The King of the Kings Road
In 1995 Ossie Clark, the iconic sixties and seventies fashion designer known for his flowing dresses and a rather excessive party lifestyle, invited the 27 year old Italian Diego Cogalato to move into his one-bedroomed Holland Park council flat in Penzance Street. Just eighteen months later, Cogalato called 999 and said to the operator ‘I think I’ve killed someone…’.
When the the police broke into the flat they found Ossie Clark on the floor with 37 stab wounds to his body and with his head completely stoved in, apparently by a large terracotta pot.
At the trial Coglato’s defence revealed that at the time of the murder he had been high on a mixture of Prozac and amphetamines – a combination of drugs that caused him to see himself as the New Messiah. Unfortunately they also caused Coglato to see Ossie Clark as a devil. A devil that needed to be extinguished. Coglato was convicted of murder but given just a six-year sentence on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
By the time he died, Ossie Clark was an unkempt and sad figure often wandering around Holland Park near his flat. He had become a buddhist and apparently prayed everyday in front of a shrine made entirely of empty packets of Sobranie cigarettes. His carpet was just brown cutting paper and his goldfish were kept in vases. He was so poor that he was occasionally seen scouring the streets for dog-ends to smoke and even fished pennies out of the fountain in Holland Park.
Ossie and Peter Morgan at the Royal College of Art in 1965
Ossie at the Royal College of Art 18th June 1965
Just thirty years earlier, and ultimately to become one of Britain’s greatest fashion designers, Ossie Clark was at the beginning of his glittering career. In 1962 Ossie Clark moved to London to enrol at the Fashion Design School at The Royal College of Art. He graduated in June 1965, with a first class degree and a collection inspired by artist Bridget Riley.
Clark was an immediate success and he’d hardly graduated when Vogue magazine wrote about him as a major new talent and photographer David Bailey was hired to take his portrait.
Clark began to sell both his couture and ready-to-wear lines in the Chelsea boutique, Quorum with his friend and business partner Alice Pollock. Incidentally David Gilmore, later of Pink Floyd was a driver for Quorum for a while and later would provide a lot of music for Clark’s innovative fashion shows.
Ossie lighting Judy Guy Johnson's cigarette with Patti Boyd looking on.
Chrissie Shrimpton and Ossie 1965 by David Bailey
Linda Keith, Chrissie Shrimpton, Suki Poitier and Annie Sabroux displaying the Ossie Clark and Alice Pollock winter collection April 1967
Part of the success of Clark’s clothes at the time was due to the extraordinary collaboration with his wife, the textile designer Celia Birtwell. Many of Clark’s more famous garments were designed around her fabrics.
Clark had met Birtwell while they were both students in Manchester and although he was sexually attracted to men they became lovers, marrying in 1969 when she was pregnant with their first child. David Hockney, friend of the couple and sometime lover of Ossie, was the best man.
The marriage only lasted a few years – towards the end of the marriage Birtwell could no longer put up with Clark’s wild-partying, drug-taking and his many affairs with both men and women. She eventually had had enough and started an affair with the artist Adrian George, leaving Ossie for good in 1974.
David Hockney’s famous painting ‘Mr And Mrs Clark And Percy’ was given to the couple as a wedding present. Ossie, later in his life and needing the money, sold it to the Tate Gallery for just seven thousand pounds. It is now one of (if not the) most famous British painting and worth millions. Clark was always, despite his success, a very bad businessman.
Mr and Mrs Clark
Ossie with his hi fi 1970
Ossie, Celia and Percy the cat
Triangle coffee tables, chocolate biscuits, Ossie Clark and his son
During the decade before the separation however, Ossie Clark was the star of British fashion – even describing himself as a “brilliant butterfly”. He was particularly famous for his bias cut dresses and brilliant tailoring.
He had an incredible eye for the female form and thus created incredibly flattering clothes – it was said that he could cut a dress to fit a woman perfectly just be running his hands over her body. Marianne Faithful described trying on one of his dresses for the first time when she was eighteen -
“Ossie wanted everything to be on bare skin, so he said ‘Take it all off’ – and I did – the display was heart-tugging.”
Ossie with Gala Mitchell his favourite model. 'It's all in my brain and fingers' he once said, 'I am a master cutter.'
ossie in 1969
Ossie in his workshop in 1969
By the early seventies Clark was at the height of his fame – his dresses were worn by the the most beautiful and famous women of the era – Patti Boyd, Ali MacGraw, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Elizabeth Tayor and Liza Minelli. He even designed some of Mick Jagger’s stage costumes including the famous white jumpsuit he wore on the 1973 Exile On Main Street tour. If he was visiting New York he would hang out with Andy Warhol, Diana Vreeland and Truman Capote. He probably thought that life couldn’t get much better.
Ossie, no stranger to a convivial night out, and friends
Ali MacGraw 1969
Ali MacGraw
After the separation with Celia, Clark never really recovered emotionally and professionally and although the first entry in his diary in 1974 read:
January 10. Moved into Powis Terrace. Dinner with Mick and Bianca. Took Mo to cheer him up. After, Paul Getty Jr with Nikki Weymouth, Chrissy, Robert Fraser.
