Király Tamás: “To Beauty Is A Duty”
Kiraly Tamas and his model wearing his red star hat, Hungarian Parliament in the background, photo by Jonathan Csaba Almasi, 1989
Dear Reader,
I wish you and all your loved ones safe passage through these rocky waters.
I hope that Király Tamás will be as much of a welcome distraction for you as he has been for me.
NWx
March 2020
In a 1988 film about the fashion designer Király Tamás (b.Budapest 1952 - d.Budapest 2013), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEUDnTaqYNU, we see various close ups of KT with his eyes closed, ruminating, dreaming and then turning to the camera and saying something which we then hear in voiceover in his charming, somewhat imperfect English. His dark mane is teased up around his handsome, angular face like Robert Smith, but without the goopy make-up. Each one of these voiceovers, (which I list below in turn), build to create a kind of fashion manifesto from which KT never really deviated throughout his long, beautiful, genre-defying career. For no real reason other than idiosyncrasy I have used the Hungarian order of names for KT, sir name followed by first name. Perhaps it is to give precedence to his family name Király, which means King, and seems to fit him like a well-cut suit. Everywhere else names follow the English way.
“All the people are different, every one of them has to be dressed differently.”
In the early 1980s KT and two of his friends and fellow designers, Gizella Koppány and Nóra Kováts, opened a shop together in downtown Pesht which they called the New Art Studio. It was a tiny space which they painted black, (as you do with tiny spaces), and it was divided by a pair of iron stairs. Everything in the New Art Studio, which came to be known as the “punk boutique”, was handmade, one of a kind and designed to electrify the sooty, pigeon shit grey streets of late Communist Budapest. The trio would go on buying trips to the countryside to find cheap second-hand clothing, household items and other material inspiration which they alchemised into utterly unique fashion. Dresses were cut out of red flags, tops sewn from wall hangings and vests magicked out of tar paper. Pheasant bones, foam and cut mirrors were transformed into accessories. They kept the New Art Studio going until 1988, on a shoestring-free budget, in a time of scarcity and social conservatism, when they were utterly without precedent.
At the New Art Studio KT would get live models to sit in the boutique window wearing their new art fashions. But they didn’t just sit, they would also perform. Their movements in the little shop window were minute, as the models played at being both mannequins and kinetic sculptures. KT and his models would also go on “fashion walks” through the city streets in their astonishing, attention-grabbing creations, to the utter amazement of its citizens who had never seen anything like this before. Most often these walks were on Vaci utca, a pedestrian street and the capital’s main fashion drag, which was parallel to Petőfi Sándor utca where the boutique was. In spite of all the greyness the city was alive with inspiration and possibility for KT. Inner city streets and underground walkways became catwalks, the steps of the Fine Art Museum with its grand Doric columns the perfect playground for his Puck-like inspirations, the Liberty Statue an ironic accompaniment to his Constructivist-inspired geometric dresses, the Hungarian Parliament reduced to a fuzzy backdrop for his iconic red star hat photo shoot. As writer/curator Gyula Muskovics put it: “Almost anyone in the right place at the right time had the chance to take a glimpse into Király’s dream world…”1 This was KT’s gift to his native city in the 1980s. It not only changed the way people dressed, it transformed the sooty, repressed streets into scenes of magic, pleasure, play and beauty.
KT and his models on a fashion walk, c. 1982/3?, photo by Jonathan Csaba Almasi, with thanks to Iliasz David Kiraly
KT and his models on a fashion walk, c. 1982/3?, photo by Jonathan Csaba Almasi, with thanks to Iliasz David Kiraly
The New Art Studio was also an important meeting place for many underground filmmakers, musicians and artists, many of whom KT worked with. He designed costumes for some of the most iconic films of the era. In his fashion performances (more on that later) he used the music of many of the most celebrated underground musicians. He worked with visual artists and performance artists, including my personal fave El Kazovszkij (see Poetic Boost Oct 2017 & Dec-Jan 2018/19). KT and El Kazovszkij were friends and collaborated on each other’s projects. El K. went on fashion walks, often dressed in blazers decorated with KT’s famous cut mirror badges. In turn KT appeared in two of El K.’s Dzhan Panopticons, which were large-scale theatrical performance art pieces that spanned his entire career. Kazovszkij began his Dzhan Panopticons in 1983, and from 1985 KT would also begin to create large-scale fashion performances. Both artists employed a multi-disciplinary approach to their work, bringing together elements of fashion, theatre, performance and visual art.
