Prince: His greatest legacy to fashion was being himself

On Thursday, Prince passed away in his Paisley Park home in Minnesota, at the age of 57 – and the universe lost one of its greatest rock stars. Prince Rogers Nelson was an icon not just because of the prodigious musical ability that would see him win seven Grammy Awards and sell more than 100 million records over his four-decade-long career. (I still remember reading a biography of His Purple Highness when I was a teenager, and being gobsmacked that he had played all 27 instruments on his debut album, For You. I still am.)

What I loved most about Prince was that he was larger than life. That’s how I want my rock gods to be: Talented, charismatic, fearless. And Prince was fearless, not just in producing sexually explicit songs that would be one of the key factors leading to the creation of the familiar black and white “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics” warning labels (which are slapped on albums with lyrics deemed morally questionable). His personal style, too, was singularly audacious – he made me realise, early on, that a man’s fondness for glitter, ruffles and flared pantsuits does not have to be inversely proportional to his fondness for women.

Fashion Icon who inspired so many. #prince

A photo posted by Christian Siriano (@csiriano) on Apr 21, 2016 at 11:22am PDT

Today, sartorial gender-bending is big again. But Prince was at it from the beginning, when Gucci’s current creative director Alessandro Michele – today’s most high-profile champion of glitter, ruffles and flared pantsuits for men – was still a twinkle in his mother’s eye. You name it, Prince wore it: Fringed ponchos, lace suits, cropped tops and tight pants, matchy-matchy ensembles in gold or red lurex, and sometimes, not very much at all. Earlier in his career, notes RollingStone.com, his stage routine would occasionally see him stripping down to skimpy briefs and doing physical exercises.

For the cover of his 1988 album, Lovesexy, he did away with said skivvies, and made even more of a gender-blurring statement. His slight form and smooth skin contrasted with his full chest of hair and a thin moustache – a jarring juxtaposition that embodied his lyrics, “I'm not a woman. I'm not a man. I am something that you'll never understand.”

Since news broke of his passing, there have been numerous essays dedicated to the ways in which Prince has influenced fashion designers or the way certain celebrities dress. But to me, Prince’s influence has never been limited to a specific style or a particular high-collared, neo-Edwardian shirt. Rather, it has always laid in his fearlessness in flaunting his fabulously unique self, to blazes with what people might think. As he once declared: “If I need a psychological evaluation, I’ll do it myself.”

RIP, Prince. Thank you for the music and the mayhem.