It was all supremely, if deliciously, wrong stuff.
Yet, here she is, two decades on, fêted as a fashion icon in a retrospective at the V&A. The question you have to ask — and many already have — is why? For all her pop success, what does the 38-year-old singer have that earns her a place in this most dignified hall of fashion fame? Full-blown retrospectives at the V&A haven’t even been afforded to dead royalty (Grace Kelly, Diana). Only fashion’s grandest dames (Vivienne Westwood, Gianni Versace) usually qualify.
She certainly isn’t a designer — unless you count her sweetly middle-market venture into undies with the Love Kylie range. Neither is she one of those paparazzi fashion ponies who can shift the latest bag or frock with a couple of snaps in Heat and Grazia. Sienna has her thrown-together variations on boho, Kate has her sexy rock’n’roll nonchalance, Nicole Kidman has her glacial couture perfectionism. But be honest, aside from her feather-and-fishnet stage persona, could you pin down Kylie’s personal style? The last trend she prompted was hot pants, back in 2000, after her Spinning Around video, which hardly qualifies her as a Mossian fashion fad machine. If Kylie deserves a style retrospective, then surely her turn should come after Madonna, or Kate Moss, or even, dare we say it, Lady Helen “Armani” Taylor.
But this V&A exhibition isn’t simply about fashion. It is about unlocking the smoke and mirrors that go into creating the perfect modern pop star. It actually matters little whether she is decked out in a sweet little Chloé shift dress or a girlie Chanel jacket and jeans. Kylie is always simply Kylie.
Whether or not that qualifies her for fashion-icon status, the fact is, her look has rarely been criticised. Which brings us to the real point of this exhibition — how much Kylie is loved. She is the closest thing the pop world has to a people’s princess. “It’s not really like looking at a collection of clothes or visual imagery,” says Vicky Broackes, who curated the exhibition. “It’s looking at the human being behind it all. It is about watching a woman and seeing the decisions she has made about her life — most of them brilliant. We have been on Kylie’s journey with her.”
And it has been some journey. After ditching her Neighbours mechanic’s overalls and the fluffy-haired look of her Especially for You duetting days with Jason Donovan, she came of age in the early 1990s, when she had her sugar coating licked off by Michael Hutchence, a man who described his role in life at that time as “corrupting Kylie” and who, later, famously kept his heroin stash in a Smarties packet. This was the moment of her transformation from pop poppet to woman, and the beginning of a new Kylie. She marked this shift with a knowing nod to sexy icon Brigitte Bardot and a wink to her burgeoning sex appeal. It’s a leap that would have been unimaginable a few years previously, the squeaky-clean poster girl of the Stock, Aitken and Waterman hit factory.
The mid-1990s wilderness years seemed at the time like the slow death of a bubblegum pop icon trying, and failing, to find maturity. In fact, during this time, she collaborated with all sorts of genuinely interesting creative figures. Nick Cave, for one, adored her. Far from a wilderness, it was an earnest gestation away from the commercial mainstream. Pop cannot transform overnight, no matter how many PRs, A&R guys, stylists and bulldog managers it has behind it.
None of this is to suggest that the style accolade is undeserved — the girl has definitely had her fashion moments. The gold hot pants, the Mrs Jones hooded white catsuit — a look that, quite frankly, we couldn’t get out of our heads — the frequent Sarah Jessica Parker-esque quirky Parisian looks she has been throwing since meeting Olivier Martinez. There have been plenty. And it is not all down to stylists; everyone who works with Kylie speaks of her determined and intelligent collaborative spirit.
“We always talk in-depth with Kylie before working on an event or a tour wardrobe,” say Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, who have an enduring relationship with the singer both on and off stage. “She usually knows what she wants, and we try to grasp her ideas and translate them into what we feel will work best on her. She is very open to our suggestions.”
This openness is echoed by Katie Grand, the superstylist and editor of Pop magazine. She first met Kylie in 1993, when she was a rookie fashion director at Dazed & Confused. “I showed up in LA with only a carry-on bag of clothes, mainly Hussein Chalayan’s first collection made of paper. As I unwrapped the paper clothes, it dawned on me how unprepared I was and how much of an idiot I must look unwrapping all this paper stuff.
But instead of telling me to get lost, she embraced the idea and happily posed in my college friend’s collections. She’s game for anything, with an eye for spotting new talent — which she still has now, working with Gareth Pugh and Marios Schwab.”
William Baker, the stylist who has been responsible for the most memorable Kylie incarnations, describes working with her as being like “having your own real-life Barbie doll to dress up”. Yet this tells only half a story. We have seen brilliant, iconic stage wear before — Bowie as Aladdin Sane, Grace Jones’s A One Man Show, Madonna’s endless torrent of visual reinventions or Gwen Stefani’s rampage with Westwood in Wonderland. But there tends to be an iciness or otherworldliness to these characters, and a certain cynical manipulation and arrogance. Kylie’s appeal, however, seems cemented in her graceful realness and her professional enthusiasm. The arrogance, bordering on misanthropy, of most big stars is entirely missing, by all accounts, in Kylie Minogue. For that alone, she is quite exceptional.
Even when Kylie is baring flesh, it feels intimate rather than suggestive; there is little of the FHM tackiness that taints lesser pop princesses. She would never get herself papped stepping out of a car without her pants on. When GQ airbrushed out her knickers for a re-creation of the classic Athena poster of the bare-bottomed tennis girl, it sparked a public outcry Cheryl Tweedy could only ever dream of. A national treasure had been vandalised. There could scarcely have been more outrage if someone had pebble-dashed Buckingham Palace. Pop doesn’t produce true ladies very often. Add her regally borne suffering over the past couple of years and any questions about her suitability for a style retrospective seem well and truly answered.
“Kylie has an innate class and a fantastic dress sense,” say Dolce and Gabbana. “She knows how to mix and match. And she always manages to look good, even when she is only wearing a simple top and jeans. Chic and understated in her daywear; over the top in her music videos. She is a true fashion chameleon.”
Kylie: The Exhibition runs from Feb 8 to Jun 10 at the V&A, SW7. Admission is free, but you need to book, in person or at www.vam.ac.uk
