Teddy Antolin: Hairdresser behind some of David Bowie’s signature looks

From the striking Ziggy Stardust feather cut he sported on the album covers of Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups and Diamond Dogs in the 1970s, to the more conventional looks he showed on Earthling, Hours... and Heathen in the 1990s and 2000s, David Bowie carried off more hairstyles than any other male figure in rock history.

The man behind many of those iconic looks was the hair stylist Teddy Antolin – and it was Antolin, indeed, who introduced Bowie to his future wife, the Somalian model Iman Mohamed Abdulmajid.

Born in October 1947 in Los Angeles, California, Antolin found the inspiration for his future career when the hugely influential George Masters – stylist to Marilyn Monroe and Hollywood make-up artist – visited his high school, and became his mentor. This grounding – and Antolin’s burning ambition – led him to opening up his own Beverly Hills salon in the 1970s. Innumerable celebrity clients, including Liza Minnelli, Geena Davis, Jackie Collins and Sharon Stone, followed over the course of that decade and the next. Later, he would become creative director at the LA boutique of the renowned celebrity hairdresser Sally Hershberger.

When the call came, the flamboyant Antolin fitted right into Bowie’s travelling entourage as it expanded from the 1980s onwards, during the Serious Moonlight, Glass Spider and Sound+Vision tours and the Tin Machine diversion, when the frontman blended into a rock group also comprising the bassist Tony Sales, his younger brother, the drummer Hunt Sales, as well as the guitarist Reeves Gabrels.

It was Gabrels, the musical director during the Sound+Vision outing that ran from the spring to the autumn of 1990, who first noticed that Iman had caught the singer’s eye. “It was towards the end of the tour,” he recalled. “We were on a private plane that he had rented, and he was going through fashion magazines and looking at pictures. ‘I want to meet that girl right there!’ It was Iman. I guess if you’re David Bowie, it’s not so hard to do that.”

It proved even easier to engineer for Antolin, who had been a constant through Bowie video shoots and photo sessions, and found himself sitting next to the Brazilian actress Sônia Braga and Iman at a Tony Awards dinner. “It was on my mind to play matchmaker,” the hairdresser remembered. “I asked Iman, ‘Are you interested in meeting anyone? Are you single?’ And she said, ‘It all depends, darling!’”

The hairdresser didn’t remain as circumspect when he talked to Bowie in October 1990. By then, the superstar had been divorced from Mary Angela Barnett, aka “Angie”, for over a decade. Through much of the late 1980s, he had dated Melissa Hurley, the lithe dancer who had been a fixture of the Glass Spider tour, but who was 20 years his junior, 12 more than the age gap between him and Iman. He now appeared ready to settle down. “David was very lonely. It was so sad. All this hard work that David did each day and then he was alone,” remarked Antolin.

Antolin persuaded Bowie to fly to Los Angeles on the pretence of attending his birthday dinner party. “David arrived in a white Mustang sports car, wearing white jeans and a white jacket, all denim,” he recalled. “Iman showed up in a black Mercedes, wearing all black leather. And I thought, ‘what could be more perfect?’

“The minute she walked in, all the attention went to her... She had a big smile and she and David looked at each other and it was love at first sight; you could feel the electricity... They spent the night talking to each other. They were looking at each other as if to say, ‘Now what, shall we skip dessert and go home?’ There was no one else in their lives but those two from then on.”

Engaged within months, they had a formal ceremony at Lausanne City Hall, Switzerland, on 24 April 1992, and a more extravagant reception at a villa in Tuscany, Italy, on 6 June 1992, with celebrity guests including Yoko Eno, Brian Eno and Bono, and a multi-spread feature in Hello! magazine. Needless to say, Antolin did the couple’s hair. “David was very happy; he never looked better. He made a speech and after dinner we went to dance. He had put together a really great tape – disco and dance music and a few of his own.”

Antolin was on hand to help his client give up booze, drugs and the patisserie habit he had developed during his time as a tax exile in Switzerland, and so cut down his cholesterol levels. Cigarettes eventually went altogether, too, much to everyone’s delight considering Bowie’s lifelong chain-smoking.

Antolin kept in touch with Bowie by phone. “During the last couple of years, I just started feeling something’s not right here; he was too quiet,” he said. “I didn’t know anything and I didn’t want to start any rumour. It was just my own personal feeling. He had a very small circle who knew. It was a shock when I found out he had died.” The reasons for Antolin’s own death were not given.

Edward Antolin, hair stylist: born October 1947; died Los Angeles 8 February 2016.