Clark
How OSSIE CLARK ,the great Designer of brand handbag that changed the world
COMELY HANDBAG
David Hockney’s famous 1971 painting Mr. and Mrs Clark and Percy depicts designer Ossie Clark and his wife, the designer Celia Birtwell, in the artistic surroundings that have since become an integral part of his place in fashion handbag history.
Studying at London’s Royal College of Art, Clark was classmates with designer Zandra Rhodes as well as with Hockney. He ruled London’s bohermain fashion world from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, reinventing the bias cut shapes of the 1930s with a contemporary rock’s roll edge and adding groupie friendly pieces like cropped biker jackets and hot pants. Birtwell, meanwhile, designed the prints for his
Women and Men Bags.
Clark’s work has been rediscovered since his death (has was murdered by his lover in 1996), with two retrospective exhibitions. Stella McCartney is just one designer who has acknowledged his influence, saying that Clark’s strength lay in the “the perfect mix between sexuality and femininity”It is these qualities that give his work power even today.