Bye, Starman, thanks for everything.
Bowie died last Sunday. It was shocking news: picking up my phone to stop the dreaded Monday morning alarm clock, and there it was, another kind of alarm. The notification from the newspaper app said he was gone, aged 69, from cancer.
My heart shattered in pieces. âWho died, mummy?â, asked my four-year-old daughter, old enough now to know that dying itâs a sort of going away, and never coming back. âOne of mumâs favourite artists. Iâll play his music to you.â She stood up and gave me a hug. She is also old enough to know what it means to really love an artist, being herself a fan of Grimes and The Beatles (yeap).
Like lots of people said all over the world on the Internet, David Bowie changed my life. I even remember the details of when this strange change took place. It was at the house I shared with my boyfriend and another flatmate in Woolwich, Southeast London. I had recently graduated from university, having studied journalism, and I was lost, confused, and feeling more out of place than ever. Going to university in London was a dream come true, but the dream slowly turned into a nightmare when I realised I would leave my course with more doubts than answers. University was supposed to have showed me the ropes, put me on track to have all the best experiences of my life, tell me where the opportunities were and how to seize them. But in three years, it didnât. On the contrary, University had smashed the little confidence I still hang onto by teaching me that there was little room in the industry for shy girls from third world countries who would rather die than risk interviewing someone over the phone and not understanding a word of what was being said.
And now the journey had come to a bleak crossroads. What should I do with my life? I was broke, my student visa was running out, and the language barrier made most journalistic jobs out of reach. I had arrived in London with artistic aspirations. I was a ballerina in my teens, and my longest running dream was to be a writer - hence my choice of a Journalism  degree - but the closest I was getting to pursuing either was by writing blog posts and book reviews in between shifts at strip clubs. I felt torn between going back to Brazil and trying a conventional career, or doing whatever it took to stay in London and find my creative voice. Whatever choice I made, it was bound to be painful and difficult. So for a while I just drifted. I didnât want to make any choices.
Till the cold afternoon in 2007 I listened to Ashes to Ashes (I canât remember exactly how I was consuming music then - it was a weird moment in time between Limewire and all the pirate softwares and streaming services like Spotify⊠I probably used Myspace. I had already stopped buying records and CDs, and would take me six years to go back to it, but I digress.) It was a particularly depressing afternoon, spent under the duvet reading The Jar Bell (I told you it was depressing), when the piano riff came tumbling out of my speakers and I got goosebumps. It told the story of this dude, Major Tom, who I vaguely remembered hearing about as a kid, but never paid much attention. âStrung out in heavens high/ hitting an all time low.â Thatâs exactly how I felt, except I wasnât high - yet. But the wish to be was there, always. It came along with another, more intense desire for self-destruction that started in my tweens, and never really subsided. Itâs a feeling well-known by creatives and intense people alike, who need to numb the pain when they canât fully express themselves. Major Tom seemed to be going through that. Wanting to run away, but feeling shitty for it. But he, Bowie, was getting tired of it.  âWanna an axe to break the ice/ Wanna come down right now.â It was time to let him go. Start anew. There was still time.
I listened to that song over and over again the whole day, the whole week. It started a phase of obsession with the man, for whom reinvention was the most sacred game. Itâs okay to feel lost and displaced, as long as you keep going. All that mattered was continuing to be creative, and for that you needed to be able to start again, over and over again.
I frantically researched all stages of his career, all the characters, and of course, the fashion: Hunky Dory, Ziggy, Low, Pierrot, Thin White Duke, Goblin King. Every phase had a different face. That was it. Before university, I had always used fashion as a prop to build my many identities. I was never very pretty, but I could be different. At school, all the girls wanted long straight hair, but mine was pink. Later, all the girls were into short dresses and high heels, while I started my raver phase, with platform sneakers and Bjork-like mini-buns. My wardrobe had chameleon superpowers: from band t-shirts, to witchy leather skirts, to nylon see through cargo trousers (wow), to pink fluffy coats. It was all because of the music I listened to. I looked up to my favourite artists for inspiration of what to wear: PJ Harvey, Bjork, Gwen Stephany in her No Doubt phase, Madonna, Sonic Youth, Jim Morrison, Bob Marley, TLC⊠how come I had never looked at Bowie for inspiration before?
Well, that was it. Fashion was the answer. Fashion, not drugs, not self-harm, would be my crutch. I could use it to reinvent myself, start over. Bowie reminded me that sometimes all you needed was an outlet to express yourself, and fashion could be that, again. I could still write, or try to. I just needed something to keep my creative juices flowing while the writing wasnât going well (god knows it still isnât). I needed something to keep me in London. There wasnât a better place to be.
Thatâs how I started my somewhat confuse path in the fashion industry: wanting an outlet to reinvent myself. I had some money saved, and in 2007 started amassing a vintage clothes archive, which my friends modelled, my boyfriend photographed, and I sold on an eBay shop called, yes, Major Tom Vintage. It lasted almost two years, before I chucked it all in to start working as a stylist. The rest is history. I travelled the world, worked with celebrities and big brands, wrote pieces for major outlets.I still have moments when I question the purpose of it all (all the time, in fact), but I donât question where I should be anymore. London is home. And these days, if thereâs one thing Iâm not scared of, is to reinvent myself. I, we, can always start all over again, even if we stay in the same place. Thanks for this, Starman.
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