Fashion, Style and Club Life 1984/85

Katherine Hamnett for Fashion Aid

FASHION AID On November 5, 1985 5,000 people gathered inside London's Albert Hall for an evening of spectacle and glamour featuring 18 of the world's top fashion designers and a host of superstars. Ticket sales net over $20,000 while the whole event was captured by Kevin Godley (of Godley & Creme - made the "Two Tribes" video). TV rights for the event were sold in hope of raising additional money for famine relief.  
  
The main person behind the event was 25 year old Jasper Conran, a close friend of Bob Geldof and Paula Yates and godfather of his daughter Fifi Trixibelle.

BodyMap

Top designers Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani, Zandra Rhodes, Calvin Klein, Katherine Hammet, Body Map, Scott Crolla, Issey Miyake, Anthony Price and Emaneuls ( who designed Princes Di's wedding dress) all gave their services for free. 

Boy George

The star studded event included Margaret Thatcher, Princess Michael of Kent, Jerry Hall, Grace Jones, Tina Turner, Paula Yates, Annie Lennox, Selina Scott, Boy George, Freddie Mercury, Dave Stewart, Paul King, Steve Norman, and more.


BUFFALO STYLE:  Influential UK stylist, Ray Petri, photographers Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Jamie Morgan and Cameron McVey and the domination of London style bible, The Face.

By the early 1980s, the English scene had grown to resemble a supermarket of style — punk, new wave, dandyism and sportswear converged on the street — and Petri found his calling as a new kind of fashion arbiter. His passion was for overseeing everything about the creation of a photograph, except actually snapping the picture. Instead of using models and the buff blonds of the time, he cast teenagers, often of mixed descent, to wear designer clothes that he paired with underwear, vintage pieces and athletic basics best suited for bicycle messengers. The resulting look was unflinchingly tough and sexually charged.

Azzedine Alaïa was born in Tunis, Tunisia on 7 June 1939. He lied about his age to get himself into the local École des Beaux-Arts in Tunis and began studying sculpture where he gained valuable insights into the human form.

Grace Jones

In 1957 he moved to Paris to work in fashion design. In Paris, he started to work at Christian Dior as a tailleur, but soon moved to work for Guy Laroche for two seasons, then for Thierry Mugler until he opened his first atelier in his little rue de Bellechasse apartment the late 1970s.

He produced his first ready-to-wear collection in 1980 and moved to larger premises on rue du Parc-Royal in the Marais district. Alaïa was voted Best Designer of the Year and Best collection of the Year at the Oscars de la Mode by the French Ministry of Culture in 1984 in a memorable event where Grace Jones carried him in her arms on stage. Alaia continues to be a fashion force to this day.

JP Gaultier 1984

Jean Paul Gaultier's first individual collection was released in 1976 and his characteristic irreverent style dates from 1981, and he has long been known as the enfant terrible of French fashion. Many of Gaultier's following collections have been based on street wear, focusing on popular culture, whereas others, particularly his Haute Couture collections, are very formal yet at the same time unusual and playful.

Sprouse catwalk

   In New York, Stephen Sprouse's initial Day-Glo bright, sixties-inspired, graffiti-printed fashion collections for men and women caught the attention of fashion editors, store buyers, and fashionistas, garnering much media coverage. His initial collections (1983–1985) were huge critical hits, sold at only the best stores (his 1983 collections were sold exclusively at Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel in New York City on a small scale). 

Hermes Advertising

Supermodel: Yasmin Lebon

Calvin Klein

Club Kids and Club Life 1985

LL Cool J

Beastie Boys

Nell

Madonna and Area's Eric Goode

Jean-Michel Basquiat at Area

NY 80's Club Kids

Club maven, Suzanne Bartsch 

Sprouse muse and model, Teri Toye (left)

Club Kids: 80's style

Paradise Garage

Artwork by Ramelzee

Nell's was a nightclub located on 246 West 14th Street in downtown Manhattan.  Actress-singer Nell Campbell was its namesake and longtime proprietress.

At its peak of popularity in the late 1980s, Nell's was known for denying even the famous entry to the club. In the 1990s Nell's matured into a jazz and reggae showcase.

Nell's came onto the scene when some clubgoers were tiring of the cavernous discothèques (e.g., Studio 54) popular in the 1970s and early 80s. Decorated as a slightly shabby 19th century English men's club, Nell's afforded its upscale patrons a place to eat, sit, socialize, and listen to live music.

Nell's is also a frequent haunt of Patrick Bateman, in the book American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

 Nell's

The Paradise Garage was a discotheque notable in the history of modern LGBT and nightclub cultures and in dance and pop music. It was founded by Michael Brody and was located at 84 King Street, in the Hudson Square neighborhood of New York City. It operated from 1976 to 1987 and was the base for DJ Larry Levan. Its name derives from its origins as a parking garage. The Paradise Garage's business model was largely inspired by David Mancuso's Loft parties: no liquor was served, there were no sales of food or beverages, and the club was not open to the general public.

The club has been credited for its influence on the development of the modern dance club as it is today; unlike other clubs of its time, the Paradise Garage was focused on dancing rather than social interaction, and it was the first to put the DJ at the center of attention

The Palladium represents architect Arata Isozaki’s transformation of a vacant and rundown theater, originally built in 1854 as the Academy of Music, into an extraordinary interior that can only be described as a sleek new structure, the equivalent of a seven-story building using more than 200 tons of steel, within the restored grandeur of the original shell. The entire club was big enough to hold different areas, the equivalent of three or four clubs. Besides the pounding main dance floor area there was a multicolored basement, and the famous upstairs "VIP room", The Michael Todd Room. Murals were created for this space by the well known New York artists of the 1980's Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf.

The crowd outside Area
Area was a themed nightclub at 157 Hudson Street in Manhattan which operated from 1983 to 1987. The theme of the club changed roughly every six weeks, and the club was redecorated for each theme change. Themes included "Night" (with a masked welder), "Surrealism", "Suburbia", "Red", and "Gnarly" (with skate ramps and boarders). Many of the artists who did installations at Area later went on to become well known.

Jean-Michel Basquiat displayed work there, as did Kenny Scharf and Reno Dakota  who made the film “American Fabulous”, worked on an Area installation. The club was also known for the theme announcements/invitations, the first one for the club including a capsule which disintegrated in water and included the paper invitation.
The club was founded by brothers Eric and Christopher Goode, Shawn Hausman and Darius Azari.  Like many New York clubs of the time, crowds waiting around the door on popular nights were handled by very selective doormen.