Decadent Costume: Live and Late at the V&A (programme)
Presented at the V&A’s ‘Feminist Futures’ Late, 26/04/2024
https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/vJdykk60bjv/friday-late-april
Featuring live performances from Hasard Le Sin, Jolie Papillon*, Lilly Snatchdragon, E. M. Parry and Nando Messias (with music by CN Lester and garment design by Max Allen and Elliot Adcock); films by Angel Rose Denman and jaamil olawale kosoko; and with Sadie Sinner as our esteemed MC.
Tickets are free, and the show will run twice on the night at 19:30 and 20:40 in the The Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre (Level 3). Drop in from 18:30 to watch a montage of films by Angel Rose Denman & jaamil olawale kosoko, and to interact with E.M. Parry’s durational work Pricklings.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the fabulous Jolie Papillon prepared an act in place of the equally fabulous Tamm Reynolds.
Notes from the curators:
Adam Alston and Veronica Isaac
The word decadence means ‘a falling’. It’s related to the word ‘decay’. ‘Decadence’ is often used to bemoan declining moral standards, ailing patriotism, the fall of empires, and the undoing of ‘good old-fashioned values’ that preserve gender binaries, heteronormativity, and uses of time that contribute to economic growth and techno-scientific progress. However, it has also been used to celebrate and catalyse the decline of all these things by representing their corruption in stories, poetry, pictures, essays, dandyism, performance, and more. Decadents might choose to queer moral orthodoxies, or a productive work ethic, or the civilising process. They might also delight in disgust, finding pleasure in decay and upending established regimes of taste and propriety. More than simply catalysing decline, decadence is about ruining what ruins – empire, patriarchy, capitalism, heteronormativity, restrictive binaries – by way of delightful refinement.
Decadence is a process, but it also has a lot to do with appearances. This needn’t mean ‘looking good’; it might mean just the opposite. Very often, decadence is about the crafting of appearance through dissimulation and the art of the pose, often poses that are not afraid to find pleasure in unconventional tastes, relishing disgust, or offending moral sensibilities.
We might say that decadence fabricates. This is what drew us to our theme for this evening – ‘decadent costume’ – which we think has something important to offer to the broader frame for this ‘Feminist Futures’ Late at the V&A. Many decadents in the late-nineteenth century – when decadent art and literature enjoyed a burgeoning period of activity in western Europe – were often not amenable to feminism, albeit with notable exceptions. Very often they also relied on narratives and symbolism that we might critique today as Orientalist. However, more recently scholars and artists have explored alternative histories or looked to reclaim decadence by acknowledging the contributions of women as well as those of artists and writers from countries around the world that demand re-appraisal of decadence as a radical practice.[1] This is what leads us to ask: Just who is decadence for, or might it be for, when embodied, enacted and ‘fabricated’?
Lord Henry in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/91) describes how ‘[b]eing natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know’.[2] This is an important book in the decadent canon. What we like about this quote is how it expresses distaste for prescribing how people should look and behave. By relishing fabrication as an art, decadents prize aesthetic qualities above useful attributes, and disdain usefulness itself at times when the productive use of a thing, person or activity are positioned as directives and essential goods that define what counts as a proper use of one’s time and energy.
Fig. 2: Sadie Sinner, our MC for the evening. 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
We’ve been inspired by recent studies of dandyism and eccentric style, not least the queer, Black and Hispanic dandyisms explored by Jillian Hernandez, Shantrelle P. Lewis, Monica L. Miller and Madison Moore.[3] We’ve also drawn influence from research networks like Critical Costume and Performing Dress,[4] and a chapter-length study of fashion as ‘the ultimate decadent medium’ by Catherine Spooner.[5] If, as Spooner suggests, decadence marks the exceeding of fashion, serving as a kind of anti-fashion that is ‘more than or beyond fashion’,[6] then fabulously non-conformist and hyper-refined ‘costume’ marks the point at which fashion tips into decadence. In exceeding fashion, decadent costume suggests grounds for ‘exceeding’ the sartorial fashioning of taste while at the same time courting the borderlands of socially-accepted identities, communities, and orientations.
