YORK artist Alex Utley reckons “fashion is about someone else deciding what looks good on you but style is what comes from you”.
His comment comes as New Visuality’s Our Style project is kickstarted in York after receiving a National Lottery award from the National Lottery Community Fund.
In the lead-up to Christmas, the project is working with 20 young people who have experienced learning difficulties or physical disabilities.
Sessions have been running in York city centre, led by Alex as chief curator. The Our Style At Christmas event at Guildhall’s ArtSpace saw more than 50 people drop in to buy jewellery, candles and T-shirts, and the project has had a presence at the Blueberry Christmas Fayre at York’s Melbourne Centre too.
When asked who he thought had blazed the trail to help to hammer home how style, not fashion, had provided lifelines to so many struggling people, Alex does not hesitate: “I like people who march to the beat of their own drum,” he says.
“You get Harry Styles and Yungblud from this generation, and from days gone by you had people like David Bowie or Elton John – he wore some right stuff!”
Alex is bringing his own energy inspired by these trailblazers to the project, although it is less their stylistic choices that have galvanised him, more that they have burst through closing doors.
“My stylistic choices are my choices,” he says. “I don’t look at Bowie and say, ‘That’s a good look, I’m going to wear that’. It’s more, ‘They did this at this moment in time to help people like me choose more freely’.
“So, someone who is comfortable enough in their own masculinity to wear a dress doesn’t change who I am. It helps strengthen my own outlook on life.”
Alex is speaking from his home in Acomb, but he is a regular learner at Blueberry Academy and has led on many previous New Visuality projects. He sees Our Style as a chance to “bring to the light many issues previously touched on”.
“Clothes rightly or wrongly come accompanied with such powerful associations, but they should never be more powerful than the wearer,” he stresses. “My style doesn’t change who I am. My jumper or dress doesn’t have a gender; it is fabric. I might like it, and if I like it, I’m going to wear it. My heroes have helped me to stop thinking about others’ opinions and to just do it.”
Over the years, Alex’s philosophy has consolidated. “I’ve hopefully made a small difference up to now. During certain youth groups and football sessions, I feel I may have changed people’s perceptions.
“A mate’s younger sister couldn’t wrap her head around seeing a different version of me. She had my old self stuck in their mind, and she used my dead name because she just couldn’t see that I was now Alex.
“So I used an analogy: when Transformers change, they change because they weren’t happy as, say, a car; they couldn’t be themselves, they transformed into robots, more powerful. She seemed to get it! This project, Our Style, will hopefully build on that.”
Alex is not only relishing the opportunity to curate the participants’ artwork, he also sees the celebration of style as a chance to balance out past negative experiences.
“Everyone sees disability first,” he asserts. “There’s so much ableism, even in areas you wouldn’t expect. Disabled people could wear the same thing as able-bodied people and the mainstream media might refuse to publish or show it.
“It’s not just the mainstream media; it happens in areas where you would otherwise expect more acceptance. The main reason why I do my hair in different colours is because I want people to see me before the wheelchair, before the splints, before the tubes.
“Back in the day, the amount of people that would look at my legs, my arm, the tubes, before seeing me as even half a person, was depressing. The second I dye my hair, they see the colour and the person before they begin staring without shame at parts of my life I have to live with.”
This month’s continuing art sessions and next year’s events and happenings in locations around York will have Alex’s stamp all over them. “It’s a great project. It’s an opportunity for young people to have fun in areas that have previously been marginalised and their ideas unexplored,” he says.
“We’re grateful to the National Lottery Community Fund and indeed everyone who continues to buy National Lottery tickets. It’s good to be able to show that all that money goes a long way in helping the most vulnerable people in our communities take their fair share of celebrating their communities.”
For art and items of clothing created in Our Style projects, check out According To McGee’s gallery, opposite Clifford’s Tower, and the Blueberry Pop-Up Shop in Micklegate, York.