My friend Eddy (De Clercq) has shared many memories with me about his famous club RoXY in Amsterdam, my favorite hangout for years. Some of the memories involve Leigh Bowery, artist, dancer, designer, creator of nightclub Taboo and professional provocateur.
Curious about this man, his amazing creations and stage performances, I found a documentary called The Legend of Leigh Bowery, which contains footage Eddy told me about, like the act The Birth and the weird wigs Leigh wore as daywear…
Leigh Bowery with assistant Nicola Bateman, ph. Fergus Greer.
Short Biography
Leigh Bowery was an Australian performance artist, club promoter, actor, pop star, model, and fashion designer, based in London. Bowery is considered one of the more influential figures in the 1980s and 1990s London and New York City art and fashion circles influencing a generation of artists and designers. His influence reached through the fashion, club and art worlds to impact, amongst others, Meadham Kirchhoff, Alexander McQueen, Lucian Freud, Vivienne Westwood, Boy George, Antony and the Johnsons, John Galliano, the Scissor Sisters, David LaChapelle, Lady Bunny plus numerous Nu-Rave bands and nightclubs in London and New York City which arguably perpetuated his avant-garde ideas.
From a young age, Leigh Bowery (born 26 March 1961) felt alienated from his conservative surroundings. He first learned about London and the New Romantic scene through British fashion magazines.
Leigh Bowery in I-D magazine.
Leigh moved to London for good in 1980, after taking a fashion course in high school. He became a known fixture at local clubs, in part for wearing outlandish outfits of his own design.
In London, he soon befriended fellow clubbers Guy Barnes (known as Trojan) and David Walls. The three men moved in together, and Leigh outfitted his friends in his creative designs. The trio became known on the London club scene as the “Three Kings.”
Leigh found some success as a designer, showing several collections at the London Fashion Week show, as well as in New York and Tokyo. He was best known, however, as a club promoter and London nightlife fixture. In 1985, he opened the disco club nightclub Taboo. Originally an underground party, Taboo quickly became London’s answer to Studio 54. Taboo was known for its defiance of sexual convention, and its embrace of what Leigh called “polysexual” identities.
Leigh Bowery in Face magazine, ph. Nick Knight.
In addition to his club activities, Leigh participated in performance art and was well-connected within the art and theater circles of London. He often performed in face paint, lurex clothing and masks, relishing the opportunity to shock and flout convention whenever possible. He also served as a model, posing nude for some of Lucien Freud’s later portraits.
Leigh Bowery, who had identified as gay for many years, married his friend, Nicola Bateman (something to do with papers he needed), in May 1994. Only a few close friends were aware that Leigh had contracted AIDS before his death from AIDS-related illness, which occurred in London on New Year’s Eve in 1994, seven months after his marriage.
.
Leigh Bowery Series by Fergus Greer
THE LEGEND OF LEIGH BOWERY (2002)
Leigh Bowery: indisputably an embodiment of the 1980’s club scene in London and a provocative influence for a generation of artists. The creator of Taboo – in more ways than the infamous nightclub – injects an outrageousness that inspired Boy George, Damien Hirst, Rifat Ozbek… the list goes on. The list is topped off with Charles Atlas, the man behind the camera for this amazing documentary
Anita Pallenberg (born 6 April 1944) ) is an Italian-born actress, model, and fashion designer, who is mostly known for being a Muse the Rolling Stones.
.
Short Biography
Young Anita became fluent in four languages, studied medicine, picture restoration and graphic design. At 21 she met Brian Jones (an original Rolling Stone) in Munich, where she was working on a modelling assignment. After a relationship of only two years Anita could no longer deal with his drug abuse. She had become Brian’s ‘full-time geisha, flatterer, punchbag – whatever he imagined, including partaker in orgies, which Anita always resolutely refused to do.
‘I decided to kidnap Brian. It sounds ridiculous but they even made a film about it, about kidnapping a pop star [‘Privilege’] starring Paul Jones. This was the original story, Brian seemed to be the most sexually flexible. I knew I could talk to him. As a matter of fact when I met him I was his groupie really. I got backstage with a photographer, I told him I just wanted to meet him. I had some Amyl Nitrate and a piece of hash. I asked Brian if he wanted a joint and he said yes, so he asked me back to his hotel and he cried all night. He was so upset about Mick and Keith still, saying they had teamed up on him. I felt so sorry for him. Brian was fantastic, he had everything going for him, but he was just too complicated.’.
