LONDON — Joe Casely-Hayford, who came to the fore in Eighties London and was known for his sleek, sculptural tailored clothing and professional rigor, died on Thursday at age 62 from cancer, according to a spokesman for his brand.
A Briton of Ghanaian descent, Casely-Hayford launched his first eponymous label in 1984, a time when the likes of John Galliano, BodyMap and Richmond/Cornejo were shaking up the city’s fashion scene. It was a time of fashion iconoclasm during the cutbacks and labor strife of the Margaret Thatcher era and Casely-Hayford was among those designers who put London back on the fashion map after years of gentrified doldrums as the city teemed with New Romantics, Goths and the Buffalo Gang — and long before the likes of Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan and Julien Macdonald arrived on the scene.
Casely-Hayford dressed bands and musicians including U2, Betty Boo, Lou Reed and The Clash in his leather creations and tailored clothing and proved prescient on the sustainability front, too, spinning a bulk buy of World War Two army tents into a collection of safari-inspired clothes for one of his very early collections. A soft-spoken, polite and friendly man with a ramrod straight posture, the designer
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