The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2023 - Issue 33

bitedesignerprofile “Getting into the club was one thing,” she said, fearing being dismissed at the door. “But inside were all these in- sanely creative people who would work tirelessly every single night to make their outfit for the next week. That really resonated with me because nobody wanted to be the same as everyone else. I can’t understand why any- body would. I always tell my students that their greatest gift is their individuality. Why would you want to be like somebody else?" Pam’s collections, inventively named Psychedelic Jungle, Warrior Queen, Best Dressed Chicken in Town, And God Created Woman, and Wild Wild Women of the West, garnered a cult following. Her first love is music rather than fashion. “I’m totally self-taught in both fields and weave in and out of them constantly,” she revealed. “But fashion has [become] the most prolific medium that allows me a voice.” At the end of the ‘70s, she joined her first band Rubbish supporting The Pogues in its infancy and had a minor hit with Britain’s first acid house band, The Garden of Eden, in the late ‘80s. She curated a solo show at the Kelvin- grove Art Galleries in Glasgow, the first design collection held there and appeared on stage in Nashville with rock band Pigface in 1990. Three years later, she supported Debbie Harry’s Blondie with her band Doll and opened for The Raincoats the following year. Her first fashion film, Accelerator , featured Italian actress Anita Pallenberg, Scottish musician Bobby Gillespie and American singer Patti Palladin. She exhibited at Switch on the Power alongside Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol and Kraftwerk and designed Kylie Minogue’s black mesh met- al-studded catsuit for the 2 Hearts video. Pam’s 2009 tri- umphant return to the catwalk with ‘The Time Machine’ collection received a standing ovation and the highest praise from the fashion world. The style rebel’s collection ‘Goddess at War’ reinvented the wedding dress with dirt, bones and her blood. “The blood was all natural,” she confessed. “Whenever I cut my hand working, I would smear it on the thing.” Lady Mary Charteris wore the famously risqué wedding dress in sat- in and tulle with sheer cutaway panels for her nuptials to Robbie Furze in 2012. The following year, ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ caused a stir when the models walked in full frontal nudity on the catwalk. In 2014, Pam’s work was exhibited at the V&A alongside designers John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, Vivienne Westwood and Vera Wang in a show called ‘Wedding Dresses 1775-2014’. The year after, she joined an elite of British fashion and art icons, including Vivienne West- wood, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, to design the Brit Awards Winner’s Trophy 2016. She broke from conven- tion and designed 13 individual figurines for each winner that night. The following year, the creative delivered a moving talk for TEDxGlasgow on ‘Divine Disorder’, bearing her soul and giving insight into her world. She revealed how she transforms her struggles into a creative force, honours imperfections, embraces chaos and lifts the insurmount- able barrier that sometimes seems too much to bear. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from Glasgow Uni- versity and the Glasgow School of Art.