Gordon Luke Clarke, also known as Luke, was a New Zealand fashion designer based in London during the 1970s.
Clarke was born in
Auckland
Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...
on 9 August 1945 to a Scottish father and
Māori
Māori or Maori can refer to:
Relating to the Māori people
* Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group
* Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand
* Māori culture
* Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...
mother.
At the age of 18, he went to work for the British couturier
Hardy Amies
Sir Edwin Hardy Amies Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, KCVO (17 July 1909 – 5 March 2003) was an English fashion designer, founder of the Hardy Amies (fashion house), Hardy Amies label and a Royal Warrant holder as designer to t ...
as a designer of ready-to-wear for five years, before going on a tour of India.
[ He also worked for Valentino.][ On his return to London, he launched his ready-to-wear boutique Luke, on the King's Road, Chelsea.] He also sold his clothing exclusively through Bonwit Teller
Bonwit Teller & Co. was an American luxury department store in New York City, New York, founded by Paul Bonwit in 1895 at Sixth Avenue and 18th Street, and later a chain of department stores.
In 1897, Edmund D. Teller was admitted to the p ...
in the United States in 1973, stating that although his work had been compared to American sportswear
Sportswear is an American fashion term originally used to describe separates, but which since the 1930s has come to be applied to day and evening fashions of varying degrees of formality that demonstrate a specific relaxed approach to their desig ...
, he felt it was more refined and had a more couture-like appearance.[
In 1978, along with a man's outfit by Cerruti, one of Clarke's womenswear ensembles was chosen by Barbara Griggs of the '']Daily Mail
The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...
'' to represent the year in the Fashion Museum, Bath
The Fashion Museum (known before 2007 as the Museum of Costume) is housed in the Assembly Rooms in Bath, Somerset, England.
The collection was started by Doris Langley Moore, who gave her collection of costumes to the city of Bath in 1963. The ...
's Dress of the Year
The Dress of the Year is an annual fashion award run by the Fashion Museum, Bath from 1963. Each year since 1963, the Museum has asked a fashion journalist to select a dress or outfit that best represents the most important new ideas in contempor ...
collection. Griggs considered Clarke to be one of the very few notable designers of the time, praising his ability to make attractive garments that followed the "big, baggy and bulky" multi-layered fashions of 1977–78. The ensemble she chose was a printed cotton tunic, skirt and leggings, worn in combination with a black leather skirt and coat, which represented Clark's focus on very simply shaped, versatile mix-and-match separates for the career woman.[
]
References
1945 births
Living people
New Zealand fashion designers
British fashion designers
New Zealand Māori artists
People from Auckland
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