Duran Duran and its founding keyboardist Nick Rhodes have remembered the late fashion designer Antony Price as an “important collaborator from the very beginning,” and a “visionary” who played an important part in the band’s look and iconic music videos.
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A maverick British designer who also shaped the style of David Bowie, Roxy Music, Mick Jagger, and more recently, Queen Camilla, Price died on Wednesday, Dec. 17, at the age of 80.
In a post penned by Rhodes, and shared on Duran Duran’s official social channels, the British musician recounts how Price paired vision with “extraordinary technical skills. Nobody did glam better than Antony.”
Perhaps most significantly for the Rock Hall-inducted band, Price “conceived and designed all of the pastel colored silk suits we wore in the ‘Rio’ video,” the title track from the band’s celebrated sophomore album.
“His distinctive creations were unique and striking,” writes Rhodes. “Whilst he rarely received the recognition he deserved from the fashion media, his notable clientele and many other designers all knew Antony was a genius, a cut above the rest.”
Born in Keighley, Yorkshire in 1945, Antony Price studied at Bradford School of Art and, later, the Royal College of Art’s Fashion School, graduating in 1968. The following year, in 1969, Mick Jagger wore a pair of his body-hugging trousers for the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter tour of the United States, marking the first time his designs had been worn by a rock star.
The music community loved his work.
Price would go on to style all eight of Roxy Music’s album covers, and designed the t-shirt that appears on the back cover of Lou Reed’s 1972 classic album Transformer. Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry described Price as “a master craftsman” and “one of the most remarkably gifted people I have ever met.”
Like many of the chameleonic artists he worked with, Price’s talents couldn’t be stifled. He was adept at expressing his art with womenswear, working with the likes of Kylie Minogue and Jerry Hall, who wore a Price wedding dress when she married Mick Jagger.
“He never failed to deliver,” writes Duran Duran’s Rhodes. “His swan song fashion show, just a few weeks ago was as spectacular and relevant as the first one I ever saw.”
More than all of this, he writes, “Antony was a loyal, kind, intelligent and razor-witted, friend.”
