Michael Stipe Reviews His 35 Greatest Fits: “This Was the F***ing Coolest Jacket on Earth”
For many years, Michael Stipe, who turned 64 in January, was the lead singer of R.E.M., a now-defunct rock band that formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980. It feels strange to say this like it’s new information, but in conversation, Stipe has a charming way of talking about this part of his life as if it’s something people might not know. (When he mentions Peter Buck, R.E.M.’s guitarist, he says “my former guitar player, Peter Buck,” even though, because he’s Michael Stipe, he could probably just say “Peter” and most people would get it.)
After basically pioneering the indie-rock-obscurantism-to-stadium-rock-ubiquity career arc, influencing generation upon generation of underground guitar bands, and selling over 90 million albums in the process, R.E.M. dissolved amicably in 2011. Although Stipe has been chipping away at new music for his long-awaited debut solo album in recent years, his primary creative focus for the past decade-and-change has been visual art. “I have lost and I have been lost but for now I’m flying high,” a major exhibition of his work in various mediums including sculpture, photography, ceramics, video, and custom-embroidered watch caps opened at the Fondazione ICA Milano in Milan, Italy in December, and runs through March; his fourth book Even the Birds Gave Pause, a companion to the ICA show, goes on sale in April.
This month, Stipe could also be seen looming above Soho in a leopard-print Saint Laurent shirt; he’s one of the faces of the label’s Spring 2024 campaign, along with Lauren Hutton and Diana Ross. Although this modeling gig is Stipe’s first real foray into high fashion, he’s always been a distinctive, risk-taking dresser– although he says his his self-presentation as a performer was mostly about hiding in plain sight.
“I was incredibly shy,” Stipe says. "I have this scar right in the middle of my eyebrows from a car wreck when I was 18. I took out the steering wheel and then went through the windshield, and so I always wore my hair to cover the scar, and I had really bad skin, so yeah, I would just cover up and I'd put on as many layers as I possibly could and then keep the lights really low. That was how we did it until we were playing much larger places. By [R.E.M.’s] third album, I had started to open up a little bit, but it wasn't easy. I've always worn a lot of layers, as a protective device in a way to help present myself publicly, whether it's at a small birthday party or on stage in front of a large group of people.
“It was a way of walking on stage,” he says, “and not fainting. I would be fine after the third song, but I'd have to jack my adrenaline up to where I would go into basically a trance state and then nothing mattered. As I got warmer, the clothes would come off, so it became really quite theatrical. By the end of the show. I would be down to a T-shirt or nothing on top, and that always looked really good.”
Over time, as Stipe became more famous—and at least relatively more at ease in the public eye—he started dressing with more intention. One of his earliest sartorial mentors was Jeremy Ayers, an Athens-born writer, photographer and musician who Stipe describes as “one of the earliest loves of my life.” After leaving Georgia for New York, Ayers had become part of the scene around Andy Warhol’s Factory, where he was known as “Sylva Thinn.”
“He dressed as a woman,” Stipe said, “and presented as a woman most of the time that he was there with Andy. But when he moved back to Georgia, he just would dress like a scarecrow. He would go thrift shopping and pull all these really classic looks together, but he always had something that was off, or amiss. I took that and ran with it and kind of made it my own thing.
“I wanted, as a teenager, to be like this hairless, androgynous David Bowie type,” Stipe said, “and I'm exactly the opposite of that. I've got bad skin and I've got funny hair. I always did. Courtney Love and I talked about this a lot with each other, early in our friendship. We both were just from the island of broken toys, and we would never fit into that look that we wanted to fit into. If I was trying to wear something that was completely tailored and gorgeous, I looked ridiculous in it. So if it was a little bit off, it always looked a bit better. Rumpled is better. I have to wear things that are extremely tailored and then they fall apart while they're on me, and that's a good look.”
A few days after the Saint Laurent billboards debuted in New York, Stipe dialed in to a FaceTime call to talk about the evolution of his style and annotate some images of his many iconic looks; he’d been staying in Georgia, in a house he bought when he was twenty-five, and occasionally he’d jump up from his seat, disappear into another room, and return with some priceless vintage piece from his personal archives. What was supposed to be a brief conversation ended up exceeding 90 minutes; Stipe is a visual learner, he explained, “so I see the picture, the clothes, and I’m instantly reminded of the era, of the moment.”
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images1/35ONSTAGE WITH R.E.M. AT THE HOLLYWOOD PALACE, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, JUNE 1984
Jesus Christ, what a great look. That hair. I remember one day my band was in London. We shared a record company with the English Beat, and we were visiting the offices, and two of the guys from the English Beat had left the band and started a new band, and they came to the offices to present their new singer, Roland Gift. It was the Fine Young Cannibals. And they were like, Get a haircut, you look like a hippie. And I was like, Fuck you– you look like busboys. And they did. But then they said, This is our new singer, Roland Gift, and I met him as he was meeting his record company for the first time, before they were famous. So cool.
In terms of this look: I’ve got really good shoulders. So a classic Levi's jacket fits me really well. And I’m wearing a belt and suspenders. The belt was, like, an old seatbelt for a dog, and I wore it as a belt. But the Levi's jacket—the second I saw this picture, I was like, I'm going out and getting myself a new one.
It fits really well. That must have been vintage, even then—it doesn’t look like an ‘80s Levi’s jacket, to me.
It probably came from a thrift store. I couldn't afford anything. I found the only pair of black cotton pants from the 1950s left in a thrift store anywhere in the world, and I wore them until they literally fell off. And that's those pants. But I look fucking hot in that jacket, and I'm going to go get another one.
Paul Natkin/Getty Images2/35ONSTAGE WITH R.E.M. AT NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY, DEKALB, ILLINOIS, OCTOBER 1986
This next one is so funny, because I wore this jacket last week. It was my father's graduation gift when he graduated from high school, from his mother and father. They gave him a red velvet jacket, and that's what he went to college wearing and my mother remembers it from when they were dating.
