https://www.ft.com/content/2fef0e8b-ec9 ... 277a759880
I don't think I've ever seen them quite so effusive on the subject of fashion, even though it's always been there. Chris's answer at the end suggests he's moved on from wanting to be "one of the crowd"!
Text under the spoiler, because the FT site keeps throwing up paywalls.
Spoiler
The Pet Shop Boys on their life in fashion
The pop duo’s style reflects changing menswear trends since the 1980s
Neil Tennant (left) and Chris Lowe on the set of the ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’ video, 1987 © 2006 and 2026 Pet Shop Boys
Mark C O’Flaherty
Published MAR 31 2026
It’s 40 years since the Pet Shop Boys debut album Please? From day one, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe made it clear they were brand more than band: an arch pair of cool Noël Cowards with a keyboard. They knew about art, graphics and the nuance of clothing. Their deadpan irony, costumes and live shows designed by Derek Jarman and Es Devlin made them the Gilbert & George of pop.
Now, an epic discography goes hand in hand with a timeline of imagery that incidentally documents changes in menswear over the decades. Much of it — including shoots by Eric Watson and Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as stills from videos shot by Bruce Weber — is showcased in a new book by Chris Heath with Philip Hoare, Pet Shop Boys Volume: The Complete Visual Record.
From the mid-1980s onwards, record companies frequently employed stylists to assemble racks of Gaultier and Westwood for their acts. Lowe and Tennant dressed themselves by studying the streets. “It was the time of the sports casual cult, which we were obsessed with,” says Tennant, who is talking to me via FaceTime. “I was into playing tennis at the time,” says Lowe. “I wore Sergio Tacchini and Fila. I got on a train one day from Liverpool and there were loads of lads in the same stuff, and they were obviously hooligans, not members of a tennis club. I loved it. They had Diadora trainers teamed with bleached Fiorucci jeans. Fashion has never got any better than that.”
When it comes to the legacy of the era, fashion curators seemingly can’t stop putting on exhibitions of what a handful of art students pulled out of a dressing-up box to wear to clubs. However, the legions of teens who followed the codes of football-terrace dress have been relatively overlooked. Which is why early Pet Shop Boys shoots — including the imagery to accompany “Rent” in 1987, which plays on what a teenage male sex worker might wear having just arrived at King’s Cross station from the provinces — are so significant, and specific.
From the Robert Mapplethorpe photo session, 1986 © 2006 and 2026 Pet Shop Boys
The inner sleeve of ‘It’s a Sin’, 1987 © 2006 and 2026 Pet Shop Boys
Similarly niche is what Lowe and Tennant did with “Paninaro”, the B-side to “Suburbia”, a year before. It was a tribute to the Stone Island and Moncler-clad Vespa-riding youths in Italy who were a constant presence hanging around outside American-style fast-food restaurants. The year it was released, Valentino Garavani began legal action to try and have the McDonald’s next to his HQ in Rome on Piazza di Spagna closed down. The paninaro trend petered out but the McDonald’s outlived Garavani.
“We thought those kids looked so cool,” says Lowe. “We saw them hanging around a square in Milan and they were so similar to the sports casuals.” The lyrics to “Paninaro” demonstrate classic Pet Shop Boys observational wit: “Girls, boys, art, pleasure . . . Armani, Armani, ah-ah-Armani.”
Changes in casual menswear and its styling are tricky to pinpoint, but there’s perpetual motion. The paninaro kids loved pastels, brightly coloured puffa gilets and yellow Timberlands. They rolled up their denim to ankle length. A decade later they’d be into grunge. “You might think that the design of a pair of Diesel jeans stays the same,” says Lowe, “but you take an old pair out after a few years, realise how much they’ve changed, and you can’t wear them any more.”
Along with streetwear, the first 40 years of the Pet Shop Boys capture key moments in runway fashion. The long black coat that Tennant immortalised in their first music videos was by Stephen Linard, the influential avant-garde designer from the Blitz Club era who died in 2024. Lowe’s fondness for Issey Miyake made the designer’s circular 1985 dark glasses world-famous when he wore them on the cover of “Suburbia” with a striped top by lesser-known Tokyo label Posh Boy. Along with Hedi Slimane, Miyake has long been their go-to, but they also modelled for Dior under Kris van Assche in 2018.
