Analyzing David Bowie’s Style Evolution

Fashion: it’s loud and tasteless, as David Bowie sang it in his classic song on that subject. Yet it’s still fun to look at and talk about, particularly when the subject is Bowie. Although the legendary singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist is far from being a fashion victim or follower. The definition of “fashion” is “a prevailing custom or style of dress, etiquette, socializing, etc.” and Bowie has never seemed to care much about the “prevailing custom” of anything at all. He blazes his own path, musically and visually; he doesn’t follow what others have done.

Today, Bowie releases his latest album, ★, (pronounced “Blackstar”), which—no hyperbole—is one of his weirdest albums yet, and once again, he sounds and looks amazing. So, we decided to reminisce on some of his many fascinating looks through the years.

On the album cover of 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World, a longhaired Bowie lay on a couch wearing a gown. The album wasn’t a hit, and the cover probably didn’t help matters much: but a number of artists didn’t mind Bowie’s cross dressing, including Kurt Cobain

, who’d later wear dresses on stage… and cover the album’s title track.

On The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Bowie changed his look radically, he was now sporting a spiky bright orange mullet, and during that era, he wore a series of glammy, androgynous, sci-fi

inspired outfits which often entailed platform boots. It wasn’t the denim and leather, or the hippie garb, that many associated with rock and roll. But it was a new era, and Bowie was heralding it. And lots of guys took notice: soon “men’s men” like the New York Dolls and KISS would be using variations of Bowie’s Ziggy-era look.

The look Bowie sported on the cover of Aladdin Sane was a continuation of the prior year’s Ziggy imagery, but with less clothes. And with that makeup. Simple but distinct, it’s probably Bowie’s single most identifiable look. And the one most people want to imitate, as you’ll find if you google “david bowie aladdin sane makeup.”

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Bowie taught us early on not to expect him to repeat himself either musically or visually. So with everyone getting used to his androgynous glam look and guitar-based rock, he decided to suit up and start playing soul music

with Young Americans. But he still looked weird; it was as if a tailor forced Ziggy Stardust to get a haircut and dress like a grown up. But it was still different, and showed that he was willing to evolve in a way that many of this peers, and followers, wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. But it was during this era—which sported his biggest pop hits to date—that notified everyone that you couldn’t box him in or bind him to his past.

Station to Station gave us a new Bowie persona, “The Thin White Duke.” He was still dapperly dressed as he was on Young Americans, but this was a much more avant-garde affair musically, and his look was much more conservative: black suit, white shirt, and his hair slicked back. It was as if he was telling us not to worry about his appearance, just listen to the mind-blowing music he was making.

Leaving the past behind has often been a theme of Bowie’s work, and that was the case on the classic “Ashes to Ashes” from 1980’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). “Ashes to Ashes” name dropped some of Bowie’s greatest works from “Space Oddity” (“Major Tom’s a junkie”) to Low. Visually, he dressed as a mime in part of the video, nodding back to his era in the ’60s when he studied mime and theater. Very few people, by the way, look cool as a mime, but Bowie is one of the few who can pull it off.

It was four years between Scary Monsters and Let’s Dance, which seemed like an insanely long time back then (little did we know that Bowie would go a decade between records years later). And the Bowie who returned to us in 1983 seemed to have little to do with the guy from “Ashes to Ashes.” And for once, he seemed to be thinking about the prevailing trend in the music industry, namely MTV. Now, he was relying on his good looks for his visual identity (his hair: naturally blonde. His skin: surprisingly tan in the “Let’s Dance” video). Over a decade into the game, he became an icon to a younger audience who knew little of his past. His look and sound worked: more than just a “comeback” album, Let’s Dance is the best selling LP of his career.

Even David Bowie isn’t perfect. After all, he agreed to be the human star in a puppet-heavy George Lucas/Jim Henson film

, Labyrinth. It just didn’t work. He sported a hairstyle only Tina Turner could have pulled off. We’re including this look, though, as a reminder that nobody’s infallible, not even David Bowie. But hey, at least his embarrassing look was part of a GEORGE LUCAS/JIM HENSON film. What’s your excuse for those parachute pants you wore in the ’80s?

By the end of the ’80s, Bowie was ready to hit the “reset” button. Following Let’s Dance, there were two more albums that went further into adult contemporary territory that even Bowie didn’t seem interested in. And of course, there was Labyrinth. So he made some truly unexpected moves: abandoning his solo career (temporarily), he formed a band called Tin Machine. Not only that, he let his facial hair grow into stubble, which sometimes seemed kind of like a beard. Tin Machine’s music was hard, guitar music, and it came just a few years before Nirvana would lead an “alt-rock” explosion. Tin Machine’s early look was as striking as its sound: all the members wore black suits and ties with white shirts. Many Bowie fans were confused by the whole thing, but the man himself credits this era with rebooting him as an artist.

After the dissolution of Tin Machine, Bowie returned to his solo career; with 1995’s Outside and 1997’s Earthling, he adopted a very electronic sound and sported a spiky hairstyle. The cover of 1999’s ‘Hours…’ announced another rebirth, with a longer-haired Bowie holding a seemingly-dead spiky-haired doppelgänger. One of Bowie’s performances to promote the album was on VH1’s Storytellers, where he showed up with relaxed longish hair, and an oversized hoodie. Somehow, the idea that David Bowie had a hoodie was shocking. But in ’99, Bowie seemed to be in an artistic and personal place where he felt he had nothing to prove and he could just make the music, and wear the clothes, that he was comfortable in. For most 50-something artists, that’d be boring, but for Bowie it somehow seemed fascinating.

Bowie followed ‘Hours…’ pretty quickly with Heathen in 2002 and Reality in 2003, and toured for both albums. And then: a decade long hiatus. He surprised the world by re-emerging in 2013 with The Next Day and today, he returns after a scant three years with ★. Clearly, he no longer cares about catering to whatever is “commercial” in 2016. Today is his 69th birthday, and the pop charts are younger than ever. So, he used a character instead of a word to title his album, his first single is ten minutes long and, as was the case with The Next Day, he appears to be doing no interviews, appearances or performances to promote the album. In the ★ video, he wears an understated black jacket and slacks and a grey shirt; sort of like apocalyptic causal Friday wear. Maybe, not his most exciting look, but damn, he looks cool in it. As he does in almost anything. Except when he hangs out with puppets. Bowie’s approaching the big seven-oh, and we can’t wait to hear what he’ll do—and see what he’ll wear—next.

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