A rumour from ground control: Time, space and fashioned gender identity in David Bowie’s ‘Ashes to Ashes’

Abstract

This article aims to identify the fashioned ‘look’ of sound, and the sound of a fashion look, by investigating a significant precedent in the early music video canon: ‘Ashes to Ashes’ (1980), co-directed by David Mallet and David Bowie. The article analyses the three characters that Bowie performs in the video in recognition of three recurring concerns of fashion theory: time, space and masculine sartorial identity. The character of Pierrot is considered through understandings of modernity and postmodernity, including the reciprocal influence of the nostalgic-futurist ‘New Romantic’ movement. The character of Major Tom is evaluated with regard to different understandings of ‘space’ in the music video. Finally, a third persona, a man who inhabits the atmosphere of a padded cell, is looked at in association with Bowie’s legacy in contemporary masculine fashion.