Lowe (pictured with Tennant on the right) in Issey Miyake’s inflatable jacket from autumn/winter 1987 © Popperfoto/Getty Images
The day we talk, Tennant is in a black Homme Plissé top: “I remember we were doing a shoot with the great stylist Michael Roberts in 1987, and he’d brought an inflatable Issey Miyake jacket which Chris wore. I started shopping there too, for collarless shirts and those voluminous light coats which look great with a wind machine.” Tennant says he stopped wearing Miyake in the late ’90s but has been buying a lot from the new IM Men line, which folds flat into perfect geometric shapes like pieces of minimalist art. “I like how the fabrics lead the designs,” he says. “Miyake was always architectural and never dates. Also, it’s polyester so you can wash it easily in a hotel bathroom on tour.”
Lowe is fascinated by garment construction, whether that’s a blow-up Michiko Koshino coat or bespoke tailoring. “I had a suit made on Savile Row at Kilgour just so I could enjoy the process,” he says. “But I still wear it for weddings and funerals.” Tennant has always gravitated towards suits: “I wore Jean Paul Gaultier for Gibo in the late ’80s and early ’90s, then moved to Mugler when he reinvented himself around 1990 with the severe collarless jackets, until George Michael and Bowie started wearing them. I recently bought two IM Men suits.”
The cover of ‘West End Girls’ from 1985 © 2006 and 2026 Pet Shop Boys/Krause & Johansen
The Pet Shop Boys in carnival feathered millinery on the cover of ‘Ultimate’ from 2010 © Pell Crepin
The Pet Shop Boys have worn wild, high-concept video and stage creations by Gareth Pugh and Jeffrey Bryant, but they have never been fashion victims. Duran Duran sailed around on yachts in swanky Antony Price suits, and Bowie commissioned Alexander McQueen to make a tattered union jack frock coat for his 1997 Earthling album as an earnest artistic statement, but the PSBs have a disarming, amiable sense of camp. “I remember being at an awards ceremony wearing Dior denim by Hedi,” says Lowe, already chuckling about the anecdote he is about to tell. “We were presenting something to New Order and Bernard Sumner turned to me and said, ‘Even your jeans are pretentious.’” Tennant chips in: “The thing is, Hedi’s always done good jeans. At Celine, Dior and Saint Laurent, always cool.”
A shoot for the band’s 1993 single ‘Can You Forgive Her?’ by Chris Nash © 2006 and 2026 Pet Shop Boys
There could easily be an exhibition devoted solely to Pet Shop Boys headwear — from Stetsons to cartoon cone hats reminiscent of American new wave band Devo, Lowe’s BOY baseball hat and silver Miyake swimming cap, to the plaid bucket hat he wears with a Chevignon coat while chomping on an apple on the cover of “So Hard” in 1990. Then there’s the JW Anderson quilted bonnet from the artwork for “Leaving” in 2012 and the extravagant high orange women’s Kenzo hat from the video for “Was It Worth It” in 1990, where the pair are surrounded by dancing club kids from Kinky Gerlinky. That club — the hottest and hardest to access in London at the time — was run by Gerlinde and Michael Costiff, who went on to open World Archive at Dover Street Market and provide the carnival feathered millinery for the cover of Ultimate, a greatest hits compilation in 2010. Lowe and Tennant have always had an ear and eye for the underground.
For a tour in 1991, the duo adopted a Hergé-inspired Thomson and Thompson matching partner look. “We had pink and yellow bowler hats,” says Tennant. “I think our use of bowler hats is a recurrent British motif. Otherwise, I’d say our style has been more European. When we shot with Mapplethorpe, I think Chris is wearing a Versace leather jacket and I was in Romeo Gigli.”
The Pet Shop Boys is an ongoing concern. After 15 studio albums, Tennant and Lowe continue to record and are touring a greatest hits show, Dreamworld, this summer. They still have looks up their sleeve we haven’t seen yet, but what would they like their legacy to be? I ask what they’d choose for their “ghost outfits” — the clothes they’d haunt the world for eternity if they knew they were about to die in them. Lowe answers enthusiastically in detail: “I’d want people to immediately know it was me, so it would be Adidas trainers, Diesel jeans, a fabulous Adidas Spezial jacket, baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses.” Tennant pauses for a moment: “It would be . . . a beautiful black suit with a white shirt buttoned all the way to the top. It’s perfect and very me.”
