Michelle Olley, Neil Albert and Andrew Mann at the Skin Two Rubber Ball she co-hosted with Chi Chi Valenti
In 1992, Olley instigated the now-famous fetish club night the Skin Two Rubber Ball, which in the 1990s went on to become the largest and most high-profile fetish party in the world.[3][4] The original Ball was held in aid of the MS Society and Cruisaid (the 1995 Ball alone raised £16,000 for the latter).[3] Guests on the opening night included John Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, Leigh Bowery and Mick Jagger disguised in a fake moustache and Muir cap. Olley hosted, ran and MC-ed the Ball from 1992 through to 1996. In that time it became an international event with people coming from all over the world to attend and to participate in the increasingly elaborate fashion shows and performances.
Of the inception of the Rubber Ball, Olley said:
"We decided that we wanted to do a 'public' fetish party because in the early 90s there was a lot of tabloid/police interest in fetish clubs and people were getting closed down by raids in the summer of 92, so we decided that instead of hiding and going quietly, the thing to do would be to hold a more open event, invite the press, let everyone know that the press were there, get them to show up in the mood for a fun party rather than anything more full-on and have a public celebration of dressing-up and general sauciness.
It grew from an event for 2,000 people in 1992 to a bursting to capacity 4,500 people crammed into Hammersmith Palais by 1994."
Club Nights
Olley also ran a club night called Disco Scum – an electro-punk night that was held in a gentlemen's club in Piccadilly – which she ran in 1993 with Mark Carter (who also ran punk club Penetration and managed the band Superblond). And, in 1995, a club night called Street life that Olley ran with her band Salon Kitty and which was held at the Brixton Academy.
Band
From 1992 to 2000, Olley was vocalist with the electronic band Salon Kitty, composed of Olley on vocals, Simon Hoare on guitar, Neil Albert on keyboards/backing vocals, Andrew Mann also on backing vocals, Robert Michael on keyboards and Cliff Hewitt on drums . In 1995, the band released the single, Freak (written by Olley/Hoare)[5] on Liquid Gold Records, and in 1996 signed to Epic Records. (Simon Hoare later went on to become a member of the bands Raymonde[6] and RPLA.[7])
The tumultuous history of Salon Kitty was described in their own words as: "9 lives, 8 years, 7 members, 6 near death experiences, 5 Countries (if you include Wales), 4 Managers, 3 record deals, 2 arrests, One hell of a ride."[8]
Alexander McQueen
Whilst at Fable, Olley was chosen by the British designer Alexander McQueen to be the main model for what became one of his most celebrated creations: the centre piece tableaux of his 2001 spring/summer collection, named Voss. The centre piece – which featured Olley within an enormous, moth-filled glass box, the sides of which fell away and smashed – was based on the Joel Peter Witkin image Sanitarium.[9] The show also featured Kate Moss and Erin O'Connor.
Olley also modelled for Nick Knight's Sister Honey series created for Dazed & Confused with British designer Peter Saville. It was the McQueen show that brought Olley to Nick Knight's attention, as he later said of it on his SHOWstudio.com blog:
"The girl in the box was Michelle Olley. She modelled for me in a story I did called Sister Honey... She was a writer and I remember she wrote a great piece on being the Butterfly Girl in the middle of that (McQueen) Glass Box show. I was sat on the front row, in between Alexandra Schulman and Gwyneth Paltrow. It was is probably one of the best pieces of Fashion Theatre I have ever witnessed."[10]
Alexander McQueen later described his thoughts on forcing his audience to stare at their own reflection for over an hour:
"Ha! I was really pleased about that. I was looking at it on the monitor, watching everyone trying not to look at themselves. It was a great thing to do in the fashion industry—turn it back on them! God, I’ve had some freaky shows."[11]
In spring 2011, Olley was asked by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to contribute to their Alexander McQueen exhibition, Savage Beauty.[12] She was interviewed by The Met and the interview included in the audio guide to the show. Also, Olley's detailed diary/journal of modelling for McQueen – written between Sept18-27 as the show was being planned and staged – was included in the Met Museum website coverage of the Savage Beauty exhibition.[13]
The diary relates details of the show and encounters with McQueen, ending with the account of when Olley returned home after the VOSS show to find "...a MASSIVE bouquet of flowers has arrived, with a note saying, "Thank you for everything – you were beautiful! – Lee xxx" "[13]
