Bowie Style

1.5
The Man Who Bought The Dress
Inside the grand Haddon Hall, 1970. Peter Noone’s Top Of
The Pops performance of ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ in 1971, with
David on piano, has been wiped by the BBC. Sadly, Bowie’s
stomp through ‘The Jean Genie’ the following year suffered the
same fate.
Between the mild-mannered faux-hippie pop star
of ‘Space Oddity’ and the full-on androgyne of Ziggy
Stardust, there was… that dress. Liz Hurley’s little
black number had nothing on Bowie’s fetching Mr.
Fish outfit – nothing apart from a few thousand acres
of newsprint, that is.
For someone who thrived on symbols and change,
the beginning of a new decade must have carried a
near-spiritual significance. Tradition weighed “like a
nightmare on the brains of the living”, wrote 19th
century longhair Karl Marx; now, as 1970 began,
Bowie saw the new decade as an opportunity to
level the playing-field. Somebody up there liked him,