Mr & Mrs Clark
News
Edition 20
17.09.2022
During Pitti Fragranze, the Prato Textile Museum hosts a retrospective of Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell's work
The long flowing dresses of Ossie Clark defined the Swinging London with their geometric shapes, floral bouquets, and art-inspired patterns.
With his flower power style and slender cuts that revealed the décolleté between sensual movements and plays of transparencies, Ossie was called the "King of Kings Road" for his dresses inspired by the 30s and 40s. A short but very intense career that significantly impacted London in the period between Mary Quant's miniskirts and Malcolm MacLaren and Vivienne Westwood's subversive punk movement between 1965 and 1974.
Clark and his wife Celia Birtwell (portrayed in David Hockney's famous painting "Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy," 1970-71) shaped the bohemian district of West London that was home to a generation of brilliant and revolutionary young people.

Massimo Cantini Parrini's archive provides a foundation for this exhibition, which is enhanced by additional loans from Lauren Lepire's Los Angeles collection (which includes over 200 original Ossie clothes) and the London archives of the Clark family as well as Celia Birtwell herself. The Textile Museum of Prato and the Sozzani Foundation are hosting a large retrospective that showcases the incredible creativity of these two figures that are often overlooked in the history of fashion. 

With the patronage of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion, the exhibition will be inaugurated on Friday, 16 September, at the Textile Museum in Prato and will arrive in Milan at the Sozzani Foundation in January.