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Visual Communications Students Tour Beyond Black The Style of Amy Winehouse at GRAMMY Museum

In celebration of GRAMMY® week, Visual Communications students in Tod Hallman’s Styling and Trends classes were treated to a private tour on Tuesday of “Beyond Black: The Style of Amy Winehouse,” a new exhibit at the GRAMMY Museum, located just blocks from FIDM’s Los Angeles campus.

Associate Curator Kelsey Goelz led the students on the tour. With five years experience at the GRAMMY Museum, Kelsey explained that with musical artists, you often have certain “buckets” of fashion to feature: on-stage, red carpet looks, and off-stage or personal looks. For this particular exhibit, there are two additional buckets featured: Amy’s collab with established fashion brand Fred Perry and her custom-made, but never worn, dresses by stylist Naomi Parry for Amy’s cancelled 2011 Summer Festival Tour.

Kicking off the exhibit, the GRAMMY Museum hosted an intimate conversation in the Clive Davis Theatre between Naomi Parry, Amy’s stylist, and Catriona Gourlay, a longtime friend of Amy’s, moderated by journalist Eve Barlow.

Winehouse was known as a trendsetting fashion icon, whose look according to Naomi was an “amalgamation of ‘80s, ‘90s, and ‘50s” styles. “She had a strong sense of her own style,” said Naomi.

Naomi recollected many styling moments she had with the singer. She said Amy “didn’t do fittings,” which often created a situation where looks would be styled on the fly, just minutes before Amy would go on stage.

One particularly memorable event for Naomi was styling the gold Dolce & Gabbana dress that Amy wore on her 2007 European tour. At the last minute, she wanted the dress shorter so Naomi literally took scissors to the hem and hacked several inches off. It’s one of the dresses on display, threads visibly hanging from the raw hem.

This project has been in the works since 2008, as a personal mission of GRAMMY Museum Chief Operating Officer Rita George to celebrate Amy’s legacy, and it’s beautifully come to fruition.

Rita worked with Mitch Winehouse, Amy’s dad, and the Amy Winehouse Foundation to curate the collection, which includes dresses, shoes, Amy’s personal music collection, handwritten lyrics and journal entries, and all six of her GRAMMY awards.

Rita shared that Amy’s dad was “crying and laughing” as he looked through the items to send. We also learned that Amy’s famous eyeliner look was created with drugstore brand Rimmel.

With her beehive hair and form-fitting short dresses, “her silhouette was instantaneously recognizable,” Catriona said.

Naomi pointed out that Amy was really sociable and polite, and cared about how people felt. She would sit and speak with all the band members before they’d play together, just to catch up with them about their personal lives.

Amy was ahead of her time, mixing high end and low end fashion. She’d wear Dolce & Gabbana but also inexpensive jewelry. Naomi commented on some of the items having survived this long. “It’s surprising that any of them have been able to be exhibited,” she joked.

Catriona referenced Amy’s love for ballet shoes. She had piles of them and wore them everywhere. She said she left behind a “ballet/pump graveyard.”

Eve thought that Amy made the little black dress popular again, but Naomi corrected her saying she didn’t really have that many black dresses. “She didn’t like wearing black because she said she thought it made her look like a witch.”

There is one famous black dress Amy wore, however, designed by Tina Kalivas, that brought to mind a funny story for Naomi. Amy wore it to the 2007 ELLE Style Awards in London. “She had one thing to remember on the red carpet,” said Naomi, “and when she was asked which designer she was wearing, she said ‘Tina, the Cleaner.’” As a stylist, it was a cringeworthy moment for Naomi.

“She was keen to support emerging designers,” Naomi said.