Penny for Rod’s thoughts by Simon Mills
What was Rod thinking?
Oh, Rod. You plonker. You only went and let your missus get you ready, didn’t you? You asked Penny (Lancaster, aka Mrs Rod Stewart) to help you select a get-up for a lunch date at The Ritz in Paris and she got you all gussied up like a lottery-winning dinner lady on her way to an Andrew Lloyd Webber matinee. A national newspaper cruelly suggested the “Maggie May” rocker might have been channelling Mrs Doubtfire.
What was Rod wearing exactly? And more the point, what was he thinking? A forensic, head to toe examination of the clotted cream nightmare reveals an off-white shearling bomber jacket, a chunky cable-knit Aran roll-neck, greige drainpipe jeans and matching leather ath-luxe trainers. Accessories include a Mulberry handbag (clearly one of Penny’s), a bizarrely incongruous black rosary and a full head of frosty highlighted hair that may have been the work of a village salon trying to achieve a Princess Di blow wave.
Individually, each item is OK. The winter cream palette is on-trend. The jacket is very Gunter Sachs, Gstaad lothario glam, the shoes are contemporary Parisian homme branché. But put together? Worn as an ensemble? As one’s wife might? Non. Jamais.
The overall effect on the peacocking, arse-wiggling dandy they used to call Rod the Mod is, frankly, emasculating. Rod has always been in touch with his feminine side, but affecting the high street stylings of a blowsy, Swiss soccer mom is not where men’s fashion (or dignity) is heading right now.
Penny will have, no doubt, advised, gently curated and enthusiastically approved the combination in the walk-in wardrobes of the marital hotel suite. (“You look great darlin’!” “You sure, Pen?
Are you sure this handbag and sweater don’t make me look like that Nolan Sister on the Loose Women panel… or a tranny Emma Thompson?” But really, Rod should have shown his wife exactly who wears the designer trousers in the relationship. He should have 86’ed the handbag, ditched the crucifix, swapped the trousers for a darker shade and then had a serious look in the mirror before strolling out in that Dorothy Perkins jumper.
How did this surrender to his better half’s tastes develop? In truth, Rod’s penchant for gender fluidity, at least in his wardrobe, has been going on as long as there have been ladies in his life. And there have been a lot of ladies. Through the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, Rod dated (or married) variously, Dee Harrington (model), Kimberley Conrad
(Playboy model), Teri Copley (model/actress), Vicki-Lee Valentino (model), Helen Fairbrother (model), Michelle Johnson (actress), Susan George (actress), Caprice Bourret (model), Alana Hamilton (actress/ model), Kelly Emberg (model), Kelly LeBrock (model/actress), Kara Meyers (model), Rachel Hunter (model)… before finally settling down with Penny Lancaster (model).
Throughout this purple period, Rod always preferred women’s company, spending hours and hours with his conquests and lovers, mostly in five-star accommodation, making experimental explorations of their wardrobes. Marcy Hanson (model/actress), whom Rod dated in 1977, remembers how Stewart would put on her underwear “and run up and down the hotel corridors in it”. Rod also spent two years with Britt Ekland, the Swedish model-turned Bond girl who liked to put makeup on him (“thick black rings around my eyes. I looked like a tart”) and dress up in comically his ’n’ hers ballet outfits compete with over the knee socks and white leotards. “Every man should have a Rudolf Nureyev period,” said Rod.
Back when he was in his lithe and priapic twenties this must have been great fun, but now that Rod is a grown man, he appears to have traded free spirited cross-dressing for the asexual duds of erstwhile breakfast TV presenter Anne Diamond. So where did Rod go wrong?
Our wives and girlfriends, they do things differently when it comes to clobber. We need and value their advice and wisdom on pretty much everything — except our clothes. Given the chance, they’ll dress us up like famous men who have been dressed up by their wives and girlfriends.
Why? The Wag’s tendency is to go with the vagaries and colourways of fashion. They’re into the newest tones, the latest “it” bags and the hoiked or dropped skirt length. We are more about the rebooting of classics; the subtle nuances, semantics and details of just four or five basic items. You can’t really apply one model to the other. Just as you can’t simply shrink and pink men’s clothes for the female market, you can’t retro-fit a female sensibility to men’s clothing.
There’s a tactical element at play also. When a woman styles up her man in comfy, feminised, asexual garb like Rod’s big jumper, she is administering a sartorial gelding, a public de-rock ’n’ rollisation wrapped up in a poncy sheepskin jacket. Those immaculately matching trousers and sneakers send out a message to other women that says “he may once have been an international swordsman, but now he’s off the market.”