Over the course of Bowie's lifetime he formed a number of close working partnerships with other creatives – Brian Eno, Alexander McQueen and Kansai Yamamoto. However, it was his work in the early 1970s with Freddie Burretti, a young fashion student and tailor, that created some of his most iconic sartorial looks. Their relationship was incredibly close both professionally and personally. In 1974, Bowie described Burretti has having a "sort of telepathy…Freddie comes across as a really tolerant and talented guy".
Bowie first met Burretti in the late 1960s, when Burretti was working for a Greek tailor on the Kings Road, London. A chance meeting with Bowie and his then-wife Angie Bowie in the El Sombrero gay club quickly led to a close relationship with both the couple and the Haddon Hall set – the groups of young friends who partied and socialised in the Haddon Hall villas of Beckenham, South London. Burretti and Bowie began to collaborate on both musical and fashion projects together, including the ill-fated Arnold Corns band, but it was in fashion design that their relationship was the most fruitful, with Burretti designing many of the earliest and most recognisable Ziggy Stardust outfits worn both on and off stage.
I wanted to take the hardness and violence of those Clockwork Orange outfits – the trousers tucked into big boots and the codpiece things – and soften them up using the most ridiculous fabrics. It was a Dada thing – this extreme ultraviolence in Liberty fabrics.
Many audiences’ first impression of the Starman was his iconic Top of the Pops performance in July 1972, which saw Bowie and the Spiders from Mars band performing in matching zip-jacket and tight trouser combinations in bright colours and fabrics. Burretti designed the outfits worn by the whole band, inspired by the aggressive suits worn by the Droogs in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, released the previous year. However, the use of luxurious fabrics purchased from Liberty, a high-end department store in London, by Burretti and Angie Bowie subverted the violence of the Droog look, with Bowie’s orange and blue quilted suit becoming a particular favourite of his to perform in as Ziggy Stardust. Burretti produced a number of suits in this quilted style for the Ziggy era, with only three surviving Bowie’s rigorous touring schedule; perhaps the most famous is the green and white version worn on the cover of the Ziggy Stardust album, the material for which Bowie sourced from a stall at a Cypriot street market.
Such stories highlight the collaborative process through which Burretti and Bowie created the ‘Starman’ style, and the wide range of influences drawn upon to create the visual language of the Ziggy Stardust era. Burretti was involved in every step of Bowie’s creative process, often purchasing clothing on behalf of the singer, including a purple quilted jacket from Bus Stop on Kensington Church Street which would serve as a template for the quilted suits worn on stage. He would also often arrive at studio shoots in advance, helping photographers to set up and acting as a stand-in model to ensure that the shoot lighting was perfect prior to Bowie’s arrival.
Indeed, the creation of the Ziggy aesthetic for both band and tour was also intensely collaborative. Trevor Bolder, bassist for the Spiders, spoke of how David would make the band regularly visit Haddon Hall, where a group of seamstresses (led by Burretti) would work on the overall look for the Ziggy Stardust tour. Bowie famously proclaimed that he wanted the music to ‘look like it sounded’, and so the band began to grow their hair long and experimented with eye makeup. During this period, Burretti worked closely with his girlfriend and muse Daniella Parmar, who helped to source fabric from Indian markets in South London, and whose fantastic peroxide hair perhaps inspired Bowie to adopt the infamous red Ziggy mullet look.
Perhaps the most striking look created by Freddie Burretti for Bowie was the iconic teal suit for the 1973 Life on Mars? music video. The silhouette is distinctively feminine, with a wide lapel, sharp, exaggerated shoulder and narrow waist, with the strong shoulder line a particular signature of Burretti’s tailoring and one which was common across suits he created for Bowie throughout the 1970s. Burretti often styled his creations off contemporary womenswear (the Bowie Archive includes a number of Burretti’s pattern books for women’s clothing), and the Life on Mars? suit was inspired by the 1971 Yves Saint Laurent haute couture collection Libération, which included padded shoulders and heavy makeup, evoking the fashions of Nazi-occupied 1940s Paris. Indeed, the garish blue eyeshadow worn by Bowie in the Mars video is reminiscent of these looks. The suit has remained an iconic visual shorthand for Bowie and his artistry – Kate Moss was photographed wearing elements of the suit for British Vogue in 2003, whilst Mattel produced a 'Bowie Barbie' wearing it in 2022.
Burretti continued to work with Bowie throughout the Ziggy Stardust and Diamond Dogs live tours until the mid-1970s, when their relationship abruptly ended and Burretti suddenly left London. Much of his later life is a mystery – he was reportedly sighted in Israel in the late 70s, and seemingly worked in Paris for the latter years of his life, where he passed away in 2001.
The Bowie Archive holds tantalising glimpses of the 'what-ifs' of the Bowie-Burretti relationship – along with several pattern books with personal notes by the designer, there are a number of unfinished garments from the Ziggy Stardust era. These include a particularly glamorous midnight blue and silver lamé jacket with striking padded shoulders, a purple and blue quilted cape, and a vibrant pink tunic pinned with Burretti’s to-do list written on paper monogrammed with Bowie’s management company. Previously unseen, these designs highlight the sheer number of garments produced by Burretti for Bowie, as well as revealing the possibilities of the Ziggy Stardust image.
Find out more about the David Bowie Centre – the permanent home for David Bowie’s archive, and a bookable creative workspace.
