2021.05.12 领先于时代的1970年代时装设计师

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The 1970s Fashion Designer Who Was Outlandishly Ahead of His Time
Twenty years ago, fashion lost the visionary designer—and prophet—behind P-Funk and Kiss.

By Jason Heller
MAY 12, 2021
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Kiss in futuristic costumes
Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Peter Criss, and Ace Frehley of the rock band Kiss pose for a portrait circa 1975. (Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)
One night in 1977, George Clinton stepped out of a flying saucer, teetering in his new pair of nine-inch platform boots. That fantastical footwear “was hard to wear onstage but great to take pictures in,” the Parliament-Funkadelic leader told Vogue in 2018. Clinton was always risking a wardrobe malfunction during concerts. Not only were his outfits cumbersome and ostentatious—kind of like Sun Ra meets Star Wars—but he’d also use a prop spacecraft called the Mothership to make a grand entrance at shows. “You could pose real good” in those shoes, he added, “but you couldn’t do much jumping out of spaceships.”


That decade saw Clinton begin to mash glam and funk into an Afrofuturist symphony that would remake pop music. But despite his wild imagination, he didn’t concoct those otherworldly costumes in the ’70s—Larry Legaspi did. The designer, who died 20 years ago, created the eye-popping looks that Clinton and his P-Funk collective have since made legendary. If that was all he’d ever accomplished, his legacy would be secure. Yet Legaspi also designed glitter-studded stagewear for Labelle, Grace Jones, Betty Davis, Diana Ross, Eartha Kitt, Klaus Nomi, and his dear friend Divine—not to mention the cartoonish, superheroes-from-Hell costumes worn by the members of Kiss. Legaspi’s influence, if not his name, is as pervasive as ever today. Glints of his larger-than-life aesthetic shine forth from a host of contemporary stars with a flair for the thespian and the spectacular, including Janelle Monáe, Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga. The Star Wars costume architect Michael Kaplan is an admirer, and Rick Owens—the fashion designer known for his dark concepts and sculpted silhouettes—dedicated a 2019 show to him. Legaspi’s futurism took wing more than 40 years ago, yet it still looks like the garb of tomorrow.

Although Legaspi remains overdue for a widespread revival, Owens did write a book about his underappreciated hero. The gorgeous, lushly illustrated, coffee-table hardcover, titled Legaspi: Larry Legaspi, the ’70s, and the Future of Fashion, was published in 2019, and it’s the closest thing to a biography of the designer that exists. It includes Legaspi’s own written account of his early life. He describes growing up in New Jersey, where he says his hard-drinking stepfather regularly beat his mother and molested him. After years of abuse and trauma, he left home for New York, where he opened a boutique called Moonstone and began designing garments. “I am self-taught,” he told the fashion journalist André Leon Talley in 1979. “I went to the Fashion Institute of Technology for a few semesters of basic trainings, but what you see is mostly my dreams.” In his own words, he was a “gay hippie” upon arriving in New York, but he soon gravitated toward the angular, intergalactic sparkle of glam rock. Incorporating elements such as arched collars and reflective materials into his designs, he also drew from the past—namely from the science fiction he had devoured as a kid.

LaBelle on stage in futuristic costumes
Nona Hendryx from Labelle performs live in New York City circa 1975. (Richard E. Aaron / Redferns)
Read: How Pierre Cardin’s futuristic fashion infiltrated everyday life

New York in the early ’70s was hardly what you would call restrained. But when Legaspi wore his own outfits on city sidewalks, his Flash Gordon–on–Fire Island style drew catcalls of “Moon man!” from passersby. “I never could bear to look like everyone else,” he told Us Magazine in 1980. Moonstone struggled to attract clientele at first, but that changed when Legaspi got a job on Broadway as a dresser for the original run of Jesus Christ Superstar. Soon, he was noticed by Labelle. The trio of Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash was transitioning from a sweet vocal group—one that Legaspi had loved as a child—to a fierce and forward-thinking funk powerhouse. Legaspi began designing their stage costumes, stitching together shimmering metallics, white leather capes, and ludicrous plumage straight out of some hallucination of alien ornithology. Hendryx, also a lifelong sci-fi fan, had urged Legaspi, “Make me a spacesuit.” Labelle’s striking new look, the music magazine Melody Maker observed in 1974, was “like a soul version of UFO.”


