EN MODE COUNTRY AI

C'est sur, ça n'est pas OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN qui chante HOPELESSLY DEVOTED TO YOU en version Country ... 

Cette version est certes sympa .. et c'est couillon qu'ONJ n'ai pas pensé à le faire .. comme ses ré interprétations pour PHYSICAL ou DON'T STOP BELIEVIN .. 

 

LA PHOTO SOUVENIR

1982 avec Fleur Thiemeyer.

MODE

« Le bandeau est apparu parce que ses cheveux ne voulaient pas rester immobiles, alors j’ai attaché une bande autour d’eux.

« Ce n’était pas un moment "Einstein", je devais juste résoudre un problème. »

Fleur Thiemeyer.

JUST ONE MOMENT

HOW FLEUR DRESSED A GENERATION

A generation of music idols owe their looks to a Melbourne lass

• Sunday Territorian
• 30 Mar 2025
• Fiona Byrne

Fleur Thiemeyer, 75, who designed the looks of many of the biggest rock acts in history. Picture: Jason Edwards

Having started out as a surf-crazy kid in bayside Melbourne, Fleur Thiemeyer went on to define the look of a generation of global music superstars.

As one of the go-to costume designers at the top echelon of Hollywood rock, pop and celebrity in the ’70s and ’80s through to the noughties, Thiemeyer’s influence was everywhere, from red carpets and award shows to music videos, album covers, TV appearances and tour costumes.

She put Rod Stewart into spandex, introduced Olivia Newton-John to diaphanous frocks over bodysuits and then famously put her into bodycon workout gear and an iconic headband for her chart topping Physical era, worked with KISS during their “unmasked, no make-up” phase, made Motley Crue into Mad Max-inspired rock warriors for their breakthrough album Shout at the Devil, worked with Heart when the world fell back in love with the Wilson sisters, and took Ozzy Osbourne glam.

Thiemeyer said of NewtonJohn’s famous “fitspo” accessory: “The hairband came about because her hair would not keep still, so I tied a band around it.

“This was no Einstein moment, I just had to solve a problem.”

Thiemeyer designed outfits for Whitesnake, David Coverdale and Jimmy Page, Van Halen and David Lee

Roth before they split, Raquel Welch, Dolly Parton, Liza Minnelli, Helen Reddy, Cheap Trick, Mick Fleetwood, Lindsay Buckingham, Christine McVie, Scorpions, Queensrÿche, ELO, Donna Summer, Earth, Wind and

Fire, KC and the Sunshine Band, Sheena Easton, Chicago, Journey, Pat Benatar, Bette Midler, Mick Jagger, Suzi Quatro, Farrah Fawcett and even Spinal Tap.

Now 75 and living in inner Melbourne, Thiemeyer has recounted her extraordinary life working with the biggest names in music for more than 40 years in a new book.

“For 30 years people have told me I should write a book,” she said.

“I have not lived an ordinary life. With my career, nothing was planned, it was cause and effect. I never had an agent or manager, it all just came. My sensibility and singularness had a lot to do with it. I was not in it for the parties, I was not in it for the notoriety.

“The things (outfits) I wanted to do did not exist in shops.”

Her road to dressing superstars for some of their most iconic moments began in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

Thiemeyer was born in Sunshine in 1949 and grew up in St Albans.

After her mother got a teaching position at

Highett High, the family moved bayside and

Thiemeyer spent her teen years doing athletics, playing softball and basketball, swimming and surfing.

“I was running for the Sandringham Athletic Club and guess who my training partner was? Raelene

Boyle,” she said.

“I only ever saw her back, because I could never get past her on the track.”

Seeing The Beatles at Festival Hall in 1964 opened her mind to the intoxicating world of music.

After high school, in 1968 Thiemeyer’s mother sent her to The Bambi Smith Modelling College, where she met singer Lynne Randell.

“We hit it off straight away and she asked me to a party hosted by Carol West where I met The Who and The Small Faces,” Thiemeyer said.

“She single-handedly changed my life.”

Randell introduced her to the likes of Jeff Joseph, Michael Gudinski and Garry Spry and she came to know the burgeoning Melbourne music scene including Roger Davies, Russell Morris, John Farnham, Rick Springfield, The Masters Apprentices and Molly Meldrum.

Already customising her own clothes, she soon found herself making pieces for local bands.

