Fashion Museum exhibition charts how shortlived Taboo and its founder, Leigh Bowery, inspired decade’s fashion
, takes a different look – by going deep into the creative explosion on the dancefloors of the decade.
It focuses on Taboo, a London club that lasted barely a year but was pivotal in the careers of people including the singer Boy George, the designers John Galliano and Katharine Hamnett, the choreographer Michael Clark and the performance artistThe exhibition charts the rise of this cohort, from bedsits to national TV. A section upstairs focuses on outfits created for acts such as Culture Club, Dead or Alive, Neneh Cherry and Bros to wear on Top of the Pops.
NJ Stevenson, a co-curator of this exhibition, argues that the interest in Bowery is down to his desire for the extreme. “In club culture, the look is everything,” she says. “Nobody did more to push the boundaries than Leigh. There were lots of other people doing it as well, but he had this wild, competitive spirit, which meant that he would always do one better.”
She emphasises that this exhibition goes beyond Bowery to the wider scene. There are paintings by his flatmate Trojan, owned by Peter Doig, a “dancefloor” of mannequins dressed as different characters often found at Taboo, including the designer Pam Hogg, and a room of photographs of clubs including Taboo, Limelight and Shoom.Stevenson has co-curated this exhibition with Martin Green, who also works as a DJ, and David Cabaret, a nightclub personality.
She says the growth of youth TV with programmes such as The Word and The Clothes Show fed off what was happening in clubs and made it more mainstream. “Caryn Franklin used to go to Taboo. She used it as an extension of work, she would go there from the office to go and to see what people were wearing … Clubs were really people’s social media at that point. They met up every night to find out what was going on.
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