LOU REED

In 2010, Rick Owens declared: ‘I try to make clothes the way Lou Reed does music.’ 

Confident in the unity of a style, Lou Reed’s music could radically change from album to album: Lulu reimagines Alban Berg’s opera with Metallica; Metal Machine Music jumps to white noise; Coney Island Baby pays tribute to the early rock’n’roll of his childhood.

A dyslexic Brooklyn kid, Lewis grows up on doo-wop. In a high-school photo, his hair is high and his tie shiny. His jacket combines herringbone and stripes, recalling Little Richard. Between NYU and Syracuse, Reed is a village youth. He tries to be Ornette Coleman, reads TS Eliot, meets Delmore Schwarz. At the time, Reed wears jeans, the mandatory village rollnecks. In Transformer, ‘Goodnight Ladies’ closes the album by quoting Hamlet’s Ophelia.

In an early photo with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, Reed is still a west village prepster, almost a beat: a lightly constructed jacket, needlecord and large elbow pads, a striped shirt. Only the belt’s width, and buckle; the sunglasses’ black and slim, suggest a darker sensibility.

By 1974, a uniform has solidified. Meshy knits under leather jackets (A2, mostly; with a zip, always); tight t-shirts, often long-sleeve; black leather trousers tied with a brown leather belt; boots. And aviators. Intimidating and humorous, Reed’s style matched his persona. Asked ‘are you happier as a blonde?’, he snapped back, ‘are you happier as a schmuck?’ 

In the 80s, as Reed’s style got looser, the albums grew more directly personal. The leather jackets were now wider, even welcoming a tracksuit jacket underneath. 

In later life, more urban choices held on to the pathbreaking ethos of his work: wire glasses, thick ribbed and zipped sweaters, a felt hat, puffer and jeans, but grey - and bought from Rick Owens. Less irascible, Reed maintained a certain defiance. Will Hermes, his biographer tells the following story. ‘A clerk at the Issey Miyake store in Tribeca, responding to Reed sneering, “Why is this belt so expensive?” snapped “Maybe it’s because the person who made it is really good at what they do?” A long conversation ensued about belt design, and Reed wound up spending a bundle on clothes, including the belt, and gifting the clerk the heavy grommeted one that he’d been wearing.’