The 1970s Fashion Designer Who Was Outlandishly Ahead of His Time
One night in 1977, George Clinton stepped out of a flying saucer, teetering in his new pair of nine-inch platform boots. That fantastical footwear “was hard to wear onstage but great to take pictures in,” the Parliament-Funkadelic leader told Vogue in 2018. Clinton was always risking a wardrobe malfunction during concerts. Not only were his outfits cumbersome and ostentatious—kind of like Sun Ra meets Star Wars—but he’d also use a prop spacecraft called the Mothership to make a grand entrance at shows. “You could pose real good” in those shoes, he added, “but you couldn’t do much jumping out of spaceships.”
That decade saw Clinton begin to mash glam and funk into an Afrofuturist symphony that would remake pop music. But despite his wild imagination, he didn’t concoct those otherworldly costumes in the ’70s—Larry Legaspi did. The designer, who died 20 years ago, created the eye-popping looks that Clinton and his P-Funk collective have costume architect Michael Kaplan is an admirer, and Rick Owens—the fashion designer known for his dark concepts and sculpted silhouettes—dedicated a 2019 show to him. Legaspi’s futurism took wing more than 40 years ago, yet it still looks like the garb of tomorrow.