Anita & Brian
Brian & Anita had become almost identical in style of hair and clothes.
Keith Richards later said he had to rescue Anita from Brian, because they were both on a very destructive course. It happened during a road trip to Morocco. Brian sensed something had happened between Anita and Keith and became violent to his girlfriend again. In the end she and Keith fled from Morocco and set up home in St John’s Wood, North London.
Anita and Keith together had three children: son Marlon Leon Sundeep (born 10 August 1969), daughter Angela (her middle name, which she chose to go by after initially being named and called Dandelion by her parents), born 17 April 1972), and a second son, Tara Jo Jo Gunne (26 March – 6 June 1976), who died in his cot 10 weeks after birth.
.
Anita & Keith
In 1979, a 17-year-old boy, Scott Cantrell, shot himself in the head with a gun owned by Keith, while in Anita’s bed, at the New York house shared by Keith and her. The boy had been employed as a part-time groundskeeper at the estate and was involved in a sexual relationship with Anita. Keith was in Paris recording with the Rolling Stones, but his son was at the house when the teen killed himself. Anita was arrested; however, the death was ruled a suicide in 1980, despite rumours that she and Scott had been playing a game of Russian roulette. The police investigation stated that she was not in the room or on the same floor of the house at the time the fatal shot was fired.
‘That boy of 17 who shot himself in my house really ended it for us [Keith and her]. And although we occasionally saw each other for the sake of the children, it was the end of our personal relationship.’
Keith later declared she shared his addiction to heroin and he wanted to clean up, but had to do it without Anita. Therefore he couldn’t stay with her, she would be a huge trigger for him. In 1981, after they had split up, Keith stated that he still loved Anita and saw her as much as he ever did, although he had already met his future wife Patti Hansen.
‘I was too independent for Mick [Jagger]. I wasn’t proper enough for him. He’s a chauvinist. I wouldn’t put up with that. Keith, surprisingly, is not. Though I feel sorry for Patti [Hansen]. I love her and think she is a marvellous woman, but I would not want to be in her shoes now. It’s such a lonely existence, living with a rock ‘n’ roller. No matter how much he loves you, he will always love his music more. I know when Keith is working on his music nothing else matters to him. He can be in a room with fifty people and he won’t nothing anything but his guitar. A woman, to live with a rock star, must find her ways of independence.’
Anita Pallenberg, Bohemian Style
Anita studied fashion design as a mature student at Central Saint Martins in London; she graduated in 1994. After she divided her time between New York City and Europe, and sporadically appeared in public as a party DJ. She also had a clothes collection.
Anita, now 70, has retired and shares a farmhouse in Sussex with son Marlon and acts as caretaker to Keith Richards’s Redlands estate while he is out of the country in tax exile.
Marlon & Anita
Interview
.
Movies
Anita Pallenberg appeared in more than a dozen films over a forty-year span. Most notably, she appeared as The Great Tyrant in Roger Vadim’s cult-classic sci-fi film Barbarella, and as the sleeper wife of Michel Piccoli in the film Dillinger Is Dead, directed by Marco Ferreri. She had a small part in Volker Schlöndorff’s Michael Kohlhaas – der Rebell which was filmed in Slovakia in 1969 and the 1970 avant-garde Performance in which she played the role of Pherber(actually filmed in 1968 but not released for two years). She co-wrote the script to with Donald Cammell, but had no intention of playing in the movie. She ended up replacing the original actress at the last-minute due to a medical emergency.
Barbarella
Anita Pallenberg as the Great Tyrant in Barbarella : ‘Hello Pretty, Pretty…..’
.
Performance
.
Anita Pallenberg, Fashion Icon
Maddie Daisy Dixon as Anita Pallenberg, Lovecat Magazine
Sometimes I have to ‘disappear’ a day and lose myself in another world to get inspired. Yesterday was one of those days and this time I choose the world of Kate Bush. I read a lot about her, watched many of her music video’s and found a BBC documentary I’d like to share.
