Remembering Prince, fashion icon, a decade after his passing.
When it came to fashion, Prince truly gave it his all. Purple was his color of choice, and his personal favorite eras of reference spanned all the way from the Victorian times to the opulent 1980s. Think: pink feather boas, sequin blazers, lace leg-of-mutton sleeves, renaissance-worthy jabots and devoré fringe shawls. Black and white polka dot suits and leopard print guitar straps were his defining accessories, alongside curations of jumbled pendant necklaces and chunky little heels. He was a maximalist long before the term was ever ascribed to a way of dressing.
The Minneapolis-born Prince Roger Nelson had the kind of legacy career artists dream of, despite his untimely passing in 2016. He signed to Warner Bros. Records at the age of 18, in 1976 and first gained wider fame in the late 1970s. He released 39 albums during his lifetime, and sold more than 100 million records worldwide. Even in his early days as a performer he dressed over-the-top.
The building blocks of Prince’s style were tight body-skimming pants, topless jumpsuits and button-down shirts open and tied low below the navel at a time when gender-bending fashion was just taking shape onstage. He took a little bit from the icons who came before him–David Bowie, James Brown, Michael Jackson, Liberace, Little Richard–but made his aesthetic firmly his own through loud colors, a dedication to flamboyant textures and hypnotizing, mesmerizing style that captivated generations.
Prince reportedly designed his own outfits and had them custom made by seamstresses. He also stayed in character; dressing in his stagewear anywhere we went. And interestingly, given his deliberate fashion direction for his own self, his band and all of his albums, there is very little documented about the actual process. He was known to have kept binders full of sketches from his tailors, constantly coming up with outfit ideas for himself and his bandmates. According to Vogue, he’d throw out a brief and sketches with fabric swatches would be delivered and he’d then respond with feedback via sticky notes. He usually never did fittings–his team of tailors worked with a full-scale mannequin of Prince instead.
Prince’s team of tailors were mostly from Minneapolis, typically culled from the theater costume community. Jim Sherrin was the tailor who worked with Prince in the early ’80s, dreaming up little skinny suits. Helen Hiatt is another tailor who worked on Purple Rain and Sign o’ the Times as well as Lovesexy and Graffiti Bridge. Louis Wells and longtime collaborators Vaughn Terry and costume designer Marie France also worked on Purple Rain.
Stacia Lang began designing from Prince in 1990. “He was constantly generating ideas—middle of the night, middle of the tour—and doodling and sketching for every aspect of his creative life,” she once said. Debbie McGuan joined the tailoring team in 1993, working under directions like “listen to this song and sketch what you think it looks like”. Prince would tear reference images out of magazines as inspiration for upcoming looks. Lori Marcuz and Cathy Robinson, of Call and Response, designed jackets, shirts, and vests for Prince from 2011 until his death in 2016. They too never did a fitting, and studied his style from Youtube videos, referencing artists like Jimi Hendrix to create looks that defied eras. Los Angeles tailor Arturo Padilla made Prince’s iconic loungewear.
Unlike many other mainstream artists at the time, Prince didn’t work with big designer names but Versace was one exception. He was a friend of the house, first starring in a Versace campaign lensed by Richard Avedon in 1996. He’d later perform at the label’s afterparty in 2007 and for the Versace x H&M collaboration bash in 2011. “He showed to men what playing with your own image really meant,” Donatella told Vogue in 2018. “He showed men how to dare and, most importantly, to not be afraid to be who they are. He ignored rules, he did what made him feel good without caring of people’s judgment. I am so proud to have called him a friend.” She added, “He didn’t just influence my work, he epitomized what Versace stands for. Creative, fierce, daring, extraordinary . . . He created an aura of uniqueness around himself that very few artists in history have been able to do. He was not afraid to show who he truly was, and that’s a lesson also my brother Gianni taught me.” The relationship extended to his closet: he had some Versace and a little bit of Balmain in his personal wardrobe, according to archivists.
He was never afraid to shock. For his second album, Prince wore a tiny pair of black briefs and nothing else. For the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, he donned a bright yellow cut-out suit, fully revealing his butt. Stacia Lang created the look and shared only years later that what looked like skin was actually dyed illusion marquisette to create a surreally shocking effect. “There was a lot of buzz backstage,” she said. “George Michael was talking. I think so was Cindy Crawford. It was crazy because people just couldn’t believe that that happened.”
Prince’s love of frilly ruffled shirts and purple knew no bounds. Once the 2000s rolled around, he transformed his aesthetic with streamlined zoot suits in turquoise and mandarin orange. His style was transformative and constantly changing. But we know this: every era of Prince was iconic. Today, Prince’s fashion archive is housed in the now-public museum Paisley Park, a 65,000-square-foot estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota, once owned by the artist. He is one of those rare fashion icons that was so incredibly genuine and authentic. A decade after his passing, it’s still impossible not to notice his forever influence on the runways and in today’s pop stars. Prince was unidentifiable, a fashion enigma that broke boundaries, mystified and enchanted beyond the realm of sameness.
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