Galliano and McQueen: clubland couture

John Galliano and the late Alexander McQueen both hailed from London’s working-class suburbs. They studied at Central Saint Martins, albeit almost a decade apart, and graduated to fashion’s major league via the patronage of the world’s biggest fashion conglomerate LVMH, before their careers came to a dramatic halt within a year of each other: McQueen’s when he took his own life in February 2010 and Galliano’s when he was sacked by Christian Dior after a drunken, anti-Semitic tirade in a Paris bar the following year.

But they had more in common than social class, education and a spectacular fall from grace. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s respectively, when they were young and hungry and still unknown, Galliano and McQueen were regulars on London’s throbbing club scene, a pastime that went on to influence their designs and formed the social centrepiece of their formative years as designers.

Their experiences were quite different: Galliano thrust himself into the New Romantics movement of the mid-1980s; McQueen into the rave and house music scene of the early 1990s, and they only really crossed paths at the occasional fashion event. But London’s heady music and club culture left a profound impression on them both. The modern London nightclub scene kicked off in 1978 when a young impresario named Steve Strange (who passed away earlier this month) and his friend, the DJ Rusty Egan, took over a basement bar on Soho’s Dean Street on Tuesdays with a night called Billy’s. Egan mixed David Bowie with Roxy Music, Kraftwerk and John Barry soundtracks. ‘This sound did not exist anywhere except in that room,’ says Steve Dagger, a London School of Economics student at the time who went on to manage the pop group Spandau Ballet. ‘It was a postmodern mash-up. You felt like you had stepped into the future.’

Billy’s only lasted three months, but Strange and Egan realised that they were on to something. ‘London in 1978 was pretty bleak,’ Dagger says. ‘Punk was finished — it was a burst of energy that wasn’t meant to last and it didn’t — and we were looking for something new, a new place for pop culture.’ A few months later, the club moved to a bigger space, a wine bar in Covent Garden called Blitz, with Strange at the door deciding who was worthy enough to enter. The crowd was a mix of Saint Martins fashion students including Galliano (class of 1984), an elfin-like chap from South London with a gelled wedge of a haircut.

‘Blitz was red and white gingham tablecloths and all dark wood — a real saloon,’ recalls Fiona Dealey, a Saint Martins student who became a designer. Everyone dressed up, as movie stars, historical figures, and their primary mission was to preen and pose. ‘You’d have Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe,’ Dagger remembers with a laugh. An eccentric kid from a Warren Street squat named George O’Dowd, known as Boy George, worked in the cloakroom. The regulars — Galliano included — were known as the ‘Blitz Kids’.

At the time, money was tight for Galliano. He still lived at home in South London and received financial aid to cover public transport costs to college. Galliano compartmentalised his two lives: that of the good Catholic boy from Peckham who spoke to his Andalucian mother in Spanish; and the self-proclaimed ‘club demon’ of Soho, with the Thames serving as a definitive border between the two.

Blitz gave birth to a flurry of other clubs over the years, including Cha-Cha within Heaven, the gay superclub underneath Charing Cross station. ‘You got in through an alley around the back of the club,’ remembers American Vogue editor Hamish Bowles, who attended Saint Martins at the same time as Galliano. ‘There was a woman named Scarlett Cannon who sat on the door, with peroxide hair that at one point was cut into the shape of the New York skyline. She was absolutely terrifying, a young Gorgon. She would hold up a hand mirror to someone she deemed inappropriately dressed for admission and say, “Would you let yourself into this club?” She was all-powerful.’

Then there was the Wag club on Wardour Street in Soho, filled with trendsetters such as Neneh Cherry, where art and fashion students would swill warm beer in plastic cups and dance to Bananarama and the Beastie Boys. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would drop by on occasion, Sade and Fine Young Cannibals would perform, and David Bowie filmed the video for his hit single ‘Blue Jean’ there.

But Galliano’s favourite was Taboo, a private night on Thursdays at a cavernous basement club called Maximus in Leicester Square, co-created by performance artist Leigh Bowery. Galliano would hang out with all the regulars, including Boy George, who remembers the designer as ‘quite introverted’ until he’d ‘have a drink and become Shirley Bassey’ — as well as singer Billy Idol, aspiring actor Tim Roth and milliner Stephen Jones. They would dance the night away, sometimes heading straight to school the next morning. ‘It was the place to be,’ Galliano later said. ‘It became harder and harder to get in, and the harder it was, the more people would try, and that made it even more exclusive.’

The mix was gay and straight, different races all dressed in outrageous get-ups, and faces made up theatrically. ‘It wasn’t about sex,’ says fashion stylist Mitzi Lorenz, who worked for The Face magazine at the time. ‘It was about being flamboyant.’ It was also about overindulgence, sometimes to the point of nasty excess. ‘It ended up seedier than the bottom of a birdcage,’ one regular has said. ‘You had bodies lying on the dancefloor. You didn’t know if they’d OD’d or were just messing about. It was very extreme and very dangerous.’ According to Boy George: ‘There were a lot of drugs and chemicals. It was very frenzied and people partied hard. It was a real time of excess.’ Galliano concurred: ‘Any kid in the 1980s used drugs,’ he later said. ‘I am glad I did. And I am glad that, somehow, I got through it. It helped me evolve.’