Stephen King ARCA 1948 – 2022
British fashion designer.
Stephen King was born on 15 September 1948 in Chelsea to
working-class parents who owned a fish and chip shop, he was the first of his
family to go to university. First he studied at Waltham Forest Technical
College and School of Art, graduating in 1969 and winning one of the
prestigious national Industrial Design
Bursaries, for student designers (£150), which helped his admission to the RCA.
He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1972 and by
the early 1980s, King was a founder-member of the English Menswear Designer
Collections (EMDC) group of talents. This included Roger Dack, Charlie Allen,
Stephen Linard, Stuart Hudson, Anne Smith, Modzart, Molto! and Su Thomas of
Sioux.
At the time, King had a small shop on King's Road, Chelsea
from where he dressed celebrities of the day, including Elton John. His
specialty was bright and bold shirts under the Otto label.
“Stephen was one of my oldest and dearest friends. He was
also one of the nicest and rudest people I have ever met,” says Charlie
Allen, who is now a bespoke tailor in Islington. “In the early 1980s Stephen
King shirts were unmistakeable. After designers in the 1960s like Mr Fish,
Stephen was the first to revive big flamboyant prints for menswear.”
In the latter part of his career, he moved into education
and was proud to run what he described as the UK’s the first menswear-only
fashion design course at Northbrook College, Sussex in the 1990s. After the
course was closed down, he headed up design for the Indian conglomerate Madura
Garments and lived in India and Sri Lanka in 2000-2004. In 2012 he was
appointed as a fashion lecturer at the University of Ulster in Belfast, where
we worked until retiring. In Northern Ireland, his many friends affectionately
named him "The Duchess" because of his camp and put-on grand manner.
King passed away in November 2022, with funeralgoers simply
encouraged to wear: “Whatever you like”.