Blues singer, actress and swinging 60s icon Dana Gillespie took this spontaneous photo of David Bowie wearing The London Leatherman LW19 soft lip mask circa 1973. Dana recalls that her and Bowie were in New York (both managed by MainMan at the time) when one day David came back to the hotel they were staying with a bag full of things he’d bought from ‘one of those shops’ nearby. He put the mask on for a laugh and she captured the moment on her famous Polaroid camera.
Photo credit: Dana Gillespi circa 1973.
The picture sits amongst a series of personal and candid Polaroids Dana took in the 70s and 80s that feature in the book ‘Dana Gillespie, Weren’t Born A Man’ published in 2020 by Hawksmoor Publishing, available here: https://hawksmoorpublishing.com/book/dana-gillespie-book
The London Leatherman shipped and supplied incredible amounts of it’s leather goods to the East and West Coasts of American in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, we wonder which leather gear shop in New York City Bowie visited?