Growing up a strange kid, before I knew what exactly that was going to mean in the long term, I was sinking deep into movies.
I watched anything and everything but I particularly liked films that reminded me that I’m not alone, that there are roaming bands of weirdos out there, with clubhouses and cool clothes. In the pictures, it is valued to be close to someone, to look like them, and if you get picked-on your gang will be there, making you feel valid, providing a sense of belonging, and maybe stopping your ass from getting kicked.
My Mother’s brother was in a motorcycle gang, he was good natured, extremely tattooed, and wore his colors on his motorcycle. His wife did the same. For work each day, she carried a metal tool box full of tattoo supplies in one hand, and a sawed-off shotgun in the other just to get into the shop. I did everything I could to be close by and begged unsuccessfully for a tattoo that I could hide from my Mother. Early on, I wanted to be a part of the misbehavior coalition.
My father is a mechanic, and racing cars was always a tangential part of my life. He built a business around the race track, hauling us kids along on the weekends to sit in the pits while he sold 2-way radios and pinstriped, flame-retardant driving suits with helmets to match.
At home I was watching Grease 2, the pink ladies and the T-Birds. The film also had Dolores, the too-young to be cool skateboarding girl with the amazing voice even as a kid (Bless Pamela Aldon). Though I felt like Dolores most of the time, I wanted one of those jackets, to smoke with the pink ladies and do Motorcycle tricks. (Non-Binary anyone?) Dennis Cleveland Stewart also loomed large in my mind as Balmuto, his biker club seemed darker, and I would have liked a movie focused on them just as much. (Stewart was a dancer, and died in the AIDS epidemic in 1994.) Somehow I understood these were the type of people I wanted to be with, as much as my father had wanted an actual motorcycle, I wanted the visual signifiers of outlaw culture on my body.
As a queer punk in the 90s-Oughts there was a uniform, a way of fitting-in by looking like you might smash a glass into shards on your face before some meathead could punch you. (thank you Adrien Brody/Spike Lee, 1999) Looking tough has a social cache, anyone who has ever walked around with a black eye will tell you, not a lot of comments come your way from strangers.
I don't remember deciding to make club jackets, rather it seemed like something I had been doing for quite some time. I would make back patch vests for friends, for a birthday or moving away gift, for myself when I needed something new or fun to wear. I’d cut up a t-shirt or pull patches from unrelated organizations. Part grunge, part punk, these practices had the visual markers of life that sounded with me, working class, regional aesthetics, local jokes, small town celebrity illustrations. The non-standardization of it all, and the crap sewing skills I applied to boot. As a punk, we used our backs like anti adverts, claiming the last unsellable space for self expression and tribe identification. As a queer punk, the jacket or the vest felt as sacred as bikers colors. A friend once thought I was handling their vest like it was untouchably dirty, but really, I was feeling a reverence for how much it seemed to hold their body, aura, toughness, and pockets full of useful things: beer, tobacco, keys, handkerchief, scraps of paper, drugs.
In 2018, I designed two embroidered club jackets as part of a group art show. The jackets were the anchors of an installation piece called Officing and repped two fake businesses, Name your Rapist (with gun emblem) and the Transsexual Gun Club (with gun emblem). I got a real kick out of imagining these two orgs sitting shoulder to shoulder taking service calls to support their customers.
So, I present to you this collection of Club Jackets. Mostly assembled during the pandemic shutdown times, they have kept me company. They are in the spirit of movie outlaws, chosen family, self-love, queer magic, thriftiness, and belonging. I have sewn each one with great love and solidarity for my trans siblings. We are so strong, so needed in the world.
You don’t need to be trans to wear one, just ready to back us up.
Almost all of the jackets / garments are second hand/ up-cycled. If the item has a particular story, I include all details I recollect.
For Fans of Hello Again (1987):
“Sometimes you can get a real feeling from a brassiere, but yours, just had a slight hum” (Bless Judith Ivy)
xoxo
Bug
January 2023
If you would like to learn more about these jackets, or purchase one, please visit my online store.
