Antoinette “Tony” Sales at Norman Seeff’s studio on Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles, 1977 © Phil Fewsmith.
Over the past 50 years, American artist Antoinette “Tony” Sales has traveled through the rarefied world of rock royalty, designing and making stage clothes for icons including Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Stephen Tyler, and Exene Cervenka. The mastermind behind Freddie Mercury’s iconic rhinestone fingernail gloves and Nick Lowe’s legendary Riddler suit has always believed that, “Each of us inherently has within us the ability to create the life of our dreams.”
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Though shy and demure, the willowy blonde Texan has always been possessed by a fearless streak. “If I wanted to do something, I would,” Tony tells Document Journal from her home in Los Angeles, where she continues to create stage clothes for film, television, and music videos. It was a lesson gleaned as a child when her father, science-fiction writer and US military personnel Keith Laumer received an assignment to move to London in the early 1960s, and brought his family along.
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“My older brother, Tom Wright, was Mr. Cool American with real Levis and all the good records. He went to Ealing Tech Art College, where he met Pete Townsend and they became lifelong friends,” Tony says. “Tom had walked into the lunchroom and this real shy guy was sitting alone, strumming his guitar, and all of a sudden, he went, ‘schwaaang!’ Tom said, ‘Oh my God. Do that again!’ Pete has said, ‘If it wasn’t for Tom coming into my life, there would never have been a Who.’”
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Drawing of Dolly Parton © Antoinette “Tony” Sales.