THE DUTCH FOOL COLLECTIVE
Thanks Sharon: It's thanks to persons like you that history can be kept and shared.
Visit Sharon's website.
Visit Sharon's website.
Drop by George Harrison's place in Surrey and your eye is drawn to his
fireplace, opulently decorated all over with highly-coloured painted scenes of
lush reclining figures and drooping vegetation. The same fauna and flora bustle
over John Lennon's piano and the guitars and drums of The Cream. The same style
is apparent on the dream-like covers of the new LPs of The Hollies and The
Incredible String Band. Should you wonder where The Procul Harem got their scarlet
performing clothes or what Marianne Faithfull can have been wearing as
she rushed through airport customs, the source is the same: The Fool.
,+Marijke,+Barrie+and+Josie,+at+home+in+Montagu+Square,+London..jpg)
The Fool: Simon (left),
Marijke, Barrie and Josie, at home in Montagu Square, London.
Since The Fool (they take their name
from the joker in tarot
cards) arrived in Britain a year ago from Holland via North Africa, they have
found that the way they dress, paint, and the way they think have become an
influential part of the pop scene. In the new year, for the first time, their
clothes and paintings will be on sale to everyone. The four who are 'The Fool'
live and work together behind a pretty midnight-blue door decorated with
six-pointed yellow stars in Montagu Square. Simon Posthuma, at 28, is the
eldest: tall, Van Dyck featured, with long, black, curling cavalier hair. He is
painter and mentor to the group. Marijke Koger, 23, with long blond hair, was a
commercial artist in Amsterdam and she now designs posters and clothes along
with Josie Leeger, 24, who formely marketed her own fashions in Holland. The
only British member, Barrie Finch, 24, met the others when he was working in
publicity for the Saville Theatre and got them to do a poster for a pop
concert. Impressed with their exotic talents, he found it easy to settle down
as their full-time organiser, promoting their ideas of hippy 'love' along with
them.
Tall and curly
haired, Josie Leeger wears clothes of her own design which always pile layer
upon layer of exotically shaped garments upon one another, each in a sumptuous
material. The Fool group love to buy many of their fabrics from Liberty's
furnishing department.
Visit them any day of
the week, even on a monday morning, and they open the door caparisoned in
splendour. In the living room, hung with fringed shawls, their own paintings,
and musical instruments and heavy with the scent of joss sticks - Barrie is
wearing a blue silk trouser suit, rajah-collared, with bright silk collages on
the chest. Simon is in dark-red knee-high boots with patterned Turkish pants
billowing over the tops. His blouse is full-sleevd, of patterned silk with a
jewelled chain over it. Marijke wears a blue-patterned headscarf held on by a
narrow shaped cap that has a Hans Anderson flavour. Over her flared, red and
orange mini-skirt she wears a multi-coloured blouse; over the blouse a green
brocade jerkin; and over the jerkin a silk coat with long wide sleeves. Josie
with short, dark, curly hair has on red tights and sandals, a different red
mini-skirt with a gypsy flavour. Over her indian silk blouse a patterned bodice
and over that an embroidered neckband and collar. It's like a non-stop
production of 'Scheherezade'.
Simon and Marijke
appear to be figures from a fairy tale. With his cavalier locks Simon carries
off the red velvet Turkish cape and brocade pants with ease. Marijke goes in
for a delicate green and blue silk coat with wide flowing sleeves, Designs like
their clothes will be on sale at their new boutique opening at 94 Baker Street,
London W1, later this month.
So effectively do
they wear these romantic clothes that in less than a year they have become cult
figures on the London pop scene. The ultimate proof of this was when they were
asked to appear in a forthcoming film, 'Wonderwall', as themselves. It was
clothes like these that made the Beatles' wives envious when they met the Dutch
group. These surely were the most beautiful people of all. The Fool group made
a number of outfits for Cynthia Lennon and Patti Harrison, so that by the time
the Maharishi arrived on the scene the girls were already dressed for the part.
Their clothes were such a success and so unlike anything else around in the
summer that the Beatles decided to set up the Dutch group in a shop, financing
it from their company called 'Apple' which has a moneyed finger in a number of
pies. The shop open this month at 94 Baker Street, is wholly designed by the
Fool. Simon says "It will have an image of nature, like a paradise with
plants and animals painted on the walls. The floor will be imitation grass and
the staircase like an Arab tent. In the windows will be seven figures representing
the seven races of the world, black, white, yellow, red etc. There will be
exotic lighting and we will make it more like a market than a boutique."
It will sell their paintings as well, and the jewellery they are going to
import from Morocco, children's clothes in the same style and birthday cards
and posters. It will even sell small musical instruments.
The Fool's costume for a forthcoming
ballet, 'Adam and Eve'
The clothes that Marijke and Josie have
designed for the shop - they completed about 100 new outfits - are already in
production. Some of the samples are an orange, embossed-velvet coat with long
sleeves, narrow at the wrist but puffed above the elbow. It is aimed to sell at
about 10 guineas. There are brocade trouser suits and heavy tapestry outdoor
coats, mini-skirts with long skirts to add for evening at about 7 guineas. The
Patterns are a little less riotous than the Fool wear themselves but, says Marijke,
"It's a gradual evolution for the people who will wear our clothes as it
was for us. We have been dressing like this for eight years but gradually we
have added things. Boys and girls can't go to the offices dressed quite
like we are. But we have made velvet suits for boys and dresses for girls that
they could begin to wear everywhere. And gradually they will add extra things -
a pretty bodice on top of something they may already have - and they will
learn to be more creative. That's how it should be for them to do something
too." All four believe that bombarding their generation with exotic
colours and clothes is a missionary work, and part of spreading their view of
life. Says Simon in expressive if sometimes Dutch english, "When they used
to open shops it was just after the bread of the people, not turning them on.
We want to turn them on. Our ideas are based on love. If you're doing things
for people you must be part of the people. Not set yourself up as something
extraordinary." They believe fashion reflects the fact that the world is
shrinking. Marijke says, "All the people of the earth are forced to come
together now and this expresses itself in fashion. Our ideas come from every
country - India, China, Russia, Turkey. And from the sixteenth century to the
twenty-first centuries. There's a bit of everything.
Elements of many lands, many periods, mix in
Marijke's designs
Charming and high
minded, they are vegetarians and tee-total. "We believe in
reincarnation," Simon asserts. "It is the only logical idea. Once we
thought about it we just knew that it was true. You are what you made yourself.
And every race and nationality is joined. There is a general spirit of revival
going on. And we should be governed by people who have regard for own spiritual
life. In future people will have more leisure and they will have to develop
their inner eye. They will want to get to know the supreme power, love."
Though their flat is scattered with books by Rudolf Steiner and a dutch medium,
Josef Rudolf, the Fool feel the pull which the whole pop world is experiencing
from the Orient, "a fund of spiritual strength", they say. Then they
must have been among those who went to hear the Maharishi on his last visit to
England? For a moment an expression of sinful pride, like that of a bourgeois
who has bought a colour television, crosses their faces. "No," they
say quietly. "We have our own swami."
Fashion drawing by Marijke:
like all her designs, it has a hothouse, flower child appeal.
No comments:
Post a Comment