Ray was a really great, kind man. I was a part of a little group that included photographers Jamie Morgan and Mark Lebon and singer Neneh Cherry, and we’d all go to him whenever we had a problem-he was like our uncle. As a fashion stylist he was ahead of his time: He brought street style and what he called his Buffalo style into Arena and The Face and made them huge. His style still influences what people are wearing today. My greatest memory of Ray was that we all used to hang out at the Café de Paris and the last song would always be “La Vie en Rose” by Grace Jones. Ray would be the only one out on the dance floor, dancing by himself. Every time I hear that song I think of him.
Naomi Campbell, model
Working as a freelance fashion stylist for the British magazines The Face, i-D, and Arena, London-based Ray Petri defined the look of men’s fashion in the 1980s and was one of the progenitors of today’s popular “grunge” style. He was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1948, grew up in Australia, and then moved to London. Starting out as a photographer’s assistant and agent, he began styling fashion photographs in 1983. His preeminence in the field was established immediately and was guaranteed when he developed his signature “Buffalo” style, an irreverent mix of surplus-store clothing and other miscellaneous influences that gained international prominence. British magazine publisher Nick Logan said of Petri that “Buffalo rejected style and exploited attitude, creating a ‘modern man’ from the remnants of punk and Ray’s own eclectic taste.” Petri died at the age of 40 in 1989.