Fig. 3: E. M. Parry, who presents their interactive durational work Pricklings. Photo by Damien Frost.
Each of the artists we commissioned for this Late thrive at these borderlands. Nando Messias and E.M. Parry make work that invites us to consider trans bodies by drawing their paradoxical positioning as both ‘threatening’ and ‘vulnerable’ into the orbit of an unconventionally beautiful sensuousness. This is a kind of sensuousness that queers the machinations of trans violence by means of the pose and the layering of fabrics and objects – satin and lace, pins and costume jewellery – one on top of the other, adding layer upon layer of meaning and signification that resists the reduction of identity to a particular facet of the body. We are also incredibly fortunate to have CN Lester create music for Nando, who will also be joined on stage by their garment designers: Max Allen and Elliot Adock.
Fig. 4: Nando Messias: decadence, performance and the archive (Staging Decadence residency - Goldsmiths)
The featured short films by Angel Rose Denman and jaamil olawale kosoko reside somewhere in the space between decadence and aestheticism. Dandies and goths form lateral relationships with innumerable and highly eclectic objects in Denman’s The Rose (2014). They are ‘of’ the environments that envelop them, contributing to a decadent scenography that upends the ordering of place and relationality, and relishing that which might otherwise be deemed outmoded and obsolete.
Fig. 5: Angel Rose Denman, still from The Rose (2014).
The Afrofuturism informing kosoko’s The Entertainer (2022) also revels in the backward glance of the retro. kosoko’s films and performances depict possible futures as if imagined in a time long past, and they do so by means of sartorial self-expression and the ‘ghosting’ of embodiment by histories lost in the wake of progress. The garments they wear are ‘fabulous’: which is to say, that they are ‘of’ fable, at once magnificent and mythic, and grounded in a form of spectacle that is also ‘political, confrontational, risky […] and undervalued’.[7]
Fig. 6: jaamil olawale kosoko, still from The Entertainer (2022).
Hasard Le Sin makes little effort to keep up the difficult pose of being natural in their ravishing ‘boylesque’ acts, although the looks and poses that they put in its place are no less demanding. They appear as Lolita and Hamlet, Incubus and Oberon, and in this case as a rococo aristocrat transfixed by the licentious affordances of sartorial pleasure. Each look they craft is meticulously filigreed. They do not culminate in a fixed ‘product’; instead, they are endlessly adapted and refined as the act is developed for different venues, becoming ever-more lavish, finding more and more opportunities for delighting in different fabrics and ornamentation.
Fig. 7: Hasard Le Sin. Photo by Säde Puusa.
Jolie Papillon takes a different tack, although they are no less interested in the art of the pose. Jolie is one of the foremost and internationally-acclaimed stars of burlesque. Their work is virtuosic and provocative in equal measure, and for this event they reference the top hats of Marlene Dietrich and Anita Berber. Dazzling, hypnotic, and an inspiration to many on the scene.
Sadie Sinner and Lilly Snatchdragon are neo-burlesque and cabaret curators in their own right – with the The Cocoa Butter Club and The Bitten Peach, respectively – and while their work on these initiatives has started to benefit from well-deserved accolades, what is less remarked upon is the role played by arts of fabrication in the work that they curate and perform. What does it mean to wear, remove, or adapt a mask or look relative to the dominance or marginality of different cultures and backgrounds? What kind of ‘naturalness’ are we talking about when suggesting that being natural is such a difficult pose to keep up? On what terms is that naturalness defined? These questions are not explicitly addressed in their respective practices, but they are certainly invited in an event exploring the staging of decadence, with costume design for both Sadie and Lilly by Bourgeoisie. In answering them, we might edge closer to appreciating the decadent appeal of their virtuosity, and the nuanced complexities underpinning their work and ways of working.
