Antony Price - Early Career

Early Career

Directly out of college, in 1968, Price began working for the new Stirling Cooper shop, designing men's trousers, coats and waistcoats which drew on sexual fetishism for their impact. Stirling Cooper was situated in London's Wigmore Street, and had a noted oriental interior designed by Price and Jane Whiteside. With Juliet Mann, Price also designed the next shop he designed for, from 1969-1974, Che Guevara on Kensington High Street. Prudence Glynn, fashion editor for The Times tipped him as a major new fashion talent in 'Trendsetters', giving him the main picture and writing that ‘Anthony Price is a sensational cutter and he puts a lot of work and thought into the shaping of even the most casual clothes. His range of little bare tops in crepe and cotton, for example, are technical feats, for they all have bra sections cut into the pattern … he is undoubtedly a trendsetter and in advance of his time … his clothes have great wit and gaiety and he is certainly a name to be watched in the future’. He next designed for Plaza, and then, in 1979, started his own label, with shops in South Molton Street and on the King's Road. He also operated a shop called 'Ebony' in the 1980s.

Price's button trousers for Stirling Cooper were worn by Mick Jagger for The Rolling Stones' 1969 American Gimme Shelter Tour. In addition, his bridge-crutch trousers were feat of technical skill, inventing a new construction that high-lighted the male crotch and buttocks. He 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 is a spiral-zipped dress in ciré satin, first seen worn by Amanda Lear in Nova's cover story for its May 1970 issue, 'How To Undress for Your Husband' and later featured as one of 'Princess Zonda's archetypal outfits in the advertisements Price drew himself for Plaza in the late seventies. The Lear pictures appeared in Peter York's feature on Price in Harper's and Queen's April 1979 issue. Lear was also the Price-dressed covergirl for Roxy Music's 1973 album For Your Pleasure.

In 1982 Price collabrated with the British band Duran Duran, designing pastel silk tonic suits for the "Rio" video. beginning a style trend among the "New Romantics".

A year later, in 1983, Price staged a 'Fashion Extravaganza' at London's Hippodrome, combining fashion and rock music. "I'm partly responsible for the marriage of rock and fashion," Price said in 1998, "When I started out, rock people thought fashion people were snobby and fashion people though the music industry grubby and dirty." Stylist David Thomas says about Price's influence:

He reinvented the suit so that it was no longer about going to the office. He made it rock'n'roll. He started at a time when British fashion didn't have sponsors. It was the era before the superstar designer. They all came after him. Yet he was a visionary. He created that military, dandy, sexy, eclectic men's look. He created rock'n'roll fashion.

Price has declared that 'I'm not a fashion designer ... I'm in the theatrical business,' and for Fashion Aid at Albert Hall in 1985 he conceived of a presentation of model, client and long-standing friend Jerry Hall emerging from a black velvet box. The outfit consisted of a bolero and dress with lampshade peplum in metallic and red French silk lace over lamé. Price has said of this outfit 'It wasn't the chicest or most subtle garment, but when Jerry moved under the lights she looked like a Siamese fighting fish in a vast blue tank.'

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.