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I first met Pam Hogg in my early 20s at an after-hours lock-in in Soho. I’d already seen her on the cover of i-D and I thought she was the coolest person, even more so when I found out she’d made the catsuit that Lady Miss Kier from Deee-Lite was wearing in “Groove is in the Heart.”
The one thing that hit me about Pam in that first meeting was how kind she was. I was a student and she indulged me. So she wasn’t only kind and cool, she was also probably very patient with me. I loved her from that moment.
Fashion is a very different beast now. Commerce dominates creativity, and people like Pam, who are 100 percent the latter, often get overlooked, which is why I think it’s vital that we celebrate how she managed to create her own prophetic symbiosis between fashion and music. It wasn’t simply that she could sing her Scottish lungs out when she was in front of her band. She also dressed stars like Debbie Harry and Siouxsie Sioux. And the people she got to walk in her show! I remember dance superstars Michael Clark and Les Child on her catwalk.
Seeing the outpouring of emotion on Instagram after her death, it’s obvious that Pam knew everyone and everyone loved her. She lit up any room she walked into with her enthusiasm and energy, and now it’s obvious how much energy it really took to sustain her life and work. I’ve been looking back at her collections, realising how much work went into them and also appreciating – really appreciating – how it was all her. She really did everything herself, like a one woman band who just kept on going no matter what.
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It took me a while to really grasp that.
When she asked for help on a few shows, I was happy to support her, give her money for fabrics or whatever she needed. You had to support someone whose integrity was so ferocious in the face of an industry which never really knew what to do with someone like her. I think that’s another reason she was so loved, along with the fact that those clothes she was making on her own were often so wonderful.
That’s why I feel so honoured by Pam’s last request to me. When she got very ill, she asked to see me. I knew that she’d kept her situation very quiet so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was sad to see her so frail when she had always been so much larger than life, but she was still somehow radiant. What she asked me to do was to organise and pack up her studio, and store her archive on behalf of her family. In my other life, I’ve curated my own very comprehensive collection of London fashion, so Pam and her family could be sure her legacy would be in the safest of hands.
I knew it would be the last time I saw her. As heartbreaking as that was, I could also see how happy she was to know that the work she had given everything to would be secure. I’m normally reluctant to meet my heroes, but Pam was something else. To me, and many others, she’ll always be a superhero.