Hang on a second.
[Stipe steps out of frame and returns after a minute, holding the very jacket we’re discussing.]
It's really, really torn up from years of wear, but it's from the 1950s, so what do you expect?
But you’re still wearing it, as recently as last week. That's great.
Yeah, still! It was raining last week, and I just came through COVID, and I was freezing all the time, so I brought that jacket out. It's really warm.
Do you tend to wear stuff to death?
Yeah. And I'm really hard on clothes. It’s unintentional. I mean, some things stick around. [He points out the purple crew-neck sweatshirt he’s wearing.] This—I mean, it’s quite beautiful now, it looks like Margiela, but the sun has damaged the shoulders.
That deep purple is apparently a big color for 2024, as well. So you’re on-trend without realizing it.
Well, I'm a little bit dressed like a Rajneeshee, but that's fine too.
Gie Knaeps/Getty Images3/35ONSTAGE WITH R.E.M. AT THE TORHOUT WERCHTER FESTIVAL, WERCHTER, BELGIUM, JULY 1989
I had two earrings. It was—what is it that people wear now, through their dick?
Like a Prince Albert?
Yeah, it's that—but it's a big ring with a little globe holding it together. I had two of those in one ear in the late ‘80s. And you don't see it in this picture, but I had the worst haircut of all time. I was doing it myself. I was shaving the sides with a pet groomer. I had a lesbian rat tail down the back, and then on top my hair was thinning. So in 1989, I cut my hair short, knowing that I would never have long hair again. I did a video to a song called “Pop Song ‘89,” which was basically me with my Robert Plant long hair, celebrating that, and right after we shot the video and edited it, I cut my hair off, never to have long hair again.
I remember that video, of course. I remember MTV censored the backup dancers’ nipples, and you got a black bar, too.
That's right. Well, I actually did that. I insisted that if the female nipples were censored, the male nipples were as well. So that was my little feminist statement at the moment.
This looks like a tuxedo shirt. The suit is off the rack. It was probably, like, a cheap and cheerful British suit that I could afford at the time. I would rip them up onstage. I mean, they really took a beating. I still have a lot of my stage clothes, but they're all torn to shreds and there's salt stains under the armpits and everything.
Jeff Kravitz4/35MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, SEPTEMBER 1991
I'm wearing a baseball cap. My hair was falling out. I wasn't ready to shave it yet. And the jacket is CP & Company. When they first moved into the Flatiron Building, which is my favorite building in the world, in New York, and I had money for the first time, I would go and buy everything they had that was that [shade] of yellow. And the AIDS ribbon and the “RAINFOREST” T-shirt. That was when I wore six or seven different shirts, each one representing [a cause] like gun control, LGBTQ+ rights, whatever we called it then, the rainforest— I don't remember what else.
You had one for every nomination, right? And you were going to come up wearing a different shirt for each acceptance speech.
But then I realized we probably weren't going to win every one of 'em, so I just started taking them off at one time, and they didn't all make it onto TV. I think there were seven of 'em all together. That was a good look.
You had a real proto-athleisure thing going on in this period. There's a few shots that I didn't pull where you're in the baseball cap with a short-sleeved hoodie, stuff like that.
There was a little bit of a skate culture thing happening in the early ‘90s. I was living in L.A. at the time and hanging out with some of the skate guys, skate people. And then the baseball cap, like I said, was just to cover the fact that my hair was thinning.
You weren’t ready to let go quite yet?
I didn't know what to do. I became the template for what to do, and then I spoke openly about it, which no one had done as far as I know. Prior to that, we had Sinead O'Connor, we had the Harlem Globetrotters, we had Telly Savalas and Yul Brenner, but Sinead’s was a different type of statement, as a woman, and of course the actors would just say that it was for a part. They wouldn't say that it's because their hair was thinning. I cut my hair off and then I said, “It's because my hair is thinning.” So I became the first bald pop star.
Mitchell Gerber/Getty Images5/35AT A GRAMMY AWARDS PARTY, 1992
We were just taking the piss. We were not excited. I mean, it was exciting to be nominated, but the Grammys are very staid and middle-of-the-road, especially at the time. And so Peter Buck, my former guitar player, wore pajamas and a robe, and I rented a powder blue tux and the cowboy hat. The brilliant thing about that—I didn't realize that this would happen, but all the country-western stars that were there, like Reba McEntire, they all walked up and presented themselves to me. Just because I had a cowboy hat on! I think they thought, I should probably know who this guy is.
A fellow traveler.
And that's also the night that I met Janet Jackson. So that was kind of sweet.
It’s a good look. It doesn’t look like a rental.
It’s absolutely a rental, not something you would buy. [The pants] were flared, like a boot flare.
It’s great, though. It’s kind of a Gram Parsons-on-New-Year’s kind of vibe.
Very much. And the American flag in the lapel– that’s a total piss-take.
Chris Carroll/Getty Images6/35CIRCA 1994
This next one is iconic for a couple of reasons. The shaved head is now fully in play, and you’re wearing the green T-shirt from the “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” video. I feel like you wore that around a lot in this period, like a uniform, or a superhero costume or something. Do you still have it?
With the star on the front? Yeah, I might still have it. I'm not sure. I bought it in a store. I think I popularized the big star– that video, for “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” was how that star T-shirt became kind of a national sensation, so that was cool. I don’t know who made the sunglasses. I don’t remember. The band looked good here. Peter all in black, with his giant chops, Bill [Berry] in sunglasses, and Mike [Mills] in white.
Yeah. You were all kind of working it around this time. We’re not tracing R.E.M.’s style evolution as a band, but I feel like that’s its own story. You guys used to dress like gentleman farmers or something– there was an austerity to your looks. And then you get a little looser as it goes along. Mike starts wearing that Nudie suit around.