‘Pet Shop Boys Volume: The Complete Visual Record’ is published by Thames & Hudson on April 7
The pop duo’s style reflects changing menswear trends since the 1980s
Neil Tennant (left) and Chris Lowe on the set of the ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’ video, 1987 © 2006 and 2026 Pet Shop Boys
Mark C O’Flaherty
Published MAR 31 2026
It’s 40 years since the Pet Shop Boys debut album Please? From day one, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe made it clear they were brand more than band: an arch pair of cool Noël Cowards with a keyboard. They knew about art, graphics and the nuance of clothing. Their deadpan irony, costumes and live shows designed by Derek Jarman and Es Devlin made them the Gilbert & George of pop.
Now, an epic discography goes hand in hand with a timeline of imagery that incidentally documents changes in menswear over the decades. Much of it — including shoots by Eric Watson and Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as stills from videos shot by Bruce Weber — is showcased in a new book by Chris Heath with Philip Hoare, Pet Shop Boys Volume: The Complete Visual Record.
From the mid-1980s onwards, record companies frequently employed stylists to assemble racks of Gaultier and Westwood for their acts. Lowe and Tennant dressed themselves by studying the streets. “It was the time of the sports casual cult, which we were obsessed with,” says Tennant, who is talking to me via FaceTime. “I was into playing tennis at the time,” says Lowe. “I wore Sergio Tacchini and Fila. I got on a train one day from Liverpool and there were loads of lads in the same stuff, and they were obviously hooligans, not members of a tennis club. I loved it. They had Diadora trainers teamed with bleached Fiorucci jeans. Fashion has never got any better than that.”
When it comes to the legacy of the era, fashion curators seemingly can’t stop putting on exhibitions of what a handful of art students pulled out of a dressing-up box to wear to clubs. However, the legions of teens who followed the codes of football-terrace dress have been relatively overlooked. Which is why early Pet Shop Boys shoots — including the imagery to accompany “Rent” in 1987, which plays on what a teenage male sex worker might wear having just arrived at King’s Cross station from the provinces — are so significant, and specific.
From the Robert Mapplethorpe photo session, 1986 © 2006 and 2026 Pet Shop Boys
The inner sleeve of ‘It’s a Sin’, 1987 © 2006 and 2026 Pet Shop Boys
Similarly niche is what Lowe and Tennant did with “Paninaro”, the B-side to “Suburbia”, a year before. It was a tribute to the Stone Island and Moncler-clad Vespa-riding youths in Italy who were a constant presence hanging around outside American-style fast-food restaurants. The year it was released, Valentino Garavani began legal action to try and have the McDonald’s next to his HQ in Rome on Piazza di Spagna closed down. The paninaro trend petered out but the McDonald’s outlived Garavani.
“We thought those kids looked so cool,” says Lowe. “We saw them hanging around a square in Milan and they were so similar to the sports casuals.” The lyrics to “Paninaro” demonstrate classic Pet Shop Boys observational wit: “Girls, boys, art, pleasure . . . Armani, Armani, ah-ah-Armani.”
Changes in casual menswear and its styling are tricky to pinpoint, but there’s perpetual motion. The paninaro kids loved pastels, brightly coloured puffa gilets and yellow Timberlands. They rolled up their denim to ankle length. A decade later they’d be into grunge. “You might think that the design of a pair of Diesel jeans stays the same,” says Lowe, “but you take an old pair out after a few years, realise how much they’ve changed, and you can’t wear them any more.”
Along with streetwear, the first 40 years of the Pet Shop Boys capture key moments in runway fashion. The long black coat that Tennant immortalised in their first music videos was by Stephen Linard, the influential avant-garde designer from the Blitz Club era who died in 2024. Lowe’s fondness for Issey Miyake made the designer’s circular 1985 dark glasses world-famous when he wore them on the cover of “Suburbia” with a striped top by lesser-known Tokyo label Posh Boy. Along with Hedi Slimane, Miyake has long been their go-to, but they also modelled for Dior under Kris van Assche in 2018.