The first time I saw the Wuthering Heights video in 1978 was a mesmerizing moment. What I didn’t realise then, was the genius of Kate Bush, who wrote the beautiful song The Man With The Child In His Eyeswhen she was 13 and recorded it at the age of 16! She became famous at 19 and was solely responsable for her music, her way of dancing and her looks……
Very young Kate Bush, stylish already
Kate Bush became one of music’s most influential women. Her tales of dashing heroes & heroines, sung in her trademark voice, marked Kate out as very different from the rest of the pop crowd.
Her appearance was another trademark, the wild auburn hair was bohemian, always curly or crimped, her wide-eyed expression was achieved with black liner around her eyes, piles of mascara and heavy grey and green eyeshadow, also Kate loved red lipstick. It all added to her status as a style icon.
Kate wearing Fong Leng, ph. Claude Vanheye Kate wearing Fong Leng, ph. Claude Vanheye Babooshka
Her background in dance led her to mixing floaty chiffons and silks with spandex leggings and dancewear. The ivory, floaty Cathy-dress she wore in the video for Wuthering Heights was /is a classic piece of loveliness, punk meets the Pre-Raphaelites.
Kate Bush has always electrified fashion. Part Stanislavski, part sex-kitten, she influenced many fashion designers with her style and but few artists are played more often at runway shows.
Kate Bush, a true original.
.
Watch the documentary and get inspired by this phenomenal icon
After decades Marianne Faithfull is still a Fashion Icon
Back in 1971, Yves Saint Laurent was foundational in celebrity stylish as he dressed Mick and Bianca Jagger for their wedding in St. Tropez. By doing so, he built on the already solid platform that saw the brand adjoined closely with rock and roll culture in the houses infant years. Decades later, last year to be exact, that connection was restored as the brand launched their Saint Laurent Music Project. A growing portraiture campaign of musicians styling themselves in iconic and permanent pieces of the Saint Laurent collection, continues this year with contributions from Marianne Faithfull.
.
Marianne Faithfull about Kate Bush
“On the phone from Paris, famous fan Marianne Faithfull notes that Bush’s four-octave range should be regarded as a “national treasure.” “My favorite instrument in the whole world is the human female voice, and Kate Bush is one of the reasons why. It is, by far, a Stradivarius,” Faithfull says. “Which is why she rarely deals with the press or isn’t in a rush to record. She’s one of the few who can be above all that.”
.
They all wanted to photograph her
David Bailey, 1964Terry O’Neill, 1964. Terry O’Neill, 1964. These pictures changed her imageJohn Kelly, 1967Cecil Beaton, 1968 Robert Mapplethorpe, 1974Helmut Newton, 1979Steven Meisel, 1989Annie-Leibovitz, 1990Bettina Rheims 1995Bruce Weber, 1997Anton Corbijn, 1997Ellen Von Unwerth, 1999Helmut Newton, 1999Peter Lindberg, 2002 Rankin, 2005Karl Lagerfeld, 2010Hedi Slimane, 2014.
Marianne Faithfull & Kate Moss
In 2009 Marianne Faithfull launched an extraordinary attack in The Daily Mail on former friend Kate Moss, calling the supermodel a ‘vampire’ who stole her style. The (now) 68-year-old singer said that, although she and Kate were once close, they are no longer on speaking terms.
‘She’s not really my friend. I thought she was, but she’s very clever,’ she said. ‘She wanted to read me like a Braille book. And she did. It’s a vampirical thing.’
Marianne, who famously had a relationship with Mick Jagger in the late 1960s, even accuses the 40-year-old of imitating her choice of men, comparing the Rolling Stone to Kate’s husband Jamie Hince. ‘Now I see pictures of her with a boy who looks like Mick Jagger, and her looking like me. So there was a reason. It’s one of her gigs to do me,’ she told The Times.
Kate and Marianne, apparently drawn to each other by a shared love of fashion and rock stars, were once a regular night-time fixture in Central London and even holidayed together in the Bahamas. At the time the iconic star said that she and Kate, who is almost thirty years her junior, were kindred spirits.