Yeah. He went to Nashville and got those suits made, by a guy who’d started [out] working with the original guy who worked with Gram Parsons. They worked with all the country-western guys. At this point, we were playing very large places, and I needed help. I needed some visual representation up front. I was like, Mike, grow your hair. I don’t have any hair left. Grow your hair out– you gotta help me here. And so he went and did that, and that became great. That was a great help for me onstage to help carry the weight of the performance– him in those sparkly suits from Nashville. He’s kept all those, I know that.
Rick Diamond/Getty Images7/35ONSTAGE WITH R.E.M. AT THE OMNI COLISEUM, ATLANTA, GEORGIA, NOVEMBER 1995
This is the Monster tour, I guess. I was wearing eyeliner even before the band. And women's clothes. I was taking my cues from Captain Sensible from the Damned. He would wear a tutu on stage and play guitar in a tutu, and I just thought he was the coolest guy on earth. I present quite masculine, so it's good to throw some feminine stuff in there. And I've always loved mixing the kind of classic ideas of masculine clothing with classic ideas of women's clothing, female clothing.
Steve Granitz8/35AT THE ‘ESCAPE FROM L.A.' PREMIERE, MANN'S CHINESE THEATRE, HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, 1996
I only have one question: Where do you even get an Adidas cowboy hat?
That was a gift. The pants are really good. I don't want to say who made them, I don't like them anymore, but they're made by a very famous brand. But the hat, I wore one evening, and Dennis Rodman tore it off my head. It was very late at night. He tore it off my head, ripped the Adidas band off and threw it on the floor, and put the hat back on my head. I was like, What the fuck? I guess he was sponsored by an opposing brand at that point, so he was offended by the Adidas [logo]. I picked up the hat band and kept it. I still have that hat, which is insane.
Michael, I just want to say I'm really glad that we're having this conversation.
I don't know how much of this is going to make it into the article.
The Dennis Rodman story is going in there, don’t worry.
I could tell more of that story, but I don't want to stir up any shit. There's enough shit in the universe.
Sure. We're all in different places in our lives than you and Dennis were at that time.
Definitely. He was in his cups, for sure. But—nice fellow. Yeah.
Ronald Siemoneit/Getty Images9/35ARRIVING AT SAM BOYD STADIUM FOR THE START OF U2'S POPMART TOUR, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, APRIL 1997
Was this look supposed to be camouflage, or a statement? Or maybe both?
It was camouflage, but it didn't work. I was pretty famous at that point, and pretty recognizable with the bald head. I thought if I had hair, people wouldn't recognize me. I just looked like Michael Stipe with a purple wig on. It was ridiculous. People spotted me from 30 seats back and started yelling my name and clapping and all this stuff. I had come from L.A. for the show, and I think it was in Vegas. I’d picked up that jacket in L.A., the fringed jacket, which is super sweet. But I didn’t wear that wig again, ever. It didn’t work. I just looked like Michael Stipe in a stupid wig.
Is there anything you’ve found that really does work, in terms of hiding in plain sight?
Face masks. But [these days] everyone’s in their phone and nobody cares about me anymore, so I have no problem on the subway, ever. Maybe one person says hello, or Thanks for your work or whatever. It’s not an issue.
Ron Galella, Ltd./Getty Images10/35‘THE APOSTLE’ SCREENING, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, DECEMBER 1997
I'm wearing a ring that was given to me by Kurt Cobain. Yeah, I must've done that intentionally. I wouldn't often wear that out in public. Jesus, [this look] is a mess. The scarf and the overcoat are Van Noten. The jacket is Dior. It's Hedi Slimane. The bag is an Eastpak backpack, and the skirt is—gee, yeah, I don't recognize it. It's just a skirt.
I like what you’re doing with the proportions here. It’s a man’s jacket but it’s down to mid-thigh. Like in a lot of these images, you’re doing things that shouldn’t work on paper but somehow it’s hitting.
To me, this look is a disaster— there's too much going on. But also there’s the eye makeup. We were probably shooting Velvet Goldmine in London, the Todd Haynes movie [which Stipe produced along with Christine Vachon.] We were all dressing like glam pop stars. So this is a take on glam. [Stipe’s friend] Helena Christensen in particular was really working the glitter that year, so there was a lot of glitter everywhere all the time.
That’s how you remember 1997? Just glitter everywhere?
Glitter everywhere. Yeah. Couldn't get away from it.
Rune Hellestad - Corbis/Getty Images11/35LATE 1990s
Oh, wow. This is good. This sweater—I still have that sweater. I'm in my studio right now. The sweater's next door.
The embroidery on the sweater—presumably this is one of one, right?
Yeah. That's a handmade piece by Noki, and I bought it at the Pineal Eye in London, in Soho. That's where I would pick up all my Vexed Generation [pieces]—now if you go looking for it on The Real Real, all the Vexed Generation stuff is going for like 2,500 bucks a pop.
In fact, check it out. Hang on. [leaves frame again, returns with a white motorcycle-style Vexed Generation jacket.] I just found this last week. It actually still fits.
[Stipe demonstrates a few of the jacket’s details, including the sweat-vents in the sleeves and across the back.]
These guys reinvented the wheel. They were ripped off by everyone—Helmut Lang, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, everyone was ripping off Vexed Generation. I saw one of them was going for $2,400, and I was like, Jesus Christ, let me see if I can find these pieces. So I went back into the deep closet and pulled this one. It’s actually in really good shape. I could sell it.
But then, the one that I would probably hold onto for one second— [he slips into a super-tech-y black zip-up jacket, like something a bike messenger would wear in a William Gibson novel] This is Vexed. It's so good.
Oh, man.
[Stipe pulls the zipper all the way up, so that the wide lapels become a mask that covers the bottom two-thirds of his face.]
