The work of the late Ossie Clark, famed British designer of 60s and 70s iconic rock star clothing, was featured in a public retrospective and sale of over 100 of his highly collectible pieces beginning February 2000 at Decades Gallery. Textiles by Clark's former wife, fabric designer Celia Birtwell, were also showcased during the same show at Decades and the Jenny Armit Gallery.
Clark dressed Twiggy, Faye Dunaway, Elizabeth Taylor, Sharon Tate, Marianne Faithful, and Mick Jagger, among others. In his heyday from 1965 to 1974, Clark was a bonafide British fashion star. At the time, his wife, textile designer Celia Birtwell, created some of the world’s most beautiful dress fabrics and Ossie employed crepe and gauze in a way it had never been used before. His influential cuts are once again highly collectible.
The vintage Ossie Clarks were collected primarily by British fashion expert Pari (no surname), and Decades Cameron Silver. Consisting of clothing that makes a woman aware of her body, the collection includes Clark’s signature chiffon dresses with a nostalgia for the thirties, moss crepe key hole flounce dresses, and Ossie’s sexy snakeskin jackets that look straight off today's runways.
As Ossie Clark’s popularity grew, fashion designer André Courrèges protested that “haute couture is as good as dead. The streets of Paris are beginning to look like Portobello Road.” But Ossie’s moment soon ended with the shift to punk, and he was out of the fashion limelight.
In 1996 Ossie Clark received posthumous notoriety when he was found murdered by his lover Diego Cogolato on 6 October—penniless. Pari began collecting 60s and 70s British fashion in the late-eighties, at age 17.
The items featured above, represent a sampling of the collections' entirety. Back To Main