Institution
Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD)
Medium
Fashion
Graduation Year
Class of 2024
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My graduate collection; “The Love Butcher” is an immersion into the subcultures of 1970’s/1980’s New York City. Each look portrays a character, starting with The John, the typical Madison Avenue salary man. The collection maps his journey through the hedonic night as he finds himself becoming embroiled in the underground subcultures of the city. The Working Girl and The Rent Boy portray the then-thriving sex trade of The Duece (Times Square) and The Loop (53rd and 3rd street), where respectable suburban family-men crowd the streets, avoiding home in favour of indulging their fantasies. As The John interacts with the sex workers and hustlers, he is coaxed out of his business suit, his social skin of establishment and morality, and allows his vice to take hold. As he delves deeper into the night, he feeds his need in The Meat Market (The Meat Packing District) and on Christopher Street, where the Leather Bars entice with their offer of further promiscuities. In these clubs, shrouded in cigarette smoke, the scent of sweat, and thundering music undercut by the clinking of chains and the creak of leather, lives The Leatherman, representative of the gay leather/BDSM scene. The intermingling of these subcultures and characters propels The John towards his final destination, The Bowery. There the spark of a new subculture glows under the white heat of the streetlights. Amongst the piss-soaked floorboards and graffitied walls of the infamous CBGB’S club, youthful bodies driven by dissatisfaction, clash to the new sound of Punk screaming its message from slashed and battered amps. Shape is derived from the dissection, deconstruction and intermingling of garments symbolic of these subcultures; the business suit, stockings, denim jeans, bondage wear and the Perfecto biker jacket. These shapes are supplemented with the use of print - portraying anecdotal stories of key members of each these subcultures and is informed by the bricolaged club-flyers, band T-shirts and underground magazine publications that spread the word of Punk throughout New York City. The monochromatic colour palette is influenced by the photographic works of Miron Zownir, Robert Mapplethorpe and David Godlis, whose images documented the sex trade, the gay leather/BDSM scene and the Punk scene respectively on grainy 35mm black and white film stocks, which is echoed in the distressed surface treatments of the textiles. Red is used throughout and is informed by the expressive use of this colour in William Friedkin’s 1980 crime thriller “Cruising” and personifies “The Red Light” of vice, as well as the violent and dangerous nature of the city during this time, which ultimately claimed the lives of many of the key figures of these subcultures.
