I am looking at the relationship between Music and Fashion through the form of contemporary stage performance. By researching into historical musical performance artists of the past thirty years, such as David Bowie’s ‘Ziggy Stardust’ of the ‘Glitter and ‘Glam’ rock era of the 1970’s.

How shock value was created in the Punk movement of the late 1970’s, through to aspects of the revival of New Romantic costume in the 1980’s with artists such as Boy George, to contemporary music and post modernist performance costume of today with artists such as Peaches and Fischerspooner.

My aim to establish what are these musical artists’ ideals, beliefs, values, sociology and ethos behind their costume and performance theatricals. Through this I will the establish why in all musical eras, fashion and costume plays such an importance in creating this surreal musical facade of performance where it is a ‘spectacle’ rather than just a ‘gig’, to find out why is the ‘alter ego’ of such importance to these artists as is androgyny and hedonism. They are globally recognised “artists” that the spectacular is their canvas– to which the fashion of costume is just as important if not more so than the music itself.

The Relationship between Music and Fashion through the form of contemporary stage performance relies heavily on costume – this creates a ‘mask’ for the performer against reality that takes the spectacular into another fantasy world. There is a strong relationship between the genre of music and an image (fashion) associated with it, this image portrays values, ideas, beliefs and attitudes that relates to the niche market. David Howells, managing director of Waterman Ltd, researched into the “Relationship between genre and image” through interview. Howells asked people to respond to the first thought that came to mind after listening to a genre of music, and most of the times were visual based answers. “99 per cent of people give answers that relate to the visual. The extraordinary thing is that you see what you hear. So if you accept that the two go together that’s fine. But there are still a lot of people that say the music speaks for itself’. It doesn’t. There is a relationship that the public identify with” - David Howells.

I aim to understand why is fashion such a major component in music and especially in relation to performance costume. It is easy to understand why these artistic musicians almost get consumed into this surreal fantasy and more times than not start to believe they are their created “alter ego” off stage as a form of escapism from reality. I hesitate calling these people musicians, but more so “artists” as their form of work is known for much more than just the music they produce.

These artists create image based ambiguous music and fashion based on the segmented market of youth and popular culture alongside the ‘coolness’ of the “independent label” being commercialised – ironic as always but it is nothing new in fashion or musical history.