Ossie
Clark - London's answer to Yves Saint Laurent...articles taken from
Telegraph - 9/08/96
"The King of King's Road murdered"
By Caroline Davies and Hilary Alexander
THE fashion designer Ossie Clark who, with his wife Celia Birtwell, epitomised the height of British style in the early Sixties was found murdered yesterday. His former lover, Diego Cogolato, 28, has been charged with the murder. He was arrested in Kingston, Surrey, after police received a 999 call from a Kingston telephone box at 6am on Wednesday. The designer who dressed Twiggy, Elizabeth Taylor and - on her wedding day - Bianca Jagger, was found in his council flat.
A post mortem examination on Mr Clark, 54, showed that he had suffered several stab wounds. He is believed to have died on Tuesday night. A police spokesman said that a knife has been recovered. Cogolato, who had recently moved out of the designer's one-bedroomed flat in Notting Hill, was charged yesterday afternoon. He will appear before Marylebone magistrates today. Celia Birtwell, who married Mr Clark in 1969, said last night that she had "wonderful memories" of her former husband. "I have two wonderful sons by Ossie and we are in shock and grief," she said at her west London design studio. "I want to remember Ossie for the great talent he was in the Sixties. We had great times together, he was a unique designer and it is a pity it didn't go on. He was a real star but unfortunately it didn't last. I think he got broken by it all."
The marriage was recorded in a 1971 portrait by David Hockney called Mr and Mrs Clark with Percy, a stylised picture of the couple with their cat which is now one of the most popular works in the Tate Gallery. The couple's elder son, Albert, 26, is a chef, and George, 24, is an interior designer. Mr Clark - who discarded the named Raymond to become Ossie - became famous in the 1960s when clients at his Chelsea boutique, Quorum, included Raquel Welch, Elizabeth Taylor, Twiggy and Bianca Jagger. He had travelled to the United States in 1964 to join Hockney for a holiday. 'Ossie Clark was a great friend and a wonderfully talented clothes designer. He's someone I'll remember with great affection' There he burst on to the social scene and was embraced into a circle of friends that included Dennis Hopper, Bette Davis, Jimi Hendrix, and Andy Warhol. When he returned, he produced a dazzling collection of couture for his degree show, inspired by the Op Art he had seen in America.
London was the fashion capital of the world with Biba, Bus Stop and Clobber and Mr Clark was soon at the centre of the excitement and creativity. Mick Jagger, who wore a jumpsuit by the designer in the Rolling Stones' 1972 "Exile on Main Street" tour, said last night: "Ossie Clark was a great friend and a wonderfully talented clothes designer. He's someone I'll remember with great affection." Bella Freud, who learnt pattern-cutting with Clark and remained a close friend, said: "I loved him. He always had plans and schemes and dreams. He would ring and tell me he was making a pair of leather trousers or a bag full of tiny compartments. "And there were his diaries. He wrote everything down and always planned to publish them."
David Chambers, who was a friend for 23 years and worked as his tailor in the 1960s, said: "I just cannot believe it. It is such a tragic end to a life which, I am afraid, had become increasingly tragic". Ulla Styles, a former model and close friend, was last night caring for Mr Clark's Jack Russell, Pippin, found whimpering outside the flat when police found the designer's body. "He was here with Pippin just the other night. I had them round for dinner. He just loved that dog." she said. "He had been with Diego for about 18 months. Ossie was very fond of him. Ossie did love him. I think quite a lot of his friends had left him behind." Once known as The King of the King's Road, Mr Clark had been of one Britain's most successful designers. But divorce, depression and bankruptcy in 1983 followed in quick succession. He died fighting a drink problem and trying unsuccessfully to relaunch himself from his one-roomed west London council flat, where goldfish swam in Ming vases and where he worshipped before a Buddhist shrine made out of old Sobranie cigarette packets. He had carpeted the floor with brown pattern-cutting paper.
Obituary taken from the Telegraph 09/06/96
OSSIE CLARK, the fashion designer who has been killed aged 54, was London's answer to Yves Saint Laurent: his slinky jersey dresses were worn by a generation of celebrities as he helped to make London the capital of the fashion world in the Sixties. No one, in the past 30 years of British fashion, could cut like Clark. From Quorum, the small fashion boutique he opened with Alice Pollock first in Kensington, then in Chelsea, Clark effected a huge shift in fashion in the mid-Sixties. The square cut, mini-shift dresses that projected an adolescent, coltish figure, all knees and elbows, gave way to a sinuous shapeliness that celebrated female curves.
The typical Clark gown boasted the sensuousness of the female form: the arched small of the back, the rounded haunch, an impossibly long neck, a rangy thigh, all slip-sliding against satin or matte jersey. Clark's heyday lasted from 1964 to 1976. During this time Alice Pollock would lock the door of Quorum during trading hours, open a case of champagne, and admit only the favoured few. It was a scene in which his wife, the fabric designer Celia Birtwell whom he married in 1969, played an important part. Birtwell created some of the most beautiful dress fabrics of the period, characterised by Art Deco forms and Audubon botanical sketches in off-beat colours - prune, dead-rose, saffron, a myriad of blues - that decked satins, moss crepes and wispy chiffons. In the judgment of Valerie Mendes, chief curator of textiles and dress at the Victoria and Albert Museum: "He knew how to use Celia's painterly patterns. The two just gelled and everyone wanted it; you were made if you had an Ossie with a Celia print."