“It was not my intention to become a clothing designer, I was not this teenage girl who sat around drawing pictures of dresses,” Thiemeyer said.

“That was never in my mind at all; it was the beach, the surf, athletics.”

She made flouncing frilly shirts for Bon Scott during his

early days in The Valentines. She created attention grabbing pink suits for Zoot while dating band member Darryl Cotton.

The Easybeats namechecked her in their hit Sorry.

She and Cotton moved to London in 1972 and then LA in 1973.

Through Cotton she met Newton-John and the pair started working together almost immediately with Thiemeyer adding her spirited and rebellious style to Newton-John’s stage and red carpet looks.

“She had shows in Vegas coming up and said ‘will you work with me?’,” Thiemeyer said.

In 1973 she studied at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, where her mentors included design and costume legends Bill Whitten, Bob Mackie and Nolan Miller.

“They told me what beaders to go to, what metal shops to go to, who to go to get the boots and shoes made by,” she said.

“I was already working with Olivia and Dick Clark at the time, but I realised this was exactly what I wanted to do.”

She won the Bob Mackie Award for outstanding design student in 1974 and voraciously consumed art history, English literature and old movies for inspiration.

Through Newton-John, a friendship that lasted almost 50 years, Thiemeyer became music’s clothing and costume designer for an era of stars.

In 1977, via Newton-John, she met Rod Stewart, who remains a close friend.

She designed for him for 25 years, including creating the spandex one-shoulder bodysuits, skin-tight leggings, billowing shirts, leopard print tops, and wide hip-hugging belts that defined Stewart’s Do Ya Think I’m Sexy era.

“We were at the pool at Olivia’s house in LA and her friend Susan George called and said ‘can we come and visit?’,” Thiemeyer said.

“A red Lamborghini pulled up and Susan got out with Rod.”

The quartet headed out to dinner at a club that evening.

“I wore a black spandex skin-tight suit that looked like a swimsuit with legs and Rod looked at me and said ‘what the hell have you got on?’,” she recalled.

“He called the next day and we started working together.

“He was interested in doing costumes like Nijinsky and the Russian ballet, and I knew how to make spandex work like he wanted.

“I probably presented him 15 different sketches and straight away he picked eight or nine. I got them all done and he went out on tour with them.”

Her already stacked roster of star clients was turbocharged with the launch of MTV in 1981.

“MTV changed everything,” Thiemeyer said.

“It was an era where images became so massive. The sound of the voice became the look of the clothes.

“I became the go-to girl because I had dealt with sets, lights and cameras because of all the TV specials I had done with Olivia and Liza (Minnelli) and Raquel (Welch), and the managers and record companies knew me. After MTV started, those next 10 years were crazy for me. I could be working with up to 40 people a day.”

Powerful artist manager Doc McGhee asked her to dress heavy metal rockers Motley Crue in 1982 for their breakthrough album Shout at the Devil.

“Nikki (Sixx) was thinking of something like Escape from New York meets Mad Max, so I gave him books on medieval armoury and said ‘tell me what you like’,” she said.

“They came back to me with ideas and I probably did 15 drawings and they picked four.

“They had been a band playing around LA since ’81 when I met them in ’82. There was no pre-conditioning, they weren’t Hollywood brats wanting to be rock stars. They were hungry.”

When Thiemeyer’s longtime friend Sharon Osbourne rang in the mid’80s and said she wanted her husband Ozzy to go glam for his Shot in the Dark era, she was straight on the plane to London.

“Sharon said ‘I want it glam, I want it loud, I want it to move’, so hence I did the beaded gowns,” Thiemeyer said.

“His coat was like something Diana Ross would have worn. It was a great song, and working on that video was just amazing. Ozzy was up for everything. I worked with him from ’86 to ’92.”

She worked with Heart to create the cover look and tour and video costumes for their massive self-titled 1985 album that included the hits Never, Alone, These Dreams and What About Love.

Patching a leather jacket as a favour led to Thiemeyer teaming up with Pat Benatar during a period when she had hits such as We Belong and All Fired Up.

“Someone gave me a leather jacket and asked if I would repair it,” Thiemeyer said. “When they told me it was Pat’s jacket, I put a note in the pocket saying who I was and that I would love to work with her.

“She literally called me later that day and I was at her house the next day and we started working together straight away.

