Underneath these perfectly preserved gingham, houndstooth and flower-print dresses are rows of flats and heels, none of which are immaculate. One tropical print number from Karen Millen worn by the singer in 2007 when performing at the Hammersmith Apollo recalls the Ronettes and Billie Holiday, while a hot pink Patricia Field mini and a Galliano newspaper-print dress both evoke the body-conscious Noughties party scene. One newspaper in the early 2000s described her as “Dietrich with a nose-stud”, and that high-low mix applied to her style as much as it did to her music.Įven on Design Museum mannequins, the dresses are distinctly ‘Amy’. With her beehive hair style, her hourglass dresses, her winged eyeliner, her battered flats and her tattoos, she melded the ultra-feminine diva archetype with Camden street culture in a way nobody had done before. Winehouse was one of arguably very few 21st century artists whose fashion choices became (to deploy that terribly overused word) iconic. And her fashion was so linked into that.” But it was ultimately her voice and her presence as a performer that made her such a powerful figure. “Not having access to Amy anymore means you can’t go and see her perform. “We understand people will feel sad, but it is also so important that the exhibition was experiential,” says Khanchandani.
You get a sense of that here.”Īs a thoughtful and emotional tribute, the exhibition undoubtedly works, although it is impossible not to look at Amy’s sky-blue guitars, slinky silk dresses, muddy ballet shoes and reams of hand-written songs dotted with hearts and not think about the tragedy of it all. Nobody is trying to say she was a choir girl, but she was funny and kind and brilliant. “She was one of the all-time great characters. “I wanted people to see the real girl - my real girl,” says Mitch, over the phone. The exhibition comes 10 years after her death and was curated by the Design Museum’s Priya Khanchandani with the help of Amy’s best friend and stylist Naomi Parry, as well as her now divorced parents, Mitch and Janis, who donated photographs, clothes and lyric books. ‘Amy: Beyond the Stage’ opens today in London’s Kensington and is an attempt by the Winehouse family and the Design Museum to shift the conversation away from alcoholism and drugs and towards Amy’s extraordinary voice and her era-defining style. “Ah, there she is,” she says, pointing to an image of a little girl with chubby cheeks. You can see the superstar she’s turning into – although it is a wall of family photos that makes her mother stop.
#AMY WINEHOUSE BEFORE DRUGS PROFESSIONAL#
The show begins with professional pictures of the then 21-year-old Amy Winehouse shot in her north London teenage bedroom – in all of them, she exudes that particular unkempt pin-up aesthetic, strutting around in low-slung leopard print trousers, little crop tops and tight-fitting miniskirts.
Her bedroom never looked like that she was so scruffy.” Janis Winehouse-Collins arrives at the Design Museum at the same time as I do, and looks around a room dedicated to her daughter’s life with a smile, while shaking her head at the neat piles of records and images of immaculate rails of colourful clothing.
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