Part Victorian pirate, part Latin American gigolo, with questionable facial hair, Kohl-ed eyes, Cuban heels, tiny flares and a permanently exposed hairy chest, the ‘look’ of the petite Prince Rogers Nelson, really, really shouldn’t have worked. But boy, it did .
I guess when you release that amount of musical talent and sex appeal into the world, you can pull off anything.
At the height of the 1980s, Prince was the pocket-rocket mega-star of the MTV generation. He was a heady cocktail of raw sex, ambition and unashamed glamour, perfectly shaken up for that glossy, visually hungry decade.
We were privileged being teenagers in the 1980s. At the forefront of commercial music, at a time when everything exciting came out of your TV, when a CD player was still a status symbol and a pair of earphones connected to a Discman was a semi-permanent extension of your head, we had Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince for heroes - a triumvirate of boundary-breaking, taboo-challenging, American artists who were changing and educating our generation through music, dance and image.
Prince was the most purposefully enigmatic of the three. In reality, far less complicated than Jackson (but we didn’t know that then), he encouraged the sense of mystery that surrounded him. “So much has been written about me and people never what’s right and what’s wrong,” he said in 2007. “I’d rather let them stay confused.” His ethnicity, his inspirations, his gender, even his age – he was somehow ageless – were all ambiguous, or fluid, as we’d say now. “If I gave you diamonds and pearls, would you be a happy boy or a girl?” he sang. He was label-less - a man whom for several years represented himself with the Love Sexy symbol, pre-dating the emoji by three decades.
He knew the value of ‘the look’, knew how much of our wiring is geared towards physicality and sexual attraction. He explored the idea of power through sexuality and the way a person presents themselves in public – particularly at night, on a dance floor (this was before all the night clubs closed down, kids). He conveyed the excitement of being watched on a sweaty dance floor, in your sexiest clothes, with your best: ‘…I saw u from across the room, Honey, u danced so hard I smelled your perfume’ (Girls & Boys).
All the women in his songs were goddesses and when he sang it was like he was talking to you –. ‘Closin' time, ugly lights, everybody's inspected, But U are a natural beauty unaffected’ (U Got The Look). He noticed the details, named a song after an accessory – ‘She wore a raspberry beret, the kind you find in a second hand store’ - many, many years ahead of the vintage trend.
He was no scruff, himself, of course. Although he did not experiment with persona to quite the same extent as Bowie, his image changed constantly and it was always faultless. His hair was coiffed to an inch of its life, as was his facial hair. He loved head-to-toe colour – from his signature royal purple, of course, to banana yellow. His silhouette was precise and perfectly completely bespoke to his small, lithe frame. He shared the jazz man’s love of a sharp suit.
Like Bowie and like the New Romantics he played with ideas of masculine and feminine in his dress – along with the heels, he wore jewellery, fancy hats, eye make-up. He was never afraid to get out his naked, lithe body or highlight his manliness in, say, a pair of hipster leggings (Justin Bieber, I dare you). That he looked desirable in a Lycra catsuit and a turban speaks volumes about his potency. He inspired hysteric admiration in men and women alike.
Prince’s sartorial motifs are legend - leopard print, paisley, necklaces, silk scarves, kick-flare trousers, frilly high necked shirts. But it was the style in which he wore them – the unflinching nature of his flamboyance – delivered via a highly commercial, mass market medium, that broke down the barriers. A look can be as stylish as you like, Prince taught us, but it’s nothing without attitude.
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