Shop Til You Drop: David Bowie Is... Exhibition at the V & A Edition

Good morning, folks! 

Well, I now have a generally positive idea about the clothes I had planned to wear to Texas at the end of this week! Thank you all for your feedback. I think I'm going to take both and see where the night takes me, haha. To Cher, or not to Cher...that is the question. :)

Speaking of weddings, kind of, I was thinking of bridal registries, and the kinds of things people would put on them. Being a lifelong collector of kitchen-goods, I am the rare twenty-seven year old who actually has PLENTY of vintage hand painted china settings. I've got three punch bowls, all the cups; two fondue pots, all the forks. Chip and dips like a mo' up in this piece. It's like a Betty Draper version of the Little Mermaid's undersea collection. What I really need? MEMORABILIA FROM THIS V & A EXHIBITION OF DAVID BOWIE'S COSTUME CLOSET. Can I set up a registry that is 100% Bowie-related items?

One of the images that shows up again and again on the exhibition's website is this outtake from the Aladdin Sane cover shoot. It freaks me out EVERY. TIME. (source)`

Let's take a look at the things I would put on the registry. Oh my goodness, there are so many things here I love:

Ziggy Stardust Silk Scarf ($98.67 USD)

Full disclosure: Know now, know forever that David Bowie is the single most defining interest I had from age 13 to age 18. For those five years, I don't think anyone in America, the world, the universe was as interested in both Bowie's musical output and biographical information than yours truly. I know! Stiff competition! I would put my teenaged self against any Bowiephile, head to head, in a just fact-based trivia bowl and dollars to doughnuts I will come out on top with my "World's Greatest Bowie Fan" medal. No joke! I read every memoir, every book...every biography of people related to him. I would pore over ninety-nine cent copies of seventies' and eighties' back issues of Rolling Stone that the Great Escape used to keep in fragile heaps under their comic book holdings, wondering if he would make an appearance in the "notes" section at the front, or (hope beyond hope!) be featured on the cover with a new album that came out before I was born. Liner notes were devoured. Ryko reissues, in their electric green cd cases, were coveted. I spent a LOT of time in Bowie scholarship for someone who hasn't written a book about him. Even for people who have!

That said, WHAT DO I NOT LOVE ABOUT A ZIGGY STARDUST PATTERNED SILK SCARF? It's souvenirs like these that make me love exhibition related items manufactured specifically for the museum. Besides the avant garde styling and silhouettes, how about the gorgeous, GORGEOUS patterns Kansai Yamamoto would use in Bowie's stage costumes?

I'm With Bowie Greeting Card ($4.17 USD)

This (extremely moderately priced, compared with the four-figure prices of a lot of these items) badge reminds of this Heroes era RCA promotional material (which I very much need a poster of):

Look at that petulant, browless face! The allegiance I feel like pledging this man!

The Archer ($1,745.70 USD)

I'm obviously nowhere near actually getting this, but shoo-wee! How majestic does our Thin White Duke look here? Bowie's background in pantomime (yes, as in MIMES, pantomime, look at him pre-music career here) always made seeing live performance f his from the seventies' kind of fun...you spend a good chunk of time waiting for exactly when he was going to work his first artistic love into the stage show. If you've seen Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture, the DA Pennebaker made documentary of his last concert on that tour at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, there's a sequence done to the extended instrumental in "The Width of a Circle" (from The Man Who Sold the World album) that shows just how in control of his tiny, lithe body the man was in his heyday. Click the link there to check it out (also, look at thigh muscles on that man! I wish I looked half as good in a playsuit).

David Bowie Life Mask ($189.75 USD):

Don't tell anybody, but this is actually one of the things I would seriously consider shelling out for. How often does one have the chance to buys something this freakin' creepy of their idol? LIFE MASK, PEOPLE. LIFE MASK. Created as "a makeup tester for the 1983 The Hunger", here we have Bowie's face exactly as it appeared in that sun-kissed, second-youth period of his Let's Dance fame. I don't know where I would hang this in my house that it would absolutely terrify me every time I walked by it, but still. You could probably make a pretty good gag reel of me reacting to it in late night refrigerator raids or when I first got home from work and turned on the lights. "IT'S STILL THERE! Why did we buy it?! It's still THERE!" #doesnotchangethefactthatIwantone

Aladdin Sane Contact Sheet ($5,246.21 USD)

Like I said earlier, it's so interesting to look at "what could have been" in terms of the cover for Aladdin Sane. While Ziggy's arguably the more effective "dramatic persona" of Mr. Bowie, you'd be hard pressed to come up with a cooler album cover from his discography (though Low, Heroes, and Pin Ups are right at the heels of its graphic design success...wouldn't a grouping of the four of these look interesting in album frames...Diane, take a memo....).

David Bowie is Watching You T-Shirt ($37.85 USD)

I wish this was available in calmer colors. Who among us looks good in bright orange? However, the combination of the stare that will conquer the will of the world and the simple typographic statement of "IS" is in fact, killin' me. $40 for a t-shirt! And yet!

My only disappointment was in how MANY items were super-collectors-editions and financially out-of-reach. But as for all the items under $100, friends! Countrymen! Let's get on this! You can see all the rest of the exhibition swag here.

Last but not least, here's me and my favorite current piece of Bowie memorabilia. This is a poster that came with the seventies' reissue of Space Oddity ("Ground control to Major Tom..." is the title track off the album).  Though I have a back up (and probably three additional copies of that record...when you're locked into a major collecting habit, you are LOCKED IN), this copy is particularly sentimental because it used to hang on my closet door all through high school and college. That hair! That face! I love it to pieces.

In the fine tradition of poorly-lit iPhone photos of me from inside my own home, here's another gem.

So! Now it's your turn. Are you a rabid David Bowie fan? Did you like the new album? Which of these items would you bite the bullet and pay international shipping fees to have and to hold? Which Bowie phase appeals to you?

That's all for today! I'll see you guys back here tomorrow. Til then!