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Gen X can thank Wham!’s music manager Simon Napier-Bell for the neon, bold statement t-shirts and a Fila obsession.

Clad in some of the shortest shorts of the 80s, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley burst onto the scene with Wham!’s upbeat poppy tunes and a new brand of fashion. Napier-Bell said that Michael was the heart and soul of Wham!’s music side, whereas Ridgeley was the one with an eye for fashion.

But when it came to some of the most important fashions that shaped the era, Napier-Bell was behind driving that all the way to MTV.

Wham!’s fashion stemmed from money problems

“There was an early stage when Wham! got their first hit and then we were planning a first tour and they didn’t have any money because they’d signed a terribly bad record deal,” Napier-Bell recounted to Showbiz Cheat Sheet.

George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley perform in Wham t-shirts
George Michael & Andrew Ridgeley | Pete Still/Redferns

“And I go into this in the film – a ridiculous record deal, which they were not getting the royalties for the records they were selling, and we had to take them to court,” he said referring to his documentary film, The Real George Michael.

“We had to find money to go to court and luckily we had two hits,” he continued. “So I said, ‘We’ve got to do a tour.’ And then we’ll get the money from the tour and that will pay for the court case. But we had no money, no clothes for the tour. How are you going to tour? I had to go get a sponsor.”

How did Wham! react to the Fila sponsorship?

Desperate, Napier-Bell pulled as many strings as he could. “I went out and looked for sponsors and it is quite difficult to find,” he said.

“Eventually, I found Fila, which makes sports clothes, and tennis clothes. Squash clothes, rugby, football clothes. So I went back to Wham!, George and Andrew, and I said, ‘Look, I’ve found a sponsor, but it’s not what you expect. It’s Fila,'” Napier-Bell recalled telling the music duo.

“I thought they were going to say, ‘Oh, piss off, you’re a s*** manager.’ Instead of which they said, ‘Oh, fantastic, we love Fila. It’s amazing.’ And they went off to the shop and they took everything,” he said.

A brand is born through Wham! music

“And that image became [their brand]. All the imagery, their first tour, they always were in shorts,” Napier-Bell said. “They had these shorts and t-shirts and they had enough of them so they could change every song. We could put together different shorts and t-shirts. And so in a way that became Wham!’s first primary image. But it came just by luck, that’s the only sponsor I could find. And, that became the image.”

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Once Wham! secured more money, they moved onto the now-famous “Choose Life” bold print t-shirts that became a huge craze in the 80s. “Then once they made money and they moved on, they got a good record deal, they could buy clothes,” Napier-Bell said. “And so when the first record they made with a new record deal after we got out of that contract was signed to CBS, and the first record with CBS was ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.’”

“And then we went to Katharine Hamnett, who was probably the top designer, probably in the UK at the time, and said, ‘We like your t-shirts with the messages.’ So we were deluged with lovely t-shirts and it went on from there.”

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