Synopsis

David Bowie performs "Fashion" with his band inside New York's Hurrah nightclub, surrounded by mirrored walls and a stark, industrial stage. The performance is intercut with dancers, sharply dressed figures moving through Manhattan, and street scenes that suggest both menace and spectacle. Bowie shifts between cool detachment and exaggerated physical gestures, while the recurring "beep beep" feels like a warning signal. The video turns fashion into a public ritual: alluring, aggressive, and oddly mechanical, reflecting the song's unease about trends, conformity, and manufactured identity.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was filmed at Hurrah, a New York nightclub owned by Bowie's friend Robert Boykin. Bowie was in New York for his Broadway appearance in *The Elephant Man*, making a European shoot impractical.

• The opening performance area was dressed with khaki canvas for the shoot. The club's faceted mirror walls remain visible in several of the band and dance sequences.

• May Pang appears among the people seen outside. Pang was John Lennon's former partner and later married Bowie's longtime collaborator Tony Visconti.

• Some of the dancers perform a distinctive shaking, angular movement that was later echoed in Bowie's "Blackstar" video.

• The same Hurrah nightclub was used for concert footage associated with *Christiane F.*, filmed shortly before the "Fashion" shoot.

• In 1980, readers of the British magazine *Record Mirror* voted "Fashion" and "Ashes to Ashes" the year's best music videos.

• The video helped establish the visual language of the New Romantic era, but its tone is not simply celebratory. The glamorous figures are presented alongside images of threat, repetition, and group behavior, reinforcing the song's satirical edge.