FEATURE:
A Primadonna in Red Shoes
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed in London, 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Why a Kate Bush Exhibition Is Long Overdue
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I might have covered this off….
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush signing copies of The Dreaming in London on 14th September, 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pete Still
a year or two ago but, in any case, it is worth revising and updating. I recently posted a feature where I theorised how marvellous it would be to have photographers Guido Harari, Gered Mankowitz and John Carder Bush get together and discuss and dissect photos of Kate Bush they have taken through the years. I posted it to social media and Guido Harari said it would be a great idea and hopes it will happen. It would be wonderful to see! There has not been, to my knowledge, a photo exhibition for Kate Bush. There have been photobooks from the three photographers I have mentioned but I am not sure whether they have opened a gallery for people to see. In any case, there has not been a larger exhibition in London with images of Kate Bush from her childhood through to 2011. She may see it as exposing (not pun intended!) or too personal. However, as these photos have been shared, seen and many are available online, so having the public pay to see them should not cause a moral or personal crisis or conundrum. Whether it would purely be photographic or fashion-based I am not sure. I have been thinking about the various iconic looks from Kate Bush through the years and how artists like David Bowie have been the subject of exhibitions. This exhibition at the V&A. Album artwork, photographs and memorabilia. I would love to see an exhibition that included some Kate Bush fashion. The problem might be that the original garments are not available. From photoshoots through to public appearances, Kate Bush has sported some incredible looks. Whether it is the more down-to-earth fashion she wore at East Wickham Farm (her family home) and in 1978 or some of the more elegant or stylish photoshoots from that time, she kept consistently fashionable, innovative and relatable through the years. Her videos and their aesthetics are hugely important too.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush washing up at her family's home in East Wickham on 26th September, 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
One of my favourite moments of Kate Bush fashion is when she was signing copies of The Dreaming in London on 14th September, 1982. You can buy a replica of that T-shirt here. I am not sure which year of her career is the standout in terms of fashion. Many would have their own opinions. I personally love 1978 and 1989. Photos taken by photographers like Gered Mankowitz and Guido Harari. Some incredible photos like with Claude Vanheye. His 1979 photo session with Kate Bush was scheduled for thirty minutes, but she sent away her entourage and stayed for six hours, with props like a fake dolphin and dresses by Fong Leng. Bush staying fashionable and distinct during the 1980s. A decade not perhaps known for its reputable and cool fashion! Even if at times her music seemed out of step with the times, too dense and lacking commercial prowess, the same could not said of Bush’s style and designs. From what she wore through to album covers and promotional images, this is an artist who has not been discussed enough in terms of her fashion and design abilities. Not only recording the music but collaborating with photographers to create these timeless images. It is one of those gaps in the Kate Bush cannon that I think could be filled and should. Kate Bush is now more than ever receptive to a new generation and open to the idea of new music and possibilities. She has reissued her own albums so I don’t feel she would veto the idea of an exhibition. Maybe at the South Bank Centre. It would be amazing to have this retrospective. Not only to show what an icon Bush is but to showcase her amazing videos and covers. Right up to date with the sketches for the Little Shrew (Snowflake) video.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the Tour of Life in Hammersmith, May 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Max Browne
Costumes worn during 1979’s The Tour of Life. Set designs and memorabilia from 2014’s Before the Dawn. Her album covers dissected and explored. Photoshoots around the album and this interactive aspect to the exhibition. Like with David Bowie, Prince or other artists who have had their clothing and music displayed for the public, it would be incredible. To be fair, Kate Bush has been covered when it comes to portraying her as a fashion icon. Articles like this from Sloane Street that tells us how to get the Kate Bush look. There is this feature that discussed the various periods of her careers and the colour palettes and aesthetics of her looks. How they changed through the years. This article highlights seven iconic Kate Bush looks, including her performing in Amsterdam in 1979 for The Tour of Life. With seventeen costume changes, there are many stunning fashion choices to spotlight. I wonder whether Kate Bush photographed with Claude Vanheye when she performed in Amsterdam during the tour. Check out this feature that gives us some iconic Kate Bush looks. Most from her early career. People tend to ignore the wonderful photos and outfits from 1989’s The Sensual World right through to 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. There are a couple of Vogue features dedicated to Kate Bush’s best looks. One here and another. Whilst there are articles that focus on her changing and always-amazing fashion choices, nothing has been mounted in a gallery or museum. That is just the tip of the iceberg! In terms of the visual side of Kate Bush, very little has been done. You feel this has to change. In 2022, DAZED celebrated Kate Bush returning to the charts after the Stranger Things effect. They heralded a ‘bizarro style icon’ whose eclectic looks through the years have had a lasting influence and legacy:
“Nearly 40 years after it was first released, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” has become the hottest song of the summer. Playing a prominent role in the dark new series of Stranger Things, the offbeat ballad has become a global hit, as endless streams by a new generation of Bush fans propelled it to the top of the UK charts. First appearing on Bush’s 1985 album Hounds of Love, the track is a rallying cry for extreme empathy that explores what could be achieved if two lovers swapped places to understand one another better – themes which feel just as timely and pertinent as they did back then.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the cover shoot for 1985’s Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Despite her fame, Kate Bush has managed that rare thing as a mainstream musician – retaining a cult-like aura that still makes listeners feel like insiders sharing a secret. To those in the know, this appreciation extends far beyond the music. A great foreshadower of the slick pop package expected today, Bush’s work has always been led by an understanding that a great singer uses all her available tools. From taking lessons with David Bowie’s dance teacher Lindsay Kemp to devising music videos that cover every genre from sci-fi to macabre fairytale, Bush’s vision was, and is, multi-faceted. Clothes have played an integral part in this creative odyssey, cementing Bush as an idiosyncratic fashion icon in the process.
