Club Kids

The Club Kids were a group of young New York City dance club personalities led by Michael Alig and James St. James in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The group was notable for its members' flamboyant behavior and outrageous costumes. In 1988, writer Michael Musto wrote about the Club Kids' "cult of crazy fashion and petulance": "They ... are terminally superficial, have dubious aesthetic values, and are master manipulators, exploiters, and, thank God, partiers."

The group was also recognized as an artistic and fashion-conscious youth culture, and were a definitive force in New York City's underground club culture at the time. Additionally, multiple Club Kids have made long-lasting contributions to mainstream art and fashion. According to former Club Kid "Walt Paper" Cassidy, "The nightclub for me was like a laboratory, a place where you were encouraged and rewarded for experimentation." However, as Alig and his followers descended into drug use, he began adding drug dealers to the Club Kids roster and Gatien's payroll, and increasing numbers of Club Kids became drug addicts.

The group, which Alig estimates included up to "750 in the early 90s at different levels", comprised (among others), its creators - Michael Alig; "Jenny Jewels" and Michael Tronn, who helped organize the early "Outlaw Parties"; and Alig's mentor/friend/rival James St. James (born James Clark) - as well as:

Alig moved to NYC from his hometown - South Bend, Indiana - in 1984 and began hosting small events. In 1987, he supplanted Andy Warhol as a leading New York partier; in an Interview Magazine article, Alig said: "We were all going to become Warhol Superstars and move into The Factory. The funny thing was that everybody had the same idea: not to dress up but to make fun of people who dressed up. We changed our names like they did, and we dressed up in outrageously crazy outfits in order to be a satire of them--only we ended up becoming what we were satirizing."

The Club Kids' aesthetic emphasized outrageousness, "fabulousness", and sex. Gender was fluid, and everything was DIY. In Musto's words: "It was a statement of individuality and sexuality which ran the gamut, and it was a form of tapping into an inner fabulousness within themselves and bringing it out."

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