I love a beautiful gown on stage, and luckily I've been fortunate to wear some amazing dresses.
What I wear onstage is so stylized and bold.
[On Kay Strozzi in The Silent Witness:] Miss Strozzi ... had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. ... Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself.
On stage, you can get away with more, so I definitely use that to my advantage and go bolder with fashion, hair, and makeup. I love a smoky eye and long lashes.
I think it was about 1990 when we first wore heels to perform.
On stage, I need to be seen from the back seats. So, I dress more colorful and vibrant.
I grew up with Cher and Motown, beautiful costumes.
I was so aware of the stage clothes versus the everyday-life clothes, and the extremeness of the stage clothes that my parents had designed. Even coming across my dad's old Beatles suits from Savile Row and the history attached to them - the masculinity and simplicity compared to the '70s glitz and glamour of Wings.
I never wanted to design clothes. I never wanted to work for the fashion industry. Shoes sort of belong to the fashion industry, which is why I'm part of the fashion industry. But that's never been my thought. My thought since I was a child was really to design those shoes for girls on stage.
Dresses, I find, are impractical in social situations, but I enjoy wearing them a great deal on stage.
When I first started Lion Babe, I wore a lot of denim to perform in because I had a limited closet. A lot of the time, I was in cutoff shorts - either dark or light denim - and then I would pair them with whatever top I had.
Obviously, I wore a lot of crazy things on stage. That's just how it goes.
I like to wear platform heels onstage and they're actually hard to find. But fans started putting money in them - so now they are filled with tons of bills. It's pretty amazing.