They were the first ones to do this, right? Nobody did that before Vex. This was when they started installing close circuit TVs all over London. This was a biking jacket. It actually caused quite a stir, because they passed a law that it was illegal to cover your face, but this was for bikers. This was the fucking coolest. It's still the coolest jacket on earth.
This is late ‘90s, early 2000s, and the eyeliner looks like a precursor to your Blue Mask look, which we’ll get to in a second.
Okay, cool. The sweater is—I'm almost certain it's an artist named Noki. I bought a bunch of stuff at the Pineal Eye there in Soho, including all the Vexed stuff. I also bought it for all my friends. I just thought they were the coolest things on Earth, and they weren't that expensive. And they had beautiful shirts and trousers that, again, were being repeated by giant fashion brands ten years later. It really inspired a whole generation of designers.
Mick Hutson12/35ONSTAGE WITH R.E.M. AT GLASTONBURY, JUNE 1999
Glasto!
I took a helicopter from London with Hole. They were performing before R.E.M., and Courtney wrote “Georgia” across her belly, as an homage to us, and to the band. And she looked amazing. She had fairy wings and, basically, lingerie, that was falling off of her. She looked so incredible. I was like, Shit. I gotta up my game. I had the scarf that I wore as a belt, and the pants are Comme des Garcons. They're really good. Great pants. But I took white duct tape and made tuxedo stripes down the side of them with the duct tape. The scarf is Alpana Bawa. And then the Vexed Generation shirt and the eye makeup. I just had to up my game, because Courtney looked so cool.
This was in ‘99, I’m pretty sure. The band’s popularity was starting to drop a little bit, and this show brought us back across the UK and Europe. It was the turning point for the band becoming very popular again.
Steve Granitz13/3515TH ANNUAL IFP/WEST INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA, MARCH 2000
This is pretty clownish. I mean, I like the hat. It was just a rain cap. The jacket I’ve still got—it’s Comme des Garçons. The white clothes probably came from Fred Segal, and the sandals came from Marrakesh. So my great friend, I'm the godfather to his four daughters, and he's from Marrakesh. So he had taken us to Marrakesh, and we went through the souk, and I was obsessed with these knockoff sandals that are really popular in Morocco. I bought a dozen of them and brought them back and wore them until they fell off.
Vince Bucci/Getty Images14/35AT THE FIRST ANNUAL LOVE ROCKS CONCERT, HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, FEBRUARY 2002
I still have the shirt. I still have that jacket. I never wear vests. I don't know why I was wearing a vest that night. This was at the first event they had at—what’s the name of the place in L.A. where they do the Oscars?
The Kodak Theater.
This was the first event they had at that theater. They were honoring Bono. You were supposed to play a U2 song and then another song, and we decided to do “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher. So I made this whole statement before the song about this guy who was political, and a great style icon. And then I said, the song goes out to Bono—meaning Sonny Bono, of course. Bono and his wife Ali were in the front row and they cracked up, and we started, “I Got You Babe.” So then everyone got the joke—but at first, there was, like, this giant gasp. Here's this guy who's supposed to be Bono's good friend—and I mispronounced his name on stage in front of him.
Later Bono jumped up and sang [U2’s “One”] with us, which was hysterical. Of course he couldn’t resist. But he didn’t sing on [“I Got You Babe.”] Sonny Bono had died recently. And I reached out to Cher. It was the first time I’d ever talked to her. I said, “I saw that your name was on the list for this event, and I want you to know that we're going to cover ‘I Got You Babe.’ And I didn’t want you to be in the audience with a camera on you and be surprised by that. Sonny had just died, and she was probably still grieving. And there was a silence on the line. And I was like, Oh, shit. And then she said, “What key are you doing it in?”
So she came and rehearsed with us, and in the middle eight of the song, she walked out onstage and brought the house down, and we sang it together. And afterwards she told me that it was the first time she had ever sung that song with anyone other than Sonny. She didn’t tell me before—I think I probably would’ve turned into a puddle onstage. I’m a big fan of hers.
I'm wearing a ring on my wedding finger. That was my 40th birthday gift from Bono. And then I just took a shoelace and did something with it to try to jazz it up a little bit for the stage.
I was going to ask about if that was a shoelace. You can see the little adjuster thing.
[Stipe laughs.] It’s a shoelace, but it looks good from 30 feet away.
What’s the deal with the pendant?
It’s onyx. It was a talisman given to me by my Chinese doctor.
So it serves a purpose of some sort? It's fending something off?
I don't remember what. I just thought it looked good, so I put it on.
New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images15/35“LOTUS THROWS ITSELF A 2ND ANNIVERSARY BASH,” NEW YORK, NEW YORK, JUNE 2002
There’s that same shirt again.
Yeah. I've still got the shirt. I mean, I love that shirt so much. Here, I'm just working a really classic look. That was my grandfather's hat. Actually, that's not my grandfather's. That was the “Everybody Hurts” hat, from the video. And then the ring is Stephen Webster, which I intentionally wore to this event with Elton John, knowing that he was going to see it. I was like, “Elton, hi!” And I had my hand up in front of my face. Elton saw the ring, and he [reached over] like four people and grabbed me, jerked me into him and said, [Elton voice] “Where the fuck did you get that?” And I told him, and so he went and bought a bunch of his own. Stephen Webster, who’s a London-based jewelry designer who’s amazing.
Oh my God. I just realized where this was. So I had terrible food poisoning that night. I had flown, this is such a story. My God. I had flown from Nice to Paris to New York to attend the [second anniversary-party] of [New York nightclub] Lotus, because my friend was working with them and I promised her that I would be there. In Nice– it was when Edge [from U2] got married, and I was at the wedding, and then we went out. A small group of us went out to dinner before I had to catch a 6:00 AM flight, and I got some bad shellfish, and I got really, really sick. And I didn't realize it until I got home to New York, took a nap, woke up, and I was like, Oh, I don't feel well. But I’d promised to be at the opening, and I flew across the fucking ocean to be there on time. I took the Concorde, by the way, that's how I got there.
