Club Kids
クラブ・キッズ / late 1980s–1990s / Style / Subculture Style
New York nightlife's Club Kids competed in extreme self-transformation rather than finished fashion, assembling body paint, huge hats, toys, scrap and couture into a one-night character whose entrance and photograph were themselves the work.
Full-face paint and prosthetics that turn the wearer into another creature / Head or shoulders expanded beyond bodily scale / Toys, scrap, couture and exposed body deliberately mixed / High chroma, black and white, checks or stripes concentrated into one silhouette

Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- Turning a club, drag or stage entrance into the appearance of a living exhibit · Building an extreme one-night character from finished garments and scrap for an event or shoot
- Type
- Give the character a name or brief catchphrase as a logo and let the figure appear before any explanation.
- Composition
- Expand one part of the body beyond human scale and make everything else submit to that silhouette.
- Material
- Mix body paint, resin, toys, feathers, scrap and couture, keeping the joins visible as part of the performance.
- Caution
- Indiscriminately adding strange things becomes scattered. Decide the night's character and one silhouette that reads from across the room.
- Further study
- Susanne Bartsch's New York club nights / Leigh Bowery and extreme self-fashioning / Nightlife, fashion and performance
Related entries
Cite this entry
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- Link
- https://indexstyle.org/styles/club-kids
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- [Club Kids — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/club-kids)
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