Everything I learned about getting dressed, I learned from pop music. I grew up in the 80s, at the pinnacle of pop’s pomp and pageantry. It’s hard to imagine oneself back to those days, before “pop” became the pejorative term it is – shorthand for the interchangeably banal warbling that is a pretext for Saturday-night TV. In the 80s, pop was the main attraction – it was a genre so broad and vibrant, musically and aesthetically, a sparkling explosion of hooks and looks in the age of the music video, of unreality TV. Pop stars seemed to be from another planet and dressed to demonstrate as much. Madonna, Kate Bush, Talking Heads, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Queen, Michael Jackson, Culture Club, Wham!, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Grace Jones, Dexys, Prince… Top of the Pops was a heady brew of cool, brains, sex, cheek, flash and chic. And absolutely everyone watched it.
Pop taught children of my generation that music was about celebration, display and escape. I’ve been thinking about this recently, as I’ve been working on a BBC4 series called Oh You Pretty Things, which starts next week. It looks at the relationship between music, fashion and subcultures, and it’s made me nostalgic about the style of my childhood. Back then, if you couldn’t sing your way into the stratosphere, the next best option was dressing your way out of the ordinary. Growing up in northeast England – where the rich, collective fantasy life of Saturday night is an integral part of the culture – reinforced this message.
When I was 16, I formed a DIY band with my best friends. Although our music had roots in the underground, our aesthetic lessons were from recent childhood. We wore anything so long as it was loud – riotous animal print, flammable fabrics, colour, sparkle. Our small success led to great adventures. We travelled around the world in charity-shop clothes (I wore a child’s karate top, PVC miniskirt and pink heels for an entire year) and glitter make-up that – in the days before MAC reached “the regions” – we had to purchase from an actual clown shop.
Now I am old – in pop terms at least. Forty is in sight, but I’m already at the age when celebration is exchanged for concealment. What was once carefree now looks careless. Winching myself up to “passable” is evermore exhausting, especially as it is the 28th item on my to-do list every morning. I read about clothes for women my age and I am hounded by the word “appropriate”.
Dear God, here’s my fashion prayer: save me from “appropriate”. Save me from such parochial, small-minded neatness; from the quiet, simpering obedience that is everything tedious about being a lady. Spare me the spiritual torture of aspiring to dress like the quietly moneyed. Free me from the desire to earn the approving nod of people I don’t even like. When we are young and creative we’re expected to dress from the inside out. It’s understood that we’re making ourselves up as we go along – experimentation is a natural part of that. But later something changes. We’re expected to know who we are. We are suddenly required to dress from the outside in – to assemble a configuration of visual signposts that reflect the world around us and our place in it. How can I escape the dread pressures of middle age? Or the siren song that calls to me, entreating me not to bother – to let my aesthetic self atrophy along with my triceps?
I still think pop music has the answers. I recently saw Kate Bush perform “Before the Dawn”. Along with the transcendent music it was inspiring to see a woman in her 50s dressing as a means of artistic expression. Feathers, fringing, beads and silk in every shade of black. I watched her dance, thinking: I am not ready for a uniform, I am a work in progress. The dress code in hell is business-casual. I intend to be wearing the wrong shoes.
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