Anyone who has sewn with a patterned fabric knows the small despair of a motif that refuses to line up at the seam, and most of us only ever wrestle with that on a flat pattern piece. Spare a thought, then, for a pattern cutter and a textile designer who made a dress from chiffon cut on the straight grain and wound around the body in a spiral, with black birds and splashes of golden flowers travelling all the way round. That is the powder blue Ziggy Stardust dress by Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, and it is a good clue to how they worked.
Celia & Ossie by Norman Bain, 1967. Courtesy of Celia Birtwell
Ossie Clark ’Ziggy Stardust’ dress, 1970. This dress is in the Celia Birtwell print ’Daisy Whirligig’.
It is one of more than one hundred and twenty garments in Ossie Clark + Celia Birtwell at the Fashion and Textile Museum, on show until 11 April 2027. Most of the clothes come from a private collection, with further pieces loaned by Celia herself, and they suggest that cloth and cut were settled in conversation. Celia’s illustrations and prints sparked Ossie’s designs, and his drawings sent her back to her desk with fresh ideas. You can see the exchange beginning in the mail-order Paper dress, covered in Art Deco flowers in orange and green, and in the 1967 Bakst dress, whose purple and red circles nod to Leon Bakst’s costumes for the Ballets Russes and to Sonia Delaunay’s abstract painting...
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Further Information:
Ossie Clark + Celia Birtwell is on now at the Fashion and Textile Museum, until 11 April 2027.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Gala Mitchell Photographed by Celia Birtwell.
All images as credited in captions and courtesy of the Fashion and Textile Museum.