And They Dance by the Light of the Moon ...

A Buffalo Gal as imagined by Mclaren and Westwood

 in their Nostalgia of Mud collection (1982/83) 

I.

Buffalo Gals is a popular 19th-century American folk song, written and published by the blackface minstrel John Hodges (aka Cool White) in 1844, although earlier versions are likely to have existed.

Contrary to what many people believe, the song doesn't refer to a particularly tough breed of cowgirl who hunted bison on the Great Plains. Rather, it refers to the dancing girls who performed in the many bars, concert halls, and brothels in the notorious Canal district of Buffalo, New York. 

However, the song continues to incite many imaginative interpretations. For example, some insist that it takes its inspiration from an old legend that tells of how the spirits of wild animals sometimes take the form of attractive young women, in order to seduce innocent cowboys sleeping beneath the stars.


II.

Unsurprisingly, when I hear the words Buffalo Gals, I also think of the 1982 single by Malcolm McLaren and the World's Famous Supreme Team, produced by Trevor Horn, that combines scratching with square dancing in a fabulously eccentric hip-hop manner - much to the horror of the record company bosses who were initially reluctant to release the track.        

In many ways, this song was more groundbreaking than Anarchy in the UK, helping as it did introduce hip-hop culture to a wider (whiter) audience; the video for the song not only featured breakdancing - courtesy of the Rock Steady Crew - but also showed rappers and graffiti artists in action.

Oh, and of course, it also featured models wearing McLaren and Westwood's latest fashions from their brilliant Nostalgia of Mud collection; a collection which attempted to show how haute couture and other aspects of Western culture retained primitive roots; or how even modernity essentially lives off the traditions it insists it has left behind.

Further, as Yvonne Gold, the make-up artist who worked on the McLaren-Westwood fashion shows, points out, the soft, unstructured tailoring with exposed seams that characterised the above collection was the antithesis of the yuppie power suit:   

"Buffalo girls wore hip-slung dirndl skirts over padded petticoats, with baby-sling-bags across their backs and hoodies topped with Buffalo hats, or T-shirt Grecian toga dresses with conical vintage satin bras worn over the top."

She continues: 

"The legacy of raw-edged, reversed-seamed sheepskin coats lives on as a classic, and wearing a hoodie under a tailored jacket or a bra as outerwear has become standard. The conceptual black painted strip mask is still seen on catwalks in infinite variations. Three and a half decades later, the iconic Buffalo hat has been revitalized by [musician] Pharrell, and you can find entire ensembles in the collections of international museums and individual collectors [...] keeping the Buffalo legacy alive."

It's such a pity, therefore, that the McLaren-Westwood design collaboration ended soon afterwards. We can only dream of what might have been, for whilst, obviously, we know how Westwood's career in fashion developed post-Malcolm, we don't know what sartorial innovations the latter would have produced had he continued working in the rag trade.*

* Having said that, see the astonishing post by Paul Gorman on McLaren's 'lost collection' intended to accompany his album Fans (1984): click here.

See: Yvonne Gold, 'Vivienne Westwood's Radically Chic Nostalgia of Mud', Another Magazine (15 March, 2016): click here to read online.

Play: Malcolm McLaren and the World's Famous Supreme Team, 'Buffalo Gals' (1982), single from the album Duck Rock (Charisma Records, 1983): click here.