El Kazovszkij & Kiraly Tamas on a fashion walk, c. 1982/3,
© El Kazovszkij Foundation
Artists like Király Tamás and El Kazovszkij were both part of the underground semi-tolerated art scene that flourished in the ‘80s during the declining years of Socialism. In Hungary, Socialist cultural policy had been dominated for decades by the figure of György Aczél who formulated the notorious three Ts policy: támogatott, tűrt, tiltott, meaning supported, tolerated, prohibited. During the 1980s many underground artists were able to produce work relatively unhindered. The faltering socialist system no longer had the will, or the resources, to silence them. But there was another reason for the ostensible tolerance of the regime. In the words of cultural historian David Crowley from his essay “Tamás Király’s Immoderate Fashion”:
“If it had a social role, fashion was not to promote individualism but a common sense of the Hungarian People’s Republic as a permissive environment.”2
What this meant for KT, and those in the same category as him, was that they received none of the scarce resources of the state for their work, but they were more or less left alone. This in turn meant that the artists needed to find new ways, new materials and new solutions to create their work. And so they did.
In order to appreciate just how difficult it was to be dressed differently in Communist Hungary, a little (more) context first. Almost all clothing in Hungary was sold through state-owned and run department stores and shops. The regime favoured clothing designs that were modest, modestly pretty and conventional. The fashion magazines (also controlled by the state), downplayed rapid seasonal changes, partly because they did not have the capacity to keep up with ever-evolving fashions, but also because of the ideological divide they strived to maintain, i.e. Socialist modesty vs. Western decadence/ostentation. The DIY attitude so intrinsic to KT’s work was one that was wholeheartedly encouraged by the regime to smooth over shortages. Paper patterns were included in the local fashion magazines, but the most coveted patterns were to be found in Burda, an East German publication. Patterns from Western magazines were even sold on the black market.
From the mid-1970s as the official economy began to fail, a secondary/black market economy crept in to slowly fill the gaps. Small private businesses were allowed to operate on a short leash, and many among them were fashion boutiques. Hundreds of these sprung up in central Pesht, fuelled by thwarted consumer desires, which were in turn drip fed by sporadic access to Western magazines, movies, music and some limited travel beyond the Bloc too. The most successful among these little boutiques brought home single prototypes, most often from Vienna, which were quickly reproduced by black market cheap labour. Voila Socialist fast fashion! Nevertheless, the dominant aesthetic as the Party saw it, in as much as they saw fashion at all, remained functional, uniform and really rather drab.3
“You can make a dress from any material.”
Last year a large-scale retrospective of KT’s work was mounted by the Ludwig Múzeum in Budapest.4 Many of his pieces for the show had to be restored, many were lost over the years, or simply did not physically last the distance. This impermanence was not a stylistic choice, but rather a by-product of the scarcity of materials and the DIY manner in which he built his dresses. For example, one of the pieces on view at the Ludwig Múzeum was a gold seraphim dress. From up close you could see that its wings are held in place by spray-painted straws. Other connective tissue KT used included fishing line, metal or electrical wires, double-sided tape, gaffer tape, suitcase sheeting and even keyring loops. He made a tutu entirely from cling film and transparent wrapping. Bank notes, paper, glass, plastic discs, all of them became dresses in his hands. He once made a cocktail dress from a garbage bag. He could conjure a dress out of absolutely anything. He was self-taught. He worked with what he had, in the moment, giving material form to his ideas.
A selection of KT’s costumes for the play Baltazar’s Night Dream, 2011, photo by Daniel Vegel, Ludwig Muzeum, Budapest
From KT’s Schwaa 3C 273 collection shown in Pecs in 1997. Named for the first quasar to be identified. Photo by Jonathan Csaba Almasi, Ludwig Muzeum, Budapest
“I would like everyone to create his own fashion.”
