fashion in particular — turned towards the new punk rock craze. Clothing from Vivienne Westwood'sVivienne Westwood
Dame Vivienne Westwood, DBE, RDI is a British fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream.-Early life:...
shop on the King's Road became the most popular look and one of Malcolm McLaren’s 'Scum' T-shirt text went so far as to include Ossie Clark under the heading 'Hates'. Ossie Clark's romantic flowing gowns were no longer in fashion. His fortunes declined to bankruptcy and Clark largely stopped working commercially. Famously devoid of business acumen Ossie blamed his downfall on banks and the taxman's ruthless insistence on cashing in all his assets. His bitterness at this and a short-sighted determination to sit out the bankruptcy term, along with deep depression, meant he worked only on private commissions which were paid for by barter. A loyal band of famous clients and friends would order a dress and pay for it by loaning a holiday house in the Caribbean or paying for his sewing machine to be repaired.
In 1984 Ossie was persuaded by a friend to go back to work with Radley. He produced some beautiful garments with shoulder details based on sea shells but according to his diaries was then sacked by Radley that same year. A note written by Ossie to the DHSS (pg147) says "I did not leave my position as a dress designer with Firwool of my own accord, as stated overleaf. It was put to me that as my designs weren't selling they couldn't continue to invest in me and I was given two weeks notice on the 19th October 1984. I wasn't offered a choice of continuing to work or not - I was fired." This version of events is backed up by a friend the artist Guy Burch who recalls that Clark told him Radley had found the complicated shell patterns impossible to make commercially.
Although the 1980s were chaotic and nomadic there were brighter sides to his life charted in his published diaries. In January 1978 he had met his second long term partner Nicholas Balaban who was working as a barman at the Sombrero Club in Kensington. With Ossie's encouragement Balaban applied to the Byam Shaw art school and went on to start his own highly successful fashion business producing printed T-shirts for high street boutiques and multiples. Although most published accounts choose not to pay much attention to Clark's gay relationships his sexuality was predominantly homosexual. Unfortunately Clarke's continued erratic behaviour eventually led to the relationships collapse in 1983/84. His depression deepened even more as he obsessed over Balaban, trying unsuccessfully to rekindle the relationship. Only with Balaban's death from AIDS in 1994 and a conversion to Buddhism did he finally begin to rebuild a career and shake off the past. In the early 1990s he trained the designer Bella Freud to pattern-cut and an extremely promising new beginning was the use of Clark's mastery of pattern cutting chiffon and delicate fabrics by the Ghost label. Clark found their computerised pattern cutter a revelation, able to turn initial ideas into formers almost instantaneously.
Death
In 1996, 54 year old Ossie was stabbed to death in his council flat in Kensington and ChelseaRoyal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is a central London borough of Royal borough status. After the City of Westminster, it is the wealthiest borough in England....
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, by his then 28 year old Italian former lover, Diego Cogolato. Cogolato was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and jailed for six years.
Legacy
Ossie Clark is featured in David HockneyDavid Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
's 1970 painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy
Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy
Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy is a painting by the British artist David Hockney. Painted between 1970 and 1971, it depicts the fashion designer Ossie Clark and the textile designer Celia Birtwell shortly after their wedding at which Hockney was Clark's best man. Hockney and Clark had been friends...
. It now hangs in the Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
gallery on Millbank
Millbank
Millbank is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. Millbank is located by the River Thames, east of Pimlico and south of Westminster...
and is one of the most visited paintings in Britain. His diaries, which he began in 1971, were published posthumously by his close friend Lady Henrietta Rous in 1998 as The Ossie Clark Diaries. In 1999-2000, the Warrington Museum and Art Gallery held the first retrospective of his work. Another retrospective was held at London's V&A museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
in 2003. A book from this show, Ossie Clark: 1965-74, is published by Adrams Books and the V&A Museum.
In November 2007, Marc Worth, the founder of WGSN purchased the name Quorum and announced the re-launch of "Ossie Clark". The re-launched label's first collection, Autumn / Winter 2008 / 9 collection was shown at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington, during London Fashion Week in February 2008. Avsh Alom Gur, a graduate of The Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, was appointed as the Head of Design. In July 2009, it was announced that "due to market conditions" the label was to cease operations yet again.
Fashion designers influenced by Ossie Clark include Anna Sui, John Galliano
John Galliano
John Charles Galliano CBE, RDI is a Gibraltan-born British fashion designer who was best known as head designer of French haute couture houses Givenchy and Christian Dior , and his own self titled fashion house.-Family:He was born in Gibraltar to a Gibraltarian father, Juan Galliano, and a...
, Christian Lacroix, Dries Van Noten, Malcolm Hall
Malcolm Hall (fashion designer)
Malcolm Hall , is a British fashion designer, known for his flamboyant, tailored suits in velvets, satins, silks and brocades.-Career:...
, Clements Ribeiro, Marc Jacobs, Gucci
Gucci
The House of Gucci, better known simply as Gucci , is an Italian fashion and leather goods label, part of the Gucci Group, which is owned by French company PPR...
, and Prada. The label Ghost, known for its diaphanous gowns, has also been influenced by Ossie Clark.
Original Ossie Clark pieces are in demand in vintage stores in London.
External links
- Victoria and Albert Museum – biography, image gallery of his works and more