FEATURE:
Red Shoes, a White Dress and Anything in Between
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979
The Unique Style and Fashion of Kate Bush
___________
RIGHT from the first videos I saw…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed by Claude Vanheye in 1978
featuring Kate Bush, I knew she would strike me visually as much as she did musically! I am not a big fashion expert – most men aren’t -, but I wanted to talk about the unique looks of Kate Bush. It is testament to the strength and individuality of Bush that she was not led by the record label in terms of how she appeared for photos or what she was wearing for musical videos. There might have been suggestions here and there but, from the Wuthering Heights video in 1978 to the promotional images for 50 Words for Snow (released in 2011), Bush has very much called the shots. I am going to bring a few articles in that highlight the fashion of Kate Bush and, whilst I am not sure whether Bush ranks alongside the most stylish Pop artists ever (if you want to limit her music to Pop), I do find that she did not follow the herd. So many Pop artists through time have been dressed by a committee or seem to have a very limited palette and imagination. The first two videos I saw involving Kate Bush – that I saw in 1986/1987 – was Wuthering Heights, and Them Heavy People. There are two versions of Wuthering Heights: the U.K. version of the single where she wears a white dress, and the U.S. one where she is in a red dress.
Every year, Kate Bush fans gather and dance to Wuthering Heights whilst wearing red dresses and, though I prefer the British video and think fans should have adopted that, the fact that masses unite to recreate that video says as much about the striking look of the video in addition to the song. I also saw the video for Them Heavy People where Bush wears a fedora – again, my hat knowledge might be lacking -, and a purple skirt. If Wuthering Heights saw Bush as this almost-gothic, spectral figure looking ghostly, beautiful and elegant, Them Heavy People was a cooler look with a bit more edge. Just look at Bush’s videos, and her attire is as iconic as the songs; from Babooshka’s Jekyl and Hyde-like contrasts, to her robber’s outfit in There Goes a Tenner, to the jumpsuit look in The Big Sky, there was no limits to her imagination and guises! I will talk more about the Tour of Life in 1979 and her Before the Dawn residency in 2014 later, but these huge productions relied on so many different outfit changes – especially the Tour of Life! One might assume that, at the start of her career, Bush might stick with a rather simple and homely style, before changing things up as time elapsed. Even in 1978 and 1979, she could be seen in a variety of styles and clothes; from colourful jumpers and boots, through to robes, gowns and leather jackets.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in Italy in 1978
Kate Bush herself might say that this was her being natural and not wanting to repeat herself, but she definitely signalled herself out as a style icon from the start, and inspired a lot of artists since. One might also say that fellow heavyweights like Madonna was as chameleon-like and evolving, but Kate Bush has that extra spark and distinction – it is hard to put my finger on! Like rare alumni like David Bowie, Kate Bush created her own style world, and each album and single seemed to introduce a new persona and side to a true innovator. I want to introduce an article from Vogue in 2014, where we got to learn more about Bush’s ever-changing looks; how she remained distinct from her debut album through to the present day:
“Nobody is more excited about Bush's Before the Dawn concert series than fashion people. She hasn't performed live on stage since 1979, but few artists, reclusive or not, are played more often at runway shows. Alexander McQueen, Gucci, Chanel—if you've been there, you've heard the British singer-songwriter's idiosyncratic soprano voice and surreal lyrics. On the catwalks, being first is paramount, so repeat spins are rare, but DJs are willing to make an exception for Bush's songs.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Take "Wuthering Heights," the chart-topping debut single Bush wrote at 18 after she realized she shares a birthday with the novel's author, Emily Brontë—it soundtracked Thom Browne's Spring 2013 women's show and Isabel Marant's collection for Spring 2014. "I think there isn't a thing that girl didn't have," says Marant's musical director, Ariel Wizman, of Bush. "Beauty, talent, personality, spirituality, amazing singing and acting technique…no taste approximation, and a lot of what fashion is missing nowadays: a personal universe." What fashion and music are missing, Wizman seems to think: "You can win The Voice 10 times with vibratos, dramas, and makeup artists, but you will never be Kate Bush."
