David Bowie – ‘Fashion’ promo video

The David Mallet directed video for David Bowie's 1980 hit 'Fashion'

David Mallet shot the music video for the single ‘Fashion’ in a famous nightclub owned by his friend Robert Boykin called Hurrah. The opening shot of the clip features David Bowie on the Hurrah stage which was draped in khaki canvas for this shoot. The faceted mirror walls surrounding the dance floor can be seen in the background of various shots, and all the band scenes are shot in this club setting. Other locations around Manhattan are intercut throughout the clip. Amid a series of facial contortions and other gestures, Bowie made use of a move he had employed in the ‘Ashes to Ashes’ video: slowly crouching and bringing his arm down to the ground in a slow vertical arc. Record Mirror readers voted ‘Fashion’ and ‘Ashes to Ashes’ the best music videos of 1980.

The video features Carlos Alomar, G.E. Smith (Hall & Oates), John Kumnick, Khandi Alexander, the guitarist Steve Love (who plays drums in the video), John Kay, May Pang (married the song’s producer Tony Visconti) and Alan Hunter, who became one of the first MTV VJs.

Hurrah was a nightclub located at 36 West 62nd Street in New York City from 1976 until 1980. Hurrah was the first large dance club in NYC to feature punk, new wave and industrial music, led by the club’s innovative in-house DJs, Bill Bahlman, Sara Salir and Charlie Brown. Hurrah pioneered the use of music videos in nightclubs, placing video monitors around the club, over a year before the launch of MTV. The club was owned by Arthur Weinstein (who also created The World and the after-hours clubs The Jefferson and The Continental) and his partners, who opened the club in November 1976, months before Studio 54.

With Ruth Polsky as the booking agent, Hurrah became known as a place for new wave, punk and post-punk bands to play, featuring many of the British bands’ first American performances. Bands playing the club included The Cure, Suicide, The Skids, The Fleshtones, Ultravox, Johnny Thunders, Liquid Liquid, The Student Teachers, Klaus Nomi, Tuxedomoon, The Sleepers, 8-Eyed Spy (with Lydia Lunch), ESG, The Fuzztones, Mission of Burma, The Slits, The Specials, Bauhaus and The Feelies. After the suicide of Ian Curtis, the members of Joy Division regrouped and played their first gig in New York as New Order at the club on September 26, 1980, opening for A Certain Ratio.

The club became notorious for an incident in December 1978, where during a Skafish gig, Sid Vicious got into a fight with Todd Smith (brother of Patti Smith,) resulting in the incarceration of Vicious for two months in Rikers Island.

Famed New York club doorman Haoui Montaug also worked at Hurrah.

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