The British entertainer, 65, isn’t always dressed to the nines, he reveals
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NEED TO KNOW
- Boy George has teamed up with Julien’s Auctions for the ‘BOLD LUXURY: Boy George Edit’ auction, a portion of the proceeds from which will benefit MusiCares®
- Despite his extensive fashion résumé, the British singer, 65, admits he sometimes enjoys hitting the streets dressed down
- George tells PEOPLE about what it’s like to experience the world as George O’Dowd v Boy George
Boy George doesn’t always have to steal the scene.
PEOPLE recently caught up with the British entertainer, 65, at the preview for Julien’s Auctions’ Bold Luxury: Boy George Edit auction. During the preview for the auction, a portion of the proceeds from which will benefit MusiCares®, at New York City’s Soho Grand Hotel, George talked about taking a break from his dedication to style to just dress down for a day.
“I will definitely go out in my sweatpants with a beanie on and it affords me a luxury of seeing the world that I probably wouldn’t have if I was dressed up as Boy George. So I get to sort of be George O’Dowd and in that, sort of really get to experience everything, hear everything, see everything, not be patronized, not be treated special,” he shares.
The artist continues, “Sometimes actually it gives you a real insight to what people are like. And then the minute they find out it’s you, it’s like a whole nother personality comes out.”
Credit: Courtesy of Julien’s Auctions
George has had an interesting relationship with fame, admitting, “There’s so many things that I’ve seen and been around by just default of becoming famous so quickly.”
“One minute you’re nobody and the next minute you’re shaking hands with Frank Sinatra. or you’re wearing that hat over there to meet Margaret Thatcher. I didn’t wear it [intending to] meet her, but it was the perfect hat because the fabric was quite establishment,” he notes. “It was like a tweed, almost like a gentlemanly kind of respectful fabric, but made into this bonkers hat.”
George adds, “And it’s only sometimes in hindsight when you look at the moment, you go, ‘That’s interesting. I didn’t even think about the disturbed conformity of why I was wearing the hat and the statement it was making,’ and then just meeting her and having a sort of brief encounter.”
Speaking of his collection, he says, “I think my look is really a fusion of kind of gangster, Jewish culture, Rastafarian, Sticksman. It was all hybrids of rock and roll; Little Richard, I think, is always in there. He ignited the whole thing around what you could get away with in vocal expression, and his voice was insane. And in fact, all my heroes loved Little Richard.”
Credit: Courtesy of Julien’s Auctions
George proclaims how remarkable it was that he found the right influence at the right time in his life, noting, “When I was a kid, there was no internet, but I found Little Richard. I found that energy and I knew what it was and it was so alluring to me.”
“Because to me, what I was wearing was thrift store, ragamuffin, kind of just grabbing stuff, making my own style based on an idea of glamour that I’d grown up with, Hollywood, fox furs and a monocle, a hat, a veil, come on, flowers,” he explains. “But silhouettes, you realize actually it’s all about silhouettes and you’re always borrowing a silhouette from whatever decade and you’re adding stuff to it.”
Using a tartan outfit crafted by his mother as an example, he continues, “The tartan outfit that I got my mum to make me was based on a Vivienne Westwood and the fact that it’s lasted and it’s not even falling apart, it should be because it’s probably almost one of the oldest things in here. And talking my mom into… She had her patterns. It was like there’s a trouser pattern, ‘Add a bit. Make it wider here. Just cut, cut…’ And she’d be like, ‘You look like a clown.’ And I was like, ‘Kind of cool.’ “
Laughing, he adds, “Then, one of my friends said to me when I was like 16, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve got a great face for makeup.’ And I think that friend really ultimately regretted telling me to put on makeup because once I put it on, it was like, ‘Oh, hello. Who’s this lady?’ And that was the beginning of me enjoying the sort of things I’d grown up loving and creating something out of that, which is what individuality is about.”
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Credit: Courtesy of Julien’s Auctions
George is proud of what he selected from his world, describing it as “A massive pantry of ideas and sounds and shapes.”
“We get locked into this whole general thing. I take the view, and I always have, that you’re not bad because of what you are, you’re bad because of who you are. It’s not what you are, it’s irrelevant. It’s who you are because everything is costume, which is why clothes are so important, but they don’t tell the whole story,” he shares.
The star adds, “When you go to a fashion show and you see a model, a lot of them look really unhappy to be wearing what they’re wearing, I’m the opposite of that. The more ridiculous I look, the better I feel.”
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