Frédéric Sanchez has played Bush's songs twice, once 20 years ago for the second Marc Jacobs show (Spring 1995)—"it was a cover of 'Wuthering Heights' by the L.A. punk band White Flag," he says—and the second time for Miu Miu (Fall 2011), when he did a soundtrack of Bush songs, including "The Infant Kiss," "Breathing," "Hammer Horror," and "In Search of Peter Pan." "Without listening, you can already feel the poetic and inspiring side of her music in those titles," he says. Equal to her poetry are the pictures her words paint. Fashion is a visual business, and insiders old enough to remember her early concerts or curious enough to have sought out her videos on YouTube will be familiar with her theatrical performance style. (The shearling-lined, over-the-knee boots she wore in the 1978 picture we found weren't bad, either.) "Like David Bowie," Sanchez adds, "she belongs to a world of artists where you immediately get the 'sound and vision'".
Though Bush adopted multiple attire, I think, at its heart, her look was defined by something true to her; she never sought to dress like Pop artists of the day. There was an honest to her style but, alongside this, she threw in twists and combinations that made her videos and photoshoots so fascinating and timeless. Her 1979 Tour of Life was Bush performing tracks from her first two albums and, for each number, there was something different in terms of her appearance.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
I want to source from an article that celebrates a few of Bush’s best looks; I have selected a passage relating to the Tour of Life, and her off-stage/set style by 1985:
“The Tour of Life, in 1979, was Kate Bush’s first and only concert tour. A spectacular of the highest caliber, the show featured song, dance, mime, poetry readings and a magic show. Unprecedented in the grandeur of its production, Kate’s singular tour has become the benchmark for performing artists from Florence Welch to Björk. It also spawned the invention of the wireless microphone, which was later made famous by Britney Spears and is standard for modern pop stars. Did we mention that the show featured 17 costume changes? Across the 24-song setlist Kate becomes a magician, a butterfly, a cowboy... the list goes on. Here, at the Amsterdam show, she wears one of her many glittered leotards and a pair of very 80s leg warmers.
While Kate’s on-stage outfits were notoriously eccentric, her off-stage looks represented a more low-key, albeit equally idiosyncratic, side of the singer. In the studio, she frequently wore brightly-colored kimono tops with jeans. To and from airports, she wore oversized blazers and her beloved red knee-high boots. During interviews she was photographed in patterned jumpers -- very British. She often integrated dancewear -- leotards and satin leggings -- into her day-to-day outfits, perhaps by pairing a bodysuit and electric blue trousers with simple white trainers. Here, Kate wears her preferred bohemian-esque look: a dainty puff sleeve top with a long, patterned skirt”.
I can appreciate how Bush’s songs are often not directly about her so, in videos, she is almost being somebody different, so it is natural her outfits would be quite varied. If many of her contemporaries in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s were being inspired by the high street or what was deemed fashionable at the time, Bush’s aesthetic was more varied: from the pages of literature and genius artistic canvases, to something more homegrown and comfortable. Her videos, as I have intimated, are wildly different and one can see a vastly different-looking Kate Bush in the video for Suspended in Gaffa (1982) as, say, Eat the Music (1993). Of course, one cannot mention Bush’s visual aesthetic without referencing her natural beauty and sex appeal – something many reviewers and press sources focused on through her career. Her stunning beauty, teamed with incredible style and allied to a keen eye for the visual meant that, from the first days of her career, one could not peg and easily define Kate Bush. In this 2017 feature from the Glasgow University Magazine, it was argued how Bush was a style icon who was more forward-thinking (or backward-thinking in a way?!) than many of her musician peers:
“Nobody ever perfected the feminine as ethereal quite like Kate Bush. An influence on innumerable modern pop stars and style icons – Florence + the Machine, Bat for Lashes, Bjork and St Vincent, to name but a few, Bush is an icon of music, style, and feminism all at once. Incorporating costume wholeheartedly into her music videos and performances, she used her attire as an equal arm of her unbounded creativity as any other artistic medium. Her iconic, enormous wavy brown hair and angelic Wuthering Heights white dress cemented her place in pop culture iconography, and informed my relationship to femininity and performance more than any other artist.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
At a time when fashion tended overwhelmingly towards the forward-looking, the shiny, futuristic fabrics, the business-influenced party power-dressing, the big skirts and sleeves and hair and a vision of the future from the 50s, Bush took a softer, more nostalgic, more quietly theatrical view; borrowing from Pre-Raphaelite painting, Japanese art history and textiles, and the culture of mine and contemporary dance from which she rose, Bush’s look – like her sound – operated in its own imaginative sphere. Her countless bodysuits and leotards spoke of a practical, dance school mentality; the idea of wearing the easiest outfits to perform in, to allow for movement, to dance and fly and fully express yourself, can be seen in the classic bodysuits and worshipping of good basics of the recently-passed American Apparel. Bush approached fashion from an artist’s sensibility and with the eye of a costume designer; her commitment was, first and foremost, to character, to performance and to creative freedom”.
