Antony Price, who has just died at the age of 80, was orignally an ‘up and coming’ fashion designer in 1974 he opened a store in London’s King Road around the corner from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop.  His raisin d’etre was  “Clothes for Studs and Starlets’’ and the space was described by Vogue as “a whole new concept of retailing’’: instead of hanging his clothes from racks, pictures of them were stapled to boards identified with a code number.  He hated being described as a fashion designer, and prancing down the catwalk was never his thing……he said I’m in the theatrical business.

He did not design for the famous fashion houses or exhibit at the big fashion weeks. Pursuing a more independent path, he staged only half a dozen shows in a career spanning almost 60 years.  He was much happier staging  “Fashion Extravaganzas” at the London’s hip  Camden Palace

Price was glamor personified and was one of the very first (and the best) to meld fashion and rock together.  In 1982 he collaborated with the British band Duran Duran, designing electric silk tonic suits for the “Rio” video. Later on,  Nick Rhodes would bankroll the  Antony Price Boutique in Brook Street, Mayfair. 

Price was the stylist for Roxy Music‘s first eight albums, as well as for the back cover for Lou Reed‘s 1972 Transformer album. His self-declared trademark design was a spiral-zipped dress in ciré satin, first seen worn by Amanda Lear in Nova‘s cover story for its May 1970 issue  Lear was also the Price-dressed cover girl for Roxy Music’s 1973 album For Your Pleasure.

Price received the Evening Glamour Award from the British Fashion Council in 1989, and the following year British Vogue published a profile on Price written by Sarah Mower. He described his approach to designing women’s clothing in an interview in 1994:

My clothes are men’s idea of what women should wear, and for that they’ll pay good money. … Men are looking for the sex robot from Lang‘s Metropolis with the perfect body offering endless fantasy sex. They’re obsessed by the size of sexual protuberances – their own as well as women’s – and I’m an illusionist. My job is to give them what they want.

In one of his many career highlights, in May 2012, Price dressed actress Tilda Swinton for her appearance in drag for the cover of Candy magazine, described as “the first fashion magazine completely dedicated to celebrating transvestism, transsexuality, crossdressing 

and androgyny in all their glory. In 2013, Price resumed his association with Steve Strange (whom he had designed outfits for during the Visage – The Anvil period in 1982) and designed an outfit for the relaunch of Steve Strange’s Visage project, which he wore for the David Bowie V&A Exhibition Private View Gala Night.

In a world/industry that was consumed by its ‘bottom line’ Price was both a renegade and a pioneer who made ‘art’ that added much-needed glamour and joie de vivre to London life and beyond.  His star always shone bright, and will not be forgotten by anyone whose path crossed with his.