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The Show.. What to Wear?

by Sass Jordan, The Lowry Agency Artist

I Want To Believe

Stage clothes .. the dreaded task …

Long ago and far away, there were once fascinating, flashy, shiny creatures that lived under lights and on stages with smoke and fire and loud, rhythmic noises .. we called them ‘Rock Stars’. They were akin to the mythical dragons that once roamed the earth, and they are now extinct. They wore colors and jewels and wonderful fabrics, they had astonishing manes of hair, and there was really nothing subtle about them … they were mighty, and they lived in magical lands that the rest of us had no access to except when we would go to see them do their thing on a stage or a television show.

FlashForward … Today. Now everyone you know is either in a band, has a family member in one, or a friend in one. Music has become ubiquitous everywhere you go, and EVERYONE thinks they can write it, play it and perform it. Or pretty much everyone. The general public has become so desensitized to almost everything that it takes a gargantuan effort of will and ambition just to be noticed at all! One of the old ways has survived, though, and that is the ‘image’ that you project. Your image is largely defined by the clothes you wear and the way you style your hair and makeup, and of course, last but not least, the way you carry yourself.

Finding the right clothes to express you AND your music is a tough task,  made all the more so these days by the mass availability of shiny, flashy clothing, which used to be the domain of rock stars and movie stars – but, like I mentioned, today, everyone’s a star, baby !!! Your choice of clothing has to reflect your style of music as well as be eye-catching, if you really want it to work for you. We went through the antithesis of this in the early ’90′s, with grunge and garage being the fashion, but in the end, I think people want their entertainers to give them something to aspire to themselves – albeit perhaps in a slightly more toned- down manner.

The guidelines I personally use for stage clothing are these …

1. Is it comfortable? Does it move with me or against me?

2. Is it restrictive in the diaphragm area?

3. Is it transparent? Is it reflective of light?

4. Will it get caught in the mic or stand or whatever?

5. DOES IT MAKE ME LOOK FAT? (LOL)

6. What is it saying about me in general?

When you are on a stage you don’t want to wear something that is going to make you blend into the background – you wanna wear something that is going to be eye catching .. it’s part of the show! Of course you will make mistakes and wonder how your friends could have let you be seen in public like that .. but hey, that’s why you need  new friends .. (joke). In the end, I try not to wear anything that is going to distract from my performance, either from my point of view or the audiences. I once saw a really great singer who was wearing a rather short dress onstage, and honestly, I spent so much of her performance worrying about people trying to look up her dress that I basically missed the show. Another time, the singer’s jeans were so tight that when he put his leg up on the monitor whilst singing, the whole seam split open, and left him hanging there, so to speak … it took me a whole week to recover from the sore muscles from laughing so hard and I remember NOTHING else about that show.