Category Archives: stage costumes

2023 ➤ 80,000 items of Bowie baggage find final resting place in the Olympic Park

Posted on 23 Feb 2023 | Leave a comment

Bowie, David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts, V&A East Storehouse, , archive, David Bowie

Into the archive: 1978 self-portrait sketched and signed by Bowie (detail)

❚ AT THE DAVID BOWIE CENTRE for the Study of Performing Arts fans will soon be able to get up-close to Bowie’s creative genius like never before. From 2025 the Victoria & Albert Museum’s East Storehouse in London’s Olympic Park will house more than 80,000 items amassed during the six decades of the performer’s pioneering career. His archive will be made available to the public, from fans to school children and researchers, thanks to the David Bowie Estate and a donation of £10m from the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group.

The archive features handwritten lyrics, letters, sheet music, original costumes, fashion, photography, film, music videos, set designs, Bowie’s own instruments, album artwork and awards. It also includes more intimate writings, thought processes and unrealised projects, the majority of which have never been seen in public before.

V&A East Storehouse will be a new type of museum experience taking visitors behind the scenes of the stored collections. The new Centre will also support the ongoing conservation, research and study of the archive.

Bowie, David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts, V&A East Storehouse, archive,

Into the archive: notes for Bowie lyrics created by the Burroughs “cut-up” technique

Highlights include stage costumes such as Bowie’s breakthrough Ziggy Stardust ensembles designed by Freddie Burretti (1972), Kansai Yamamoto’s flamboyant creations for the Aladdin Sane tour (1973) and the Union Jack coat designed by Bowie and Alexander McQueen for the Earthling album cover (1997). The archive also includes handwritten lyrics for songs including Fame (1975), “Heroes” (1977) and Ashes to Ashes (1980), as well as examples of the “cut-up” method of generating lyrics introduced to Bowie by the writer William Burroughs. Additionally, the archive holds a series of intimate notebooks from every era of Bowie’s life up to his death in 2016.

Tilda Swinton, one of David Bowie’s friends and collaborators, said: “In 2013, the V&A’s David Bowie Is… exhibition gave us unquestionable evidence that Bowie is a spectacular example of an artist who not only made unique and phenomenal work, but who has an influence and inspiration far beyond that work itself. Ten years later, the regenerative nature of his spirit grows ever further in popular resonance down through younger generations.”

Bowie, David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts, V&A East Storehouse, costumes, archive,

Into the archive: stage costumes from every decade of Bowie’s career

➢ Read further detail at the official David Bowie website

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2022 ➤ Out of chaos comes forth Grace Jones

Posted on 20 Jun 2022 | Leave a comment

Grace Jones, Meltdown, Royal Festival Hall

Grace Jones’s finale at Meltdown: 20ft above the stage in Keith Haring printed dress

■ WHAT AN O-T-T SPECTACLE Grace Jones made of her finale last night as the annual Meltdown Festival’s curator over ten days at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Backed by an eight-piece band (which includes her son Paolo), plus a magical accordionist during Libertango, Grace’s own set reached back through her entire catalogue of reggae, dub, soul, new wave, pop and disco. As her supporting act, the evening had showcased the black British singer and percussionist Eska (who Radio 6’s Gilles Petersen has called “one of the most important singers in the UK”).

Grace as Meltdown logo

Grace was on-stage for 1h45m while she changed costumes for virtually every number and was visibly fortifying herself during the changes with red wine, an apparent spliff and who knows what else. Let’s face it, at 74 years old, this was a helluva lot of stage minutes to cavort through in her uniquely burlesque style without break!

The show opened to reveal her singing the trip-hop This Is, mounted like a mannequin atop a massive 20ft “dress” bearing a Keith Haring print and wafting as if animated within by vigorous dancing feet. The witty chaos that followed didn’t falter, and never overshadowed the music.