And I got to the opening, and you see I'm holding onto the [stanchion]—it’s because I was really, really green. I’ve never been so sick in my life. I still can't eat shellfish. They were serving shrimp at the opening, and everyone was breathing on me and offering me shrimp. And finally my friend who was working with them came over and said, What is going on? You're the color of the Grinch. And I was like, I got food poisoning in Nice. And she's like, Go home. So I did. I left the party. I got photographed and left.
Now that you’re saying this, I can see that you're in some distress in this picture.
I was so sick I couldn't eat. It had nothing to do with the meal that made me sick, but I couldn't eat arugula or asparagus for a year after that. It really fucked me up. And to this day, if I even see the word “langoustine,” I start throwing up in my mouth.
Steve Granitz16/3545TH GRAMMY AWARDS, FEBRUARY 2003
That’s a Walter Van Beirendonck scarf. The shirt— I don’t know what that is. The jacket is Margiela. Skin looks good here.
This is the point where scarves really become a go-to for you. How much of that was about creating a visual contrast with the bald head, by, like, making your neck bigger?
I mean, I've got a great jawline still, remarkably, but when you don't have hair, it's hard to figure out what to do. If I wear a hat, there are certain hats, like the hat that I wore in the prior picture, the “Everybody Hurts” hat, if I wear that with a certain outfit, I would look like Truman Capote. You can't really wear hats like that after a certain age. It's a bad look. Or with a shaved head, it's a bad look. So you start doing something with scarves to try to bring a little bit of interest around the head and shoulder area. Mostly I wear hats like these watch caps [indicates the one he’s wearing today] because they keep my head really warm. If you don't have hair, it's not a problem for you. But if you don't have hair, you get cold really easily.
One of the exhibits in your Fondazione ICA Milano art show involves a bunch of watch caps with different phrases and maxims embroidered on them. Is that where the one you’re wearing came from?
This is one of ‘em. But this one was a fuckup. The wording was wrong and I needed a hat, so I wore it for the opening.
So that’s technically an art object.
It is. I mean, I decommissioned it as an art object, and made it a hat.
Daniele Venturelli17/35MTV EUROPE MUSIC AWARDS, NOVEMBER 2003
This is full-on Dior, head to toe. It’s all Hedi Slimane. And then I did the makeup myself. I flew over to Scotland for the MTV [Europe] Awards or something like that. That was the flight where Justin Timberlake came over and presented himself. We were on the same flight together, and he was such a gentleman, and he's amazing. He's so talented. I saw him with Pharrell [Williams] and Chad Hugo. I presented to—what's that band? Jack White. What was his band?
The White Stripes.
The White Stripes. I presented to the White Stripes and I was in head to toe Dior. The ring's another Stephen Webster.
It’s a more formal look for you, but everything is still a little askew– the tie is loose and the cuffs are unbuttoned.
Well, again– I have bad skin, so if I try to look put together, it’s not going to work. But the jaw here is snatched. I mean, I’m looking good in this shot. And the makeup– no one did that before. Of course I was referencing Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner, but it then got bigger and bigger as we moved towards the 2005 tour.
Carley Margolis18/35GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM YOUNG COLLECTORS COUNCIL ARTIST'S BALL, DECEMBER 2004
That’s a paint-spattered polo shirt?
Yeah, that's from Fred Segal. I wore that in the “Imitation of Life” video. The ring is Stephen Webster again. And I must have just come from Japan because I've got all these Japanese things that hang off your phone. It looks like I’m with Karen Elson there.
So those are phone charms? That's crazy.
Yeah. The jacket must be Dior. They probably were upset that I wore it with that shirt and a Kangol hat, but I still have the hat. I still have the shirt. I still have the jacket. That's at the Guggenheim. Anyway, I look good. I was really skinny. That shirt is, like, for a 14-year-old boy. But it really works in “Imitation of Life.”
Did it come like that, with the spatters?
Yeah, it came like that.
Rob Verhorst19/35ONSTAGE WITH R.E.M. AT ROTTERDAM AHOY, ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, FEBRUARY 2005
I forgot how long the blue-makeup period lasted. It got heavier and heavier, and took up more and more of your face as it went along.
Yeah, the band weren’t thrilled with it. It was Makeup Forever, thanks to Helena Christensen, she turned me onto that. And it stayed on. There’s one record cover that we have where it's dripping off my face. It's such an intense picture. It was the hottest recorded stage we ever performed on, in Durban, South Africa. It was 130 degrees recorded on stage. I think that's like an oven. It was insanely hot, and the makeup was dripping off my face. But we used it for a live album cover, and it looked good. I think it was the only time I put my face on an R.E.M. record cover.
I mean, the makeup was really just about—Bjork had really raised the bar as a woman [performer], and I was like, it's 2005, I'm a man of a certain age at this point. I'm 45 years old. There was no fucking around. It had to be all in or nothing. And I decided I needed to have a look that would last through the tour. And so I experimented with all these different types of makeup. I have images of me with a circle in the middle of the forehead, like Bowie, and then I did circles on the temple, which looked amazing from some angles, but then from other angles, I looked like an insect. So I went with this kind of mask look. I felt like a cat burglar, but it was really inspired by Bjork.
Yeah. You do have a burglar thing going in some of these images.
We had written a song called “The Worst Joke Ever,” and the joke is about a cat burglar. And I just always loved—when I was growing up in the sixties, there were all these kind of cliché caricatures that would pop up— I guess it was probably Playboy magazine. There was the Cat Burglar, there was the beatnik, there was the Ditzy Blonde. And I always kind of admired the Cat Burglar. And of course Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner.
It’s a good look. And it translated onstage. It was legible from the cheap seats.