In the mid-seventies his fortunes went into a downward spiral, never a good business man, Clark now found his clothes decidedly unfashionable. The Kings Road was now enthralled with the punk revolution and its accompanying home-made fashion.
By 1983 Clark was declared bankrupt after the Inland Revenue claimed 14 years of back tax. He lost his house and had to live with friends until, eventually, the DHSS re-housed him in the small council flat in Penzance Street – the council flat where he was ultimately murdered.
Except for bits and bobs he never really worked properly again.
Ossie at Claridges in1985
Hockney's Mr and Mrs Clark with Percy
Nicky Samuel modelling Ossie Clark
Tags: Ali MacGraw, Celia Birtwell, David Hockney, fashion, gay, Holland Park, Kings Road, Marianne Faithfull, murder, Nicky Samuel, Ossie Clark, seventies, sixties
Fascinating as ever… have you tried pitching this site to a publisher? You should you know!
Thanks! I was researching the Fraser bombing for my own blog and I came across your blog. Keep up the good work!
[...] updated Ossie Clark, the King Of The Kings Road in Holland Park today with some extra great [...]
Came upon this site by accident – loved reading about Ossie Clark – I cannot believe I wore one of his creations in 1972 (I have a photo luckily to prove it!!) when he was dressing all those famous people!!! Didn’t really understand how famous he was then, I also married at 20 in 1969 – so I cannot believe I bought one of his frocks, I can remember the label perfectly well, I think I bought from Hammonds at the time in Walton-On- Thames, Surrey, I wish I can remember how much I paid (a lot probably) and what happened to that dress!!! I moved house 5 times so it must have gone somewhere along the moves!!! I wish I could buy the material and make a replica of that dress – it was black background with red, blue, green and yellow little fans. Would you have a clue who would sell the same kind of cloth??? Thank you!!!
Please seek out my new book on the artist Patrick Procktor, a great friend of Ossie Clark. The title is ‘Patrick Procktor: Art and Life’ (Unicorn Press) – it will be launched at a show of Procktor’s work at the Redfern Gallery, Cork Street, London, on 13th April 2010 (show runs until 13th May) – http://www.redfern-gallery.com. My book is based on interviews with very many people who knew Procktor, including Celia Birtwell and David Hockney, both of whom had fascinating things to say about Patrick’s friendship with Ossie. The book includes a watercolour portrait of Ossie which is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Thank you for giving such an intimate detail of the life of Ossie Clark, he was my great uncle and unfortunately my Grandmother, Beryl, dear sister of Ossie passed away some years before Ossie and I have been unable to find out certain facts.
I appreciate the work you have done here and it gives a true insite into the life he lead and the unfortunate circumstances surrounding his death.
Came across this website by chance and realised I used to sit next to Ossie (real name Raymond) in school. I also have school photos of him. What a lot of memories it has brought back. He was such a lovely quiet boy. Lovely photos !!
Arrived here via Caroline’s Miscellany (of which I’m a great fan), and delighted to have found you.
At university I used to borrow Ossie Clark clothes from a flatmate, and always felt like the bee’s knees whenever I sported them (he could make even the most ordinary of women feel fabulous, and – your pix are the proof – made fabulous women look even more so!). His combinaton of superb fabric with extraordinarily skilled cutting was his trademark – and somebody should have funded him. I was so sad when I heard of his fate.
BTW, one of the models in the ’67 group pic – Suki Pottier – was killed in a car crash not long afterwards. She was passenger in the car driven by Tara Guinness crashing and killing both, which inspired the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’. Much later, I lived in a flat nearby – and tended to avoid the spot.
Having written a post which merely touched on Emily Davison, it was also great to read your comprehensive coverage of the event @ the Derby and its aftermath.
Thank you again.
Have really enjoyed my visit: thank you.
PS Yup, I really did re-name the late, unfortunate Tara. His surname, of course, was Browne (still a Guinness family member tho’). And I am an eejit!
Royal Court Theatre fashion show (from the film ‘A Bigger Splash’):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8HhncQH6bE
Rest in peace
Just a minor point: Suki Potier survived the crash that killed Tara Browne. She did, unfortunately, die in another crash in Portugal in 1981.
[...] por la astucia, y tira de él que fuera un par de veces: “ Ossie última colección / Biba venta de cierre / A poco más de colorete en las mejillas empolvadas / Pero la base es pálido [...]
i exhibited my paintings of native americans at the bayswater rd.art exhibition in london in the 1990s, ossie always stopped to admire them which was nice, it would have been great to have spoken to him about his wonderful past but he was always with that stoned italian kid, god bless, r.i.p. ossie.
does anyone know who shot the Quorum fashion show ?? i would like to know if there is footage from the 1972 spring summer collection , the one Manolo Blahnik did the shoes for . would lov eto see this footage or any still sthat are available please .