David Bowie has and will be a badass icon, a sensational dresser and fashion Rebel. He had balls of steel and confidence that worked to his advantage and helped him get the recognition he deserved. Bowie was like no other – breaking gender boundaries and rules fashion dictated at the time. Now you can be Bad like Bowie too! This is his story, what’s yours?
Table of Contents
‘Fashion’
In a very essential way, Mr. Bowie helped make fashion writ large — fashion the system, fashion the pop culture force — the ever-mutating megalith we know today. It’s why his effect is tremendously felt not just in men’s wear but in women’s wear, too; not just in ready-to-wear, but in couture; from high to low and back again.
“When I first started going to discos in New York in the early Seventies there was sort of a very high powered enthusiasm and it had a natural course about it, which seems now to have been replaced by an insidious grim determination to be fashionable, as though it’s actually a vocation.”
David Bowie
Dries Van Noten, who reworked recordings from “Heroes” as a soundtrack for his fall 2011 women’s wear show and the same season gave his men’s models ‘Ziggy Stardust hairdos’- the classic Bowie look.
Master Of Disguise
He was all about constant change, experimentation and was always one step ahead of time and trends. Why? Because he never followed the trends, he was the trendsetter after all. He was a hard one to catch up to. That was his appeal,” a master of Disguise”
He was about the power of the changing look: the in-today-out-tomorrow, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it opportunity to redefine the character that you are playing — on stage, in life, no matter — through what you wear. He embodied the conviction that there was value in constant reinvention, and his life and success was proof positive of his belief, not just for fans, but for the creative community that cared about clothes. Though performers and designers had flirted with transformation before, he codified the idea and made it a working principle.
CONTROVERSIES
Jean Paul Gaultier’s spring 2013 women’s wear collection, “Rock Stars,” when the designer showed a Bowie-esque asymmetric star-spangled net catsuit; sometimes covertly, as last season, when Haider Ackermann sent out sharp-shouldered button-down shirts with contrast collars on mulleted models, and Alessandro Michele at Gucci challenged gender conventions by putting men in floral suits with matching shirts — his effect is, in fact, much deeper, and more indelible, than any single look or shoulder style.
Lucky BlueSmith rocks the Bowie style contemporary jacket and pants in velvet also keeping a little edge with the grunge accessories.
Ziggy Stardust
Bowie, at this point in his life, was the ultimate Mod. With the right haircut, clothes and accent, Bowie had morphed himself into one of the most fashionable gentlemen within one of the most fashionable style groups of the 1960s. Pointed boots, ankle-length trousers and shirts with the top button done up were a regular for this dapper gentleman. Bowie was slick through and through – but never pretentious – and his 60s style will forever be one of his most influential style periods.
The release of Space Oddity saw Bowie start to experiment with his look, and to start using his alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, in a big way. The whole album was tribute to Bowie’s fictional character, Major Tom.
Eyeliner, skintight outfits and the iconic zigzag across his eye all became staples for Bowie. It was at this point that he well and truly secured his status as a full fashion icon. Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange was one of Bowie’s biggest influences, and it massively showed in his style
A Gentleman
Towards the end of the 70s and the start of the 80s, Bowie turned his style around to dressing like today’s definition of a gentleman, complete with three-piece suits, ties, shirts and dapper shoes. Gone (for now) were the days of skintight suits and silver, but make-up and wild hair (which at this point had been dyed a golden blonde) still remained a large part of Bowie’s persona.
The beauty of Bowie was the fact that he could merge so effortlessly between eras and styles without ever sacrificing any of his charm or personality. Even when he started wearing suits, so much of his character and charm still remained and he always, without a doubt, wore the clothes – the clothes never wore him.
Lucky BlueSmith rocks pinstriped suite, Bowie style making his fashion statement relevant and stylish even today and amongst the newer generation. A great respect for his creativity as an artist and a Fashion icon.