‘She’s very complex – she’s very like me. She’s a Capricorn. I think she’s great,’ she has said. ‘You know, it’s OK. I don’t give a s***. But I was quite offended at the time. We were very fond of each other. And then it suddenly soured,’ she added.
‘She’s very clever, but she isn’t at all educated. We don’t have any [common] references. Except music.”
A year later, Marianne Faithfull apologizes to Kate Moss……
In the Guardian of 16 February 2013, Marianne says she’s keeping her distance:“Except from Kate [Moss] – she’s an exception, because she’s clever and interesting, which is rare. Also, she’s clean now, which is great. It makes things much easier. She’s almost 40, which is a good time to stop. It’s when I stopped.”
.
Story in W magazine by Bruce weber
The story was called “High Camp” and was published in W magazine November 1997. Models in this series:- Lucie de la Falaise, Kate Moss, Stella McCartney, Marianne Faithfull. Photographed by Bruce Weber, styled by Giovanna Battaglia
Only the pictures with Marrianne Faithfull:
.
New Album
‘Sparrows Will Sing’ was written by Roger Waters for Marianne Faithfull and is the first single from Marianne’s 20th album ‘Give My Love To London’.
“The two greatest mannequins of the century were Gertrude Stein and Edith Sitwell – unquestionably. You just couldn’t take a bad picture of those two old girls”
A quote by Diana Vreeland
Short Biography
Edith Sitwell (1887 – 1964) was born in a very wealthy, aristocratic family. She got two younger brothers (also authors), Osbert and Sacheverell, who, like Edith, had a hard time growing up with their eccentric, unloving parents.
When still a teenager, Edith’s father made her undertake a “cure” for her supposed spinal deformation, involving locking her into an iron frame.
Edith, Sacheverell and Osbert Sitwell, 1930’s.
At 23, she began publishing poetry and three years later she moved to a shabby flat in London, which she shared with her governess, Helen Rootham. In 1932 together they moved to Paris to live with Helen’s younger sister. Helen Rootham died six years later of spinal cancer. This was a tragedy for Edith, for she had never lived alone before.
Although she spent her life unmarried, Edith was passionately in love with the homosexual Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew. This love was Edith’s most important, yet most unfulfilling, relationship of her long life. For her the spark was definitely there and it did not matter that she was almost eleven years Pavlik’s senior, initially the relationship was one of great intimacy.
In the beginning, Pavlik was captivated by Edith’s extraordinary presence and later painted her portrait several times. Sadly, he only offered “Sitvouka” friendship and with no other choice, Edith accepted. Pavel’s interest in her seemed purely intellectual and quite possibly financial, the thought of Edith laying her hands on him in an intimate way appalled him.
Pavel Tchelitchew by Cecil Beaton, 1930sEdith In front of a Pavel Tchelitchew Portrait of her.
Pavel started to design her clothes and her signature look was born. Edith always tried to be somewhere near Pavel, who once said to her: “Nobody has ever understood you better, or come closer to you than I have and nobody ever will!”
Edith went to New York after the war, where the friendship almost ended as the result of a wild scene that Pavel made in a New York restaurant. Apparently, “white-faced with anger,” he denounced Edith for being “self-obsessed” and for letting herself be corrupted by the “vulgar social figures that surrounded her.” Pavel further accused her of betraying the poet in her, the part he cherished, and “crudest of all, he coldly told her that everything that had ever been between them now was over.”
Pavel Tchelitchew, Edith Sitwell and Pavel’s partner Allen Tanner.
Crushed, Edith sailed for home the next day and spent the entire Atlantic crossing in bed.
Although, it was possible for her to eventually forgive him the friendship barely survived. It was a disaster of failed nerves and disappointed expectations on the sides of both.
During the WWII Edith had retired to Renishaw with her brother Osbert and his lover David Horner. She wrote under the light of oil lamps as the house had no electricity. She was lucky that during her lifetime she was surrounded by people who appreciated her and her two brothers as central to the artistic life of the times.
Edith Sitwell by Jane Brown, 1959.
