‘I look this way because of Bowie’

The moment I saw him I wanted Ziggy’s hairstyle, writes a star-struck BOY GEORGE... It’s just a shame I asked my aunt to cut it for me!

Iwas introduced to Bowie through my elder brother Richard’s record collection. I snatched every opportunity I could to hear his music – even listening through his bedroom door when he was playing his albums. But nothing could have prepared me for seeing Bowie in the flesh. I was just 11 years old and it was in concert in London, and after that experience, everything changed.

Bowie’s look wasn’t camp. That’s what people often get wrong. He looked alien, he looked ‘other’ but he wasn’t beautiful. Even when he wore make-up and white kneehigh boots he looked like a man. I remember so clearly those outfits – the kimono and the boots, the swimsuit with the rings around his legs. I hadn’t seen anything like that before. Even from my rubbish seat he looked amazing.

I watched footage from the gig recently and the stage set was very plain – red lights, a drum set with the lightning flash on it – but there he was. He looked so theatrical, so larger than life.

There was no one like Bowie – his make-up, his clothes, his presence. He introduced me to so much – Dylan, Lou Reed, Klaus Nomi – so many things I would never have known about if I hadn’t been a fan. Everything he did was so new and so different.

One of his strengths musically and visually was that he was a magpie. His talent was to take the best and strongest things around him and throw them into the mix and create something unique.

He emboldened me. He gave me the strength to look different. I immediately asked my auntie Jan to give me a Ziggy haircut. It didn’t work, I came off more like Dave Hill from Slade. I remember starting to borrow clothes from family members and throwing things together. Around this time you would see other kids starting to experiment with what they were wearing. Especially if you went to hang out by his house in Beckenham in London, which I would do regularly. These girls and boys who looked just like Angie and David. It made me shrink a little bit and I thought: ‘I must try harder.’

When I went back to school I would wear drainpipe trousers and plastic sandals – things that were very different to what everyone else was in – and it all stemmed from Bowie. They thought I was wearing my grandad’s clothes and bullied me for it. I had grown up being constantly told by those around me that I was different – even before I knew it myself – and those words always had the power to hurt.

But Bowie gave me permission to be me. He validated me, he allowed me to be different and to embrace that difference. I had been made to feel like an outsider from a very early age and seeing Bowie made me realise that, actually, I wasn’t alone.

He was always changing how he looked.

I like all of his looks but if I had to pick one it would be the Station

To Station era and the Thin White Duke look. It was so strong.

I even liked the pale, blue pastel suits he was wearing in the Eighties. I remember seeing him in one at Sydney Airport around 1983. He looked immaculate and even though I was famous then I couldn’t approach him.

I tried to get him to model for me once. I’m really into photography and sent him a picture I had taken of Amanda Lepore, who is this exotic, transgender artist, to impress him and he remarked how striking she looked. I pointed out to him that he was responsible for her. That when we put the musical Taboo on in New York, we had signs everywhere backstage that said: ‘It’s all Bowie’s fault.’ That’s his legacy.

We are all his children.