The clownish collective position themselves as knowing disrupters of the art and fashion worlds

The world record for largest clown boots was set at some point in the twentieth century by Coco the Clown, a harassed-looking figure with locks of red hair and a baggy checked suit who wore a mighty (and weighty) size 58. Born in Latvia, Coco, aka Nicolai Poliakoff, first ran away to join the circus when he was eight. Several decades later in 1929, he moved to the UK to appear in Bertram Mills’s circus, and soon became one of the nation’s best-loved clowns. (Poliakoff’s son Michael made clown history too, when he was hired by McDonald’s in 1966 to redesign its mascot, dressing Ronald in a yellow jumpsuit, ketchup wig and pair of huge, scarlet shoes.)

Coco was that most noble and melancholy subset of clowns: an Auguste. ‘Clumsy, incompetent and eager to do well,’ according to drama scholar Louise Peacock in Serious Play: Modern Clown Performance (2009), an Auguste could often be spotted by ‘clothing that does not fit, including trousers which are too long or too short, too tight or too baggy […] shoes or boots which are overly long.’ It was deliberate chaos in costume form, an attempt at gentlemanly elegance that always fell short. His very appearance was tragicomedy. ‘The Auguste tries to be smart,’ Peacock adds, ‘but fails.’

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