Revisiting the Style Behind Prince's '1999' on the Album's 40th Anniversary

As you all know, Prince is synonymous with the color purple. In fact, Prince is the color purple. Though we had seen traces of his affinity for purple in previous eras (such as the cover for Controversy), 1999 was when he officially adopted the color as a part of his persona. You had purple jackets, purple blouses, purple gloves, purple guitars… even the sky was purple. Even Prince’s band The Revolution, which was introduced along with the album (Prince was known for having different bands as he evolved as an artist), were wearing purple. That leads us to the singles.

Released September 24th, 1982, the video for “1999” was quite literally the party they said it was going to be in the song. The leading ladies of The Revolution, Wendy and Lisa, were wearing one of those popular 1980s style British military hats paired with black and purple cut-out dresses. Some of the other band members had on leather vests, purple pants, and black blazers.

Prince himself was wearing the shiniest long purple coat we’ve ever seen over top of a black turtleneck, black pants (fun fact: Prince never wore jeans as he didn’t like them), and black boots. Like many music videos back then, 1999 was filmed as a concert performance style video.

Same deal with the video for  “Little Red Corvette,” the second single for the song which was released on February 9th, 1983. The video was a concert performance that showed Prince serenading the crowd in a glittery purple jacket over top a white blouse and black pants. 

Released August 17th, 1983, “Delirious” didn’t have an official video released to it, but the performances were fun both from a costume and entertainment perspective, as you can see in this 1983 performance at First Avenue, which is a danceteria in Minneapolis that Prince regularly played at.

The final single and video from 1999, “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” dropped on November 23rd, 1983, in which the video appeared to have Prince wearing the same (or at least a similar) outfit to the one he wore in “Little Red Corvette.”

Prince wasn’t really one to do a ton of award show performances, preferring concerts and club gigs to “jam,” (a lot of times those gigs would be when he revealed new music, or would experiment with playing songs in a different way). That said, Prince and the Revolution embarked on the official 1999 tour in November 1982. The tour spanned five months, running through April 1983, and featured Prince’s girl-group Vanity 6, and The Time.

Yes, that Rolling Stone cover. Perhaps the prettiest cover of all-time. In April 1983, Prince appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine alongside then-girlfriend Vanity (who was also the lead singer of Vanity 6), which remains one of Rolling Stone’s most iconic issues to date.