“As I approached the end of the catalogue, towards the early 20th century designs with the Ballet Russes, I came across a costume design by Alexandra Exter from Don Juan in 1927. It was black with a band of white, asymmetrically cut across the chest. The resemblance was startling, it’s just like a costume Freddie wore on stage in 1972.” – Cassettes & Chocolate Milk
In 2023, I wrote an essay about the prospect of Freddie Mercury visiting the V&A. I had wondered about it due to my own personal connections with the museum, but for all the interviews, biographies and magazine articles I consulted, it never came up. That was until BBC Two’s A Life in Ten Pictures, in which Mercury’s ex-girlfriend Dr Rosemary Pearson, also known as Rose Rose, was interviewed about a V&A ballet exhibition they had attended together while they had been students at Ealing Art College.
The visit was portentous, first revealing Mercury’s fascination with a photograph of two naked men wrestling by Eadweard Muybridge. His curiosity led Pearson to consider whether Mercury might be gay. Further investigation about their visit led to the identification of the exhibition they visited: Ballet Illustration: 1581-1940, which ran between 13 April and 1 October 1967.
A cursory flip through the exhibition catalogue led to several fascinating discoveries. There was the echoes of the Harlequinade, similar to Mercury’s black-and-white leotard from 1978, as well as the sumptuous rococo setting similar to the 1984 music video for It’s a Hard Life. An eighteenth-century lithograph by Johann Georg Puschner depicts a dancing Scaramouche opening two small baskets on stage to reveal miniature scaramouches. So much of what Mercury was into seemed to be here…
The most inspiring discovery of the catalogue was the costume design by Alexandra Exter. Its similarity was so strong that you could almost imagine Mercury presenting it to his costume designer, Wendy De Smet. The corresponding costume was on display at Sotheby’s and it was startling to see it, if only for its extremly modest presentation on a hanger.
After publishing my essay, I managed to get in touch with Dr Rosemary Pearson, and we struck up a friendship. She shared her art college biography with me, along with a painting she had made depicting a scene in their college art room after the ballet exhibition at the V&A, where Mercury was gushing about the objects that he loved. She also shared a poster she had created for a college art project: a V&A touring exhibition poster on Gothic Woodcarving in England, which Mercury served as the model. His facial features can even be identified in the figure of the king.
Pearson shared many personal and illuminating stories about that era. I continued to update her on my research, but eventually I stopped hearing back from her. I believe she passed away in 2023 or 2024. I miss her insights. I remain deeply grateful for her generosity and encouragement.
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