The Fashion Designer Bringing the Club Kid Ethos from NYC to Te Whānganui a Tara
From the underground clubs of New York City to the windy streets of Wellington, the spirit of the Club Kids, a “cult of crazy fashion and petulance” lives on in the work of Angelina Koh, one of Massey’s latest Fashion Design graduates.
For those in the dark, Club Kids were a group of New York club personalities who started a movement of gender expression during the overtly homophobic era of the 80s and 90s. Journalist Michael Musto described the Club Kid aesthetic as a “blending of Japanese anime, fractured fairytale Mother Goose chic gone amok, apocalyptic chic, and a heavy influence of British outrageous performance art”. If that sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to you, just take a look at Angelina’s work, and you’ll get the gist.
According to former Club Kid, Waltpaper, “The nightclub was like a laboratory, a place where you were encouraged and rewarded for experimentation.” This description resonated with Angelina, who titled her recent grad collection “The Laboratory” in homage to the Club Kids’ attitude and style. “I’m hugely influenced by the Club Kids,” Angelina tells Massive. “They created a safe place for people who broke barriers and subverted gender stereotypes.”
“The Laboratory,” which showed in November of last year, explored Angelina’s fascination with drag and aimed to deconstruct the idea of gender identity. Most of the materials for the collection were sourced from Angelina’s trip to South Korea. The project was a coming together of the wide-ranging aspects of her own identity; from her migration to New Zealand from South Korea, to her “deep love and respect [for] friends in the queer community”.
We asked Angelina what experimentation means to her. “Experimentation is embodying your fantasy into a creation, exploring your identity, gender, sexuality and your true self-expression. [During the Club Kids era] experimentation was encouraged and rewarded as Walt said because being gay, gender fluid or anything other than being ‘straight’ was never acknowledged outside of the underground spaces they created.”
The Club Kids movement began to decline in 1994 when Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York and began cracking down on the city’s nightlife. The group then collapsed when Club Kid Michael Alig murdered his roommate and fellow Club Kid, Andre “Angel” Melendez over a drug debt. Hectic stuff. They even made a movie about it starring Macaulay Culkin as Alig. In the wake of this horrific event, “a lot of the humanity, tenderness, creativity, and the cultural impact all of the nuance kind of got lost,” Waltpaper explained. Thankfully however, the significance of group’s influence could not be erased by the evil actions of one of its members. Today, we are able to appreciate its impact while simultaneously understanding and learning from its flaws.
For Angelina, fashion is more than just a vibe or an aesthetic. It’s a chance to break down stigmas and shape culture in a way that contributes towards a more inclusive society. “At the moment, womenswear and menswear are two separate things,” she says. “It’s categorised, which I don’t like. With my fashion, I wanna be able to go between womenswear and menswear to make unisexwear.”
Studying fashion at Massey was not a difficult decision for Angelina to make. During her childhood, fashion was something that she was surrounded by. “When I was eight, my mum and I would stay up every night watching America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway. So that’s where it all started,” she said. By the time she reached intermediate school, sewing had become her main focus.
Her fascination with drag, however, wouldn’t come until university. Like many people her age, Angelina’s first exposure to the drag world came from watching RuPaul’s Drag Race. “I binge watched every season,” she said. She became transfixed. She knew that she wanted to get involved in the scene, but at the time didn’t know anyone who was a part of it. So, she did what most people would do: made a post on Vic Deals. Unsurprisingly, it worked. “I think it was second year when I first styled a drag queen,” she said. From there, fashion became more than just a hobby, a degree, or even a career. It became a way to form meaningful relationships. Angelina was welcomed into the community with open arms.
Despite the obvious appeal of creating clothes that have a commercial appeal, Angelina is cynical of the trends of commercial fashion. “I don’t want my stuff to be commercial, because that’s boring. What I would like to see is costumewear becoming more commercialised. I want people to wear my clothing on the street rather than just on sets or on stage.” Angelina is grateful to call Wellington home, however she is wary of its imperfections. The homophobia and transphobia that she has seen on Courtenay Place have discouraged her from going out to town too often. If I do go [to town], I either go to gigs or to Ivy,” she says. “There’s nothing down Courtenay that could ever compare to the nightclub scene that the Club Kids created or even the night clubs currently that are in NYC for queers.” As of right now, Angelina is focusing on custom orders. Dancers and drag artists make up the bulk of her commissions. “They’ll e-mail me or DM me what they want, and I’ll make it,” she says. Angelina’s G-strings are a crowd favourite, and are quickly becoming a signature garment.
In a country that still has plenty to learn about inclusivity and acceptance, not least in the context of the nightclubbing scene, thank fuck for designers like Angelina Koh. “I hope our safe place expands beyond the dance floor in the years coming,” she says.
As for whether or not she’s experienced the thrills of the NYC clubbing scene first hand: “I haven’t yet but it is definitely on the list. Maybe if you happen to ask me again later on in the future my answer would be yes!”
If you want to check out more of Angelina’s work, follow her on insta @a.n.g.e.l.i.n.a.k.o.h