Style: fashion Icons

While I adore fashion and style, I find all the new stuff a bit difficult to keep up with. I mean, I'm even behind with new music, let alone all the new fashion! Keeping up with it all is probably a full-time job for like fifty people. I'll save that for when I'm writing for actual money, not my own pleasure. However, here are some of my ultimate fashion and style icons/inspirations.

Alison Mosshart

She is probably my ultimate inspiration for both fashion and life. There is nothing I don't admire about Alison. She goes completely beyond androgyny; she is a creature from another world onstage and a edgy yet effortless presence off it. She also goes beyond fashion; the things she wears are so careless yet so perfect for her. I have tremendous admiration for her style of dealing with the media; she never speaks about her personal life, yet her creative output is somehow extremely personal. She never talks about sex, not the way any other female musician does. She will never pine for a man or rage or cry. She will probably punch and stab and shoot someone, but she will not languish or moan. Her style is completely outlandish yet utterly perfect. Wedges, skinny jeans, leather jackets, black or red-dyed or bleached hair, immaculate eye makeup, it's all completely part of her. Everything looks just slightly worn (or not slightly as in the case of her leopard-print boots that she wore for years) as if it has always belonged to her and is part of her. She also took a while to develop her look, she did not 'grow into her face' until late in her 20s, which gives me hope for myself! Even though I love all her looks, the one that is really unforgettable for me is her from around 2006-2010; dressed all in black, face mostly hidden behind long black hair, stalking around the stage like a demon or some other utterly inhuman presence from another world.

Kate Moss and Pete Doherty

 Did someone say 'heroin chic'? I can't get enough of this drugged-out couple with their bedraggled couture. I love Kate's style at any given point from 1990 to around 2007, and her and Johnny Depp were amazing, but Kate and Pete really do it for me. The two of them constantly looked like they just emerged from shagging one another senseless, only taking breaks to snort coke, in the sexiest way possible and were now on their way to a concert. Kate's constantly rumpled hair, Pete's disheveled clothes, their devil-may-care attitude, their clear love for one another, it was absolutely perfect. Not that I particularly aspire to being the drug-crazed girlfriend of a rock star, but I feel that emulating bits of this careless style isn't a bad thing. Pete has always been one of my favourtes with his inspired combinations of formal and ragged (Guards jacket and converse, suit jacket and jeans) that he pulls off so well, but combined with Kate's ability to wear anything (or nothing) and look like a goddess (or a bacchian divinity in this case), it was just too much. Kate also prompted Pete to model for the 2007/2008 Roberto Cavalli campaign, in a series of photos where he looks ridiculously handsome. I also definitely picked up the idea of wearing loose ties over casual clothes from Pete.

Love and decadence.

David Bowie 

Bowie's typical genius for pattens and colours (the chair doesn't count)

It's impossible not to admire David Bowie's many styles. I cringe with embarrassment when I think of the amount of glitter, eyeshadow, and lipstick I have experimented with as an homage to Ziggy Stardust. Bowie transformed himself so many times that few people now know what he looked like originally: a scrawny, weird-looking short guy with crooked teeth and mismatched eyes. And this guy managed to convince the entire world that he is a sex god, multiple times in multiple guises. Whether as the effete ultra-hippie of the early 70s, the glam space invader Ziggy Stardust, the icy and impeccable Thin White Duke, the kitsch mega-star of the 80s, or the almost post-modern enigmatic artists that he has been since the early 90s, David Jones has never been David Jones. We will never know who he really is, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Bowie knew the importance of appearance and used it as his greatest tool in his fame, manipulating image with superlative success. He not only worked with top designers, he designed his own clothes, did his own makeup, always with an incredibly astute sense of style. He also 'grew into' his face, I will always maintain that Bowie was vastly more attractive in the 90s than the 60s.

Bowie not afraid to look a little... um... eccentric.

Anouk Aimée

She's sort of my Audrey Hepburn. For me, she embodies the light, alluring, utterly European elegance even more than Audrey does. Even though she is French, I first saw her in the role she is probably most famous for, as the wealthy Maddalena in La Dolce Vita. In contrast to the blonde and overflowing Anita Ekberg, Aimee looks restrained, independent, intriguing. In every way, she is inaccessible and delightful. Her ambiguous yet sensual presence onscreen is enhanced by full hair, huge, emphasized eyes, and slender figure in simple, lovely clothes. Felini was inspired to make the film by women's sack dresses which he saw as endlessly suggestive, and perhaps no one embodies the spirit of those obscuring/revealing garments better than Aimee. For some reason, the most enduring part of her role in La Dolce Vita for me is when Maddalena listens to Marcello's declarations of love from another room, suddenly stops answering and leaves with another man. It is impossible to tell when her expressions are sincere, where the game ends and reality begins.

The above-mentioned scene in La Dolce Vita

Brett Anderson 

Brett flaunting what's he's got

 Being a tall girl, not particularly curvacious (shall we say), a lot of your fashion icons wind up being male. If you also happen to be poor and can only afford one leather jacket and second-hand tops (like me), Brett Anderson is a great fashion icon to have. During the early 1990s, Brett wore the most subtly androgynous, flattering outfits that were somehow very seductive without being outrageous. His clothes, bordering on trashy, loudly called attention to his best features, which were a surprising and unorthodox assortment; the curve of his back, the strip of skin between his belly and hipbones, the prominent cheekbones and jawline. Basically, I think I learned from Brett is that you can be sexy without catering to stereotypes.

None of this should work... but somehow it does

Babara Stanwyck and Myrna Loy

These two actresses are for me the best representations of a certain kind of early 30s glamour, the pre-femme fatale; hard as nails and beautiful as diamonds. They wore simple, flowing clothes, draped with unbelievable elegance. Their hair was perfectly set. Their faces showed a cool, sneering indifference. Their makeup was subtle and unobtrusive, yet made their faces positively blossom. Their unruffled look combined with their tough attitude make their stock characters one of my favourite Old Hollywood 'types'. Unlike the femme fatales in film noir, they are often unrepentant and/or unpunished, especially in pre-Code films such as Baby Face, which may be my favourite Barbara Stanwyck feature, her character as hard and cruel to the world as it is to her.

Karen Elson

Karen Elson by Steven Meisel for the Vogue Italia couture supplement, March 1997

 My favourite Karen Elson look is her breakthrough one from the early 90s (photographer Steven Meisel's invention) when she looked like an alien; bizarrely short crop of violently red-dyed hair, shaved eyebrows, milk-pale skin, exaggerated makeup. She kept the look for quite a few years. Her almost intentionally unsightly appearance was a slap in the face to any commonly held standards of feminine beauty. It was as if she was supposed to look hideous and instead looked like an outre vision from an alternate universe. Once she grew back her hair and eyebrows and started looking like a human being again, Karen lost most of her appeal for me.

Karen Elson by Craig McDean for the Vogue Italia couture supplement, March 1999

Mick Jagger

In the early 70s, Mick Jagger generally looked like a glittery, slutty trashcan. No one (including Bowie) before or since has done glam better. Mick had everything; the filthy crossdressing of the New York Dolls, the subtle aggression of Lou Reed, the insane 'dangerous glitter' of Iggy Pop, the alien genderless super-sexiness of Ziggy Stardust, the outrageous clothes made of priceless material, the buckets of glitter smeared on his chest, the makeup, the shining, jingling belts and jewelry, the leather, the lace, you name it. For me, Mick exemplified glam and the combination of a million different influences that make trashy so hot. Besides this, he was also a style icon since the early 60s and personified the decadence and drugged-out madness of the end of that decade. If anyone set the style, it was Mick Jagger.