Visionary fashion designer Antony Price whose work helped define the look of British rock music and later dressed royalty, has died aged 80.
Born in Keighley in 1945 and raised in the Yorkshire Dales, Price was one of a generation of Northern creatives who brought technical rigour and working-class craft into the heart of British fashion. From early training in Bradford to global influence via David Bowie, Roxy Music and Duran Duran, his career bridged art school pragmatism and theatrical excess.
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Price first studied at Bradford School of Art at just 16, a grounding he later credited with giving him a decisive edge when he moved south to the Royal College of Art. “I arrived with a total headstart,” he later said, pointing to the discipline and pattern-cutting skills learned in West Yorkshire.
That foundation underpinned a career defined as much by construction as by spectacle. After graduating in the late 1960s, Price cut his teeth at Stirling Cooper in London, where his body-hugging, buttoned trousers were worn by Mick Jagger during The Rolling Stones’ 1969 Gimme Shelter tour — an early signal of how Northern-trained tailoring could upend rock iconography.
Price went on to become a key architect of British pop’s visual language. As stylist and designer for Roxy Music’s early albums, he helped create the band’s pop-retrofuturist aesthetic, blurring menswear and womenswear in ways that felt radical at the time. He later dressed David Bowie, designing the jacket worn in the 1986 As The World Falls Down video, and collaborated closely with Duran Duran, whose pastel suits in the Rio video became emblematic of 1980s glamour.
Duran Duran paid tribute this week, calling Price a “visionary” and a “kind, intelligent and razor-witted friend”.
Despite his association with London and global celebrity, Price consistently framed himself as a craftsman rather than a couturier. “I’m not a fashion designer – I’m in the theatrical business,” he once said, reflecting a sensibility shaped as much by Northern art schools as by the West End.
In later years, his clientele expanded to include Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, alongside figures such as Jerry Hall, Tilda Swinton and Daphne Guinness. He was widely tipped as a potential successor to Gianni Versace in the late 1990s and continued to work across high fashion and high street, including a menswear collaboration with Topman.
Last month, more than 30 years after his previous London runway show, Price unveiled a final collection in collaboration with 16Arlington, with Lily Allen modelling a piece inspired by Diana, Princess of Wales’ famous “revenge dress”.
