De Angela will be presenting the following talk at the Prince 78-88: The First Decade, a 2-day Interdisciplinary Conference at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN during June 2021.

Conjuring the Prince Mystique

Before the symbol and the color purple, Prince’s key visual signatures were the trench coat and smoke. Both were prevalent beginning with Dirty Mind and reaching their peak during the Controversy and 1999 eras. This talk will concentrate primarily on how the ubiquitousness of smoke from fog machines, combined with light, present in music videos and album art would come to symbolize how Prince was ultimately evoked–mysterious, otherworldly, and bewitching.