1 2 THE FOUNDRESS: AN INTERVIEW WITH FASHION PIONEER SUE CLOWES BY DS THORNBURG English textile and fashion designer Sue Clowes is who I call the Icon of the Underground. Even more, I have the honor of calling her my friend. Sue dominated the counterculture music scene of the 1980s with her gender-bending fashions for the one and only Boy George and his band Culture Club, Nina Hagen, The Cure, and countless other legendary bands and artists. Her silkscreen techniques are utterly jaw-dropping, resulting in dangerously gorgeous works of wearable art. Exactly what the underground scene, and culture as a whole, needed at the moment. The unfilled space of time between the punk and New Wave movements was where Sue unleashed her true art, elevating her fellow creators in their journeys along the way to global success. And that was just at the start of her career. Her work is fiercely relevant, and perhaps, needed more today than ever before. Her solo show, Collecting Sue Clowes, at The Winchester Gallery, and exhibition in the group show Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London earlier this year No. 143 proves that she still stands firm in her craft. Currently on exhibition in Blitz: The club that shaped the 80s through March 2026 at the Design Museum in London, Sue continues to pay homage to her rich rebellious roots in fashion while still offering fiercely artistic wearable creations, rooted in the ethos of shared humanity and harmony. Sue and I had the chance to catch up about her work, legacy and what’s truly at the heart of her art. When did you realize you were destined to be a textile designer? I was born in 1957 in London, but we moved to a small village when I was young. I was a terrible teenager and spent most of my time trying to hitchhike back up to London. Consequently, I failed my exams and left school at 16. I attended a local technical college in the evenings to retake exams and took an art course during the day. I was hopeless at pottery; I just fiddled around with clay and made ashtrays. But my life changed when I was introduced to silkscreen printing. It
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