Legaspi dubbed his new line of costumes “Primal Space,” a term that played on both his adoration of sci-fi imagery and his connection to the earthy pulse of funk and rock. His name began circulating, and as his Labelle creations made waves, other musicians took notice. Before long, the members of an unknown rock group playing small clubs in New York asked Legaspi to help them realize their own bizarre ideas for stagewear—costumes that were extravagant, gleaming, superhuman, and just a little bit scary. Legaspi obliged, unaware that Kiss would become one of the biggest bands of all time. “Our manager Bill Aucoin introduced us to Larry. He had a storefront in the far West Village,” the Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley recalls in Owens’s book. “He was doing costumes for Labelle.” In fact, Kiss stole Legaspi away from Labelle, whisking him up in a rise to fame that, ironically, did little to help the designer’s brand recognition. He loved applying his aesthetic to the world of popular music, and the money didn’t hurt. He wanted nothing more, though, than to be seen as a high-fashion creator.

Grace Jones in brown fur and spandex and George Clinton in fringe
Left: Singer and actress Grace Jones. (Robin Platzer / The LIFE Images Collection/Getty) Right: George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic (Echoes / Redferns)
But Legaspi wound up stuck in a strange place: too bold to go mainstream and too weird to be embraced by the fashion industry. With seemingly nowhere else to turn, Legaspi continued making costumes for his friends in the New York art scene, including the operatic singer Klaus Nomi, whose retro-futurism meshed with Legaspi’s. And after becoming close friends with Divine, he supplied the gay icon with designs that accentuated camp, drama, and subversive sexuality. Grace Jones, as she was moving from modeling to music in the late ’70s, tapped Legaspi as well. But of all the people he dressed, no pairing was more perfect than Legaspi plus P-Funk. “I know the theater well,” Clinton told Vogue in 2018. “I watched a lot of these plays, and when we first did the Mothership Connection album in 1975, I knew that I had to get the costuming from Larry Legaspi.”

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Working with Clinton and crew—including the irrepressible bassist Bootsy Collins—Legaspi’s cosmic visions and sci-fi obsessions truly soared. Parliament's Mothership Connection was the first in a series of interconnected albums by it and the overlapping group Funkadelic. In the albums, an epic battle between good and evil—that is, funk and funklessness—sprawls across the backdrop of space-time. Legaspi was finally fully unleashed. He “made crazy sci-fi costumes,” Clinton wrote in his memoir, Brothers Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You? They “made us look wild and interstellar.” Legaspi’s garb brought a vital element to the P-Funk mythology—and, in his own words, came “right out of my fantasies about the future.”

Tragically, Legaspi’s own future dimmed. He contracted HIV in 1987 as the epidemic decimated New York, especially the queer and artistic communities he was so intimately involved in. Focusing on his health, he left the city and ultimately settled in North Carolina, where he died of AIDS-related causes in 2001, having ceased any creative output years earlier. Although clients such as Clinton realized—to the point of potentially breaking a leg onstage—that Legaspi’s designs weren’t very practical to perform in, the designer himself always saw them as having the potential to be much more than rock-star garb. “My clothes are not a stage costume,” he told an interviewer in the early ’80s, just as his visionary style was being copied and adopted by music’s growing futuristic, new-wave movement. “They are something that can actually be worn in the day as well as the evening.” He dreamed of new synthetic fibers and other technological advances that could be used to make solar-heated and air-conditioned bodysuits: “Our clothing is going to have to help us cope with our environment, and of course venturing into space travel is going to affect the way we dress.” He wanted, essentially, to reboot civilization’s entire concept of what clothes were and did. And he wanted that concept to be sexy.