Yeah. There was no missing where Michael Stipe was.
Arnaldo Magnani/Getty Images20/35‘MATCH POINT’ SCREENING, TRIBECA GRAND HOTEL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, DECEMBER 2005
The shirt is Rogan. The hat is Rogan. Do you remember Rogan? Rogan Gregory. For me it was Margiela, Helmut Lang, Rogan, and then I would follow Hedi, whatever he was doing. The scarf is Paul Smith. I still have it. The bag is an old Coach bag that my goddaughters decorated for me. The jacket I bought in Finland. I thought, if anyone knows a winter jacket, it's the Finns. And it actually was very stylish, but it wasn't very warm.
Dimitrios Kambouris21/35FOOD BANK OF NEW YORK AWARDS DINNER, CHELSEA PIERS, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, APRIL 2007
That’s all Rogan, with a vintage tie from the ‘50s. And I have a corn flower in my lapel, and the shirt is a cheap shirt from—shit. What's it called? It's a good brand. It's an old brand that's been around forever. I can't remember. The shoes are Dior tuxedo shoes. And, yeah—Rogan made the suit for me, for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I needed something that was going to stand out.
Jakubaszek/Getty Images22/35ONSTAGE WITH R.E.M. AT THE WALDBUEHNE, BERLIN, GERMANY, JULY 2008
This was basically my last look as a pop star on stage with R.E.M. It wouldn't be repeated after this. That was our last tour, and I knew it. We knew it, but no one else knew it. The shirt was John Varvatos. Again– it’s the cat-burglar [thing]. I found the perfect cat-burglar striped shirt, and I bought 10 of them, and I wore that for the entire tour as the bottom layer, or the second to last layer that I would take off, before I was down to just a T-shirt.
I had quit smoking, turned 50, and put on a little bit of weight. Or, no— I was about to turn 50, but I’d quit smoking, so I put on about ten pounds. I was still quite thin, but I was heavier than people remembered me. And so the stripes were good on stage. And then the shirt [under the suit jacket] was a gift from one of the opening bands. The drummer had this skate shirt on, and I complimented him on it, and he took it off and gave it to me. So I wore it a lot. It had all these patterns, but it mixed well with stripes. It’s very torn up, but I still have it.
Are you wearing one of the cat-burglar shirts as a scarf in this picture?
Yeah. That just means it was cold. That was in Berlin. You can tell I'm not sweaty. So this was at the beginning of the set, and I was protecting my throat, basically. It takes two and a half or three songs to warm up, and I never warmed up backstage, so I wore the scarf to protect my throat, and then you throw it off at some point and it's very theatrical and it looks good.
Michael Loccisano23/35‘SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK’ SCREENING, AMC LOEWS 19TH ST. EAST, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, OCTOBER 2008
This is a pretty straightforward look. A black jacket and some jeans. But I want to know about your passenger there—the little red guy in your pocket.
Someone must've handed that to me right before the event, or at the event, and I just stuck it in my pocket. The jacket is Margiela. They actually made a second one for me. I wore this one out. It has the best shoulders of any jacket I've ever worn—except I recently wore a Saint Laurent jacket, for the YSL photo shoot, that is fucking the best shoulder I've ever worn.
The shirt here is Rogan. The jacket is Margiela. The jeans are Dior, and those are just work boots, and then the bag is Il Bisonte. The glasses are my grandfather’s. My grandfather and my father wore those glasses when they were in the Army, and so that's where I started. I had to go to larger glasses as I got older.
Mark Von Holden24/35RADAR ENTERTAINMENT/THE LAST MAGAZINE PARTY, STUDIO, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 2009
There’s so much to highlight here. First of all, there’s a ton of photos of you in this shiny jacket from this winter, 2009 going into 2010.
That's Margiela. And it was for their anniversary, like their 20th or 25th anniversary. So it's got a giant M on it, which I took to mean “Michael,” of course. I still have that jacket. It's beautiful. I wear it in New York a lot. It layers really well. And that's the same Il Bisonte bag, and I think the hoodie is Acne. I started wearing Acne around—when is this? 2009? Yeah, Acne was doing really great stuff then. So I started wearing Acne then. And I still go back onto, what's it called, Grailed, and buy old Acne from the turn of the oughts, around 2008, 2009, 2010. They were doing great stuff. My eyes look good. The beard is fully in now.
And you’re wearing the Margiela jacket over—what is that, a blazer?
Yeah. It's a blazer. It's like a classic Austrian gentleman's jacket that Peter Buck found when we were on tour in Strassburg, I think. Is Strassburg in Austria? It is, right?
Yes.
Thank you. And so we had a day off, and we all went to this gentleman's Austrian jacket store, and we all bought hats and jackets. But yeah, the Margiela jacket is not leather. It's like a super-weird vinyl.
You can tell. It’s too shiny to be leather.
But it's really warm. Yeah, it's good luck actually. It works.
Putting the leather jacket over the blazer, I feel like that's another thing that should not work, and does. You're rolling the dice and it's working out for you.
Thank you. And it was February, so it was freezing cold. I mean, that's why I'm dressed in so many layers.
And lastly, you’re using the hoodie as a scarf here. This is an unorthodox deployment of the hoodie. Was that part of the look, or were you in the process of going down a layer?
I would wear it as a hoodie [sometimes], but I just wore it as a scarf that night. I knew I was going to be photographed, and it sets off my eyes.
Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images25/35‘IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS’ PREMIERE, CROSBY STREET HOTEL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, DECEMBER 7, 2009
So I've got a Rogan necktie. The scarf is from—what's it called, in Madrid? Can't think of the name of it. The Contemporary Art Museum. I bought two of 'em there in the gift shop. They're beautiful scarves. The shirt is Stefano Pilati. Then the jacket, you can tell, is Margiela. And there's that same Il Bisonte bag again.I'm sorry about the pants. That's a terrible mistake. I shouldn't have done that.