Fig. 9: Lilly Snatchdragon. Photo: Captured By Corinne.
Each of the artists commissioned for this Late, invite us to encounter decadent costume not as that which is housed the other side of a vitrine, or kept locked away in storage. They invite us to see garments as material things that influence how bodies move, and how they present themselves to and orient themselves within a world. In the context of a Late that takes ‘Feminist Futures’ as its theme, they also invite us to pluralise what feminism might mean, who it might include, and how histories once deemed to be at odds with feminism might be queered in ways that make clear how important it is to think of feminism and queerness as allies. Most of all, these artists invite us to appreciate not just the agency of costume, but the agency that different garments have to offer to those who wear them: crafting identity through fabrication, and working with the staging of decadence as that which can create or manipulate its own frames and terms of reference.
#DecadentCostume @DecadentStages
We’d love to hear your thoughts on the show! Please do take a minute to offer feedback if you were able to come along: https://forms.gle/QvG8PTTgSvxssWNW8
Contributors
https://linktr.ee/decadentcostume
Adam Alston (co-curator) is Reader in Modern and Contemporary Theatre at Goldsmiths, University of London. He runs the Staging Decadence project (www.stagingdecadence.com), which began as a two-year Fellowship funded by the AHRC, and is now an ongoing initiative for fostering new collaborations, publications and events. He is author of Staging Decadence: Theatre, Performance, and the Ends of Capitalism (Bloomsbury 2023), co-editor (with Jane Desmarais) of Decadent Plays: 1890-1930 (Bloomsbury 2024), co-editor (with Alexandra Trott) of a special issue of Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies on ‘Decadence and Performance’ (Winter 2021), and author of numerous articles, chapters and short-form publications exploring decadence and performance. He has also written extensively on immersive and participatory theatres, and freelances as a producer and dramaturg. @alston_adam @DecadentStages
Angel Rose Denman (artist) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans performance, writing, video, and printed media. In 2015 she earned a Masters in Performance and Visual Practice from the University of Brighton. Her work has been exhibited internationally and shown in spaces such as Centre Pompidou, Somerset House, The ICA, and The British Film Institute. Her first solo show, Sick Bag, was presented in 2016 at the Residence Gallery in London. She has presented research and taught at institutions such as Central St Martins, NYU and Columbia University. She currently lives in New York. @angelrose.universe
Veronica Isaac (co-curator) is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Brighton, and Course Leader for the MA Fashion Curation and Cultural Programming at London College of Fashion. She has a background in the museum sector and worked for the Department of Theatre and Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum for over ten years. She has also carried out freelance projects with museums and private collections around Britain and lectures widely. She also works as a curatorial consultant and freelance writer. Her research focuses on the history of dress and theatre costume from the late 18th century to the mid-20th century, and she is committed to promoting further academic research into the History of Costume for Performance. @vt_isaac @hoadbrighton @CDH_Brighton
Mwice Kavindele (artist / MC) is the artist behind Sadie Sinner The Songbird, and she is a creative force! Founder and curator of The Cocoa Butter Club, Sadie performs a seamless repertoire bursting with RnB, Blues, Jazz, Motown, Funk and Neo-soul. Sadie brings entire rooms to their feet- her vocals and vibe, compelling them to dance the night away! Mwice’s legacy is creating productions to decolonise performance spaces and showcase and celebrate performers of colour. She also facilitates workshops and university lectures about reclaiming and redistributing the narrative of racially, gender and sexuality othered bodies. @SadieSinner
jaamil olawale kosoko (artist) is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, and curator of Yoruba and Natchez descent originally from Detroit. Their practice moves within the creative realms of live art, video, sculpture, and poetry. They are the recipient of numerous awards including the 2022 Slamdance Jury Prize for Best Experimental Short film and the 2021/22 MacDowell Fellowship. Their book Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts was released Spring 2022. Their 2020 project, Chameleon, is a multimedia artwork, film, and radio transmission project that explores the fugitive realities and shapeshifting demands of surviving at the intersection of Blackness, gender fluidity, and queerness in a pirated virtual space. Other notable performances include Séancers (2017) and #negrophobia (2015). @jaamilkosoko