Click any pic below to enlarge all in a slideshow

Grace 2022: surfing through Pull Up To the Bumper. (Live pix Shapersofthe80s)

Meltdown, Royal Festival Hall, Eska Mtungwazi,

Meltdown: Eska Mtungwazi as powerful support. (Photo Victor Frankowski)

Grace 2022: Love is the Drug

Grace 2022: hula-hooping through Slave to the Rhythm

Grace 2022: fortifying herself with red wine

Telling us “I feel like the wicked witch,” Grace proceeded to destroy two sets of side drums, spin her famous hula-hoop throughout Slave to the Rhythm while tweaking her bare nipples, surf her way up through the stalls during Pull Up To the Bumper buoyed by an eager audience, then returning to the stage to fight her own full-on Hurricane from a wind machine, the whole time proffering her sensually painted torso to us, led by a curiously masculine bulge over the crotch of her black corset. All of which exhausted many among the sell-out standing audience across the generations who had to sit down at frequent intervals to recover their wits.

Grace’s legendary creative chaos endured to the end: the band had taken their bows and exited past the scheduled finish time, when Grace lit a cigarette and told us “I can sing a cappella” only to linger alone to give us La Vie En Rose. Then, er, that done, she walked off. Here’s to Grace’s 75th!

Grace Jones at Meltdown: backed by her eight-piece band

➢ Read Andy Polaris’s expert review of Grace’s triumphant return to the London stage – at his blog Apolarisview

➢ Previously at Shapers of the 80s:
2011, Mother of all disco divas Grace fans her hurricane

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2020 ➤ Farewell Daniella, the girl who inspired Ziggy’s fiery hair

Posted on 18 Nov 2020 | 1 comment

Daniella Parmar, stylistic inspiration for Bowie. . . She became part of David’s 1971 entourage and is seen here with him during one of his rare visits to the Blitz Club in late ’79. David wears a Modern Classics jumpsuit by Willy Brown, as featured on the cover of his Feb ’80 single Alabama Song, which had as its B-side an acoustic version of Space Oddity recorded in Dec ’79. Choreographer and co-director of Bowie concerts, Toni Basil, was also sitting to David’s left. (Photo: Robert Rosen)

❚ THE TEENAGED GIRL who inspired David Bowie to give Ziggy Stardust livid red hair died this month from cancer at her home in Worthing. Daniella Parmar belonged to the circle of “piss-elegant champagne-drinking” young night-owls who Bowie met with his wife Angie at London’s Sombrero nightclub in 1971. During this Hunky Dory period he was wearing the Mr Fish man-dress and had long cascades of blond hair.

The pals included “fun-loving glamour girl” Wendy Kirby and her flatmate Freddie Burretti (Bowie’s handsome costume designer, who went on to create Ziggy’s exotic and sexual one-piece outfits). Daniella was of Indian extraction and noted for her emphatic eye make-up and top-to-toe style with special focus on her hair – in 2002 Bowie confirmed that its constantly changing colour had convinced him “of the importance of a synthetic hair colour for Ziggy”.

Wendy says: “We were the ‘young dudes’ who shaved off our eyebrows just for camp, because you could paint them on higher up — that gave us a strange unearthly look which David adopted. He was always open to suggestions and went through our wardrobes like a magpie!”

Melody Maker Awards, October 1973: Daniella Parmar with Freddie Burretti, who collected the award for Bowie. (Photo: Kevin Cann collection)

The Ziggy Stardust tour was already on the road when Bowie decided on the dramatic change of hairstyle. On 17 March 1972 they were to play at the Town Hall in Birmingham when a photographer called Mick Rock turned up to interview Bowie. They hit it off so well he soon became his official photographer. Kevin Cann’s seminal account of Bowie’s early life, Any Day Now, recalls that crucial day. . .

“ For the show his hair has been dyed light red and styled by Suzi Fussey, but David tells Rock he is going to make his hair ‘even redder’. Swayed by his Sombrero friend Daniella’s use of different hair dyes, not long after the Birmingham performance David shows Fussey the exact tone he desires in a photograph of model Marie Helvin in a recent fashion magazine. Fussey applies a bright red colour-fast dye and spikes the crown with Guard, a strong setting lotion. The Ziggy hairstyle is born. ”

Daniella became an intimate member of the Bowie household, playing nanny to their son Zowie, and shared the Bowies’ last Christmas party in Britain before they departed for the USA in March 1974.

One of Daniella’s last public outings was in 2015 at the premiere of Lee Scriven’s film titled Starman: Freddie Burretti – The Man Who Sewed The World. She died a fortnight ago on 3 November and friends report that the funeral chapel was decorated with pictures of her with David.