Look at this article from The Guardian, and a selection of Bush’s looks are laid out. From body stockings and something free-flowing and eye-catching that pre-dated Florence and the Machine by decades; to a red-white-blue/jeans-and-boots combination, one can see why Bush has been so influential to artists looking to establish themselves in terms of style as much as the music – from Tori Amos, and Bat for Lashes, through to Grimes, and St. Vincent, so many artists we know today can trace a lot of their visual essence back to Kate Bush.
I am going to write a separate piece regarding Kate Bush and her legacy closer to her birthday on 30th July, but I have a few more articles I want to source from as, through the years, so many inches of screen and page have been shored up to emphasise the beguiling and inspiring sides of Kate Bush’s fashion. AnOther saluted Bush in 2017, and they also mentioned her individuality and how, when she could have been led by labels and trends, she was very much keen to retain her own sense of style and what felt right to her – often with extraordinary results:
“Bush’s appreciation for dramatic flair where her music was concerned spilled over into her sartorial choices, often to stunning results. Far from existing as separate entities, Bush’s musical and sartorial experimentation were in constant conversation, resulting in the creation of her very own visual universe. Her striking features paired with her pre-Raphaelite curls served as the template to an ever-shifting array of eclectic looks: she never shied away from bold colours (think blood reds and electric blues), extreme silhouettes (she frequently donned kimonos and gender-bending pantsuits), and a healthy dose of pure theatricality. It’s not hard to see why designers – from the late Alexander McQueen to Gucci – have frequently turned to Bush for inspiration over the past few decades, whether by setting their runway shows to her music or by referencing her surreally romantic ethos in their collections”.
As Hounds of Love approaches thirty-five in September, we can look at the album’s songs and see how they have fared through the years. We can also look at the videos for the singles, and see how Bush changed from the previous decade. In a decade that is not associated with great fashion and subtle clothing, Bush managed to be bold without being garish and naff. She looked positively classy and sublime in the video for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), and her various costumes for The Big Sky were awesome – where she was a pirate one moment and she indulged in some light falconry the next (and she rocked every look!). Even when people’s hair was at its most tragic and sky-scraping, Bush managed to look dignified, cool and restrained. Which decade was her best in terms of the looks and video aesthetic? I still have a very soft spot for the 1970s myself. It was the contrast and the clashes that made Bush such an enigma – though someone who could inspire others with her accessibility and grounded nature. This article from The Telegraph talks of the (many) shades of Kate Bush:
“That was Bush all over: part Stanislavsky, part sex-kitten with an approach to make-up that was more school of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane than Bobbi Brown. And the hair - a leonine fusion of Body Shop henna and static crinkles (no John Frieda Frizz Ease back then. I know. How ever did we cope?) it was punk meets the Pre-Raphaelites. I don't think any of us had ever seen anything quite like it.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Best of all, you could do it all yourself, sort of, at no cost. Dunk tresses into sink of something orange, twist hair into hundreds of plaits over night, smoosh a lot of blue shadow in the vicinity of your eyes and voila: Kate Bush - ish.
There were other components, but then again, too few to mention, although the ivory, floaty Cathy-dress she wore in the video for Wuthering Heights was /is a classic piece of loveliness. Great sleeves too, especially when she gets to the mimey-hand stuff part and it all goes a bit Tales of the Unexpected.