Olley was interviewed for the documentary on the life and work of McQueen,[14] directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui,[15] released in 2018.[16][17][18]
Magazines
Michelle Olley, PH.UK, circa 1997
In 1997, Olley was brought in as deputy editor to help helm the now rather notorious relaunch of Penthouse UK (or PH.UK, as it was newly christened) as a modern redefinition of the traditional adult magazine, partly via the vision of designers and Face and Vogue fashion photographers such as Corrinne Day,[19][20]Iain McKell and Ben Westwood garnered from Olley's formidable black book of contacts built through her previous editorships at fashion and fetish publications; and from the sexual politics brought from the same. Olley's vision of empowerment through sexual expression rather than exploitation soon ran into the more trad-view of owner Bob Guccione. The relaunch generated much medias interest but failed to reposition the magazine. The resultant implosion was recorded by a Channel 4 camera crew, making an early reality TV documentary series about the magazine's relaunch, and also featured in The Independent in a feature titled 'From the Penthouse to the Street', which opened with the line 'If anyone could have done it, it should have been Michelle Olley.'[21]
Olley worked as deputy editor of So magazine, features editor at gay lifestyle magazine Attitude, in 1999 became editor of P.U.R.E magazine, followed by the deputy editorship at Fable and contributing editor of the Arts Council quarterly, Upstart magazine. As editor at Carlton Books, Olley has edited and written for several photographic anthologies, including the work of Herb Ritts, Derek Ridgers, Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons and Nick Knight.
After being appointed content editor of The-Hotel.com, in 2003 Olley became website editor and media consultant at Faith Inc, before moving to Turner Classic Movies at Turner Broadcasting, London.
Olley is a contributor to Bonafide magazine, which covers hip-hop, electronic music and street art.[23]
Alan Moore
Michelle Olley, Rubber Ball, London, by Derek Ridgers
For the Skin Two Yearbook 2009,[24] Olley was granted a very rare interview with author and graphic novel writer Alan Moore (of Watchmen and V for Vendetta fame), widely regarded as the most innovative writer of the genre, and one of its most celebrated. The occasion of Olley's interview with both Moore and his partner, Melinda Gebbie, was the publication of Moore's and Gebbie's book Lost Girls (written by Moore/illustrated by Gebbie).[25][26][27] Fifteen years in gestation, Lost Girls was much anticipated and eagerly awaited by Moore fans and graphic novel aficionados.
Robert Anton Wilson and Cosmic Trigger Play
Michelle Olley, London, 2012
Olley became involved with bringing Robert Anton Wilson’s popular counter-culture work, Cosmic Trigger,[28] to the stage in 2014. After volunteering to help with the initial crowdfunding phase of the production, Olley handle the press and curated the art gallery at the show’s debut and 'Find The Others' event in Liverpool in November 2014.[29][30] She was also the co-producers and director of marketing for the 2017 London run of the production.[31] The play, written and directed by Daisy Campbell, ran for 23 performances, and also hosted special events with speakers including John Higgs, Ru and Claire Callendar from the Green Funeral Company, poet Salena Godden, Shardcore, David Bramwell and Adam Curtis with Alan Moore – a discussion event which Olley hosted.[32]
Adult Swim
Michelle Olley was content manager of Adult Swim[1] for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Adult Swim (EMEA) is the non-U.S version of the hugely successful American Adult Swim channel/website – home of, among others, Venture Brothers (written by Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick), and Robot Chicken, the popular satirical show co-created by actor Seth Green (voice of Chris Griffin in Family Guy) and Rick and Morty.
Other
Olley is married to Howard Gray, the British musician, music producer, composer, re-mixer and founder member of dance rock outfit Apollo 440.
Skin Two is a fetish magazine covering aspects of the worldwide fetish subculture. The name is a reference to fetish clothing as a "second skin".
Lee Alexander McQueen was a British fashion designer and couturier. He founded his own Alexander McQueen label in 1992, and was chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards, as well as the Council of Fashion Designers of America International Designer of the Year award in 2003. McQueen died by suicide in 2010 at the age of 40, at his home in Mayfair, London, shortly after the death of his mother.
