Eric Clapton’s Nineties Style Was a Freakin’ Roller Coaster

In the eighties, Eric Clapton was trying to quit drugs and alcohol. Naturally, he got really into clothes and women. (Jawnz and jillz!) “I’d always loved clothes, and that became a huge interest for me,” he told Classic Rock in 2016, when they asked him about the shift.

Clapton meant it when he said he’d always been really into clothes: His ’70s stage ensembles included overalls and a bucket hat made from a flour bag, for example, and his former bandmates have spoken to his obsession with getting the look (he got a perm to look like Jimi Hendrix once—yikes). But in the mid-’80s, he made a conscious effort to pivot away from his rock-dude image of vests and blouses and clean up his act (or at least his wardrobe) a bit. So he turned to Armani and Versace. “I was really interested in Italian stuff,” he told Classic Rock. “I met and loved this lovely Italian lady, we had a child, and I met Giorgio Armani and I met Gianni Versace.” A love story for our time.

Throughout the ’80s, he almost exclusively wore the two Italian greats and went all the way in, developing a look The Telegraph described as “rock-and-roll gigolo.” He appeared onstage and in publicity photographs in Versace’s gangster-fashionisto tailoring—“revolutionary, but simple at the same time,” as he wrote in his 2007 biography—and Armani’s sexy cool-guy suits, with their soft shoulders and looong jackets. He liked the energy and the romance of it, he said: “English culture, and fashion, was always much more tweedy and introverted, so when I finally got to Italy in the mid-eighties I was overwhelmed by the vivacity of it all, and the colours and the flamboyance of everything, and I was sucked in, I really loved it.” He even struck an endorsement deal with Armani, his bassist told AllMusic.com in 2015, “where we’d go into the Armani shop and pick out anything we wanted to wear.” (Goals!)

But in the early ’90s, he pumped the brakes on the bella figura thing for a bit, and this is where we must begin to pay close attention. If Clapton has been eager to speak on Armani mania, this much more bizarre and rewarding period is less documented. The British press, with its enviable flair for the poetic, has been eager to connect this makeover with his newfound sobriety and 1989 “comeback album” Journeyman, referring to his ’80s period as one defined by “heroin, alcohol, and dodgy Armani suits” and expressing relief later that “the suits have been binned in favour [sic, mate] of jeans, [and] his entire Armani-period output has been trashed.” Instead, The Telegraph wrote, “with his weatherbeaten, beardy visage, wire-rimmed specs and tufty, bed-head hair, he could pass now as a regular middle England dad, the sort you would hardly notice in a DIY superstore, or a country high street.”

While The Telegraph wrote those words in 2005, that wardrobe change had actually happened about 15 years earlier, presumably around the time he was snapped in this iconic, undated look, which is the perfect combination of Italian nonchalance (no socks, unbuttoned blazer, and a Henley shirt) and English country clothes (well-made loafers, crispy jeans, a silk-lined mac). Whatever the impetus for the style change, this is when Clapton hit his stride. (For those who are curious: Clapton is a documented fan of Sanders shoes as well as Crockett & Jones, so the shoes are likely from there. And maybe the shirt is the one he wore with this Versace suit he sold at Christie’s in 2004? As for the rest, you’re on your own to stalk out the look, or even the source of this photograph.) It is actually perfect: not too “dad,” not too posh, and he’s comfortable in the clothes. You could wear this outfit every day for the rest of your life and kill it.

Clapton spent the next few years in this vein, mixing his Italian stuff with English fabrics and tailoring, an assured mingling of tweedy and suave that makes him look like someone who spends a lot of money on clothes (but not any of the dumb ones). Like an Armani suit with a houndstooth shirt, or a cinched mac over a tuxedo. He went to a red carpet event in a washed blue chore jacket and a faded polo like it was totally appropriate—because he made it appropriate! He actually did the impossible thing you always want to do, which is put a black T-shirt under a black suit, and he didn’t look like an idiot. (The secret: The T-shirt is slub cotton. Looks more substantial.) And here is the perfect way to wear a motorcycle jacket if you can’t even get close to a motorcycle. When he played with B.B. King, he didn't have an Extremely Important Legend Getup on. He just looked calm and kinda mystical! (Big jeans, mandarin collar popover.) He also became the co-owner of Cordings of Picadilly, a classic tweed, knits, and field clothing company that dates to the mid-19th century.

But Clapton didn’t stop there—he had “found his look,” but then he decided to find another. After the Italian tailoring flash and his poshcore era, he suddenly got into skate brands. This was no casual fling—it was as deeply researched as his previous phases. Somewhere around the time he met his current wife, in the mid-’90s (at an Armani party! Flex!), he rolled through LAX in DC sneakers and baggy jeans. He stalked around London in 1997 in what appear to be JNCOs. He performed around 1997 in a T-shirt by Los Angeles streetwear brand FUCT. He rehearsed for the 1999 Grammys in a Chocolate Skateboards hoodie. Obviously, he eventually got into Supreme—but over a decade before everyone else who doesn’t own a skateboard.

Clapton’s encyclopedic obsessiveness continues to this day. By all photographic evidence, he’s mixing pieces from his deep Visvim archive with cool dad basics. (And remember: Clapton is in fact the man who introduced John Mayer to the legendary Japanese brand.) And a few months ago, when I asked the guys working at Stüssy’s SoHo shop who the last celebrity shopper had been, they told me it was Clapton. He was buying stuff for his wife and daughter, they said. Jawnz and jillz, baby!

But if you want to know the real Clapton style secret, step back to his Armani phase: “It was part of being gregarious, I suppose, and I was starting to think of myself as being an interesting person,” he told Classic Rock. “It took me all that time to get a kind of value for myself.” Clapton, you look wonderful every night!!!