But like all the female style goddesses of that time, Bush was not put on this planet to sign lucrative deals with the mega-brands. I can't even recall whether she ever flaunted a designer bag. Probably not. That's why we loved her. That and the songs. She was, at the time, a one-off, albeit much copied, traduced and palely imitated in the three decades since her astonishing debut. Let's not forget she was 13 - 13! - when she wrote the beautiful Man With the Child in His Eyes”.
If you want a sense of the variety of looks Bush adopted through the 1970s and 1980s, this article is handy but, to me, I felt she was sporting some incredible choices in the 1990s around the time of The Red Shoes.
One can see elements of massive music style icons like David Bowie, Madonna and Deborah Harry in musicians. I think a lot of the most influential style icons – from Lady Gaga to Kylie Minogue – can trace their roots to Kate Bush. Not only has Kate Bush’s styles and fashion infiltrated musicians today, but one can see it at big festivals. Coachella founder Paul Tollett tried to book Bush to play in 2017, but many were not sure whether Bush would translate or know who she was – she only got proper recognition in the U.S. after Hounds of Love’s release, and is perhaps not as played and known there as she should be. This Vogue article underpins how Bush’s music videos rubbed off on artists who followed which, in turn, has made its voice known at festivals like Coachella:
“Tollett’s response is not only off base considering the countless acts that Bush has influenced (her dramatic sound reverberates through the music of Florence Welch and Lady Gaga, to name two major artists), but it also fails to recognize the profound influence that Bush’s iconic videos have had on modern style—and in particular, the carefree looks that flood the Coachella Valley each spring. While Bush responded to the slight by saying that she had no intention of playing the event (no surprise there, as Bush has never played in the U.S. and her recent high-profile series of shows in the U.K. were her first in 35 years), her romantic, dramatic approach to dressing would fit right in among the festival’s fashionable set.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Anwar Hussein/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Knowingly or not, many festival-goers have been reinterpreting Bush’s quintessential looks for years, whether through romantic, ’70s-inspired lace numbers or satiny ballerina dresses. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it would appear that the Coachella crowd would be honored to see Bush on stage. Well, there’s always next year”.
There is proof that Bush was stylish even from childhood, and it is interesting to see where that flair might have come from. She was raised in an artistic household, but one that was middle-classed and nestled in the idyllic Wickham Farm on Wickham Street in Welling, Kent. Maybe it was the music she listened to and was inspired by when growing up – David Bowie, Captain Beefheart and Elton John were all the mix -, that fused into her subconscious; perhaps it was a sense of rebellion or need to be different to her friends. I would also urge people to buy the photo book, Kate: Inside the Rainbow, from her brother John Carder Bush, as it boasts a collection of stunning photos covering Bush’s childhood to 2011; there are some stunning shots/outfits on display! Whether Bush was sporting some knee-length boots or blue spandex, there is just something completely natural and ‘her’. I will wrap this up in a minute, but from modern female Pop artists to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, Kate Bush has inspired and changed lives.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2011
Her music and talent is all a part of that, but I think her incredible fashion sense – that was at once otherworldly and intimate the next – and visual element is just as important. Liz Eggleston, in 2008 explained why Kate Bush was such a fashion icon:
“Her wild auburn hair was similarly bohemian, always curly or crimped, and has remained her trademark look to this day. Her expressive, open features were enhanced with heavy eye and lip make-up, there was no following the only-emphasise-one-feature rule for our Ms. Bush! She almost defies explanation. Most men I know positively glaze over with lust if you simply mention her name, and there’s definitely a lesson to be learned about subtle seduction in your appearance. And she’s still a very hot lady, without having resorted to botox and facelifts. Personally, this year Kate Bush has emerged as my main squeeze style icon and will remain so for a long while yet”.
From those famous dresses in the Wuthering Heights videos to her Tour of Life extravaganza, all the way through to the promotional images for her last studio album, 50 Words for Snow, Kate Bush has had an enormous impact in terms of her sartorial brilliance. As we look ahead to the possibility (we hope) or another album, in terms of the promotional shots and videos, it is curious to think…
WHAT will come next.