Stevie Nicks Said Fleetwood Mac Looked ‘Totally Absolutely Ridiculous’
The distinct musical styles of Fleetwood Mac’s songwriters — Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham — blended seamlessly, earning them awards, acclaim, and staggering album sales. According to Nicks, the band’s personal styles didn’t align quite as well. She shared her belief that when the bandmates were together, they looked utterly ridiculous. Nicks explained this by sharing the way she defined each of their styles.
Stevie Nicks designed her onstage uniform once she joined Fleetwood Mac
After her first tour with Fleetwood Mac, Nicks sat down with designer Margi Kent to create a standard uniform for future shows. She explained that her goal was to wear “something urchinlike out of Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities.”
With Kent’s help, Nicks brought to life a uniform that she would wear for the next several decades.
“We came up with the outfit: a Jantzen leotard, a little chiffon wrap blouse, a couple of little short jackets, two skirts and boots,” she told The New York Times. “That gave us our edge.”
It also gave her a hint of anonymity despite her level of fame.
“I’ll be very, very sexy under 18 pounds of chiffon and lace and velvet,” she said. “And nobody will know who I really am.”
She said that the band looked completely ridiculous when they were together
Nicks’ style is perhaps the most well-known of her band’s, but she said that the other members have consistent styles as well. She described the way they all dressed in a 1982 interview.
“John [McVie’s] always going to the beach, Mick [Fleetwood’s] always going to the Renaissance Faire, Lindsey [Buckingham’s] always going to visit his tailor, I’m always going to a Halloween party, and Christine [McVie] is like Christine always looks in her kind of cool clothes,” she told Creem, per The Nicks Fix.
Though they each have a style but Nicks wasn’t sure that the looks fit well together.
“It’s funny to see us before we go onstage, standing in a circle,” she explained. “We look ridiculous! Totally absolutely ridiculous! John’s got his crew socks and his cut-offs and his t-shirt and his baseball hat. Mick’s got his velvet knickers and the same tights and the same shoes he’s worn for a hundred years — you wouldn’t want to be within 50 feet of him in that outfit, especially the next night when he’s put it back on after it’s been in the bus all day and never dried! Lindsey wears the same two Armani suits, one white and one gray, every night.”
Though she thought they looked ridiculous, the varying looks clearly worked well for the band. With the exception of Buckingham, they’re still performing together 40 years after the interview.
Stevie Nicks has a vault to store all her Fleetwood Mac clothing
Though the rest of Fleetwood Mac has onstage uniforms of their own, they likely do not have temperature-controlled vaults to store them as Nicks does. She keeps all of her clothing and thousands of shawls in protective storage.
“I have my shawl vault — they’re all in temperature-controlled storage,” she told Rolling Stone. “I have these huge red cases Fleetwood Mac bought, all the way back in 1975 — my clothes are saved in these cases.”
She plans to give the shawls away but has found this difficult due to the volume of her collection.
“I’m trying to give my shawls away — but there’s thousands of them,” she said. “If I ever write my life story, maybe that should be the name of my book: There’s Enough Shawls to Go Around.”