“I remember doing the We Belong video. She was pregnant, so it had to be shot in such a way to hide that fact. I did an oversized white jacket for her with bright green earrings and bright green gloves. It was all done as a distraction, and all anybody thought was how great she looked.”

Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie was a client and friend.

“I loved working with her. She was a brilliant talent and lovely person,” Thiemeyer said. “She wanted a bit more of an English feel (to her look) and that is where I came up with the coats and velvet jackets and beaded pieces. She wore one of those jackets when they played at Bill Clinton’s (1992) inauguration.

“Then I started working with Mick Fleetwood and did a lot of stuff with him. At some point Mick decided he was going to open a restaurant called Fleetwoods, and he brought me in to design all the staff uniforms and I helped him with the look of the club and so on.

“When Lindsey Buckingham went solo I did his (outfits) for his Go Insane album cover and videos.”

In the early 2000s Thiemeyer moved back to Australia with her son and worked for Jeanne Pratt at The Production Company before hanging up her measuring tape.

She started writing her book charting her life at the e heart of Hollywood rock and nd pop in Covid in 2020.

“I picked it up again in December 2022 and finally finished it a couple of weeks ago,” she said.

“I hope it will be released by the end of year.”

Thiemeyer puts her success down to hard work, , trust, creativity, understanding the personalities of those she worked with and knowing how to get along with people. le.

“I was dependable, I had integrity, I had respect, I was damn good at my job,” she said.

“I worked hard at my art, I did not take it for granted. They used to say ‘ring Fleur, she will take care of it’.”

Her teen years looking for waves on the Victorian coast were also a key foundation for her international success.

“Being out in the water with a bunch of guys when you are 13, you learn how guys think and how to get along with them,” she said.

“It stood me in good stead for what was to come.”

After a lifetime jetting from New York to LA to London creating looks that built legends and images that stand the test of time, she has one piece of sage advice for anyone chasing an impossible dream: “Don’t take s--t from anyone.”

NEWS

.

La costumière des stars Fleur Thiemeyer parle de sa vie extraordinaire dans un nouveau livre ... Fleur Thiemeyer a  défini le look d'une génération de superstars mondiales de la musique ... et s'est occupée d'ONJ !! 

Costume designer to the stars Fleur Thiemeyer opens up about extraordinary life in new book

She put Rod Stewart into Spandex, got ‘Physical’ with Olivia Newton-John and turned Motley Crue into Mad Max inspired rock warriors. Now costume designer to the stars Fleur Thiemeyer is recounting her extraordinary life in a new book. From starting out as a surf crazy kid in bayside Melbourne, Fleur Thiemeyer went on to define the look of a generation of global music superstars.

L'INSTA SOUVENIR ...

 de Fleur THIEMEYER ...

 

Voir cette publication sur Instagram

Une publication partagée par Fleur Thiemeyer (@fleurthiemeyer)

 

REPRISE

Lana Del Rey covers 1971 classic 'Take Me Home, Country Roads'

Lana Del Rey is putting her spin on a John Denver classic... 'Grease' star Olivia Newton-John released her cover in 1973. It featured on her album, 'Let Me Be There'. 

Mon coté "naughty".. : La musique de Lana Del Rey me gonfle au plus haut niveau ... et c'est triste de penser que les jeunes générations ne sont pas capables de découvrir par eux mêmes les trésors musicaux des décennies précédentes !!

 

 

Lana Del Rey covers 1971 classic 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' (ecr.co.za)

 

VOUS AVEZ DIT BIZARRE ?

Hopelessly Devoted to Olivia

 

 

MISE EN BOUCHE

Aperçu du Disque Picture de SOUL KISS par le publiciste d'Olivia !

 

Voir cette publication sur Instagram

Une publication partagée par Michael Caprio (@mikecaprio)

75 ANS

Elle aurait eu 75 ans ... le photographe Manfred Baumann vient de partager un cliché inédit ! Olivia y est plus jolie que jamais ! 

/

 

 

 

Voir cette publication sur Instagram

Une publication partagée par Fleur Thiemeyer (@fleurthiemeyer)

 

NEWS EN VRAC

Legendary Nine Entertainment reporter Richard Wilkins has paid tribute to Olivia Newton-John ahead of her memorial service in Melbourne. 

 Dickie caught up with Ben to spin some yarns about why he called her “Aunty Olivia”, the kid she used to babysit and the night a ghost showed up!

