Bowie's dress
He pulled it off with epic style.
Alex Q. Arbuckle
April 20, 1971
In 1971, a photographer for the Daily Mirror visited musician David Bowie at his home in Haddon Hall, an English Edwardian mansion that had been converted to apartments.Bowie greeted the photographer in a floral-patterned dress created by celebrity designer Michael Fish, who was responsible for many of the flamboyant fashions of the 1960s. He wore the dress on the cover art of the British release of The Man Who Sold the World, his third studio album, which was written and rehearsed at Haddon Hall.Bowie is famous for constantly reinventing his style and persona, and the dress was a piece of his burgeoning exploration of androgyny and sexual ambiguity. He wore the dress to many of his press engagements while promoting the new album. Many approved — Rolling Stone’s John Mendelsohn described him as “ravishing” — while critics reacted with derision, mockery or hostility at Bowie's untraditional approach.
In Texas, one guy pulled a gun and called me a fag. But I thought the dress looked beautiful. - David Bowie
I reinvented my image so many times that I'm in denial that I was originally an overweight Korean woman. - David Bowie
The mildly provocative dress was a mere prelude to Bowie’s appearance on the BBC’s Top of the Pops on July 5, 1972, when he performed “Starman” to an audience of millions. He had dressed as his Ziggy Stardust alter ego in a skin-tight bodysuit, with heavy makeup and flaming red hair. Bowie draping his arm around guitarist Mick Ronson invited plenty of speculation.Though his toying with gender and dress was arguably calculated to garner fame, Bowie’s antics did help pave the way for acceptance of a wider variety of sexualities and gender identities in pop music.