Nando Messias (artist): Nando’s work combines beautiful images with a fierce critique of gender, visibility and violence. They have performed at the Royal Court, The Gate, Hayward Gallery, V&A, Tate Britain, Roundhouse, Royal Vauxhall Tavern and the ICA, among other spaces across the UK and internationally. As well as a practitioner, Nando is movement director for Theo Adams Company and a researcher of queer theory and performance. @nancymessias
CN Lester (musician for Nando Messias) is a multi-genre musician, author of the critically-acclaimed Trans Like Me (2017), and founder and artistic director of arts event Transpose at Barbican. CN is both an alternative piano-based singer-songwriter and classical singer, improviser/deviser, and composer. They hold an interdisciplinary performance/research PhD on composer Barbara Strozzi. Research and teaching interests include performance and composition, gender and music, and the history of gender and sexuality. They work internationally as a trans/queer/feminist educator, writer, speaker, and activist. Words and music at BBC Radio 3 & 4, Newsnight, ITV, The Guardian, SBS, Sydney Opera House, Southbank Centre, Royal Exchange, The Arts Club, and arts and book festivals/radio/print worldwide. They made their fiction debut with the 2023 collection Furies, alongside Margaret Atwood, Ali Smith, and Emma Donoghue. CN is currently working on their next album, next non-fiction and fiction books, upcoming Strozzi opera, and forthcoming academic publications. They live in London. www.cnlester.com
E. M. Parry (artist) is a transgender, trans-disciplinary artist, working and playing across scenography, performance, drag and visual art. Flitting between genres and platforms, their work has been seen at Shakespeare’s Globe and the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, international opera stages and leaky basements. They work with, through and for the queer body, squinting at history, flirting with ghosts and the things that go bump in the margins. @e_m_parry
Miss Jolie Papillon (artist), the so-called ‘Queen of Classic Burlesque’ (The Stage), is an award-winning, world-renowned star with the reputation of ‘Burlesque Royalty’. She is the owner CEO of SHOWGIRL ENTERTAINMENTS Ltd, and the multi-award-winning show La Clique presented classic Burlesque on their stage with Miss Jolie Papillon as part of their world-class lineup. She is the co-producer and director of the acclaimed vintage Revue Gin House Burlesque, who recently danced on the legendary Orient Express. She has been featured in fashion magazines such as Vanity Fair and Vogue, and has been voted multiple times as one of the Most Influential Burlesque Industry Figures in the U.K. and worldwide.
Hasard le Sin (artist) is a boylesque performer from Helsinki, Finland, known for his theatrical charisma, sensual sense of humour, and complete lack of shame. Inspired by myth and fairytale, he explores beauty as a vehicle for alternate masculinities. Beautifully crafted costuming is central in his practice. Previous acts include Fairy Boudoir (or, Oberon Is Horny) (2019 / 2022), Getting Biblical (2016), and Hard Candy (2017). @hasard.le.sin
Lilly Snatchdragon (artist) is an international, award-winning drag queen, burlesque artist and compere. Her approach to how the West stereotypes South East Asian women won her Best Newcomer at the London Cabaret Awards in 2015. She has been in the Top 15 most influential Burlesque Performers in the UK since 2015, including #1 in 2017 and #3 in 2018. Lilly is currently #28 in the world for 2024. Lilly is also one of the founders of sell-out show ‘LADS’ and of renowned all-Asian cabaret collective The Bitten Peach. @bittenpeachuk @lillysnatch
Staging Decadence (organiser) began its life as a two-year AHRC Fellowship led by Adam Alston. It is now an ongoing initiative for fostering new collaborations, publications and events. We’ve staged live events at HERE arts centre in New York, and in London at The Albany, Goldsmiths, Iklectik, Queen Mary, and Rich Mix; released a documentary and short films; hosted artist residencies; organised various research events; and facilitated the publication of books, edited collections, chapters, articles, and short-form publications. We also host a lively blog, and are always on the lookout for new contributors. Find out more at: www.stagingdecadence.com.
