Bowie was probably the most inspiring individual I’ve spent any time with. He came to my Blue Note club night in London a few times when it was very underground and he could be left alone. Then he’d come to the studio, where he’d sing through a haze of cigarette smoke like a gorilla in the mist, or I’d take him to see Dillinja in Brixton to hear drum’n’bass, or we’d spend time in his trailer on the Isle of Man set for the film Everybody Loves Sunshine and he’d sit there doing crochet. His thinking was that of an alchemist – he wanted to saturate himself in everything because he knew that inspiration could come from anywhere. He once said to me: “Golds, did you know Michelangelo said that when you blow the dust off a piece of marble, the sculpture’s there inside”? That thought stayed with me.

I hope the archive has some of his interviews, especially this one where he talks about DJ culture, the internet and what it’s going to mean: everyone having access to music and the general saturation. Nobody else understood the change that was coming like he did. He said things about it like: “Treat this thing like a velvet claw. It’s very soft and passionate on your skin, but it can cut you like a knife.”

One of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust costumes, designed by Freddie Burretti. Photograph: Richard Davis/V&A, London

Visits to museum-library collections rank high on my list of peak experiences. I’d always imagined the poet Emily Dickinson as deep in thought or mourning or enraptured. Then at the Emily Dickinson museum I saw her favourite white cotton house dress: something meant for cleaning house or baking bread, and for all her forceful words issued on paper, the dress revealed that she was a thin-boned tiny bird of a woman, even smaller than me. I have a feeling the Freddie Burretti costumes would give me a similar insight about Bowie.

When I was a 14-year-old kid growing up in rural New York State, someone gave me a copy of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars and it delivered me entirely to another place. On the back cover, Bowie wore a quilted suit with a geometric pattern, a tight fitted jacket unzipped to the waist and matching trousers. He was otherworldly, cocky, dangerously hip, androgynous, provocative. Burretti’s fabulous costumes during the Ziggy Stardust to Diamond Dogs cycle refined Bowie’s androgynous glitter god persona. If I couldn’t have access to them all, I’d settle for some time alone with that iconic album cover suit that played such an important part in my adolescent awakening.

Anthony Szmieriek – Freddie Burretti’s Ziggy Stardust costume (1972)

As a teenager I found The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust in the bottom of a wardrobe. It’s one of the only things I have of my dad’s – a man I never knew but at least we share a taste in music. For me, this Ziggy costume is about collaboration, trust and bravery. A conversation in a London club [El Sombrero] with designer Freddie Buretti created an androgynous science fiction figure, the first of Bowie’s iconic characters inside a kind of time lord. Bowie’s marriage of music, fashion and art felt so beguiling and eternal that his passing almost felt like another transformation. I’d love to spend time with this costume to understand how that was possible, how it started and what it would lead to.

When David and I lived opposite each other in New York he would sometimes call up and say: “Hey, do you wanna come over and play guitar or piano on this song?” One night as I was leaving the apartment he shared with Iman, going down this very fancy hallway filled with art, he shouted: “Hold on – I want you to have this” and gave me his black fedora hat. When I rewatched him in the film The Hunger recently I thought: “Hey, there’s my hat!” For years it went missing, I presumed stolen by the crack addicts I’d invite back to my apartment at the end of the night when I was still going hard with liquor and drugs.

Two house moves later I was in LA unpacking some boxes and there was the David Bowie magic hat. I’m so glad to have it back, but otherwise the Bowie artefact I’d most like to spend time with is this poster for a gig in Hamburg in 1978. There’s a drawn self-portrait and underneath are some of his records: Low, “Heroes”, ChangesOneBowie and Space Oddity. In terms of a moment in time, you can’t do any better. I’d love to be able to go back to 1978 and see him performing songs from those records and Station to Station, my favourite Bowie album.

Returning … David Bowie’s Thin White Duke costume. Photograph: Richard Davis/V&A, London

The first time I saw David in this outfit was in a news article announcing that he had “arrived on UK soil”, which was a thing then. Then the concert at Wembley was an unforgettable experience. This period was a move away from his decadent years and he was trying to clean up, which was reflected in the outfit: clean cut, white shirt and trousers, black waistcoat, slick hairdo. I’d also choose [to see] one of Bowie’s notebooks containing his handwritten lyrics, sketches or fragments of thought. Those pages are where his worlds first took shape, so to spend time with those would feel like being allowed into his head, to witness the beginnings of what would affect the lives of so many.

It’s near impossible to pick just one item from such an inspiring collection but I was surprisingly drawn to this one. There’s a pristine, tailored aspect to it where he’s wearing this lovely suit with the perfectly untied necktie, but the live recordings from that tour are wild and unpredictable. It’s so immaculately presented yet he uses what was by then an incredible suite of songs as the basis for experimentation. This is all the different eras of Bowie in one photo. He’d just become a megastar but the photo captures a human look, as if he’s wondering: “Is everyone enjoying it?” But on the other hand he is absolutely in command, looking cooler than he ever has.

Casting a spell …Bowie’s crystal ball from the movie Labyrinth. Photograph: David Parry/V&A, London

I remember watching Labyrinth when I was eight years old and my mother telling me: “That’s a musician called David Bowie.” To me he was always Jareth, the king of the goblins, a sort of child-catcher figure who gazes into this crystal ball. It wasn’t until much later that I saw a video of Live Aid and realised who he was. Then in my teens I started listening to his records and loved them all. I still find it hard to compute that the same person could do Under Pressure with Queen and shapeshift into the king of the goblins in the same period, but that’s how transformative he was – and nobody did it better.

Unpacking the future of pop … EMS Synthi AKS synthesiser used by Brian Eno and David Bowie for ‘Heroes’, Low and Lodger. Photograph: Olivia Singleton/V&A, London

Until I first heard this synth on Low, I’d only known Bowie as the writer of hit songs such as Life on Mars and Changes, which my parents would play over Sunday lunch. The more esoteric, experimental, Berlin-era Bowie was a version I could claim for my own. My fascination with analogue synths started there and Brian Eno’s synths on those albums fundamentally shaped me as a producer and artist. I’ve been lucky enough to recently get to work with Pete Townshend’s incredible collection of vintage synths as I’m making a new album. But getting to see the one that started it all for me would be priceless.

Joe Elliott, Def Leppard – Life on Mars handwritten lyrics (1971)Approaching star … David Bowie’s draft lyrics for Life on Mars. Photograph: Geoff Pugh/Shutterstock

I’ve got enough Bowie posters to keep me happy for the rest of my life and his clothing wouldn’t fit me, so I’d love to have or get close to the lyrics to Life on Mars. Taken out of the context of his entire body of work, it stands out as a beacon of brilliance. The lyrics would look great above my jukebox next to my original lyrics of Marc Bolan’s One Inch Rock.

The David Bowie archiveopens at the David Bowie Centre at the V&A East Storehouse, London on 13 September