Legaspi in a robe in front of a pool with his wife
Larry Legaspi and his wife, Valerie, pose beside a hotel swimming pool in New York, New York, on August 3, 1979. (Allan Tannenbaum / Getty)
Twenty years after Legaspi’s death, his vision of futuristic glam as everyday streetwear—or everyday spacewear, for that matter—hasn’t quite come to pass. But maybe that’s because he was even more outlandishly ahead of his time than his biggest fans and most famous patrons could have imagined. “I knew I’d have to wait for the world to catch up with me,” he said in 1980, already 10 years into a career full of fabulousness, frustration, and idealism about the future. “But I didn’t think I’d have to wait this long.”


Legaspi barely got to see the 21st century he anticipated with so much wonder and hope. Now we don’t even blink at innovative technologies such as electric cars and smartphones, which seemed like science fiction back when Legaspi was peaking as a designer. We’ve charted thousands of exoplanets and are looking ahead to the human exploration of Mars. Still, onstage Legaspi’s prescient vision seems to guide many of today’s leading-edge artists. Lady Gaga, his most conspicuous stylistic descendant, appeared in the video of her 2020 hit “Stupid Love” wearing sleek, twinkling bodysuits that recall the space-warrior vibe of Legaspi’s vintage Labelle collections. “The world rots in conflict,” the video’s opening slate reads. “Many tribes battle for dominance. While the Spiritual ones pray and sleep for peace, the Kindness punks fight for Chromatica.” It’s the kind of sci-fi mirage that Legaspi himself dreamed into fashion.

Jason Heller is the author of Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded.




领先于时代的1970年代时装设计师
20年前，时尚界失去了P-Funk和Kiss背后的这位有远见的设计师和预言家。

作者：Jason Heller
2021年5月12日
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穿着未来主义服装的吻乐队
摇滚乐队Kiss的Gene Simmons、Paul Stanley、Peter Criss和Ace Frehley大约在1975年为一张肖像拍照。(Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)
1977年的一个晚上，乔治-克林顿（George Clinton）从一个飞碟中走出来，穿着他新买的一双九英寸的平台靴摇摇晃晃。那双梦幻般的鞋子 "在舞台上很难穿，但穿起来很好看"，这位Parliament-Funkadelic的领导人在2018年告诉Vogue。克林顿在音乐会上总是冒着衣衫不整的风险。他的服装不仅笨重而浮夸--有点像太阳神与星球大战的结合--而且他还会使用一个名为 "母舰 "的道具飞船，在演出中隆重登场。他补充说，"你可以穿着那双鞋摆出真正的好姿势"，"但你不能从飞船上跳出来做什么"。


那十年间，克林顿开始将华丽和放克混合成一种非洲未来主义的交响乐，从而重塑了流行音乐。但是，尽管他有狂野的想象力，他并没有在70年代构思那些超凡脱俗的服装，而是由Larry Legaspi来做。这位20年前去世的设计师创造了令人瞠目结舌的造型，克林顿和他的P-Funk组合从此成为传奇。如果这就是他的全部成就，他的遗产将是安全的。然而，Legaspi还为拉贝尔、格蕾丝-琼斯、贝蒂-戴维斯、戴安娜-罗斯、Eartha Kitt、克劳斯-诺米和他亲爱的朋友迪夫设计了闪闪发光的舞台服装，更不用说吻乐队成员所穿的卡通式的、来自地狱的超级英雄服装。Legaspi的影响，即使不是他的名字，今天也是一样的普遍。他比生命更重要的美学的闪光点来自于众多具有戏剧性和壮观性天赋的当代明星，包括Janelle Monáe、Beyoncé和Lady Gaga。星球大战》的服装设计师迈克尔-卡普兰(Michael Kaplan)是他的崇拜者，而瑞克-欧文斯(Rick Owens)--这位以黑暗概念和雕刻轮廓而闻名的时装设计师，将2019年的一场秀献给了他。Legaspi的未来主义在40多年前就已经展翅高飞，但它看起来仍然像明天的服装。