Here, we look back at the way the musician has utilised fashion throughout her career, and her subsequent influence on the way we dress.
KATE’S KEY LOOKS
Let’s reverse to the beginning. Bush burst into the limelight in 1978 with her debut album The Kick Inside. She was just 19. The lead single “Wuthering Heights” remains one of her best known to this day, its high-pitched, broken-hearted register still a favourite among brave karaoke-goers. Two separate music videos released to accompany the Emily Brontë-inspired track featured Bush fluttering around a field and a stage in flowing gowns: one red, one white. Often, this is the Kate Bush we still imagine, all big hair and ethereal seventies regalia.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Claude Vanheye
Away from her videos, Bush was frequently pictured wearing rustic knits, silk blouses, waistcoats, colourful tights, thigh high-boots, and a further succession of diaphanous dresses. Her style suggested not only hippyish ease but a particularly English kind of eclecticism: all thin fabrics and big woolly socks. She wasn’t afraid of high fashion drama either. A series of photos of her taken in the late ‘70s by Claude Vanheye see her in various jewel-coloured Fong Leng pieces, with one ritzy yellow number worn to walk a leashed crocodile.
The needs of dance also influenced Bush’s love of glittery bodysuits and tight lycra – all the better to move in. Her 1979 show The Tour of Life was a heavily costumed affair, featuring outfits including a magician’s top hat and tails, a veil, wings, leotards, and WWII army attire. Always ahead of the game, she was also the first singer to perform with a wireless microphone headset, her stage sound engineer Martin Fisher devising it from a coat hanger.
During those early years, Bush was prodigious. The Kick Inside and Lionheart were both released in 1978, Never Forever came in 1980 (featuring a brilliant futuristic look complete with chainmail bikini for “Babooshka”), and The Dreaming in 1982. The latter, which marked her most experimental work to date, received lukewarm reception but has since been recognised as a classic. Bush then stormed back onto the charts in 1985 with Hounds of Love.
Forever a shapeshifter, across the course of the album’s music videos and shoots Bush fashioned herself into a small boy complete with knitted jerkin for “Cloudbusting”, an overcoat-clad dancer for “Hounds of Love”, and an Ophelia-style figure in a life jacket framed by flowers for the album’s B-side telling the story of a slowly drowning woman. For “Running Up That Hill” she opted for grey leotards and hakama – draped Japanese trousers – ideal for the video’s soft purple light as she and fellow dancer Michael Hervieu (dressed identically) grappled together in a series of motions that rolled between intimacy and distance.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for the 1981 single., Sat in Your Lap
A LASTING INFLUENCE
To some degree, it’s hard to write about Kate Bush’s ‘style’, because so much of it exists in service to her music. Take her 1993 album The Red Shoes. There it’s all about the scarlet ballet slippers, used to reference Powell & Pressberger’s 1948 film of the same name – itself nodding to Hans Christian Andersen’s gruesome tale of a girl cursed to dance forever. For Bush, clothing is both kinetic and character-forming. It frees or accentuates the body. It allows the wearer to play role after role. Often, her vision has extended beyond the merely human. In her promotional images you can find her dressed as both a bat and a lion.
This exhilarating malleability has made the singer a firm favourite in the fashion world. Designers including Kim Jones, Phoebe Philo, Clare Waight Keller, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Luella Bartley, and Craig Green have lined up to declare their love for the grand witch-queen of pop. The latter recently described his first encounter with her work aged 13 to AnOther, saying “I was spending a lot of time alone in my bedroom, working, and I started listening to her over and over… I love that she can find music in anything – from mother-and-son love, to pigeons and snowflakes.”
There is a narrative that exists in the fashion world – that of the slightly awkward kid who spends their adolescence sketching in their room and grows up to create clothing that fulfils their hunger for beauty and fantasy. No wonder Bush appeals to that cohort. It’s one of the reasons why she’s so beloved. Yes, there’s the emotional precision of her lyrics and the expansive reach of her sounds. Yes, there’s that fantastic willingness to be intelligent and daring and strange. But there’s also an implicit suggestion about the galloping power of the imagination, particularly when combined with an outsider-ish sensibility that leaves you dreaming about literary ghosts or the merits of the mathematical symbol Pi.
That’s why her fashion choices are so memorable too. It’s not just their ethereality or eccentricity, but the stories they tell. Designers love to throw around vague statements about creativity, but in someone like Kate Bush you see the full force of an active, searching mind – and an understanding of what the dressing up box can do. Really, it’s a very simple fashion philosophy. To become someone new, all you need is a costume change”.
Now more than ever, Kate Bush is reaching people. Not only would an exhibition emphasise her incredible fashion and role as a genuine style icon. It would also make people more aware of her music. Going deeper. Whether it is Kate Bush in a T-shirt signing The Dreaming in 1982, wearing red shoes in 1993 for the film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve, or some amazing shots with Trevor Leighton in 2005, this is someone who is always pioneering and distinct! Next year, there is definite opportunity for some new celebration of Kate Bush. An exhibition would bring in fans from all over the world. Making it multimedia, interactive and truly career-spanning. I hope that one day this idea…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for Eat the Music in 1993
WILL become a reality.