Three things with Paul Bui: ‘I lost it promptly that night at a rave, flinging my body around’
Paul Bui’s career spans fashion, music and community work. He has served as a creative director for style magazine The Face, edited Australian fashion bible Oyster Mag and recently founded Community Bread, a livestream platform that raises money for marginalised artists. Along the way, he has worked with stars such as Laverne Cox, Grimes, Charlotte Gainsbourg, John Waters and Hailey Bieber – and those are just the names he’s allowed to talk about.
Bui goes on a deep dive into his 20-year career in a short film that will air at Beautiful Freak in the Machine, a free event at the Powerhouse Museum on Thursday 2 June. For Bui, the thread connecting all elements of his work is storytelling – especially amplifying the voices of queer people of colour. That love goes back to his childhood in Canberra, where Bui would escape into the countercultural narratives created by an electronic music duo called Drexciya. Decades on, he counts a new graphic novel based on Drexciya’s music as one of his most prized possessions. Here, the creative director, now based in New York, tells us why he’d save that book in a fire, as well as the story of a few other important personal belongings.
What I’d save from my house in a fire
My Brooklyn apartment did catch on fire just before Covid spread in 2019. I had to act quickly at the time, so I ran out idiotically clutching a packet of cigarettes. The fire marshals were there within minutes and thankfully put the flames out. I’m very blessed I survived unscathed, and the only things I lost were replaceable material items, such as half my clothes and my bed. I was raised Buddhist, so practising detachment came relatively easy. If it happened again, I’d grab some of my treasured books instead of my Marlboro menthols.
One of my favourite books is Buffalo: The Life and Style of Ray Petri, which chronicles the work of stylist Ray Petri who ignited the “Buffalo” style revolution in the 80s. Buffalo was arguably an antithesis to the vapid and elitist style coming out during that time – super scrappy and DIY; a constant source of inspiration.
The other book I would grab is a graphic novel I bought recently called The Book of Drexciya. A Detroit outfit that pioneered the 808 analogue electro sound, Drexciya are one of my all-time favourites. Not just for their incredibly original music, which paved the way for so many electro artists today, but also for the entrancing narrative they created. Bear in mind, this is without any music videos – they wove an intricate tale of subterranean uprising simply through their music and cover artwork. As a queer Asian kid growing up in Canberra, Drexciya’s music and the story it told made me feel less othered and provided a much-needed escape from a rather white, heteronormative town. You can imagine my excitement when, in 2020, I learned that this book was being published.
My most useful object
I seem to accumulate a lot of un-useful objects – ornate, decorative items that serve no purpose. I’m an unashamed maximalist. Probably one of the most useful objects I own is a five-euro fanny pack (bum bag) I bought in Berlin from Alexanderplatz. An essential if you want to spend two days dancing at a rave (I often tuck a water bottle between the straps and my hip bone) or 12 hours on a photoshoot, where it can be a practical kit within a kit on set.
The item I most regret losing
I lose un-useful objects as quickly as I buy them. This includes a rare 1970s Balmain ring I bought from the Clignancourt markets in Paris. I lost it promptly that night at a rave, flinging my body around on the dancefloor. I’ve also lost countless designer clothes which I lent to revellers leaving my apartment from an afterparty to walk home in the cold – a YSL jacket, Berhnard Wilhelm sneakers, Comme cardigans; the list goes on.
The one thing I wish I kept, though, are clippings of my published articles from when I used to write for music street press as a teenager. Interviews I’d done with legends like Grandmaster Flash, Q*bert and Theo Parrish for music mags and a now defunct music website are sadly no longer accessible.
Similarly, I wish I’d kept copies of my work when I took a creative writing course in my final year at university. I recall writing a short story about a little boy growing up in 1950s Connecticut who gets caught playing dress ups in his mother’s clothes and is forced to undergo electroshock treatment. Then there was the screenplay I wrote about two hilarious rival drag queens, living in squalor and dying from a rare bone cancer. And I wish I still had a copy of the beat poetry anthology I wrote, mostly touching on themes of sexuality, race and body dysmorphia.
I’d probably cringe if I read these again, but it holds sentimental value to me – it was the first time I fully realised the power of storytelling. Perhaps in some ways, storytelling was a way for me to process my own traumas growing up, but I seemed especially drawn to the stories of those who have felt othered.
