ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

Robert Palmer's 80s classic was released in 1986. It's remained on the style radar since then.

Can it be a coincidence that Hedi Slimane, fashion’s biggest rock’n’roll fanboy, chose the 80s as the inspiration for his final collection of Saint Laurent, in 2016, the year that marks the 30th anniversary of that most 80s of rock videos, Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love? Surely not.

The collection has all the hallmarks of the girls that populate Palmer’s video - LBDs, sheer, 10 denier tights and with a blusher and red lipstick quota that must have made backstage makeup artists busier than usual. Add moody expressions, cinched-in belts and the kind of proper pointy stilettos that only the 80s could produce, and there’s little doubt Addicted To Love was on heavy rotation in Slimane’s LA studio. Other designers aren’t immune to its charms, either. Slimane’s rumoured successor, Anthony Vaccarello, Versace and even Vetements have a touch of the Palmers in recent seasons, while American Apparel has been selling the look on the high street for ages.

There are few pop videos that manage to still feel relevant after 30 years. Especially one that really only involves a backdrop of photowall paper and a ‘band’ of girls in black dresses, fronted by Palmer in the sort of estate-agent-after-work look of black trousers, white shirt and black tie. With over 24m views on YouTube, it has been parodied by Weird Al Yankovich, and had the reverse treatment from Shania Twain: her video for Man! I Feel Like A Woman sees her fronting a band flanked by male models on guitars. If the women-as-glambots thing feels a bit dated, compare it to Blurried Lines. The girls-with-guitars, man in a suit, thing is now commonplace – the girls are just wearing far less.

For fashion, it’s the full package - clothes included - that make Addicted To Love so irresistible. The look was supposedly based on the artwork of Patrick Nagel - who drew the girl on the cover of Duran Duran’s Rio, hence the mask-like faces. Interviewed in 2013, model Julia Bolino – the guitarist on the far right – said the hardest thing about the video was “having lipgloss applied every three seconds.” The route one idea of fierce sexiness – red lips, slicked-back hair and tight black Alaia-like dresses – is still effective. And, after years of no makeup-makeup, boho floaty layers and sportswear, it is subversively, almost excessively, glamorous. In a world where day-to-night dressing is now the norm, and contouring means a makeup bag full of beige shades, proper transforming makeup like this, worn with a cocktail dress, is categorically afterdark. It feels edgy for it.

Part of the video’s longevity comes from its pedigree. It was directed by Terence Donovan, the photographer who, two decades earlier, had captured the 60s in London for Vogue and Man About Town. He was part of the MTV-fuelled video explosion, directing this along with Palmer’s promo for Simply Irresistible, and work for Toyah, Malcolm McLaren and Liza Minelli.

All have the kind of lighting, composition and drama (Minelli in an off-the-shoulder gown, girls in formation in a steam room for McLaren’s Madame Butterfly) that you woud expect from a Vogue photographer. Add styling by Harper’s Bazaar editor Liz Tilberis, and Addicted To Love is essentially a moving, high-end fashion shoot. But while many other mid-eighties shoots have been consigned to fashion history, this piece of pop culture history has remained on the moodboard. 30 years on, and we’re still Addicted To Love.

Lauren Cochrane (The Guardian - April 2016)

Voir aussi :

• Terence Donovan On Directing The Addicted To Love Music Video
• Addicted To Blush!