David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust hair stylist thought the singer was too “arty” for her.
David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust hair stylist thought the singer was too “arty” for her
The late ‘Starman’ singer, who died aged 69 in 2016 from liver cancer, stunned fans with his flame-haired look in the 1970s, and the woman who created it has now lifted the lid on how she ended up in his clique and used a high street hair dye to help create his iconic ‘androgynous alien’ Ziggy character.
Suzi Ronson, 74, told The Guardian about meeting David in 1971 after he and his then-wife Angie Bowie, also now 74, caused a stir outside the Evelyn Paget hair salon on Beckenham High Street, London, where she was working as a hairdresser: “Everybody rushed out to have a look. Everyone was like nudging, poking each other, asking, ‘Who’s that?’ Then someone whispered, ‘It’s David Bowie.’”
David’s mum was a client of Suzi’s hairdresser mother, but she added about how she thought she would never land a job as his stylist: “He was in an arty clique, not my world.”
Despite her fear, Suzi ended up as the only working woman in David’s touring entourage.
She was welcomed into the clique after she was invited by David’s former wife Angie into their Haddon Hall home in the south London suburb of Beckenham.
Suzi added: “They wanted to change David’s look, and Angie knew I was willing to experiment.”
The stylist was shown a magazine photograph of a model used by the Japanese fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto by David who was sporting short, red spiky hair – and asked to copy the look.
Suzi added: “It was the colour that really sold them. I used fantasy colours – Schwarzkopf Red Hot – from the salon.
“God knows why we had them in Beckenham. No one used them.”
By the time she was finished, the Ziggy Stardust character’s hairstyle was born, and Suzi added she ended up feeling like one of David and Angie’s family when she hit the road with the pair and their team.
She went on: “I didn’t have a particularly happy childhood. My family were a little (messed) up so I left school at 15 and was always looking for an escape.”
Suzi, who has just published her memoir, ‘Me and Mr Jones: My Life with David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars’, ended up sleeping with David as he and Angie had an open marriage.
Her autobiography also details how she ended up dyeing his jockstrap red for his Ziggy character and ironing sweat from his stage outfit.
She said: “There were many costume changes. So David would come to the wings where I would be standing with a glass of red wine and a Gitanes cigarette.
“While (his guitarist) Mick (Ronson) was playing his guitar, I would change David’s clothes.”
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