Edith Sitwell provoked many critics in conservative Great Britain because of her dramatic work, but also because of her unusual appearance. She resembled Queen Elizabeth I (they also shared the same birthday) dressed in exotic costumes, brocade and velvet gowns, adorned with gold turbans and huge colourful rings that reflected what she claimed: ‘good taste is the worst vice ever invented.’
She was created Dame of the British Empire in 1954. Three years later Edith got ill and ended up in a wheelchair. She passed away in 1964.
.
“I am not eccentric. It is just that I am more alive than most people are. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish”.
(Edith Sitwell, quoted in Life magazine, 4 January 1963)Edith Sitwell, 1962
.
.
Edith Sitwell (and brothers) by Cecil Beaton
19271928 Edith Sitwell and her brothers, 1930s1930s1927Vanity Fair. Edith Sitwell and her brothers by Cecil Beaton, 1929 1930s1962, the photographs taken for her 75th birthday1962, the photographs taken for her 75th birthday1962, the photographs taken for her 75th birthday1962, the photographs taken for her 75th birthday1962, the photographs taken for her 75th birthday.
Edith Sitwell first met Cecil Beaton on 7 December 1926 at the home of Allannah Hooper. It was a fateful meeting because the photographs that Beaton made of Sitwell later in 1926, then in 1927 and 1931, brought them both much fame.
The portraits that he took in 1926 and 1927 were all prefabricated set-ups prepared in dimly lit interiors.
In 1962, wearing her black ostrich feather turban faced with sheer organza, she welcomed Beaton into her apartment at Greenhill in Hampstead. She had commissioned portraits from him to mark her 75th birthday. She knew that they would be published internationally and would create an instant sensation. They did and you can see why. She is performing her eccentric fame for the camera and is much more beautiful at 75 than she was at 25.
Her style was an essential part of her character. But she had also had teasing sense of humour. Early on, Cecil Beaton noted ‘the twinkle in her eye’.
.
The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation, they do not want to attract attention.
Edith Sitwell
.
Edith Sitwell by Horst P. Horst
Horst photographed Edith in 1948 for Vogue in New York. Here-along with her aquamarines-Edith wears two massive brooches.Horst says “Edith Sitwell wore extravagant clothes and Jewels; usually the clothes did not fit at all they just hung. She did it exactly her own way and got away with it.” “She was considered an Improbable and anachronistic fashion icon frequently photographed bristling with gigantic aquamarine rings– at least two to a finger, and plastered with vast brooches of semi-precious stones”
.
The ‘Aztec’ necklace
‘This gold collar was made for me by an American woman called Millicent Rogers. She was one of my greatest friends, though I only met her once. She sent it to me and the British Museum kept it four days and thought it was pre-Columban, undoubtedly from the tomb of an Inca-though they couldn’t make out how the gold could be stiffened in a way that wasn’t in existence in those days. But I have to be careful of the clanking when I am reciting and don’t often wear it for that.’
.T
The rings
Ph. Philippe Halsman, 1937.
‘I feel undressed without my rings.These aquamarines I love, but I’ve got a beautiful topaz like a sunflower–and when I’ve worn these too much I feel it’s being neglected….I’ve got red and green and black amber bracelets, and a ring I call tiger into grape. Its yellow, veined with blue and red, but when it snows it turns blue.’
.
.
Edith Sitwell & Marilyn Monroe
Edith Sitwell & Marilyn Monroe
People were expecting the two women to dislike each other. Instead of giving the waiting photographers a good scandal, Edith and Marilyn hit it off immediately. Edith described Marilyn in her autobiographyTaken Care Of:
In repose her face was at moments strangely, prophetically tragic, like the face of a beautiful ghost – a little spring-ghost, an innocent fertility daemon, the vegetation spirit that was Ophelia.
Marilyn was an autodidact but her intellectual curiosity and love of books were not considered consistent with her sex symbol image. Marilyn and Edith sat together chatting happily about Austrian philosopher, esoteric spiritual writer, and founder of anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner, whose books Marilyn had recently been reading.
leigh Bowery, ph. Fergus Greer, Novenber 1988
.
Leigh Bowery with assistant Nicola Bateman, ph. Fergus Greer
.
Leigh Bowery in I-D magazine
.
Leigh Bowery in Face magazine, ph. Nick Knight
.
agnautacouture.com 