Crafting Hip and Cool: David McDiarmid's Handcrafted Lamb Suede Dancefloor Outfits, 1980–1989

Abstract

The work of the self-designated queer artist David McDiarmid is here inserted into renewed discussion of relationships between craft and art. Links are made between McDiarmid's political art and the retrieval of craft in 1970s feminist art. The “craftiness” and “Indianness” of 1960s–1970s countercultural dress is linked to McDiarmid's deployment of Native American traditions in his 1980s handcrafted lamb suede garments, part of the artist's maverick appropriation of diverse cultural traditions. The utopian aspiration materialized in these handcrafted garments is linked to the multiracial gay male sociality of the underground Manhattan dance club, Paradise Garage, which in part stimulated their conception.

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