STYLE ICON
Exhibits at the David Bowie Exhibition in Berlin in 2014
Bowie Is”, in 2013, was always going to be another Bowie hit. Thousands were happy to queue. This extraordinary exhibition reminded visitors of the theatricality of his vision and the sartorial splendour of his suiting in bolts of electrifying colour from Mediterranean Blue, to Arctic Snow to Jaffa Orange. Plus, his romancing the stridency of eternal mono or indispensable duo chrome. Always combined with strato-
spheric changes in hairstyle, Bowie could create new visions, be it in a sharp Tuxedo and trilby or pictured lying on a bathroom floor. Remember how loquacious a silent suit could be when looking at the cover of the 1969 album The Lodger. There is something marvellously menacing and venially vunerable
about this image –
even if, musically, the record does not contain the best of Bowie’s brilliance. As a
teenager, it
terrified-delighted me – I wanted to be there and I wanted to run a million miles away! As far as Savile Row is concerned,
Bowie favoured among so many tailors, a work of genius. Tommy Nutter with his elegant and, to some, mildly eccentric, and others, clever and playful, take on suiting. Bowie also supported Ozwald Boateng and there is a wonderful image of Bowie in a softly draped suit in canary yellow with a pair of what must be tailor’s shears in his hands. So it is no surprise that he was also a fan of the rigorous and demanding tailoring of Alexander McQueen who trained on Savile Row. If one thinks about a suit as
“Bowie favoured among so many tailors of Savile Row, a work of genius – Tommy Nutter with his elegant and, to some mildly eccentric and others clever and playful, take on suiting”
an element of essential dress for a campaign of some sort, then one really understands its huge importance. A last image of David Bowie shows him with the urban grittiness of a grille behind him – sporting a somewhat, for him, anonymous suit. But a suit it is. And in the ever-changing world of fashion the suit, as Bowie knew, is always an ally of sublime confidence. Q
SAVILE ROW STYLE MAGAZINE
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