[WHAT I AM PASSIONATE ABOUT]

Le Freak C’est Chic

Disco deserved a better name, a beautiful name because it was a beautiful art form. It made the consumer beautiful. The consumer was the star” – Barry White

In life there are times when music has to remind us it's the magnetic force of humanity. Disco is one of those times, where music was used a remedy to forget about depressing times and the economic crisis. Disco was a world built on escaping the monotony of life. It was frivolous, confident and brazen. Every day in disco was a show stopping performance, a time to show off your moves and rags. A Friday night turned into a time of looking good, make up and sexiness. It's no wonder discos biggest band called themselves CHIC. They knew that the correlation between fashion and music is one of irrefutable magnitude. Disco brought about the platform shoe. Height and thickness were the foundations of this shoe, but behind all that we know that it was made to stomp and bring about attention. Now that's what you call a statement shoe. In the nineties it was revisited and was given Girl power by the Spice Girls. The world all over wanted a pair and soon become the uniform of strippers and lap dancers.

Because of its frivolity,disco always tapped into sexuality be it through dancing,sex or clothing.Through the clothing, women who were brave enough were seen flaunting their bum cheeks in a pair of hot pants. Kylie Minogue modernised the hotpant in the 90s with her disco-esque single "Spinning Around". The nice thing about disco was its inclusive nature. Deriving from Gay,Black, and Latino bars in New York. It never left anyone out. Men too, were dressing up for the occasion, as seen in Saturday Night Fever. Men's fashion in the disco era found that wearing wearing tight fitting clothing was something that was not gay,but something that oozes confidence sexual confidence and it ran with it. Suits were clean,slim or tight fitted,lapels were wide,trousers were flared and shoes were polished to reflect the shine of the disco ball.

Cocaine became fashionable. What Kate Moss did was nothing compared to the sniffing done in Studio 54. Being liberated was what attracted many to disco, losing all sense of time and self. Immersing yourself in something with no restrictions and boundaries. Creativity flourished during the disco age with the likes of Halston.Halston dressed a list of who’s who in the world of celebrity at that time, catapulting him to being one of the definitive designers of the era. Halston himself was a party boy, shaking his thang in Studio 54 with the likes of Steve Rubell,Cher,Bianca Jagger and Divine(Harris Glenn Milstead). And who can forget the dame of American fashion, Diane Von Furstenburg (DVF) with her knitted jersey wrap dress. She will forever be associated with the dress, as it combined style with function. If the 70s are anything to go by, there was economic strife but as Galliano said about the present credit crunch there is “not a creative crunch”.