Making dresses was KT’s unique way of communicating. It was his particular way of responding to the given moment in which he found himself. In a 1988 interview KT had this to say:
“I try to follow society’s mood swings with my garments. People’s lives are increasingly harder in this country, and I am trying to incorporate my visions about this into the garments. A surge in violence is to be expected, therefore I create hats out of hardy materials, I line coats with a thick layer of foam, I make vests out of metal. In other words I am presenting a line of defensive clothing.”5
This idea of fashion as a kind of protective armour to be worn out in the world continued throughout his career. From a 2013 interview, here’s KT again (my translation):
“If a dress fits you, you can move in it, go from place to place in it, or even go dancing in it. If the dress happens to be too big, then you need to go to the kind of places where the doorways are wide. I’ve said so many times before, I highly recommend my dresses for taking the trams too. No one can shove you, step on your feet, they can’t harm your aura, so it protects you from aggression and smells.”6
KT in one of his own creations, circa 2010s ?, photo by Istvan Szecsi, velvet.hu
This idea of clothing as armour did not just extend to people. Here’s another quote from KT, this time from 1990:
“This year will be a decisive one, my life and Hungary will both change. In winter, public statues and fountains are covered in ugly sacks to stop the frost and smog destroying them. But why should they look so triste [sad]? I’m going to dress them in an outfit that can look different every day. The city needs a new face.”7
“I’m very against fashion.”
KT was an anti-fashion fashion designer, or put another way, he was an anti-fashion world fashion designer. His clothes were not made to be reproduced or sold. In the absence of any better description, KT would describe himself as someone who worked with dresses, with a charming little shrug of his shoulders. However, that did not mean he was opposed to using the tricks of the trade. Between 1985 and 1989 KT and the director Marianna E. Padi, mounted four large-scale fashion performances at the Petőfi Hall in Budapest. Over the course of half a decade thousands of people attended these shows and were thrilled by the newness and freshness of: “Baby’s Dreams” (1985), “Boy’s Dreams” (1986), “Animal’s Dreams” (1987) and “Király Dreams” (1989). Each of these fashion performances/dream shows made use of elements commonly seen in fashion shows: the catwalk, evocative music, dramatic lighting. However there the similarities end. For his dream shows KT conjured landscapes populated by figures not seen in the world of fashion, an idea to which he would repeatedly return in his later years when he worked with disabled actors and models. Witches, rats, sphinxes, mythological animals, live animals, the French Revolution, transvestite vampires, court jesters, monks, fallen angels and cherubs all featured on his stage. The fashions made for these shows were dictated by an inner logic belonging to the world of KT’s dreams, which is not to say that they had no parallel in the fashion world at large. KT greatly admired the DIY punk aesthetic of Vivienne Westwood whom he met in Berlin in 1988. Another inspiration for him was the ground-breaking work of Jean-Paul Gaultier from this era, particularly his use of unusual looking models and the upending of traditional gender roles. Perhaps KT also felt a strong affinity with these designers because all three of them were self-taught?
Poster for KT’s Boy’s Dreams, 1986, with thanks to Iliasz David Kiraly
A scene from KT’s Boy’s Dreams, 1986, with thanks to Iliasz David Kiraly
KT’s dream shows worked to subvert norms on multiple levels. There was the genre-defying way in which KT brought together so many art forms to weave his dreams: visual arts, theatre, opera, performance art, film and music. KT was similarly fluid about sexuality, which was especially bold in a society where homosexuality, although not officially illegal was highly suppressed. Notions of classical beauty, of femininity and masculinity were repeatedly subverted by the use of models with striking, androgynous looks. The fashion world and the history of fashion itself was also being sent up. In KT’s dream world fashion does not control the body, fashion does not denote gender or class, it does not confer social distinction. It is precisely the implosion of all these norms and constraints that made his dream shows so liberating. Transformation and re-birth also feature as fashion leitmotifs. KT repeatedly appears on stage to catalyse this process. A plaster dress bursts open to reveal something entirely different beneath. A bare-chested model is handed a pair of wings. Two models dance on the stage as KT unwinds their dresses - which appear to be made of nothing more than cleverly tucked bolts of fabric - only to wind them back up into something entirely new.
The dissolution of boundaries is yet another ground-breaking aspect of his dream shows. The private and the public, first and foremost. Laying bare his dream world strikes me as particularly bold in a dictatorship, where the rigid policing of how one behaves in public versus the privacy of the home, of one’s inner life, was a particularly important survival tool. Male and female, beauty and ugliness, are all dissolved and re-made for a new era. But perhaps it is the question of what is useful versus what is useless that is most interestingly and fully realised through his life’s work. When KT says, “I’m very against fashion” he means it. Not only were his clothes not made to be reproduced, or sold, they were not made to be useful. But many of his dresses were sculptural, and as such KT believed that they could adorn a home, just like sculptures.
“There are no rules. One can wear anything with anything.”
