Pam Hogg's first collection, launched in the 80s and entitled "Psychedelic Jungle", featured quite a few outfits entirely made of PVC. Rather than fame at the time Hogg found many critics among the audience of her catwalks: most of them claimed she offended and degraded women with her designs.
Yet, according to Hogg, her designs were actually meant to liberate women, creating for them post-punk armours that new amazons could use to dress up in and that could help them revealing their most aggressive yet sensual side. Despite what her critics said, visionary Hogg had actually seen into the future with her corsets, tight catsuits, see-through dresses and rubber outfits.
Born in Paisley, Hogg grew up in Glasgow, studied at the local School of Art and pursued further studies in textiles at London's Royal College of Art. At the end of the 70s she had her own band, Rubbish, then moved onto fashion, had a stall at Hyper Hyper in London's Kensington High Street (where also Leigh Bowery used to have a stall) and later on opened her own shop on Newburgh Street. Her name soon became associated with legends such as the Blitz Club and Siouxsie Sioux.
In the 90s she launched a new band, Doll, and, since then, she has been involved in different projects from making music with Hoggdoll to directing videos that featured her designs, music and friends such as Siouxsie Sioux and Alison Mosshart and has also relaunched her fashion career with her label Hogg Couture.
Her recent collections featured tight catsuits and dresses in metallic colours and shiny fabrics, vivid red suits and black coats with PVC inserts.
One main influence in Hogg's designs was definitely S&M rubberwear, but the cut, lines and details often called to mind clubwear mixed to historical inspirations from the 15th century and to echoes of her native Scotland visible in the tartan she used for some rather punkish outfits.
Hogg never followed any trends, and, being entirely self-taught, she designed without any particular references in her mind. Her early catwalks were rather revolutionary compared to what goes on in the fashion world just now. Her models strode down the catwalk with an aggressiveness and sensuality that nowadays' 16 year old anorexic zombies (read: models) don't have, while male dancers vogued down the catwalk wearing unisex outfits that combined traditional menswear with feminine touches such as lace and metallic colours. There was an anarchism and sense of humour in Hogg's catwalks that fashion has now sadly forgotten.
A while back the singer, artist and designer created some installations in the windows of London's Browns, and the first issue of Katie Grand's new magazine, Love (coming out in a couple of weeks' time), will feature a shoot by David Sims styled by Joe McKenna, dedicated to Hogg. For the joy of all her fans the designer will also make a comeback at London Fashion Week (LFW) where she will launch her Hogg Couture Autumn/Winter 2009-10 collection as part of the On|Off fashion collective at London’s Science Museum. I genuinely hope Hogg the rebel will bring back to her catwalk all her anarchism and liberating designs.
So far this post has covered the "Brave New Hogg" part of the title, so let's now move on to the "while Glasgow sleeps" bit. First let's go back to 1990, when Glasgow was city of culture and Hogg did a solo exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Gallery. Believe it or not, this was the first fashion design exhibition at the historical Glasgow-based museum.
Since then Kelvingrove has gone through a major and rather confusing revamp that mercilessly reshuffled its collections and galleries. Yet there hasn't been much going on in terms of fashion apart from the exhibition on Kylie Minogue's costumes during the annual Glasgay event. This was a total shame as Glasgow might have paid homage to Pam Hogg, but also to other local talents like stylist McKenna and to Scottish contemporary fashion designers with interesting exhibitions and events (not with the fake and hugely embarrassing Glasgow Fashion Week and the useless "Glasgow: Scotland with Style" design collective – note: "useless" because it's utterly useless to pretend you're promoting young fashion designers hailing from Scotland without giving them any money to fund their collections). This would have generated interest from alternative fashion circles and put the spotlight back on Glasgow which has sadly been reduced in the last few years into a twee outpost not even able to produce new and original musicians, but only capable of regurgitating sad clones of 80s bands.
Glasgow usually catches up with the rest of the world roughly two years after something has happened. Hogg is still young, so there are good hopes we will be so lucky to see a new exhibition dedicated to her while she's still alive.
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