By Isabella Lipuma
As we mourn the London-born David Bowie, we recall a myriad of radicalizing pop music spanning five decades, celestial alter egos such as the beloved Ziggy Stardust and The Thin White Duke and a sense of fabulously unisex fashion. Bowie was more than just a singer. He will be remembered for eclectic hits such as “Space Oddity,” “Little China Girl,” “The Man Who Sold The World,” “Lazarus” and “Let’s Dance,” but was also the androgynous pioneer to the fashion world who inspired artists for labels including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Dior and Dries Van Noten.
Bowie was arguably the first celebrity to do away with gender binary fashion, donning himself with lightning bolts of blue and red face paint, plasticine creepers, white zoot suits and flaming onesies opposed to the mod suits and “mop-tops” popularized in the mid-60s. There was never anything consistent or predictable about Bowie’s fashion. Not only was he a perpetually enthusiastic singer, but he was a performer in every sense of the word.
Four years after an American astronaut landed on the moon, the world was introduced to a new kind of astronaut: Ziggy Stardust, Bowie’s glamorously gender-denying alter ego. The Starman set the world on fire with a fire engine red mullet (later to be adopted by singers including Cherie Currie of The Runaways) and outfits including gender-bending platform creepers, high-heeled boots, sequined suits and cardigans. Not to be forgotten was the blue and red lightning bolt that slashed over his right eye and divided his face into a 20th century diptych. Formed from rice powder, colored creams from Indi and Elizabeth Arden’s glossy Eight Hour Cream, the 1973 Aladdin Sane album cover was a perfect example of a new kind of “coming out.”
In the early 70s, the eccentric astronaut revealed his true colors in fringed white silk kimonos, super wide legged pants that were more evocative of a Frank Stella painting than the wears of a pop artist and the iconic blue flaming suit complete with asymmetrical shoulders and red and yellow satin flames rising from his nether-regions. Bowie was arguably the first major icon to do away with gender norms and archetypal notions of capital F “Fashion” by always dressing fabulously.
And yet Bowie could also do the heterosexual male thing — it is at this conjecture that we recall the Thin White Duke, the alter ego that accompanied Bowie’s 1976 album Station to Station. It was with this dashingly shadowy cabaret character that Bowie played “Aryan superman” by critiquing Hitler and fascism in streamlined silhouettes composed of white button downs and unbuttoned vests. The Thin White Duke was a far cry from the outlandish and glittery Ziggy Stardust, the cocaine-fueled, angst-ridden skeleton who appealed more to a dystopian crowd.
So when we recall Bowie, with tears in our eyes, we recall not only the man who sold the world with countless hits, but rather a kind of multi-faceted shapeshifter who influenced music and the apex of style and identity. A quick glance into Bowie’s lopsided irises can only remind us of the many dualisms between man and machine that the Starman exposed to us. In a current fashion climate where style means to take on an archetype (i.e. “normcore,” “babygirl,” “prepster”), we can draw inspiration from a man who defied everything — and succeeded.
