KISS Wore Their Iconic Makeup Because They Were Too Physically Large For Glam
In the 1970s, KISS’s full-costume, full-makeup look was eye-catching but not as outrageous as you might think. KISS’s look was sort of the logical progression from David Bowie’s various personae, as well as stylish costumed artists like Parliament-Funkadelic and Gary Glitter. KISS’s problem was that they were neither skinny nor hairless, according to Simmons: “Well, we were more like football players; all of us were over 6 feet tall, and it just wasn’t convincing! The very first pictures we took when the band first got together, we looked like drag queens. But we knew we wanted to get outlandish. We weren’t a Grateful Dead kind of band that would get onstage and look worse than the roadie delivering our stuff. Which doesn’t negate what the Dead and other bands were doing; it just wasn’t us. … That’s where the makeup and dressing up came in.”