Designer and musician Keanan Duffty learned a lot from his fashion collaboration for Target department stores in 2006 with rock legend and fashion icon David Bowie, and on March 28, Duffty passed on some of that wisdom to FIT students when he spoke at the Faces and Places in Fashion lecture series.
“A lot of things happen if you believe,” Duffty advised the students. “I do believe we can empower ourselves to make certain things happen. [David Bowie] did not need to do the Target collaboration, but [in doing so] he empowered me to have more success. So you can’t be afraid. And you have to pass it on. You should always be in a place where you can help other people succeed in their goals.”
Duffty long considered himself a Bowie fan before finally having the opportunity to work with him on the fashion collaboration. “Bowie is a tremendously creative figure and is the reason I got into trying to make stuff,” he said. Duffty led the audience through Bowie’s early years as David Jones, when he was not producing hits, to the musician’s successes, tying together the various phases of his fashion and music such as his sci-fi rock star period and glam rock (the period in which, Duffty said, Bowie “found his so-called DNA”), followed by his “alien” image to, finally, an embrace of modernism.
When Duffty approached Bowie about doing a collaboration, “I told him I’d like to make a collection inspired by his fashion legacy for Target, and he said, ‘What’s Target?’” But when it came time to show him initial ideas for the collection, he loved them.
When the two first got together, Duffty said he was expecting to meet the space alien. “What I got was a guy in Hilfiger jeans, bad shoes, and an ill-fitting T-shirt. I realized in that moment, this was David Jones and David Bowie was another creation.”
“They say don’t meet your heroes,” Duffty added during the Q&A, “but in the case of David Bowie, he was extremely generous. It definitely did change me as a person.”
The Faces and Places in Fashion lecture series was established 15 years ago to provide students with new perspectives on current issues, as well as advice on careers and jobs.