The corduroys?
Yeah, that's not a good look. Again, it must've been really cold.
The beanie's good, though, with the oversized puff.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think [The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus] was maybe the film that Heath Ledger was working on when he passed.
Yes. It's the one where all the different actors played what was supposed to be Heath’s part.
Right. So, Heath was a friend of mine, a good friend, and I'm sure I put the hat on as a gesture to his memory, just to be goofy.
Yeah. It looks like him, now that you mention it—Heath in incognito mode, back in the day.
He was an incredible actor, and such a sweet man.
Ben Hider/Getty Images26/35AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY EVENT, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, JANUARY 2010
That’s a watch cap off the street, off the sidewalk, and the Margiela jacket. There was a dry cleaner that closed, and they were selling everything that had been left behind, and there was a whole room of furs. I'm vegetarian most of my life, or vegaquarian, but the furs—they were like 40 bucks a pop. You couldn't pass 'em up. They've been dead longer than I've been alive. So I bought a bunch of those. I still have some of them. I don't wear 'em very much. They don't suit me now, but I've got one that's a floor length, like, beaver-skin jacket from the 1920s, and a couple of these neck things. And then the jacket [underneath] is—I've still got the jacket. I don't know who made it, though. It looks like Diesel, but it’s not Diesel. If you look really close, there's a shark attached to it. Attached to the lapel. A little brass shark.
Charles Eshelman27/35‘HAPPY TEARS’ SCREENING, MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 2010
Here's that same Margiela jacket, the same Stefano Pilati blue shirt. The tie is, I don't know. That might be Thom Browne. There's the same scarf from the art museum in Madrid, and the sweater is the Velvet Underground record Loaded. Someone turned it into a sweater, and I thought it was amazing. It didn't fit very well, but I wore it this night.
There’s a few pics of you from around this time with a handlebar mustache. I’d completely memory-holed that whole era.
Yeah. That's usually a joke. In the winter, I'll grow a beard, and then at some point I'll shave it. But when I shave it, I usually leave the Fu Manchu, just as a joke, usually for a day or two.
Yeah. It's always fun, when you shave your beard, to kind of go piece by piece, and see what you look like with each facial-hair style.
Yeah, exactly. That's what I was doing. And the picture's not very good. It's just shot from way too high. I look like I'm five feet tall. It's not a good angle, but it's kind of an interesting outfit.
I like the tie outside the sweatshirt.
I'm not embarrassed by it. I stopped wearing jeans right around this time. I felt like they were not appropriate for a man of my age, so I stopped wearing jeans. I'll probably start again in my late sixties. I think it's okay then—but you don't want to wear jeans at a certain age. It's not a good look. Even if you live in L.A.—I’m sorry, but there it is.
Roger Kisby/Getty Images28/352010 ART AWARDS, WEBSTER HALL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 2011
There's that same Margiela jacket. The shirt is a Levi's shirt over the Varvatos stage shirt, and then the jeans are Rogan, with the selvedge down the side. Really brilliant. I mean, those guys were fucking on fire. They were amazing. The bag is really funny. I was probably coming from a photo shoot or something. I'm not sure why I'm carrying it, but it's a good look. And then the hat—I’m wearing a watch cap, but I was [at an event] honoring Rob Pruitt, and Rob Pruitt paints pandas. I don't know why there was this panda mask sitting around, but I just put it on as a joke for the photos, to honor Rob.
And I'm wearing my name on my lapel. That was also, obviously, a joke.
Do you remember where you got the name tag?
Yeah, I was involved in the Reebok Human Rights Awards for years, and it was myself and Peter Gabriel and President Carter, and a variety of people. The Williams sisters. We were all on this board, and we would honor human rights activists who were under the age of 30, but it was such a diverse group of people from all walks of life that everyone wore name tags. And I just kept mine, and from time to time, I would wear it out, as a joke.
It’s great. Like, literally the weirdest thing you could do, as a famous person, is wear a name tag that identifies you as yourself.
I think it’s really funny.
Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images29/35‘THE REALISTIC JONESES’ PREMIERE, LYCEUM THEATRE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, APRIL 2014
This look is really good. That's at Lotus, the place where I had the food poisoning and flew across the ocean on the Concorde to get there for the opening. I bought this jacket next door to there. The jacket is DDC Lab. I still have it. I was wearing it last week, with the safety pin. I was in New York magazine wearing it, too. They did a full-page spread of me wearing this to one of the Frieze art fairs. And the whole thing was like, “How do you dress for an art fair?” And I think they thought that I was very well-dressed. The jacket is buffalo hide in the front, and then it's canvas in the back. The zipper broke at one point. And I was cold, so I just used this giant safety pin to hold it together. And then of course, the second I started wearing it like that, the zipper miraculously fixed itself. But it's still a good look.
The watch cap is a different color, and a good color for my eyes. I think that’s a Pendleton hoodie. It's good. I don't think I have that anymore. And the pants are, yeah, it's again, Stefano Pilati, when he was working for Zegna. And the shoes are Margiela. Hysterical. I still have those. The bag I still have, although it's torn to shreds, and that's the one that my goddaughters decorated for me. They wrote their names and drew their favorite dogs and stuff on there.
I love the safety pin, too. I feel like I have a memory of my mom having something like that, to keep a sweater closed. That was a look—the oversized statement safety pin.
Yeah. I mean, obviously it's kind of funny, but I really needed it. It was very cold.
Mike Pont30/35ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTION CEREMONY, BARCLAYS CENTER, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, APRIL 2014
This is you inducting Nirvana into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I like that you’ve gone for what is, for you, a more conservative look for the occasion.
The event was not about me, it was about Nirvana, and I was there as a presenter. I wasn't there to draw attention to myself, so I wanted to go as classic as I could. I didn't even wear any makeup for this. And I had my nose ring tucked up inside, so I made it really about the band.
