WHITAKER MALEM UNCOVERED

Stylists usually leave very little time for one to respond to a potential feature. A day or two is often the norm, and if one is required to make the garment slightly differently from one’s standard design, there is very little time to turn that request around.

One such instance Patrick related to me was when a jacket was ordered by Sarah Jane Hoare for a shoot. She had seen one of WM’s jackets and wanted it in gold when the original was black. Insufficient time led to the decision to use the one she had seen — but sprayed gold!

The sprayed garment was duly photographed by Herb Ritts, no less, and led to invitations to design show-wear for pop stars like Grace Jones, Cher and Mariah Carey, to name but a few of the early collaborations. It was another turning point in Whitaker Malem’s career that led to many future engagements.

Fashion first: Alexander McQueen/Givenchy

The first fashion designer the duo worked with was Alexander McQueen, in his first season at Givenchy Couture. Re-visiting their art school degree show ideas, they made a Centurian outfit (their spelling) and bustier for the designer.

As McQueen was based at Givenchy in Paris, they had to cart their samples — on mannequins in black binliners — onto the Eurostar to show to the Givenchy team.

KENDALL JENNER revives WM’s 1997 Winged Bustier made for McQueen at the 2024 Met Gala

A fellow passenger on the same Eurostar was actress Isabella Rossellini, and she offered to help them. It was only later that they realised who she was. The pair say they regret not working more with McQueen, but due to film pressures they “couldn’t fit him in”!

Nevertheless some of the pieces created for McQueen continue to have relevance and may get adapted. Kendall Jenner wore a 1997 Winged Bustier in white at the 2024 Met Gala, and Swedish singer Tove Lo wore a gilded version on her tour.

The value of such pieces lives beyond a single season, as we have been reminded recently by celebs like Lady Gaga, who wore vintage McQueen at this year’s Grammys.

Though different, the creative disciplines of film, fashion and stage performance inform each other, and in Whitaker Malem’s case, not only draw on the same creative process but also generate new techniques that support their work.

Film work helps to develop new techniques

GAL GODOT in 2017’s Wonder Woman, for which WM made 120 costumes in a year-long project

Film was especially important in this process; they could explore these overlaps, and their creative contribution to film has been immense.

Examples to mention include the Bellatrix Estrange corsets in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2006); armour for Clash of the Titans (2010); and costumes for Batman (2005/2019) and Wonder Woman (2017). The last was their biggest movie gig to date involving 120 costumes — a year-long project requiring many duplicates to be made for the stunt performers.

The demands of durability, ease of movement, and concealment of harnesses and safety gear all had to meet the aesthetics of each character, setting them huge challenges.

The Batsuit for Christian Bale in the The Dark Knight (2008) was an important project for them as it began an ongoing working relationship with Lindy Hemming, an award-winning Welsh costume designer.

CHRISTIAN BALE’s batsuit made by WM to Lindy Hemming’s design for The Dark Knight (2008)

The duo evolved Batman’s anatomical breastplate, a look that had begun with the foam latex creation worn by Michael Keaton for Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie. It was a notable example of how WM had developed male breastplates since creating the (female) gold Centurian Breastplate for Alexander McQueen at Givenchy Haute Couture.

Naomi Campbell saw that very gold piece being worn by model Alek Wek and requested it for her shoot with Pierre et Gilles (see top of this page) — confirmation, surely, of how highly desirable Whitaker Malem pieces are.

WM’s collaborations with Allen Jones begin

Another big break in the duo’s careers occurred when the late photographer Bob Carlos Clarke, who was a friend, recommended them to the artist Allen Jones. Allen needed someone to collaborate with after the death of John Sutcliffe, who had created the initial catsuits and corsets for his table sculptures.

The collaboration came about when Elton John, who had purchased two of the original table sculptures, sold them in one of his clear-outs, but immediately regretted his decision and commissioned two replacements from Jones.

These two new pieces were placed in a top floor room of Elton’s house in the south of France, where they remained, forgotten and unprotected. The sun had bleached and damaged the leather so they had to be restored.

ALLEN JONES leather figures from Whitaker Malem’s earliest collaborations with him in 2001

WM were brought in to restore them. The project meant developing new skills. It was for this project with Allen Jones, involving fibreglass figures and bonding the leather bodices onto those structures, that they solidified their processes and established an identity that is totally their own.

Jones showed the duo many of his acquisitions, including drawings by Eric Stanton that he collected while lecturing in America in the ’60s, Patrick reveals. “He has also got one of the Isse Miyake original acrylic bustiers [from his A/W 1980/81 collection], as has Zandra Rhodes and Grace Jones.”