Jewels Of Sir Elton John

Enter stage left, Elton John, his flamboyant, often outrageous outfits, were overshadowed by his timeless musical talent and uninhibited taste for jewellery. A stylist, songwriter and outlandish showman, no one ever left a concert in disappointment. To have your jewellery in his radar is an honour and privilege.

The perfect ambassador to glam rock he reckoned with his own ego traversing stages all over the world delighting audiences with his soulful music. Amongst his collaborators in the field of dress style, are, David Bowie Brian Ferry and the originator Marc Bolan.

Knighted by Queen Elizabeth and having received the prestigious CBE, he decided in 1988 to clean out many of his belongings including his concert costumes and jewelry. Sotheby’s conducted the auction for Elton where a Magritte surrealist painting of a blue fish in pearls scooped up close to one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.

Elton was 14 when he and friends formed a band, the Corvettes, which evolved into Bluesology. It was 1961 and they played Ray Charles and Jim Reeves ballads Fridays to Sundays, at the Northwood Hills Hotel, Middlesex.

With the money he made from this work, Elton bought himself his first electric piano. By the mid 1960s, Bluesology was backing American soul and R&B artists, including Patti Labelle and the Bluebells.

A dedicated lover of designers’ jewellery, his fingers encrusted with diamonds and gold, he’s done more to market and make famous the budding designer, adding names like Babette Wasserman to his A list.

Additionally in the early years he reinvented the mod silk ties in grossly exaggerated form, just like his electric boots in the film Tommy. Even macho men who openly critised him secretly wished they could experience the fame and freedom of expression that was naturally characteristic of Sir Elton John. A true stylist cares not what is said in negative context.

And who could forget his electric light suit and sunglasses, we’d never seen glasses like this before, and, just like catwalk fashion is watered down so too were his glasses, they made it into the stores.

We all need a leader that we can follow, otherwise we’d still be wearing loin clothes all the same colour. But like 90% of the population we’re too afraid to stand out alone, because of what people may say or think, well not Elton, he had the courage to make a statement and we follow.

As a late starter designer on the verge of constant failure, everyday I face my worst fears, failure, failure and more failure, ironically it’s the very emotion that drives me closer to my goals. So there is a positive side to fear. All I need is recognition to catapult my concepts to an international audience. Sir Elton John and artists like him are a constant source of inspiration; perhaps this is good enough on the rough road of fashion design. It’s full of dips and dives and can leave you high and dry on the high tide line.

Still we battle on, jut like the little pome battler and my hero Sire Elton John.

A BREIF HISTORY

He changed his name, by deed poll, from Reginald Kenneth Dwight to Elton Hercules John in 1972. The name came from Elton Dean, a saxophonist, and the late Long John Baldry, a British blues musician. Hercules was the name of the horse in the British television sitcom ‘Steptoe and Son’.

The Elton/Taupin formula was beginning to weave its magic and they recorded their first song ‘Scarecrow’ in 1967, going on to write songs for the likes of Roger Cook and Lulu. Their musical chemistry had a sense of urgency to it, with Taupin writing a batch of lyrics in less than an hour and then Elton writing music for them in half an hour. If he couldn’t quickly come up with the music, he would dispose of the lyrics. They were never in the same room during this process.

Elton’s debut album, ‘Empty Sky’ (1969), received somewhat of an empty response, despite its good reviews. He quickly followed this with ‘Elton John’ (1970), which started to climb the charts and the single ‘Your Song’ making the US Top Ten. A few months later, Elton gave his first American concert in Los Angeles.

Next came his concept album ‘Tumbleweed Connection’ (1970) and then the live album ‘11-17-70’ (1970) (or ‘17-11-70’, as it was known in the UK) which truly highlighted Elton’s talent as a rock pianist as well as showing his influences in boogie-woogie and gospel music. He was well on the road to stardom and became the most successful pop artist of the 1970s releasing many albums, often two or more a year.

The rest is history.

We offer a selection of silk ties and rarely found cufflinks that Elton John would be proud to wear, or would he? In fact we’re going to name one silk tie after him; they capture the essence of his charm and playfulness.