A RUG RETHINK THAT SAID GOODBYE TO THE ’60s, RECOUNTED

“AS A STYLIST, you look at a face, and David’s was beautiful,” said Suzi Ronson. “Long slim neck, alabaster skin, perfect for short red hair.”

In January 1972, Ronson (then Suzanne Fussey) was a 21-year-old stylist at Evelyn Paget salon on Beckenham High Street, where one of her regulars was Peggy Jones, David Bowie’s mother. Through Peggy, Ronson met Bowie’s wife Angie, and was invited to Haddon Hall to give Bowie a tonsorial makeover.

The couple showed Ronson inspiration photos from Vogue, including one of model Christine Walton sporting a candy-red pixie – spiky front, comma sideburns.

“Can we do that?” Bowie asked. Half an hour later, the do was done. At least the first part of it. The still-blondish Bowie was captured in Brian Ward’s

cover photo on January 13. Meanwhile, Ronson experimented with colour on some of Bowie’s trimmed locks. She settled on Schwarzkopf’s Red Hot Red, “with 30 volume peroxide, to give it a bit of a kick.” And for fixative, she chose Gard, “an anti-dandruff treatment I’d used on the old girls at the salon – it set hair like stone.”

By the time Bowie started his UK tour at the end of the month, his hair was in full rooster glory. But it took some maintenance, which soon gave Ronson a ticket out of salon life and into Ziggy’s touring circus. “I knew if I created something that needed touching up every two or three weeks, I was in. I wanted to be on the bus, not waving at it.”