The couple were portrayed by David Hockney in Mr & Mrs Clark and Percy, now in the Tate Gallery. In the glamorous, narcissistic world of the Sixties, Clark gave mainstream culture its cue. His shows were in demand: hordes beat on the door of Chelsea Town Hall or the Royal Court to see his shows. In the front row sat Hockney, the Jaggers (Bianca married Mick in "a white Ossie"), Pattie Boyd and the wan society girls of that era. Up on stage strutted the top models of the day. Clark, taken up by the powerful fashion editor of The Times, Prudence Glyn, was the toast of London fashion; but fame proved difficult for him. He became egotistical, and disliked meeting the demands of everyday life. Awaited by Macey's department store, where he was to meet the big customers, Clark simply stayed away in a black duplex overlooking Central Park, surrounded by Roy Lichtenstein paintings. 'They did such ghastly things to women. Those shapeless short skirts, patterned stockings and back-combed hairdos - yuk' Clark was emotionally frail, and with success became depressive and took to drugs.
He had little business acumen, and over the decades his fortunes fluctuated wildly. He made money in the 1960s ("Like everyone else", he said later, "I blew it"). In the 1980s he went bankrupt; by 1992, although his clients had included Jerry Hall, Elizabeth Taylor, Mick and Bianca Jagger, he was living in a council flat in Notting Hill, signing on when commissions failed to materialise. In previous decades, he fought back when he was down. "Being declared bankrupt was awful," he said in 1986, "but I just thought to myself, 'My parents got through the war; this is my war.' " But in later years, he stopped designing, although he gave the fashion designer Bella Freud lessons on pattern-cutting. By this time Clark sported a grey pony-tail and a shabby cotton jacket. Asked why he didn't design clothes any more, he replied: "Can't stand the rag trade." Looking back at the Sixties, Clark expressed some reservations, focusing on the mini-skirt.
"They did such ghastly things to women", he said. "Those shapeless short skirts, patterned stockings and back-combed hairdos - yuk." Born Raymond Clark at Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, in 1942, he studied building and art at Warrington Technical College. In 1957 he went on to Manchester College of Art. He lived on a grant of £35 a year, spending two shillings a day. He then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London, studying fashion under Janey Ironside. Always dressed in black, Janey Ironside was given to frank speaking, as when she told him that a piece of jewellery he had designed looked like a dental plate. Years later she described him as having been a very withdrawn boy, who excelled at cutting. "Very few people," she explained, "know how to cut clothes."
In his final year Clark was already designing clothes for Quorum, and when he graduated in 1965 he was snapped up by Woollands as a staff designer. He then went into partnership with Alice Pollock, producing clothes that hinted at curves, rather than stating them, and persuading the fashionable crowd of the time to abandon the mini, and adopt the midi and maxi. By 1974, Clark's marriage to Celia Birtwell was over, and depression followed. At the same time, the lyrical romanticism of Clark's work became outmoded. Although bitter, he refused to compromise. To some friends it seemed that Clark was incapable of dealing with the demands of ordinary life A small band of loyal women continued to order dresses from him privately; and echoes of his asymmetrical cut and cavalier romance could still be seen in Karl Lagerfeld's designs.
In 1981 he was declared bankrupt to the tune of £200,000. He subsequently taught at the Royal College of Art, continuing to work when he could: in 1983 he designed the costumes for Ashton's ballet at Covent Garden, Varii Capricci (with sets by Hockney and music by William Walton). In 1986, aged 43, he launched a new fashion venture with a lingerie collection which went by the name of Rustle. Yet his fortunes steadily declined. Earlier this year he was sentenced to two months in prison for assaulting a police officer. At a filling station, impatient for petrol, Clark had bumped his car into that of the woman in front, "to chivvy her along a bit". Unfortunately, the woman turned out to be an off-duty police officer, who promptly summoned her colleagues to the scene.
By then he was thoroughly disillusioned with the fashion world. He hated the vulgarities, ugliness and commercial opportunism of 1980s fashion. He had belonged to an era that refused to think in terms of careers, mass sales, balance sheets: to an extent he spurned material success. To some friends it seemed that Clark was incapable of dealing with the demands of ordinary life; he was more like a talented, naughty child. Ossie Clark had two sons. Victor Edelstein writes: With Barbara Hulanicki of Biba, Ossie Clark was undoubtedly the most talented British dress designer of the 1960s and 1970s. He combined an understanding of design and cut to a rare degree, one which probably remains unsurpassed in this country. One of my clearest recollections of Ossie is from the early 1970s, at a Royal College of Art diploma show.
Dressed in a pale lime-green suit and white-rimmed dark glasses, he was eating an enormous ice-cream - attracting a great deal of well-deserved attention. A friend of mine, who had many of his dresses, has said that whenever you put on an Ossie Clark dress you knew you were going to have a good time.
Seeing all his wonderful clothes at Quorum, in the King's Road, used to make me think I might as well hang up my needle and thread. I shall always remember the incredible frilled spiral chiffon dresses in prints by Celia Birtwell, and the impeccably fitted jackets with the first re-appearance of padded shoulders. His clothes were always innovative, moved wonderfully and never failed to make the wearer feel like a siren. While most women have thrown away their old dresses from those days, if they had any by Ossie Clark, those were the ones they couldn't part with - even if they no longer fitted. A friend of mine, who had many of his dresses, has said that whenever you put on an Ossie Clark dress you knew you were going to have a good time. Surely there could be no greater accolade.
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