*********

Music royalty, celebs to speak at Olivia memorial

Some of the biggest names in music will appear at the memorial for Olivia Newton-John, and will share intimate moments of their time with the Aussie superstar. Elton John, Pink, Mariah Carey to speak at Hamer Hall service !

**********

Olivia Newton-John’s daughter Chloe Lattanzi and husband John Easterling have paid a visit to a Melbourne garden that had a very special place in the star’s heart.

**********

A Remarkable Friendship – Fleur Thiemeyer’s Journey with Olivia Newton-John

As Australia pauses to remember the life and career of Olivia Newton-John, Fleur Thiemeyer has more memories to summon than most, more tears to shed and more laughs to remember. Her friendship with the star spanned half a century, and was the spark for a story that has never really been told.

“I think for me, more than anything, I felt like her protector, because I was the tough kid,” Thiemeyer says of the woman she met in Los Angeles in 1973, when these two Melbourne girls were in their mid-20s and on the verge of conquering Hollywood.

“No one could get near her. We gelled so well. I looked at her as being a soulmate, a protector. She was the person who would confide in me if she wasn’t sure about something. The silly stuff. I love the photos where we’re laughing.”

Thiemeyer is sharing her story — and her astonishing photo album — in honour of her friend, and to properly tell the tale of how her own star rose in tandem with Newton-John’s — but behind the scenes.

Newton-John was Thiemeyer’s fashion muse, the superstar who turbocharged her nascent fashion career and helped forge a remarkable rise as designer for an eye-popping Rolodex of music legends.

Even more remarkably, she got there with almost no one knowing who she was, even in her native Australia. “I didn’t really want it,” says Thiemeyer of the fame that might have accompanied her rise. “I never had a manager. I never had an agent.”

What she did have was a reservoir of nerve and determination forged growing up in postwar Melbourne. A tomboy who preferred surfing and athletics, she stumbled into the burgeoning Australian music scene of the late 1960s, moved to London and then Los Angeles with her pop star boyfriend, and fell into the world of Hollywood fashion design. 

You could put her name at the centre of a wheel whose spokes reach out to include local pop pioneers such as Zoot and The Easybeats, through her big break dressing ONJ from 1973 onwards, and then Liza Minnelli, Dolly Parton, Bette Midler, Fleetwood Mac, Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osbourne, KISS, Motley Crue, Pat Benatar, KC and the Sunshine Band, Dusty Springfield and more. 

She put ONJ in that iconic Physical leotard and headband; Rod Stewart in Spandex pants; she made Minnelli dazzle in her legendary Liza with a Z show; and it was Thiemeyer who Midler called on to dress her for a career-flipping Beast Of Burden video with Mick Jagger in 1984.

How did it all happen? It’s tempting to use a word like “fairytale”, but Fleur Thiemeyer is too down-to-earth for that. She recalls her life matter-of-factly and with many a wry laugh.

“I’m growing up in the ’50s. I’m probably the only child whose mother isn’t home at lunchtime, so there’s an independence that you get. Always a rebel. I think if you could be expelled at eight years old, I would have been.” 

She was no shrinking violet, but there were no signs early on that she would one day make her mark as a master of the frills and fads of the fashion world. She was athletic (she remembers racing future Olympian Raelene Boyle’s behind around the track) and took a shine to surfing: “You’re out there with 20 guys and you’re the only girl. I preferred always to be hanging out with guys just for the fun of it. And from there it extended to going out to clubs, and the only people I really related to were the people on stage.” 

Thiemeyer was present at the creation of dozens of celebrated music careers. She was going to clubs in her mid-teens, and her first big-name friendship was with The Easybeats, Australia’s answer to The Beatles. Indeed, it is her unusual first name that graces their 1966 song Sorry:

Had a date at seven

With a girl named Fleur

Then I just remembered, had a date with her

At a club she met singer Lynne Randell, resulting in an unlikely shift in focus: Thiemeyer started to dabble in modelling.

Her elder sister was dating Phillip Frazer, founder of the iconic pop magazine Go-Set; her sister was also friends with a young music nut named Ian Meldrum, trying his hand at music writing. Thiemeyer found herself in the pages of Go-Set as a model. She met Zoot, a band that included Darryl Cotton and Rick Springfield. She met a young Bon Scott, then in a band called The Valentines. Roger Davies was around, about to hit the big time managing a band named Sherbet. “It’s all six degrees of separation,” says Thiemeyer. 

