Prince of Pop, King of Style: An Ode to a Legend

Legendary artist Prince was found dead at his recording studio in Minnesota on Thursday, according to the Associated Press. He was 57.

While I had never met him, and I don’t want to pretend I did, he has had such an indelible, lasting impact on the fashion industry. He created pop culture — and what would style be without the former?

My first encounter with Prince happened back in 1983, when I was in the 10th grade, pulling an all-nighter writing a paper on the economic state of Brazil. Being informed that coffee was the country’s primary export required more than my just drinking it past the midnight hour — it also required my listening nonstop to the radio.

In Toronto, the biggest pop station was Chum FM, and that night, it kept me going, in particular a little ditty called “Little Red Corvette.” I’d never heard the song before then, but between the hours of midnight and 7 a.m., it played 28 times (yes, I counted). So the next weekend I dedicated myself to researching this Prince character. In those pre-Internet, pre-iPhone days, research meant going to my local record store and thumbing through the bins to find that artist — filed under P, for Prince (he wasn’t yet under A, for Artist Formerly Known as Prince).

I remember picking up a copy of 1999 in 1983 and looking at the purple, cartoonish cover. I pored over every magazine article I could find on him, watched every one of his videos, and listened to his songs religiously.

I was quickly obsessed — the man had style.

Seeing a petite man in ruffles, brocade, and lace wasn’t what struck me — it was, after all, the era of Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Boy George, and I had just gone through my own New Romantics phase (Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran), so I knew my way around a ruffle and a rhinestone — there was something magnetically special about this little guy.

He approached fashion in a way I’d never seen before, mixing the feminine with the masculine in an unprecedented way, in an eye patch or a crystal embellishment — or a Speedo paired with a choker and eyeliner. Then there were his signature bandannas, often worn with catsuits, bell-bottoms, or crop tops and cutout leggings. Even when he was butt naked, with his tiny, lithe waist, there was a stylish flair to the way he wore his birthday suit.

But I think what fascinated me most was his own fascination — and appropriation — of women’s shoes. Prince made high heels and, later, Cuban heels his sneakers. It was the shoe he was most comfortable in, the shoe he lived in, the shoe that defined him. There was something regal (naturally) about the way Prince wore his heels. It was more Jimi Hendrix meets Louis XIV than RuPaul. In an interview, Prince explained that “people say I’m wearing heels because I’m short. I wear heels because the women like ’em.” And he was right. In his heels, he was a lady-killer, luring the likes of Apollonia, Vanity, Sheila E., and his ex-wife Mayte. He not only dated them — he helped craft their style and public image.

The mystery and allure of Prince’s style has never escaped me. When a friend of mine moved to Minneapolis to work for Target, I would occasionally ask him if he ever got invited to Paisley Park (he never did), because in my mind that was the nerve center of all that is Prince. It was his recording studio and his home, but, most important, it’s where he kept his famous wardrobe. Legend had it that there was an army of designers and seamstresses (10 to be exact) who worked around the clock making Prince’s wardrobe and that there were vaults of the world’s most luxurious heels, which were locked up nightly. Allegedly, he would sometimes borrow or share shoes with Mayte too, though they didn’t wear the same size (Prince supposedly wore a women’s size 6).

I have no idea if any of that was true, but I do know this: Prince continued to dazzle and delight with his sartorial confections until the very end (he performed in concert just days before his death). For those inevitable moments when I may feel a little less than inspired, I will play a Prince song — and with the first twang of his guitar, everything will seem more colorful (purple, red, raspberry!) again.

He’ll be missed.

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