How ‘Velvet Goldmine’ Captured the Glam-Rock Era Like No Other
Twenty-five years ago today, Todd Haynes’ impressionistic glam-rock fantasy Velvet Goldmine hit movie theaters, offering audiences a glimpse of a short-lived era of rock defined by artists like David Bowie, Marc Bolan, and Roxy Music. Told as a Citizen Kane-like investigation into the disappearance of fictional pop star Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), the nonlinear film captured an energy and aesthetic vibrance that remains unparalleled. Its stacked cast also included Christian Bale as glam-rock fan-turned-journalist Arthur Stuart, Ewan McGregor as Iggy Pop-esque rocker Curt Wild, and Toni Collette as Brian’s flamboyant wife Mandy.
Prior to shooting in London, British costume designer Sandy Powell caught wind of a possible glam-rock film. She’d grown up in Brixton loving the scene, but wasn’t quite old enough to be fully part of it. Once Haynes hired her, Powell got to live out her childhood dreams by designing sparkling glam-rock costumes that evoked the looks made famous by Bowie, Bolan, and Pop.
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“It came from everything I’d always wanted to do,” Powell recalls, speaking from London in the midst of designing the costumes for next year’s stage production of The Great Gatsby. “Everything I wished I could have had or worn, or every concert I wished I could have gone to, I got to live it in my thirties instead of in my teens. I do remember at the time there were a few comments and people who would say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t really like that.’ But it doesn’t matter. It was my fantasy, and it’s how I remembered it.”
The film encapsulates hundreds of looks, both from the early Seventies and Eighties, when Arthur is looking back on his youth. Powell reimagined some of Bowie’s iconic stage ensembles, but also took her cues from other pop acts of the era. She enlisted shoe designer Terry de Havilland to remake the fabulous platform shoes he’d produced in the Seventies and shopped flea markets and vintage stores around London. But many of the most memorable costumes were made custom with only six or seven weeks of prep time.
“The challenge was really getting everything done in time,” Powell remembers. “I don’t think there was one difficult costume to do. It was all a challenge, but a good one.”
Powell’s now regarded as one of the greatest costume designers in film history, with 15 Academy Award nominations for Best Costume Design and three wins, for Shakespeare in Love, The Aviator, and The Young Victoria. She’s made a number of films with Haynes and Scorsese, and recently wrapped the new Snow White, hitting theaters in 2025.
Here, Powell reflects on the making of Velvet Goldmine, working with Haynes, and how she lost the Oscar for Best Costume Design to herself.
How does it feel to be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the film?
It’s wild. I was 37 when I worked on it, so I’d already been doing [this job] for about 12 years. Strangely, I was actually looking at some of the costumes the other day. Some of the costumes actually still exist. I was at Angels Costumes having a look because I’m having a retrospective exhibition next year in Atlanta, Georgia, and I’m trying to track everything down. And the reason they exist is because the costume house Angels, in London, made it possible for me to make them because I really had very little money. They built a lot of the costumes for the price of a rental as opposed to actually charging what you’d normally charge to custom-make things. But what that meant was that they increased their stock with that kind of look, those sort of glam-rock clothes. They’ve been kept rather well, although they’ve been rented out over the years. Not all of them — some of them have been destroyed completely — but there are key items they kept to one side.
Have any of the costumes popped up in other films?
Probably, but no one’s drawn that to my attention. I mean, all the time because they’re rented out all the time. Most likely they’re on extras, as opposed to principal characters. I’m sure somebody would have seen something and sent it to me if they recognized something on a principal character.
Is it true that you sought the film out when you heard a movie about glam rock was being made?
I did really want to do it, yeah. I just heard a rumor. A friend of mine said that somebody was making a film about Marc Bolan — that it was vaguely about Marc Bolan and the glam-rock era. I thought, “Oh, God, I just really want to do this.” I’m 63 now, so in the early Seventies, I was like 11, 12, 13, and desperately into clothes. Loved clothes, loved dressing up, loved fashion, and liked music. That’s when I first heard David Bowie on the radio, in about 1971. As a young teenager, of course, I couldn’t afford to buy clothes, so I used to make my own. And I wanted to be old enough to go to the concerts, and I wasn’t. So I really wanted to do it because it was a very meaningful time for me. It’s a very inspirational time for me — the whole movement, the whole music, fashion, world, everything in that first half of the Seventies was very important. I was keen to do it. But then it transpired that friends of mine were friends with Todd Haynes and so I got an introduction. And that was it.
Did you and Todd get along right away?
Absolutely. Yeah, we did. Yeah. We knew we were the right match.
When it comes to a film like this with such visual scope, how much of that is in the script and how much do you just need to imagine?
Todd is one of those directors who is super prepared and does enormous amounts of research. Clothes weren’t actually described in the script — that doesn’t usually happen unless it’s a significant outfit that has to do something or say something. They’re rarely described by the writer. But the scenes are described, and the characters are described, and then Todd also had a lot of his own visual reference material and things to look at. I just followed what was in the script as inspiration and as a jumping-off point.
Was Brian Slade always imagined as a fictional David Bowie?
