“We both had our egos massaged being drag queens dancing on tables when we were younger,” says Max Allen, the designer, in a corner of a Manor Park warehouse. It has been his home and studio for eight years — and you can tell.
Fabric scraps, safety-pin sculptures and fiery fuchsia and red silk-satin outfit fragments dangle from the ceiling and pile up in corners. En masse, the scene looks a lot like the DIY, sequin-and-feather-splashed, outrageously high camp extravagances that are known to leave the doors here.
“Today we are running a business. Our ego is definitely attached to it as an art form, but [when] we have a dress to make in a certain time, it’s more a question of how we are going to do it.”
Allen, 32, was born in Derbyshire, is a graduate of Central Saint Martins and has been a powerhouse of London’s queer nightlife scene since soon after he arrived in the city in 2008. Five years ago he met Elliot Adcock, 26, who moved from Nottinghamshire to the capital in 2016 to study at London College of Fashion, online when he needed a second pair of hands on a project. “Since then we have worked full-time together,” Allen says.
Their roster of recent achievements has included making Emma Corrin’s Vogue España cover gown in April (a couture-like, white strapless dress printed with Corrin’s face) and costuming performances at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Court and Soho Theatre. They have just sent off their costumes for Selfridges’ Christmas windows, a sought after gig Allen has secured for the past three years. “It became clear we had a creative dialogue together, and I realised it should start being equal,” says Allen.
At the end of September, their partnership became (Instagram) official as they announced news of the purposefully grown-up sounding Allen and Adcock Costume Studio. They are ready to be taken seriously.
“Coming from a very underground queer background can make people feel quite uneasy, even though we are skilled,” Allen says. “Putting us together and branding it as a studio is a clean start. Yes, we do queer, independent stuff but look what else we can do.” Despite both working in fashion, making costumes for theatre alongside one-off looks for singers, models and dancers presented itself as the better option. “Our work is about storytelling with clothing,” Adcock says. It has also been borne from necessity. “Making costumes is a more practical way to make money. When you don’t have much, making a dress for a performer is a way to get £200 rather than waiting for a fashion collection to be made.”
Their next project is with the AIDS Play Project, playwright Alastair Curtis’ theatre company, which resurfaces productions written by people who lost their lives to the disease. “We just finished a run of Camille, by Charles Ludlam. Next is Christmas on Mars, written by Harry Kondoleon,” Allen says. These are done on a shoestring, something of a specialty: “I enjoy the challenge of having to make something very quickly with a very low budget. We do it quite well,” Adcock says.
Do fights break out when things get fraught? “No, we get on really well,” Allen giggles. “We work five, six, seven days a week, but I’ve always had a really healthy relationship with the studio.” He founded it on calm determination and it is a quality they both seem proud of. “Elliot’s father has a working-class business, I grew up in a similar situation; my grandfather was an electrician, my stepfather was a plumber. We work with that mindset; we have a service to give,” Allen says. “It keeps us going. That, and a bit of 6 Music.”