Lowe (pictured with Tennant on the right) in Issey Miyake’s inflatable jacket from autumn/winter 1987 © Popperfoto/Getty Images
The day we talk, Tennant is in a black Homme Plissé top: “I remember we were doing a shoot with the great stylist Michael Roberts in 1987, and he’d brought an inflatable Issey Miyake jacket which Chris wore. I started shopping there too, for collarless shirts and those voluminous light coats which look great with a wind machine.” Tennant says he stopped wearing Miyake in the late ’90s but has been buying a lot from the new IM Men line, which folds flat into perfect geometric shapes like pieces of minimalist art. “I like how the fabrics lead the designs,” he says. “Miyake was always architectural and never dates. Also, it’s polyester so you can wash it easily in a hotel bathroom on tour.”
Lowe is fascinated by garment construction, whether that’s a blow-up Michiko Koshino coat or bespoke tailoring. “I had a suit made on Savile Row at Kilgour just so I could enjoy the process,” he says. “But I still wear it for weddings and funerals.” Tennant has always gravitated towards suits: “I wore Jean Paul Gaultier for Gibo in the late ’80s and early ’90s, then moved to Mugler when he reinvented himself around 1990 with the severe collarless jackets, until George Michael and Bowie started wearing them. I recently bought two IM Men suits.”
The cover of ‘West End Girls’ from 1985 © 2006 and 2026 Pet Shop Boys/Krause & Johansen
The Pet Shop Boys in carnival feathered millinery on the cover of ‘Ultimate’ from 2010 © Pell Crepin
The Pet Shop Boys have worn wild, high-concept video and stage creations by Gareth Pugh and Jeffrey Bryant, but they have never been fashion victims. Duran Duran sailed around on yachts in swanky Antony Price suits, and Bowie commissioned Alexander McQueen to make a tattered union jack frock coat for his 1997 Earthling album as an earnest artistic statement, but the PSBs have a disarming, amiable sense of camp. “I remember being at an awards ceremony wearing Dior denim by Hedi,” says Lowe, already chuckling about the anecdote he is about to tell. “We were presenting something to New Order and Bernard Sumner turned to me and said, ‘Even your jeans are pretentious.’” Tennant chips in: “The thing is, Hedi’s always done good jeans. At Celine, Dior and Saint Laurent, always cool.”
A shoot for the band’s 1993 single ‘Can You Forgive Her?’ by Chris Nash © 2006 and 2026 Pet Shop Boys
There could easily be an exhibition devoted solely to Pet Shop Boys headwear — from Stetsons to cartoon cone hats reminiscent of American new wave band Devo, Lowe’s BOY baseball hat and silver Miyake swimming cap, to the plaid bucket hat he wears with a Chevignon coat while chomping on an apple on the cover of “So Hard” in 1990. Then there’s the JW Anderson quilted bonnet from the artwork for “Leaving” in 2012 and the extravagant high orange women’s Kenzo hat from the video for “Was It Worth It” in 1990, where the pair are surrounded by dancing club kids from Kinky Gerlinky. That club — the hottest and hardest to access in London at the time — was run by Gerlinde and Michael Costiff, who went on to open World Archive at Dover Street Market and provide the carnival feathered millinery for the cover of Ultimate, a greatest hits compilation in 2010. Lowe and Tennant have always had an ear and eye for the underground.
For a tour in 1991, the duo adopted a Hergé-inspired Thomson and Thompson matching partner look. “We had pink and yellow bowler hats,” says Tennant. “I think our use of bowler hats is a recurrent British motif. Otherwise, I’d say our style has been more European. When we shot with Mapplethorpe, I think Chris is wearing a Versace leather jacket and I was in Romeo Gigli.”
The Pet Shop Boys is an ongoing concern. After 15 studio albums, Tennant and Lowe continue to record and are touring a greatest hits show, Dreamworld, this summer. They still have looks up their sleeve we haven’t seen yet, but what would they like their legacy to be? I ask what they’d choose for their “ghost outfits” — the clothes they’d haunt the world for eternity if they knew they were about to die in them. Lowe answers enthusiastically in detail: “I’d want people to immediately know it was me, so it would be Adidas trainers, Diesel jeans, a fabulous Adidas Spezial jacket, baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses.” Tennant pauses for a moment: “It would be . . . a beautiful black suit with a white shirt buttoned all the way to the top. It’s perfect and very me.”
‘Pet Shop Boys Volume: The Complete Visual Record’ is published by Thames & Hudson on April 7
