DAVID BOWIE: Space clobber and eyeshadow added to unique style

Whether it was a skin-tight catsuit and a face full of make-up or a dapper jacket and neatly combed hair, David Bowie pulled off a wide variation of looks during his six-decade career.

He admitted having been “really into clothes” as a teen, and the love of fashion featured throughout his musical exploits.

Aged 15, Bowie had been fascinated by a fellow passenger on the train who he described as managing to look tough while wearing eyeshadow.

“And the jarringness of it was really weird. I thought, I like that — I feel that, not one thing or the other,” he told Interview magazine in 1990.

His famous Ziggy Stardust character, based on the rocker Vince Taylor, was always supposed to be centred on clothes, he said.

The first name referred not only to his friend and collaborator, garage rock star Iggy Pop, but also to a tailor’s shop he passed once.

He told Q magazine in the same year: “I thought, well, this whole thing is gonna be about clothes, so it was my own little joke calling him Ziggy.”

Perhaps in tribute to his love of style he released a single entitled ‘Fashion’ in 1980, reaching number five in the charts.

A master of reinvention, he transformed himself from the theatrical Ziggy to a glam rocker, soul singer, and hippie songwriter over the years, as well as appearing in costume in films such as Labyrinth and The Last Temptation of Christ.

His lasting influence on both music and fashion was clear to see when he was given a Brit award two years ago, accepted on his behalf by supermodel Kate Moss, who wore one of his Ziggy Stardust stage outfits from 1972.

The ‘David Bowie Is’ exhibition, which achieved the highest ever advance booking for an exhibition when it opened in London in March 2013, is running at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands.

Featuring original costumes including a spacesuit-style jumpsuit he wore on television in 1979 in character as Major Tom, the exhibition looks at how Bowie’s work both influenced and was influenced by fashion and design.

On its opening one of the curators, Victoria Broackes, described Bowie as a pioneer.

Ms Broackes said: “He’s a pioneer not just in music but also in stage shows, in what he wears, he’s always been personally and actively involved in everything that he creates.”