Nicholas David Gordon Knight is a British fashion photographer and founder and director of SHOWstudio.com. He is an honorary professor at University of the Arts London and was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by the same university. He has produced books of his work including retrospectives Nicknight (1994) and Nick Knight (2009). In 2016, Knight's 1992 campaign photograph for fashion brand Jil Sander was sold by Phillips auction house at the record-breaking price of HKD 2,360,000.
Knockabout Comics is a UK publisher and distributor of underground and alternative books and comics. They have a long-standing relationship with underground comix pioneer Gilbert Shelton.
Michael "Atters" Attree is a British humourist and performer.
The Venus Award is a film award in the adult film industry presented yearly in Berlin since 1997 as part of the Venus Berlin trade fair, an international erotic trade festival, on the exhibition grounds at the Funkturm.
Tundra Publishing was a Northampton, Massachusetts-based comic book publisher founded by Kevin Eastman in 1990. The company was founded to provide a venue for adventurous, creator-owned work by talented cartoonists and illustrators. Its publications were noted in the trade for their high production values, including glossy paper stock, full-color printing, and square binding. Tundra was one of the earlier creator-owned companies, before the formation of Image Comics and Dark Horse Comics' Legends imprint.
Harry William Pye is a British artist, writer, and event organizer.
Peter Ashworth is an English photographer. Ashworth initially specialized in music photography, between 1979 and 2000. In the 1980s, he worked with many UK artists including The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, Soft Cell, Jimmy Page and The Associates.
Dian Hanson is an American magazine and book editor.
Molton Brown is a British fragrance brand founded in 1971 by Caroline Burstein and Michael Collis. The brand was conferred with a Royal Warrant for the supply of toiletries by appointment of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2012. The brand is a member of the Walpole body for promoting, protecting and developing British luxury.
Steven Cook is a British artist, photographer, and graphic designer.
Derek Ridgers is a British photographer known for his photography of music, film and club/street culture. He has photographed people including James Brown, the Spice Girls, Clint Eastwood and Johnny Depp, as well as politicians, gangsters, artists, writers, fashion designers and sports people. Ridgers has also photographed British social scenes such as skinhead, fetish, club, punk and New Romantic.
Anita De Bauch is the professional name used by an English model from London, England.
Lost Girls is a graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Melinda Gebbie, depicting the sexually explicit adventures of three female fictional characters of the late 19th and early 20th century: Alice from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Dorothy Gale from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Wendy Darling from J. M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy. They meet as adults in 1913 and describe and share some of their erotic adventures with each other.
Walter Robinson is an American painter, publisher, art curator and art writer, based in New York City. He has been called a Neo-pop painter, as well as a member of the 1980s The Pictures Generation. Robinson is the subject of the 632 page book A Kiss Before Dying: Walter Robinson – A Painter of Pictures and Arbiter of Critical Pleasures by Richard Milazzo published in 2021 with an Italian translation by Ginevra Quadrio Curzio.
John Higgs is an English writer, novelist, journalist and cultural historian. The work of Higgs has been published in the form of novels, biographies and works of cultural history.
Susannah Frankel is a British fashion journalist and writer who, since the 1980s, has worked with a number of newspapers and publications. She was the leading journalist chosen by the Fashion Museum, Bath, to choose the defining Dress of the Year of 1999. Since 2001, she has also written and co-written a number of books on fashion designers.
Alistair Fruish is an English filmmaker, writer and novelist, born in Northampton.
Voss is the seventeenth collection by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, made for the Spring/Summer 2001 season of his eponymous fashion house. The collection drew on imagery of madness and the natural world to explore ideas of bodily perfection, interrogating who and what was beautiful. Like many of McQueen's collections, Voss also served as a critique of the fashion industry, which McQueen was often ambivalent about. Voss featured a large number of showpiece designs, including dresses made with razor clam shells, an antique Japanese screen, taxidermied hawks, and microscope slides. The collection's palette mainly comprised muted tones; common design flourishes included faux-"Oriental" flourishes, surrealist elements, and ruffles.
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