Celia Birtwell looks back on fashion partnership with Ossie Clark ahead of new exhibition

Fashion designer Celia Birtwell has revisited her creative partnership with the late designer Ossie Clark as a new exhibition celebrates the pair's work, according to the Guardian.

Birtwell and Clark were among London's most prominent fashion figures during the psychedelic era that followed Mary Quant's miniskirts and preceded the emergence of punk. Birtwell designed distinctive botanical and dreamlike fabric prints, which Clark then transformed into sensual, bias-cut dresses combining Hollywood-style glamour with a rock'n'roll sensibility.

The couple's boutique, Quorum, in Chelsea, became a gathering place for prominent cultural figures of the period, including Talitha Getty, Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg. A 1970 catwalk show reportedly drew an audience that included two Beatles, photographer Cecil Beaton and actress Brigitte Bardot. Clark also designed stage clothes for Mick Jagger and later accompanied the Rolling Stones on tour.

The artist David Hockney captured the couple in his well-known portrait "Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy," painted two years into their marriage while Birtwell was pregnant with their second child, a work that helped cement their place in the cultural history of the era.

The new exhibition revisits this body of work at a moment when Birtwell has also spoken about her grief following Hockney's death, according to the report.