Molly Syrett, with Silvia Carradori (design associates) is a costume designer, milliner and tutor based at Goldsmiths. They have supervised costume on events ranging from the Opening Ceremony to London Borough of Culture: Brent 2020, to theatre productions at the Orange Tree, The Vaults, and Southwark Playhouse. Find out more at: https://www.mandy.com/uk/c/molly-syrett
This event was made possible thanks to funding from the University of Brighton, the V&A, the AHRC, and with institutional support from Goldsmiths, University of London. We would also like to extend a note of gratitude to the V&A for hosting and facilitating the event, particularly Carrie Chan, Adonis Fuyana, Aaron Kelly, Niamh Kelly, Thomas Matthews, Simon Sladen, and Faunsia Tucker, and to our event assistants from University of Brighton: Al Meggs, Liliane Broschart, and Max Harding-Jones.
Film and photographic material from the night was shot and edited by Farhath Siddiqui and Sofia Natoli.
Flyer design by Zed Gregory.
Notes
[1] For examples, see Adam Alston, Staging Decadence: Theatre, Performance, and the Ends of Capitalism (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2023); David Fieni, Decadent Orientalisms: The Decay of Colonial Modernity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020); Herold, Katharina, and Leire Barrera-Medrano (eds), ‘Women Writing Decadence’, Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies, 2 (1) (Spring 2019); Julia Skelly, Radical Decadence: Excess in Contemporary Feminist Textiles and Craft (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017); Robert Stilling, Beginning at the End: Decadence, Modernism, and Postcolonial Poetry (Cambridge, Ma. And London: Harvard University Press, 2018).
[2] Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Croxley Green: Chiltern, 2020), p. 13.
[3] See Jillian Hernandez, Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2020); Shantrelle P. Lewis, Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style (New York: Aperture, 2017); Monica L. Miller, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Madison Moore, Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018). For notable studies of dandyism and theatrical style, see: Susan Fillin- Yeh (ed), Dandies: Fashion and Finesse in Art and Culture (New York and London: New York University Press, 2001); Rhonda K. Garelick, Rising Star: Dandyism, Gender and Performance in the Fin- de- Siècle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).
[4] For more on Critical Costume and Performing Dress, see https://www.criticalcostume.com/; https://performingdresslab.com/. The study of dress and costume also benefits from long-standing (Costume) and recently-established (Studies in Costume & Performance) journals, and several recent books have contributed to this now flourishing field. For indicative examples, see: Donatella Barbieri, Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture, and the Body (London: Bloomsbury, 2017); Aoife Monks, The Actor in Costume (London: Bloomsbury, 2010); Sofia Pantouvaki and Peter McNeil (eds) Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Methods (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).
[5] Catherine Spooner, ‘Fashion: Decadent Stylings’, in Jane Desmarais and David Weir (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Decadence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 417-41 (p. 417). See also Robyne Calvert and Veronica Isaac (eds), ‘Decadence and Fashion’, spec. issue of Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies, 6 (2) (Autumn/Winter 2023). Other more tangentially relevant studies can be found in: Regenia Gagnier, Idylls of the marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian public (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986); Joel Kaplan and Sheila Stowell, Theatre and Fashion: Oscar Wilde to the Suffragettes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); ‘La Belle Epoque Costume 1890-1914’, Costume, 1 (Supp 1, 1967), pp. 1-65.
[6] Spooner, ‘Fashion’, pp. 418-19, original emphasis.
[7] Moore, Fabulous, p. 8.