Tag Archives: Michele Clapton

Stephen Linard’s 1980 Neon Gothic collection modelled by Myra Falconer and Michele Clapton: one wears a lace hat, the other a skullcap, both by Stephen Jones. (Photo by Graham Smith)

New York’s Met Gala 2018 signifies the highly anticipated grand opening of the Costume Institute’s annual fashion exhibition Heavenly Bodies, which opens on May 10. At Vogue online this week Laird Borrelli-Persson recalls how a Blitz Kid’s 1980 collection anticipated Heavenly Bodies by 38 years:

“ FASHION’S BIGGEST NIGHT OUT” is the Met Gala. As a pinnacle of iconic style, this annual fundraising benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, welcomes celebrity stars, young creatives, and industry paragons alike.

The British designer Stephen Linard deserves credit for many innovations in fashion and its presentation that we take for granted in 2018. One of the Blitz Kids whose dandyish ways had an outsize impact on 1980s style, his early work was distinguished not only by irreverence, but also by a strong sense of narrative. Linard’s 1981 St Martin’s graduation show, Reluctant Emigrés, was a smash success. “The clothes were instantly covetable, thoroughly masculine in an entirely new way, and electrifying in the way that only the truly innovative can be,” historians Alan J Flux and Daryl F Mallett have noted.

The collection Linard presented a year earlier at St Martin’s unofficial Alternative Show was a pot-stirring presentation titled Neon Gothic – clothes with an ecclesiastic twist. Captured in the image above are models Myra Falconer, who shared a squat with Linard, and Michele Clapton, now an Emmy Award-winning costume designer. Their jewellery, upside-down crosses and menorahs of black-painted wood, was made by a friend of Clapton’s. The headpieces are by Stephen Jones, who graduated ahead of Linard, and has stayed in the spotlight. Linard recalls the audience reaction: “Everyone stood up and gave it a standing ovation and my models wouldn’t get off the catwalk…” / Continued at Vogue online

Linard’s 1981 degree show Reluctant Emigrés: classically tailored menswear with eccentric twists. . . Traditional pinstripe trousers had contrast patches at the derrière, solid dark waistcoat fronts and shadowy organza backs. Striped city shirts had curious underarm patches, and all were concealed beneath swirling black greatcoats. And modelled by his masculine pals among the Blitz Kids. (Photo: Shapersofthe80s)

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