In 1988 KT was invited to West Berlin to take part in an international fashion show organized by Claudia Skoda called Dressater-Dressed to Thrill. The show took place at the Hamburger Bahnhof, a disused train station on the border of East and West Berlin which re-opened as a contemporary art museum in 1996. Some of the world’s most avant-garde designers of the era were also invited, among them Vivienne Westwood with whom he became friends. KT was the only fashion designer from the Bloc to be invited. His women’s collection was made up of geometric shapes and forms. His men’s collection was inspired by the working man’s clothes, part blue collar, part military, all of which looked right at home in the industrial space. KT’s work was lauded in the international press. There were other invitations to show his work abroad, here and there, throughout his career, but there are several reasons why KT’s international career stalled. Firstly, he could not speak any other language. Secondly, he was incapable of thinking like a commercial designer. Thirdly, he chose his hometown, and as Claudia Skoda put it, “…you cannot make it if you never leave Budapest. You can be a remarkable local designer, but not an internationally recognized one.”8 So KT stayed home. There were commissions, sporadically, and whatever he did, whether for the Sziget Music Festival, or the Baltazár Theatre, his work continued to be extraordinary. He never stopped designing, he never stopped making dresses, but as Skoda so soberly remarked, “...today nobody needs that avant-garde.”9
KT and in his models wearing some of the magnificent geometric dresses he showed at Dresssater in 1988, photo from 1990 by Jonathan Csaba Almasi
At the pedestal of the Liberty Statue in 1988 wearing one of KT’s geometric dresses, photo by Jonathan Csaba Almasi
“The most important thing is to feel right in the dress you are wearing.”
In the middle of the night on April 7, 2013 KT invited a stranger into his house. He’d always lived like that. Open mind, open spirit, open house. He was murdered by the stranger. Some say it was consensual rough sex. His son says otherwise. Either way it was a gruesome end and the world is a less beautiful and interesting place for it. KT had just shown his most recent designs at the Elle fashion show in March of that year, featuring a collection of red dresses made entirely from plastic sheets which he’d cut into rose-like shapes using nothing but a pair of nail scissors.10 Pride of place in the collection was given to a radiant disabled model in a wheelchair dressed entirely in apple green. A voiceover precedes her entry. It is a plea for tolerance. If clothes cannot protect us from harm, perhaps human decency will have to do.
From KT’s final collection from 2013, photo by Aron Erdohati, from the Elle fashion show that year in Budapest
KT surrounded by his beautiful creations in 1988, FORTEPAN/Tamas Urban, 1988
“To Beauty is a duty.”
I love this line. I love its subtly non-native quality. I love the sweetness of its exhortation. At the end of the film, “Fashion in Eastern Europe”, when KT delivers this final edict of his fashion manifesto, it is the first time we see him smile. He is animated and emphatic, certain that if everyone takes their duty to beauty seriously, then the world will be a better place.◊
See you in June for what will be a rather apt post when I write about the famous pulmonologist
Dr László Levendel and his extraordinary art collection. Stay safe.
1. Gyula Muskovics, “The Dreamworld of Tamás Király”. This essay appears in the wonderful catalogue “Tamás Király ‘80s”, edited by Gyula Muskovics and Andrea Soós, published by tranzit.hu, Budapest 2017. Translators: Nikolett Erőss, Lucy Jones, Júlia Laki & Andrea Soós. The catalogue builds on the work of the 2014 exhibition Open Doors: Király Tamás ‘80s at tranzit.hu
2. David Crowley, “Tamás Király’s Immoderate Fashion”, ibid.
3. Djurdja Bartlett, “FashionEast: The Spectre that Haunted Socialism”, MIT Press, Boston, 2010. Fascinating insights, thank you Djurdja.
4. https://www.ludwigmuseum.hu/en/exhibition/tamas-kiraly-out-box
5. Gyula Muskovics, “The Dreamworld of Tamás Király”, ibid.
6. https://hvg.hu/plazs/20130408_Kiraly_Tamas_evek_ota_ehezett
7. From an article by Jan Kromschröder, “Folklor und Strenge Linien: Die Kreationen des Tamás Király” which originally appeared in Stern Magazin, March 29, 1990. Reprinted in “Tamás Király ‘80s”.
8. “David Bowie told me to move to New York”, Interview with fashion designer Claudia Skoda by Andrea Soós, in “Tamás Király ‘80s”.
9. ibid.
10. KT’s final collection. Very moving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XheyB-JOFs