Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Jimmy Page's Stage Suit on display at the V&A

The Victoria and Albert Museum has a display of rock costumes - a Mick Jagger one from 1972, and a Jimmy Page one from 1975, it says here. I can't find any evidence that he actually wore this suit on stage but I guess that's not the point.

The satin suit on display is being widely touted as so small they are using a child mannequin to display it. The costume description says "ancient Hebrew and Egyptian symbols reflects his personal interest in esoteric religions and mysticism". It has long arms and it's tall for a child, though. The major problem with it is it does not appear to be finished. The lotus design on the front is nice. The back appears to have a sketched out eye-in-a-pyramid and the basic beginnings of the Stele of Revealing.






Don't know what happened - perhaps Jimmy realized it was going to look ugly, or perhaps he realized that walking around with a famous Aleister Crowley landmark on his back was going to give him a bit of a rep. If the latter, it was too late. People call Page names anyway and one more bit of Crowleyana wouldn't have mattered too much.

Here's what it might have looked like finished, courtesy of Photoshop.

4 comments:

Julie said...

He did have a white suit, it appeared after the black "Dragon Suit", but I'm pretty sure the designs were different to what's on display here.

Lyle Hopwood said...

Yes, he had the lovely and iconic Poppy Suit in 1977. http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb193/Peromyscus/1-4.jpg
It appeared at first with fewer designs and ended up looking like this - but I can't find any pictures of him in this lotus suit. (And neither can the large Led Zeppelin message boards, although I'll keep checking back to see if they have.)

Steve Moore said...

"tall for a child..." Yes - but tiny for a full-growed man. We saw it on Saturday.

Lyle Hopwood said...

Oh, that's great, Steve. I'm too far away to go and take a look in person.

Yes, he was very, very thin. Here's a shot from 1977. It's amazing that his stick-man arms and legs could throw that heavy double-neck around for hours every night.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb193/Peromyscus/Blog%20start%20Nov%2008/mojo6a2md.jpg

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