Yeah. It never was meant to be David Bowie, but it’s a character that has elements of David Bowie, but not everything. Bowie was the main reference, without it actually being Bowie or looking like Bowie.
But you did take inspiration from Bowie for Jonathan’s costumes?
Oh, absolutely. Even the early ones where he was more hippie-dressed and then he started wearing women’s blouses and elements of female clothing, which everybody did. He went through different phases — like the audio, really. And so I used elements of that all along the way. I had hundreds of images of Bowie everywhere. And I did my versions of the things he was wearing, rather than trying to copy them. We had to do the Brian Slade version of that.
It must have been so much fun to do that.
It was the best fun I’ve had on a film. I’m probably saying that through retrospective glasses, but I did have a good time. But we also had a complete nightmare because even though we had a lot of help, we were really struggling on the budget. And so we were just working incredibly long hours just to get it done. But that was never a problem because we were enjoying doing it and having a good time anyway.
Do you remember how many costumes you made for the film?
I wish I knew! I’m sure there were hundreds — hundreds that we actually made, and then of course we shopped. We purchased lots. And then there were costumes from rental companies. But we did do a lot of shopping. Every weekend we were at flea markets, hunting. That was 25 years ago, so it was a slightly easier time. In vintage stores and markets right now, Seventies is antique and you can’t find it. Now, we’re lucky if we find Nineties.
Were there any considerations you had to make knowing the actors would be performing concerts in the costumes?
Yes. I mean, you’re designing costumes bearing in mind they are meant to be staged theatrical costumes. But then, of course, the whole point of that whole look was that people looked theatrical off the stage, too. So there wasn’t that much difference. What they were wearing standing around playing instruments onstage was probably just a bit more glittery than what they’d be wearing standing around in the studio.
Were you there for the performance scenes?
Every single one I was there on set. Normally, I don’t hang around on a film. I actually get really bored because you spend a lot of that time waiting around, and normally I have more important things to be doing. I’ve got work to be doing to be getting ready for the next day or the next week. In the case of this film, I managed to be on set the whole time, especially the concert scenes. We were all in it. We were all part of the audience half the time, the crew. And every time there’s a party scene, we were all there.
In costume?
Yeah! We actually lived it.
When Ewan performs at the music festival, he takes his leather pants completely off. Did you design those knowing that was going to happen?
I must have. Well, did I know what he was going to do? We knew his whole act was sort of based on Iggy Pop, and I was familiar with what Iggy Pop would do. I’d seen him. So yeah, we kind of did know, but I’m sure Ewan did a lot of stuff spontaneously as well.
The performances feel really raw, like everyone just went for it.
And they did. Seriously, it was one of those films where everybody lived it. Many late nights. We shot in a venue in Brixton, London, where I live, the Brixton Academy, which is a big music venue. We shot there for a couple of days and then everybody just came back to my house afterward to party. This was on days when we were having to get up the next day to go to work. We actually did all live that mad, hedonistic lifestyle. Todd was a bit more sensible. I don’t want to make him sound like he was irresponsible. I think Todd would actually go home and go to bed.
Do you have a favorite costume or scene in the film?
It’s really difficult to choose your favorite. I’d have to watch it again. But maybe my favorite bit, strangely, is the opening credits. I absolutely love the opening credits with all the young kids, the extras, running in excitement to get to a concert and how they look. That’s how I looked at school. All my friends at school looked like that — just the cheaper versions. It’s a school-kid version of glam rock where they can’t quite afford the proper gear and it’s all of it homemade. I love that with the Brian Eno music over the top. It’s really one of my favorite opening credit sequences in any film.
The year after the film came out you were nominated for the Oscar for Best Costume Design for this and for Shakespeare in Love. You lost to yourself. I still think you should have won for Velvet Goldmine.
I got nominated twice for the BAFTAs too, and I won the BAFTA for Velvet Goldmine. So that was one each. And yes, you’re right, of course I’d have loved to have won for Velvet Goldmine. I don’t know if I should talk about this, but both films were being promoted by Harvey Weinstein. Back in the day, he was known for his aggressive campaigning, and everything was put into Shakespeare in Love. I started off doing press for both and then suddenly I wasn’t doing any press for Velvet Goldmine, but I was doing a lot of press for Shakespeare.
When you look back on Velvet Goldmine, what are you most proud of?
We pulled it off. When I look back at Todd’s look-books and his images and his references, I think we made it look exactly like what his vision was. I know for a fact we did and he was happy with that, but what I’m proud of is that we did it and we had a ball doing it. Quite often you can do extraordinary work and you can have a miserable time doing extraordinary work, and then the film is a massive hit. If you have a great time then quite often you go, “Oh, the film’s not so good.” This was fortunate where we had both — a good film and it was hard work, and I think it was successful. It’s one of those films that actually its following has grown, hasn’t it? It wasn’t a massive success at the time. But it’s one of those where it’s just going to grow and grow and grow. It holds up 25 years later.
Are there any other memories from filming you want to share?
There are things, yeah, that you can’t print. So I won’t tell you.
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