There’s no photos of you with the tie tied, the whole night.
There's a reason for that. Margiela did an H&M line, and the tie is sewn onto the front of the shirt. So you can't tie it. It's an untied tie. It's a beautiful—what's it called, like when something’s painted, but it's tricking your eye?
Trompe l’oeil.
It’s a trompe l’oeil tuxedo tie. And it was like 30 bucks at H&M. I still have that shirt, and I still wear it. The tux is actually very expensive, and I still have it, but I'm not going to tell you who made it. They're assholes—but it's a real good tux. And I'm wearing real tux shoes here.
Dominique Charriau31/35‘FIFTY SHADES OF GREY’ PREMIERE, ZOO PALAST, BERLIN, GERMANY, FEBRUARY 2015
Great scarf.
That's a blanket, actually. It was a Kim Jones blanket, and I wore it as a scarf. It was bitter fucking cold. I mean, Berlin in February is cold.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images32/35ONSTAGE AT A DAVID BOWIE TRIBUTE, CARNEGIE HALL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, MARCH 2016
You’re cleanshaven right now, on this call, but around this time you were really rocking the Samuel R. Delany.
That's a sweet reference. I love [Delany's hallucinatory 1975 sci-fi novel] Dhalgren. It was really important to me, as a queer man. It came out when I was 15, and some guy handed it to me and said, “There's a really good sex scene on page 283.” So that was a nice introduction to queer sex in the future. I met Delany once, at a play, and I got to tell him that story. He's really a hero of mine.
This is head to toe Margiela. I flipped the shirt collar, which I never do. But for the stage, it worked with the beard. I had agreed to do this to honor Bowie. I think he was expected to attend. I knew personally at that point that he was sick. I didn't know how sick he was, but I knew that he was experiencing some problems. I agreed to do it on his birthday. I sent them an email and said, It's important to me that he understands how much he means to the people around him. And then he died a few days later. So what was [supposed to be an event] honoring him became more of a public grieving.
That’s the same Stephen Webster ring. I only really wear it for TV and big events. It's an outrageously huge ring.
Yeah, it pops in this photo, even from a distance.
Iit's kind of absurd. You'll see it whenever I'm on TV—I tend to pull it out for TV.
I'm pretty chubby here. I'd put on a lot of weight. I'd lost my father and I was in a deep grieving. What year is this?
It’s 2016. End of March.
Yeah. So I’d just lost my father and I put on a lot of weight and grew the beard as a protective device. I literally padded myself out. But it's a good look. And that was a beautiful performance. That was with Karen Elson, and Paul Cantelon on piano.
Theo Wargo/Getty Images33/35ELTON JOHN AIDS FOUNDATION EVENT, CIPRIANI WALL STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 2016
I'm now wearing the ring as a joke, because Elton became aware of Stephen Webster through me. And whenever I go to any event with Elton, I always just jack up the jewelry [laughs] because he's going to have more on. But he does appreciate a man with some bling. He's a man of great tastes. So I'm wearing here—that's a ring that honors my father, with the ruby in it, and then the Stephen Webster ring, and the same tux [from the Rock Hall induction.]
Adam Berry34/35OUTSIDE THE DUOMO DI MILANO, MILAN, ITALY, DECEMBER 2023
This is a month ago, outside your ICA show in Milan. This is double puffers, right? Two layers of jacket?
Yeah. I was freezing cold. And also, I'm Husky Mike right here. So I've still got about 15 pounds on me that I need to take off. I'm wearing two jackets to keep warm, but also because I'm 15 pounds overweight, for my body. And the sweatshirt is the aforementioned vintage Acne. And then the bandana is Hermès. I always wear them into the ocean—it's silk, so if you take it into salt water, it softens beautifully. Wear your silk scarves into the sea, and they become a lot softer. And then the big orange scarf is a gift from the artist Jonathan Berger, who helped me install the art show that went up a month ago in Milan. And that's my look for the winter. And in fact, since this photo was taken, I've lost eight pounds, so that's nice. But I also got Covid, and then got Covid rebound. So that had a lot to do with it.
The glasses are Caddis, which are great. They’ve proven that looking at life through rose-colored glasses actually boosts serotonin and helps your mood. It helps pull people out of a depressive state. So they’re really good to wear in the winter. Me and my friend Aaron, we’re searching for those old Italian-guy, Fellini, 1960s really wide-templed glasses. And when I find those, I’m going to buy a hundred of them, and they’ll take me through until I’m a hundred years old.
Photo by David Sims, courtesy of Saint Laurent35/35SAINT LAURENT CAMPAIGN, JANUARY 2024
This image is on the giant Saint Laurent billboard in Soho right now. You’re ten stories tall above La Esquina. Can you tell me how this came about? You’ve never really done any modeling, or walked in a runway show, have you?
I've never walked. I've never been asked. I would consider it if I was asked. Just putting that out there. But this is Anthony Vacarello, and I have a decades-long love for Saint Laurent, and I just love what he's doing right now. And I was really honored to be asked to be a part of the campaign.
The leopard shirt is incredible. What were some of the other highlights, in terms of the stuff they had you wearing?
I have to say the trousers. Again—put this in the article—I'm a bit chunky right now. And the trousers are absolutely, stunningly beautiful. They're just magnificent. Part of what [Vacarello] does that’s great is combine classic masculine cut and profile with a classic feminine cut and profile and bring them together in a way that feels extremely now and extremely forward-looking at the same time. They're beautiful. There's a lot of stuff with me in those clothes rolling out soon. And I have to say, wearing them is just a delight. I kept the pants, by the way.
You don't get to keep all of it?
When we shot it, a lot of the clothes were still being used for the campaign. But the pants were tailored for me specifically. So they're waiting for me in New York. I can't wait to put 'em on.
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