One of the earliest David Bowie album covers to fall foul of the censors, the artwork was rejected by his US record label, who instead used a cartoon illustration Bowie had originally commissioned – and himself rejected, in favour of the “man’s dress” sleeve – from a friend, Michael J Weller. At the start of the 70s – and on the cusp of a revolution in gender experimentation – Bowie, now sporting a curly blond mane reportedly inspired by a Pre-Raphaelite painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, posed on a chaise longue in his Haddon Hall home for the cover of The Man Who Sold The World wearing a “man’s dress” made by British fashion designer Michael Fish. In an early example of Bowie’s canny media manipulation, in 1964 he formed the Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Long-haired Men and soon found himself (then still trading as Davie Jones) on the BBC’s Tonight show, defending his shoulder-length locks with members of his first band, The Manish Boys, in tow.
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