虽然Legaspi仍未得到广泛的复兴，但欧文斯确实写了一本关于他这个不受重视的英雄的书。这本华丽的、图文并茂的咖啡桌精装书，名为Legaspi。Larry Legaspi, the '70s, and the Future of Fashion》于2019年出版，这是目前最接近于设计师传记的作品。它包括Legaspi自己对其早期生活的书面描述。他描述了在新泽西州的成长过程，他说他那酗酒的继父经常殴打他的母亲并猥亵他。经过多年的虐待和创伤，他离开家去了纽约，在那里他开了一家名为Moonstone的精品店并开始设计服装。"我是自学成才的，"他在1979年告诉时尚记者安德烈-莱昂-塔利。"我去时装技术学院接受了几个学期的基本培训，但你看到的主要是我的梦想"。用他自己的话说，他刚到纽约时是一个 "同性恋嬉皮士"，但他很快就倾向于棱角分明、银河系闪光的华丽摇滚。他在设计中融入了拱形衣领和反光材料等元素，同时也从过去--即从他小时候看过的科幻小说中汲取了灵感。

拉贝尔在舞台上穿着未来主义的服装
来自拉贝尔的诺娜-亨德莱克斯大约于1975年在纽约市进行现场表演。(Richard E. Aaron / Redferns)
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70年代初的纽约很难说是你所谓的克制。但当莱加斯皮在城市人行道上穿着自己的服装时，他的 "火岛上的闪电侠 "风格引来了路人 "月亮人！"的叫喊声。"他在1980年对《美国》杂志说："我从来都不能忍受自己看起来像其他人。月亮石起初很难吸引客户，但当莱加斯皮在百老汇找到一份工作，为《耶稣基督超级巨星》的原版演出做化妆师时，情况发生了变化。很快，他就被拉贝尔注意到了。Patti LaBelle、Nona Hendryx和Sarah Dash三人组正从一个甜美的声乐组合--Legaspi小时候就喜欢的组合--过渡到一个凶猛的、具有前瞻性的放克动力源。Legaspi开始设计他们的舞台服装，把闪闪发光的金属材料、白色皮革斗篷和可笑的羽绒服直接从一些外星鸟类学的幻觉中缝合起来。亨德利克斯也是一个终生的科幻迷，他曾敦促莱加斯皮，"给我做一套太空服"。音乐杂志《Melody Maker》在1974年指出，拉贝尔引人注目的新造型 "就像一个灵魂版的UFO"。


莱加斯皮将他的新服装系列命名为 "原始空间"，这个词既体现了他对科幻图像的崇拜，也体现了他与放克和摇滚的大地脉搏的联系。他的名字开始流传，随着他的拉贝尔作品掀起波澜，其他音乐人也注意到了。不久，一个在纽约的小俱乐部演出的不知名的摇滚乐队的成员要求Legaspi帮助他们实现他们自己对舞台服装的怪异想法--这些服装是奢侈的、闪亮的、超人的，而且只是有点可怕。Legaspi答应了，他不知道Kiss会成为有史以来最大的乐队之一。"我们的经理Bill Aucoin把我们介绍给Larry。他在遥远的西村有一个店面，"吻乐队吉他手保罗-斯坦利在欧文斯的书中回忆道。"他为拉贝尔做服装"。事实上，Kiss把Legaspi从拉贝勒那里抢过来，让他一举成名，讽刺的是，这对设计师的品牌知名度没有什么帮助。他喜欢将他的审美运用到流行音乐的世界中，而且金钱也没有什么影响。不过，他最想做的就是被视为一个高级时装的创造者。

穿着棕色皮草和弹性纤维的格蕾丝-琼斯和穿着流苏的乔治-克林顿
左图：歌手兼演员格蕾丝-琼斯。(Robin Platzer / The LIFE Images Collection/Getty) Right: Parliament-Funkadelic的乔治-克林顿（Echoes / Redferns)
但莱加斯皮最终被困在一个奇怪的地方：太过大胆而无法进入主流，太过怪异而无法被时尚界所接受。似乎无处可去，Legaspi继续为他在纽约艺术界的朋友制作服装，包括歌剧歌手Klaus Nomi，他的复古未来主义与Legaspi的风格相契合。在与迪文成为亲密的朋友后，他为这位同性恋偶像提供了突出营地、戏剧和颠覆性的设计。格蕾丝-琼斯（Grace Jones）在70年代末从模特行业转向音乐行业时，也找了莱加斯皮。但在他所装扮的所有人物中，没有任何一对比Legaspi和P-Funk更完美的搭配。"我很了解戏剧，"克林顿在2018年告诉《Vogue》。"我看了很多这样的戏剧，当我们在1975年第一次做《母舰连接》专辑时，我知道我必须从拉里-莱加斯皮那里获得服装。"

