This was the outfit I would first walk on stage wearing, during my Made of Bricks 10th anniversary tour in the summer of 2017. It was designed by Alice Jane Potter and I loved it.
It kind of felt as ridiculous as it looked, but it also didn’t. There was so much material, it was like wearing a piece of art. I would run out on tiptoes feeling like Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz. It was like being the moon or a disco ball.
I love any excuse to dress up; my wardrobe’s a bit like a fancy dress box. Sometimes it’s hard for me to dress for normal situations. A lot of the time I’m either performing or travelling – so what I wear is either really fun or just really comfortable. For anything in between I think, ‘Oh God, I don’t know how to dress myself. But when I get on stage I’m just like, ‘I can wear anything I want!’ For an hour and a half, I feel very free.
Hair is so important and emotional. I dyed mine black and blond after a breakup – there’s something really powerful about changing your hair when you’re in a weird place. In method acting classes, hair is considered one of the senses. But when I started working on [wrestling comedy-drama] Glow in 2017, they wanted to dye my hair back to red, my natural colour. I was really scared about it – I didn’t want to go back to that girl from 10 years ago. I don’t think I had dealt with a lot of what had happened to me, from being in the media and feeling bullied, all these things made me feel downtrodden. I didn’t feel like a woman with that hair – I felt like a girl. But as I was watching it change in the mirror I thought: “This is really important. This is me reclaiming myself.”
Filming Glow helped with my confidence. Then, when I started the tour, I was singing songs I’d written when I was 16 and the whole crowd was singing every single word. Tours and live shows go wrong all the time – that’s just the nature of them – but this tour went off without a hitch. There was a lot of joy in the room, and I felt like it healed everything.
Kate Nash is touring the UK from 6 June.
