“I'm at home in my front room and although sick with a serious chest infection I'm pretty buzzed up,” Pam Hogg tells AnOther. “In the last 15 to 20 minutes I wrote my first song in about seven years..."
“I'm at home in my front room and although sick with a serious chest infection I'm pretty buzzed up,” Pam Hogg tells AnOther. “In the last 15 to 20 minutes I wrote my first song in about seven years. It followed immediately after a handful of emails from this dude in Toronto who I've just found out is really into my stuff, but in a way that I felt he really got to what I'm about, seemed to be on the same wavelength. I don't normally converse with everyone who writes to me but this was also about what he sent me, what he was working on that made him feel connected. I've just sent the lyrics to him, it’s a first draft but he's blown away and writing music to go with it as we cyber-speak.”
The push-pull relationship of music and fashion has push-pulled throughout Hogg’s career, with periods focused more on one (professionally) than the other. Yet Scot Hogg is beyond ever separating herself from either, a true icon of British counterculture who unites both in a way that is effortless – because it is an authentic and intuitive mannerism. As Britain invented the style magazine, a richer fashion context which she grew up in the pages of, Hogg could only come from our wilfully audacious island – this harbinger’s message could well be "live it". She is electric.
“[Music and clothes are] all intertwined,” Hogg explains. “When I was a kid my dad used to sit me on his knee and sing songs like The Black Hills of Dakota – it conjured up such inspiring visions and he had a great voice. All my family sang. We created harmonies straight off the cuff and my father wrote to me in verse all my life, so that must have rubbed off. The clothes thing? I was customising all the hand-me-downs from a really early age but I never really focused on it. We didn't have enough money for me to choose so it was more a survival thing, cutting things up and rearranging creating my own identity.”
“I'd rather see someone with attitude not dressed-up than sheep-like fashion, identity is all, knowing who you are. But great fashion is wonderful."
Arriving in London shy and “in awe of all these amazing creatures – but I felt totally connected,” Hogg upped her look to get past the ferocious Steve Strange on the door of The Blitz, where you had to present yourself to get in. “I resorted back to what I did in my childhood, used my imagination and conjured up these clothes every week,” she elaborates. “From there people wanted what I was wearing so I started creating a look that eventually developed into mini collections.” The clothes found a home at the legendary Hyper Hyper and her space on Newburgh Street.
Today, Hogg has moved far beyond anything capsule, becoming synonymous in modern fashion for signature panelled catsuits and multicolour fur coats, worn by the likes of Kate Moss, Siouxsie Sioux and Alison Mosshart. She recently presented her A/W12 collection, Wild Life, in London. “But I deliberately made pieces that were commercial to prove to people that I can do much more than a showpiece – I'd like someone to invest in me,” she reveals honestly. “The little hand-knits at the beginning, all the models went crazy for them. I'd love to have my own shop again to show my capabilities.”
“I'd rather see someone with attitude not dressed-up than sheep-like fashion, identity is all, knowing who you are. But great fashion is wonderful. I'm self taught in making clothes so was never really interested in the history of it, now I have a great desire to explore. Not long ago I found out about Madame Grès, wonderful.”
She has plenty of stories to tell. “Going on tour with Pigface in the early 90s driving from Texas to NY via Nashville and New Orleans was incredible,” she illuminates. “Although I wasn't in the band they dragged me onstage when they heard I could sing, so for the short time I was with them I sang one song every night with my boyfriend at the time, Mary Biker from Gay Bikers on Acid. That's what actually led me to give up fashion for 10 to 15 years and go back to writing and performing, I'd forgotten just how great it was. I didn’t want to live to regret not doing anything.”
“I'm open and at the most creative I've ever been...”
Since, there’s been Doll and Hoggdoll, with Jason Buckle. Recently she sat in for Jarvis Cocker on BBC 6Music – “some tracks I wanted to play were only on vinyl and I knew my records were scratched so I tried to call Bobby Gillespie, who is only person I know has pretty much the same record collection as me.”
If you’ve been in Bermondsey recently, you’ll have caught the creative on the streets, making a glorious commotion, colliding her ethos with the everyday.
“I caused havoc with Rankin's band of merry men and women last weekend, filming guerilla style and speeding about in an open-top jeep,” she shares.“He'd generously given me control of a huge piece in the next issue of The Hunger, and not content with a studio shoot I managed to persuade him to do it on location. He allowed me to style, art-direct and also choose models I knew, as I needed girls familiar with tight time limits, quick changes and the chaos that can ensue when I'm at the helm demanding the impossible! We were stopping traffic with these gorgeous half-naked girls, seven at at time in some cases. Like a li’l army, such an amazing crew. The set-up allowed instant viewing enabling us to establish the perfect shot within breakneck speed, and the photos I cant wait to see in print, beyond awesome.”
For her history, Hogg also has a lot to give – and there’s a lot she should be credited for. Still, the future’s unwritten and that’s what makes life exciting. “I'm open and at the most creative I've ever been,” she summarises optimistically.
