The Times - UK (2021-11-25)

the times | Thursday November 25 2021 9

arts

VALERIE PHILLIPS; COURTESY OF CHARLES MORIARTY/ICONIC IMAGES; ED REEVE

I

t’s the notes that get you. Lyrics; a

checklist for a driving licence

application; the name of a

boyfriend, Chris Taylor,

surrounded by a blizzard of

hearts; rundowns of songs she loved

— Julie London’s My Heart Belongs

to Daddy, Dean Martin’s Baby Won’t

You Please Come Home. All written

in the looping script of an 18-year-old

north Londoner.

The pages from Amy Winehouse’s

notebook circa 2001 are among the

first things you see at the Design

Museum’s intimate new exhibition,

which comes ten years after her death.

Curated with the help of the singer’s

parents, Mitch and Janis, it aims to

shift the focus from addiction and

tragedy to style and inspiration. It’s

pretty successful in doing so, although

it’s hard to ignore that the person who

wrote those notes had only a decade

left to live.

Asif Kapadia’s Amy documentary

benefited from the amount of footage

of its subject, and this show is helped

by how little her family have thrown

away. In one alcove Winehouse’s CD

collection is stacked. TLC, Carole

King, Louis Armstrong — they give a

fair idea of the music that shaped her.

A mocked-up music studio has concert

footage and audio snippets of her

mooning over Ray Charles and Salt-

N-Pepa. Later the mooning goes the

other way as Adele, Winehouse’s most

successful imitator, pays tribute in a

clip from one of her shows.

Just as Winehouse’s sound blended

A street sign for the

square in north London

where Amy Winehouse

lived, covered in fans’

tributes. Main:

Winehouse in 2003.

Above right: in New

York in the same year;

her beehive wig

Remembering

Amy: doodles,

wigs and all

Relics from Amy Winehouse’s life are

on display at a new show at the Design

Museum. Ed Potton pays his respects

soul, jazz and hip-hop, so her sartorial

style was a Camden Market-style

collage of denim, gingham,

houndstooth and flower prints. Fans

will be beside themselves at the stuff

on display: a feast of frocks including

the diamante number she wore to the

Mercury prize in 2004; the signature

beehive wig that had to be prepared

with a mountain of mousse and woven

into her hair. Again, the influenced

the exhibition and a list of her

teenage “fame ambitions”. She never

managed No 3 (“To do a movie where

I look ugly”) and I have no idea

whether she ticked off No 6 (“To

f*** Huey”). No 12, though, was “To

have people look up to me”. That one

was no problem.

From Nov 26, designmuseum.org

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the latest reviews

became the influencer. There is a

jacket from Karl Lagerfeld’s show

for Chanel in 2008, where the

models went down the catwalk in

towering beehives.

The grand finale I won’t say too

much about, except that it does

emotional and creative things with

footage from one of Winehouse’s great

shows, at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire

in 2007. Better to return to the start of

Amy: Beyond

the Stage

Design Museum, W8

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exhibition