Style lessons we can all learn from Elton John
At the end of the fabulous Elton John fantasy musical extravaganza, Rocketman, it is revealed that while Sir Elton may have been sober for almost 29 years, his off-thescale shopping habit is still gloriously intact, a fact that is illustrated by a portrait of the nation’s most treasured shopaholic surrounded by Gucci bags. This is the same man, lest we forget, who once racked up floristry bills of £293,000 over 20 months.
Now, of course, I am not going to tell you to go forth and shop to your heart’s content à la Elton (wouldn’t that be nice?), but the pure exuberance and razzle dazzle of the Rocketman wardrobe is a joy to behold for so many reasons.
To set the scene: the film is blingified courtesy of around a million Swarovski crystals, deployed across 64 looks created by costume designer Julian Day for the film’s star Taron Egerton, ranging from a recreation of the time Sir Elton became Queen Elizabeth I, complete with a twinkling headdress inspired by one Swarovski made for Hedy Lamarr’s 1941 turn in Ziegfeld Girls to a tomato red devil get-up adorned with heart-shaped wings and 60,000 hand-embellished gems.
I saw Rocketman on Tuesday evening, ahead of hosting a Q&A with Day at the V&A on Wednesday. My first thought was: madcap sunglasses will be having a moment this summer. My second thought was: this is just the celebration of maximalism we need right now. My third: well, until that lovely cut to Sir Elton looking delighted with his latest designer haul, the fashion seemed to be as caught up in his tortured trajectory as drink and drugs.
“I don’t know him or want to talk for him but I feel there was a sort of protection for him [in costume],” Day told me. “I read recently that he said that 20 minutes before a performance he puts on his clothes to become Sir Elton John, I think that clothing can mean so many things to so many different people and I think in a certain way it’s almost like a shield.”
Shields don’t come more snazzy than 18-inch mohawk wigs, befeathered epaulettes, staremblazoned jackets, crystal scattered baseball tracksuits and an apparently
limitless collection of blingtastic glasses. “How does Reggie from Pinner get to be a songman?” comes the plea from a young Reginald Dwight sometime early in proceedings. The answer is to change his name and, therefore, his identity. It’s no mistake then, that as Reggie morphs into Elton Hercules John, it’s not just the name that changes but the levels of maximalism, which until this point have been mostly limited to Reggie’s mum Sheila’s lipstick.
Day told me that he was granted access to Sir Elton’s personal clothing archives during his research and they sound like the most beguiling treasure trove – among its loot is 10,000 ties and two vast rails of Versace dressing gowns. Those famous glasses, however, have their own separate storage facility, naturally.
In an interview with V last year to celebrate his partnership with Gucci on the costumes for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, Sir Elton admitted that his beloved specs offered a mask for his “extreme shyness”. He added that he has “never, ever been a minimalist or a beige kind of guy”. So glad he clarified that! “I was like a big kid in a sweet shop. I couldn’t get enough, and kept trying newer and crazier looks.” Behind the excess of the Sir Elton John look, there is ultimately an uplifting message of the power of fashion to be transformative, confidence-giving and life-affirming.
Of Bob Mackie, the costume genius who made many of the original outfits, Sir Elton said, “Bob made some fabulous outfits for me – feathers, sequins, glitter – totally outrageous one-offs. I look at them now and they make me howl with laughter. We had so much fun!”
While Sir Elton has gone to extremes with his love of fashion, festooning is a method of protection we all deploy to some degree. Just look at these Elton Johninspired Gucci sunglasses, how could they fail to raise a smile?
As Day and I discussed his costume creations on Wednesday, it was evident that the audience was quite simply delighted to see the sequinned jackets, winged boots and various other bonkers artefacts from the film’s wardrobe department that were on display and to hear Day speak about engaging David Cox, the man behind Dame Edna Everage’s glasses, to make many of those in the film, or how it took six people one week to embellish all the rhinestones on to one look.
So how to be more Elton? Thanks in no small part to the rise of Alessandro Michele’s fantastical Gucci aesthetic, it’s not hard to do glam rock for now. In recent years, Sir Elton has toned down his own style, but a statement blazer is still a mainstay.
The dream would be a baroque Gucci version (I would love to know how many of these he has to his name) but in the meantime & Other Stories’ floral velvet style will do very nicely. An early Eltonism was a pair of overalls. His came embellished with an explosion of motifs but you could just as easily adopt the vibe with some wide-legged dungarees, like Mih’s pillar-box red pair.
And what would Elton do on the shoe front? Well, these days he loves a trainer but it needn’t be pared-back, see Converse’s card suit hi-tops. As ideal for leaping about on stage as a gentle stroll to the shops.
Sequins: you can’t get enough of these, though perhaps if you’re not performing to a packed stadium of superfans, keep it to one piece only – I love a sequinned midi, à la
Zara’s gold style, with a plain T-shirt/knit and chunky boots/ sandals.
We can’t all go the full Sir Elton, after all.