Fast-forward to 1973. Thiemeyer and her partner Darryl Cotton, who she had dressed along with his Zoot bandmates in all-pink in her first foray into high-impact design, had moved to London for a time. Then they joined the burgeoning Australian presence trying to crack the US market. She enrolled in a fashion course, more as a way of getting a visa than from any larger ambition.

Several of what would later become known as “the Gumleaf Mafia” lived in the same block: “The apartments overlooked the swimming pool and over to Sunset Boulevard and Tower Records.”

Where better to launch a storied Hollywood career?  

One day, a musician from Moonee Ponds — John Farrar, of The Strangers — came over to the apartments to visit Steve Kipner, a young musician from Brisbane who lived upstairs. Farrar brought with him a friend from his Melbourne TV days on programs like Bandstand - Olivia Newton-John, a close friend and singing partner of his wife, Pat.

Farrar and Kipner later wrote some of Newton-John’s biggest hits. But in 1973, she had just cracked the US market with her first country songs and was about to embark on a first Vegas stint. One of the Gumleaf brigade said to her: “You’re going to need dresses. Fleur does dresses. You should meet Fleur.” 

The rest is music and fashion history.

Thiemeyer and Newton-John forged an instant bond. They were the same age, from the same town, with the same sense of humour, and — at the same height and with blonde hair — they even looked alike. Vegas shows and foreign tours followed as Newton-John became one of the planet’s biggest stars.

On the road, it could feel like a prison of endless shows and little escape from Newton-John’s celebrity, but they would find ways to break the grind. In Japan, they once slipped out without security but had to flee to the hotel when Newton-John was recognised. In Vegas, they’d make surreptitious late-night visits to a drug store and try on makeup and laugh at the silliness of it all.

“I look at a photo of us now and it’s just two Aussie girls, and that was the great part of always being with her.”

In the second half of the 1970s, Thiemeyer dressed her friend for tours and multiple US TV specials, which Newton-John did yearly with big-name guests such as ABBA, Elton John and Tina Turner. Then in 1978, Newton-John’s star shot into the stratosphere with Grease. And while it wasn’t Thiemeyer who put her in those famous black leather pants, this was a fashion theme she applied more broadly to Newton-John’s videos and performances that drove a pop music trend. Her distinct style, and Newton-John’s effortless natural flair in wearing it, had Hollywood taking notice.

The phone started ringing.

It might be: “Liza Minnelli would like to meet with you, would you be available tomorrow morning? She’s at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

Or: “Can you meet with Dolly Parton?”

Thiemeyer recalls that meeting: “We went to her closet and went through her stuff and Dolly said ‘You can do anything you want with me except for this or this or this’, like her trademarks, the long fingernails and so on.”

She embarked on long working relationships with Rod Stewart and Pat Benatar. Then there was an unlikely detour when she started dressing the big-hair, big-noise, big-everything bands of the 1980s. She is friends to this day with those heavy rockers — Motley Crue in particular — a sharp design departure from her most famous early client. 

Now 73, and living in Melbourne where she has raised her son for the last 20 years, those ties are often the cause of sadness. Celebrity deaths these days form a melancholy path through her own life and career. A few days after our interview she gets the news that Raquel Welch, a client for decades, has died. A few weeks earlier, it was Jeff Beck. In November, it was Christine McVie, the Fleetwood Mac singer-songwriter who Thiemeyer dressed for Bill Clinton’s first inauguration concert in 1992.

“I can call up pictures now and I’m the only person still alive.”

La suite sur How Olivia Newton-John got her look (smh.com.au)

Par Neil McMahon

Fleur’s famous looks

Fleur Thiemeyer laughs at her part in music fashion in the 1980s, the early days of MTV: “Probably 80 per cent of the bad taste is from me!”

Let’s get Physical: One of the most iconic fashion moments of the era: ONJ in leotard and headband. The outfit was built in real time, with Thiemeyer dyeing a white leotard pink. “Bad taste is timeless,” she laughs. “We put the white T-shirt on and cut the neck out. The neckband of the shirt became the hairband because her hair wouldn’t stay right. And the turquoise I put on as a wrap-around because I didn’t like the overall shape. And then there were the leggings.”