Stage, gesture, persona: how celebrities anchored the neck accent
What Italian fashion developed as a sustained inquiry into the body, fabric, and masculinity took on a different—performative—dimension in pop culture. The stage, the red carpet, and the music video became spaces where a bow, a ribbon, a jabot, or a neck knot stopped being mere costume details and turned into a statement.
By the late twentieth century, Prince had made ruffles, jabots, and the pussy-bow part of his own visual language—not as a “feminine” pastiche, but as a demonstration of control over image and body. His stage wardrobe operated by the same logic as Italian fashion: sensuality does not cancel masculinity; it reconfigures it.
Even before New Romanticism shaped ruffles and neck ribbons into the recognizable aesthetic of the 1980s, this accent was already audible in the 1970s—in David Bowie, where the neckerchief and ties at the neck became part of the stage image. In Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music, a related line appeared in a more restrained version—through the cravat and the neck scarf, which brought decorative nuance to menswear without abandoning rigor.
This language was then taken up by New Romantic pop culture—from Duran Duran to a wider circle of 1980s artists—for whom neckerchiefs, bows, and ruffles at the chest became tools of visual theatricality. What mattered was not the accessory itself, but the refusal of utilitarian strictness: the male image once again allowed decoration, excess, and play.
In the twenty-first century, that vocabulary moved directly from the runway to the red carpet. Jared Leto in Gucci with a pussy-bow blouse, Harry Styles in a sheer blouse with a bow at the Met Gala, Dapper Dan in a hyperbolized variation of the same motif—these appearances function as public statements. This is not quotation for effect, but a deliberate choice of a visual code that points back to the same line—from Tom Ford to Alessandro Michele, from the deconstruction of a norm to its “release.”
Notably, more restrained versions of the gesture—such as a Pussy Bow or a slim neck scarf on Timothée Chalamet—read in the same field. There may be no literal ruffles or bows, yet the principle remains: the neck becomes a zone of vulnerability and expressiveness, not merely formal correctness.
The same logic is legible in later red-carpet appearances by rock artists. Lenny Kravitz sustains that line of “male decorative expression,” where the focus shifts away from the tie as a norm toward the scarf, the knot, the texture—an image built around the neck.
A separate contemporary episode is Harris Reed: in one of his signature looks, he appears in front of the camera himself, framing this aesthetic as a personal position rather than only a design device.
In this story, celebrities are not simply a “display case” for a trend; they are amplifiers of meaning. They translate runway language—from spezzato and Tom Ford to Masculine, plural—into the space of mass visibility. And in doing so, they fix the essential point: a bow, a ribbon, a jabot, or a scarf in menswear today is not decorative eccentricity, but a legible cultural code.
Bryan Ferry with the polka-dot scarf — a bit silkier, but all smooth, esquire.com
Lenny Kravitz from 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party, vanityfair.com
Lenny Kravitz, Met Gala 2022
Prince, “pussy-bow tie”, Vogue Australia прямо упоминают “pussy-bow tie” как один из элементов его стиля.
Duran Duran — New Romantic «poet shirt»:
“Planet Earth” (1981), ruffled shirt / Simon Le Bon poet shirt.
John Taylor, a New Romantic icon, c. 1980.
Harlem couturier Dapper Dan — Met Gala 2019: exaggerated pussy-bow blouse Gucci. GQ.
Timothée Chalamet Golden Globes 2025 scarf / polka dot scarf Tom Ford suit.
Timothée Chalamet in red; Venice Film Festival 2022.
David Bowie. The Guardian. David Bowie wearing the now famous eye patch and neckerchief, Bowie performs Rebel Rebel in the Netherlands, 1974. Photograph: Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns
Bryan FERRY and ROXY MUSIC; Bryan Ferry, posed, studio, wearing white suit and cravat (Photo by Jorgen Angel/Redferns); gettyimages.com
Jared Leto, Met Gala 2018 (Gucci) — pink pussy-bow shirt; TIME / W Magazine / Vogue.
Harry Styles, Met Gala 2019 (Gucci) —pussybow blouse; Vogue India / Refinery29 / i-D / Esquire.
Harry Styles & Alessandro Michele, Italian fashion designer.
