Atomic duds! Music legend George Clinton looks back on seven decades of funky fashion
When it comes to funky, futuristic fashion, George Clinton — the music legend who brought “One Nation Under a Groove” — says that you have to think out of your comfort zone to be out of this world.
“We always was trying to make sure we was down with whatever was happening,” Clinton, 82, told The Post about his seven decades of culture-shifting garbing and grooving. “And the only way to do that is to pick up on the stuff that sounds the most ridiculous to you, that looks the most ridiculous to you.
“That usually is the stuff that’s getting ready to knock you out of the box. So when I see kids getting on my nerves [with their style statements], I know that’s the new s – – t.”
The “Atomic Dog” master is keeping in slamming style with his third collaboration with John Fluevog Shoes, which includes not only some space-surfing sneakers but a beach-ready bucket hat.
“We started doing it, and I did not realize that George was an artist,” said Fluevog, 76. “So I go, ‘Well, send me some of your art, some images and stuff.’ And then we took those images that he had, and we imprinted it on the leather of the shoes that we did for him. And that was, to me, the clicker that made it work.”
And now, you can feel Clinton’s beat in his sneaks. “It’s funk, it’s jazz, it’s just letting yourself loose,” said Fluevog. “Your funk is your funk.”
As Clinton makes another fresh style statement, he looks back on some of the iconic fashion moments in his career — from Parliament-Funkadelic to Prince.
Grooving with John Fluevog
Looking like the grooviest octogenarian you’ll ever see, Clinton rocks his Soul Speed Bonneville mesh lace-up sneakers from his latest collaboration with John Fluevog Shoes, as well as a bucket hat by the designer. The forever-fly funkateer has a unique way of working with Fluevog.
“I do a set of [designs] for him, and he finds a way to make them work with his printing style,” said Clinton, who has to rely on Fluevog’s vibrant vision for color combos like this bold mix of purple and orange. “I’m colorblind, so I wouldn’t know which color I was looking at.” But thankfully, he added, the two are “on the same frequency” coming from “that psychedelic era that probably affected both of us.”
Out of this world!
Always ahead of his time — and beyond this realm — Clinton embraced his place as the godfather of Afrofuturism when he rode atop a spaceship on the cover of Parliament’s 1975 album “Mothership Connection.”
“When we did that look, we was definitely going into outer space,” said Clinton, who paved the futuristic flight for everyone from Erykah Badu to Janelle Monáe. “I was a ‘Star Trek’ freak.”
The rainbow-braids connection
Clinton was feeling the rainbow when he wore multicolored braids on the cover of his 1993 album “Hey Man… Smell My Finger.” It was the revolutionary artist’s second album on Prince’s label, Paisley Park, three years after Clinton appeared in his fellow funkster’s movie “Graffiti Bridge” — and four years before the Purple One inducted Parliament-Funkadelic into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“There was a place in Minneapolis right down the street from Paisley Park [studio complex] called HairPolice, and they did my colored hair. I was going in there during the ‘Graffiti Bridge’ time,” said Clinton, who still misses Prince eight years after his 2016 death: “We was planning on taking over the world.”
Silver styling with wifey
Clinton’s manager-wife, Carlon Thompson-Clinton, has also served as his in-house stylist since they got married in 1990. And she was by his silver-masked side when he received his Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. (Somehow he has never won a competitive Grammy.) “She puts different combinations together for different shows . . . depending on what the affair is,” he said.
This particular look, though, wasn’t exactly comfortable. “The mask was easy,” he said. But not so much the coat, custom-made by frequent Clinton couturier Nathalia Gaviria, based in Beverly Hills, California. “That was hard to wear. It was heavy as hell . . . It’s painful sometimes to look good.”
Purple — and yellow — reign
An honorary Que Dog — as members of the black fraternity Omega Psi Phi are called — Clinton proudly repped their purple and yellow colors when he received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in January.
“You saw a lot of Que Dogs at that particular event, so I had some purple and yellow on,” he said. “That all was custom [by Gaviria]. She makes a lot of stuff for me. She knows the styles that I like, and she hooks me up.”
