Bowie's fashion gave others permission to embrace their outsider identity

John Wind loved David Bowie's music, but it was the musician's glam-rock style - the fiery red hair, eyelids painted teal blue, metallic skinny pants, and long, dramatic trench coats - that gave Wind the OK he needed to embrace his outsider status as a teen and young adult.

"I was so attracted to his outrageousness, independence, and sexual ambiguity," said Wind, 54, remembering how Bowie's irreverent fashion choices inspired him during his nerdy days at Harriton High School in Lower Merion.

It was 1976 when Wind, then 15, persuaded his mother to take him to the Spectrum to see Bowie assume what he anticipated would be his flamboyant Ziggy Stardust style - but the singer had already assumed his more conservative Thin White Duke persona. Wind took it all in, loving the singer's ability to be a fashion chameleon.

"I was starting to recognize my own creativity and tap into my outsider identity," said Wind, founder and designer of the Aston jewelry company Maximal Art.

By the mid-1980s, Wind was going to art school in London and wearing the same long, black trench coats that Bowie wore. But Wind - then just an emerging jewelry designer - covered his coats with dramatic brooches he designed himself.

"I always knew I was artistically different," Wind said. "Bowie paved the way for that."

It's not that young people copied Bowie's looks in their entirety. After all, when Bowie hit the music scene in the late 1960s, fans couldn't track celebrities' daily comings and goings on the Internet.

But fans who reminisced hours after learning of the rocker's death Monday morning said they wanted to embody Bowie's vibe and adopt his aura.

They might plug into the artistic funk he expressed in his lyrics, whether he sported the shiny look from his earliest "Space Oddity" days, the crazy flamboyant "Aladdin Sane" persona, or his hollow-cheek, vampiric "Station to Station" appearance.

"Oh, yeah, I was all about the leather and the lace gloves," said Anne Leith, a 54-year-old artist who lives in Berwyn. "But it was more about the attitude. Bowie was fearless. He was the reason I wasn't afraid to wear a wig to the club."

Peter Lloyd Jones, 50, was a teenager in London during Bowie's heyday and clearly remembers wearing a long, canvas belt in his private-school-approved pants that he called his "Bowie belt."

"Bowie was constantly changing," said Jones, who now lives in Philadelphia. "As soon as something became mainstream, he moved forward with a new idea. That was a part of his genius."

Of course, what was considered fringe then now serves as fodder for some of today's popular trends.

One could call Bowie the grandfather of the androgynous look. He boldly ringed his eyes with eyeliner and wasn't afraid to wear leggings.

That wasn't something lots of guys were adopting like they might now, but Bowie's sexual ambiguity clearly influenced other artists - Prince, Boy George, and even Michael Jackson - and they would surely inspire genderless fashion on stage.

But Bowie's influence on style goes beyond sexual ambiguity. Bowie mixed and matched patterns and confidently wore bright colors and bizarre hair on stage long before Madonna, Lady Gaga, or Nicky Minaj.

"I was one of those people who walked my own path - in fact, people said I looked strange," said Bowie fan Alicia Nazario, 52, of Media. "But I can say I got into costume design because of him. It was OK for me to be a theater kid."

Now what's strange, she says, is a world without Bowie.

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