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与克林顿和工作人员--包括不可抗拒的贝斯手布西-柯林斯--合作，莱加斯皮的宇宙观和科幻迷恋真正飞速发展。Parliament的《Mothership Connection》是它和重叠团体Funkadelic的一系列相互关联的专辑中的第一张。在这些专辑中，一场善与恶--也就是放克与放克--之间的史诗般的战斗在时空的背景上蔓延开来。Legaspi终于被完全释放出来。他 "制作了疯狂的科幻服装，"克林顿在他的回忆录《兄弟》中写道，"像乔治一样，那不是对你来说很困难的放克吗？他们 "使我们看起来很狂野和星际化"。Legaspi的服装为P-Funk的神话带来了一个重要的元素--用他自己的话说，"就是从我对未来的幻想中走出来的"。

可悲的是，Legaspi自己的未来也变得暗淡。他在1987年感染了艾滋病毒，当时这种流行病正在摧毁纽约，特别是他所密切参与的同性恋和艺术社区。为了关注自己的健康，他离开了这座城市，最终定居在北卡罗来纳州，2001年死于与艾滋病有关的原因，几年前他就已经停止了任何创作产出。尽管像克林顿这样的客户意识到--可能会在舞台上摔断腿--莱加斯皮的设计在表演中并不实用，但设计师本人始终认为它们有可能成为比摇滚明星的服装更多的东西。"我的衣服不是舞台服装，"他在80年代初告诉一位采访者，当时他富有远见的风格正被日益增长的未来主义、新潮运动所复制和采用。"它们是可以真正在白天和晚上穿的东西"。他梦想着新的合成纤维和其他技术的进步，可以用来制造太阳能加热和空调的连体衣。"我们的衣服将不得不帮助我们应对我们的环境，当然，进军太空旅行将影响我们的着装方式。" 从本质上讲，他想重新启动文明的整个概念，即衣服是什么，做什么。而且他希望这个概念是性感的。

穿着长袍的莱加斯皮和他的妻子在游泳池前。
1979年8月3日，拉里-莱加斯皮和他的妻子瓦莱丽在纽约的一家酒店游泳池旁摆姿势。(Allan Tannenbaum / Getty)
在Legaspi去世20年后，他对未来主义的魅力作为日常街头服饰--或者日常太空服--的设想还没有完全实现。但也许这是因为他比他最大的粉丝和最有名的赞助人所能想象的更加离奇地领先于他的时代。"我知道我必须等待世界来追赶我，"他在1980年说，在充满神话、挫折和对未来的理想主义的职业生涯中已经有了10年。"但我没想到我得等这么久。"


Legaspi几乎没能看到他所期待的21世纪，他是如此的好奇和希望。现在，我们甚至对电动汽车和智能手机等创新技术都不眨眼，而这些技术在莱加斯皮作为设计师达到顶峰时似乎是科幻小说。我们已经绘制了数以千计的系外行星图，并期待着人类对火星的探索。不过，在舞台上，莱加斯皮的先见之明似乎引导着今天许多领先的艺术家。Lady Gaga是他最明显的风格后裔，在她2020年的主打歌 "Stupid Love "的视频中出现，穿着光滑、闪烁的连体衣，让人想起Legaspi的复古拉贝尔系列的太空战士的气息。"世界在冲突中腐烂，"视频的开头写道。"许多部落在争夺统治权。当精神上的人为了和平而祈祷和睡觉时，善良的小混混们为了Chromatica而战斗。这是Legaspi自己梦想的那种科幻海市蜃楼的时尚。

杰森-海勒是《奇怪的星星》的作者。大卫-鲍伊、流行音乐和科幻爆炸的十年。