APPLIED ART : COSTUME

Object Name: Coat
Maker: Clark, Ossie (Primary maker)
Clark, Ossie (maker)
Date Made: 1969 circa
1969 circa
Description: design : snake skin maxi coat, with belt by Ossie Clark. From exhibition label for 'The Fashion Show' exhibition Ulster Museum 2002 Snakeskin coat over cire mini dress, c. 1968 Cost by Osiie Clark (1942-1996) At the end of the sixties the wearing of a 'maxi' coat over a mini dress became a dominant fashion which hearlded the end of the mini era. Fashion was moving to a longer, slinkier, more retro look. Ossie Clark used fabric prints by his then wife Celia Birtwell in his evening wear Literature: 'The Ossie Clark Diaries' edited by Henrietta Rous where Ossie describes discovering a stash of snakeskins and decides to use them to mak garments, 'They were exotic, with added glamour attached to wearing a part of a dangerous animal and the association with fetish in clothing oneself with the skin of another creature's skin.' From exhibition label 'Grand Designers' Raymond Clark graduated in 1964 from the Royal College of Art, at the beginning of the swinging Sixties' when London was in its heyday of artistic and musical innovation.' His design career began in Alice Pollock's shop 'Quorum,' but he made his name by his collaboration with his wife Celia Birtwell who designed the prints with which he worked. The combinatuon of his cutting and tailoring techniques and the subtle, etheral colouring of Birtwell's fabrics made him London's most famous designer of the Seventies.
Materials: snakeskin
Catalogue Number: BELUM.T2705
Copyright: National Museums NI

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