Style Icons: Female »Iman

imanA true icon of fashion, the statuesque Iman is the keeper of David Bowie's heart and muse to none other than the late, great Yves Saint Laurent, who referred to her his “dream woman” and used her in some stunning campaigns in the 80s.

Sure, she's quit the biz only to come back to plug products on reality shows (really Iman, you're cool shilling your wares on ANTM?) but she mostly works as a cosmetics mogul, a humanitarian and a devoted wife.?The two superstars have (at least, in the picture they paint in this interview) a dreamy love-of-their-lifetimes relationship where?she bakes him shepherd's pie and, “They even celebrate the 14th of every month, the anniversary of their first date.” Awwww.

She's also blessed with a healthy dose of ego-mania, having written a book about (you guessed it) Iman, but she's never thrown a phone at anyone and she's doing good in the world and, for all the nerds, she's even graced the Star Trek universe with her unearthly beauty.

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Posted on April 6, 2009

Style Icons: Female »Sally Kirkland

sally kirklandNo one really knows why the ostentatious strangeness that is Sally Kirkland and her ever changing whirlwind of bizarre red carpet fashion is famous. Well, I do (it's a single movie called Anna and wealthy parents and the dubious distinction of being the first nude performer on the legitimate theater). Still, that doesn't seem enough does it to warrant an almost never ending extended invitation to any red carpet event?

Except, maybe the lords of invitation giving feel the same way I do about big breezy blonds that are clearly kind of crazy – I love them! Just look at her life as the rich and famous where she explains the half of her that isn't a fame seeking monster, the half that enjoys basking in the glory of unearned money with a fire roaring and creating?Nagel inspired marker art (she calls it “paint”). Continue watching and she leaps into a “pizazz”-y sequin, leather, and batik fashion show before explaining her nervous break down in the sixties and teaching kids to act.

She's appeared on Go Fug Yourself, but not as often as one would think. I believe even they have an appreciation for her lunacy. And besides she spends lots of her time as a health activist and was the god daughter of one of my all time loudmouth dames and talents, Shelley Winters, which gives her points in my book.

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Posted on March 30, 2009

Style Icons: Female »Ronnie Spector

ronnie spectorBefore you start and end with giving Ronnie Spector credit for making your tween years a bit more romantic with the Dirty Dancing soundtrack golden oldie Be My Baby, you may be interested to know that when this spirited New Yorker was a teenage rebel with a record contract, she had the Rolling Stones opening up for her. She and The Ronettes were also the only female group to tour with the Beatles.

Known as the original bad girl of rock and roll, she was tough enough to survive a marriage to Phil Spector and smart enough to get out of it eventually because “I knew that if I didn't leave at that time, I was going to die there”. She may have been right.

Her tough, out of sight voice defined a generation of girl group rock and roll and while she never quite reached the same peaks of success in later years, she is the voice singing in Eddie Money's Take Me Home Tonight and she also sang background vocals for The Misfits!

She remained stylish through the years, with beehives and suede boots in the sixties and this smoking jumpsuit and flowing locks later.

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Posted on March 23, 2009

Style Icons: Female »Laura and Kate Mulleavy

rodarteI have to admit, unlike most people who fell head over heels instantly for Rodarte, the romantic line by sisters Laura and Kate Mulleavy, it's taken a while to grow on me. There latest collection has made me a full blown admirer with the gray thigh high strappy boots and form flattering, odd combination piecing that would make the sisters a shoo-in for designing costumes for the next epic intelligent sci fi film – if I ran the world.

The shredded yarns, the piecing and the limited palette with pops of unexpected colors are all an extension of their spring line which played with the human form – namely rib cages too. It was perhaps the season before that – Fall 08, that defined the unique mix of craftiness, strange color combinations, and ladylike decay that they've become known for and have perfected.

I gained a deep respect after seeing one of those pieces, diaphanous “blood stained” gown at the Goth FIT show. They came to New York with their first collection with out any design training and little more than talent, a rare vision and hard work. It's enough to inspire anyone to follow their dreams.

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Posted on March 16, 2009

Style Icons: Female »Girlschool

How is it that the band Girlschool: an explosion of big bangs and British Heavy Metal swagger escaped my knowledge and attention for so long? Just goes to show that the world is always full of interesting things you've never heard of and that is awesome.

Just take a look at the archive gallery of this cult band that inspired many girls in the seventies and eighties to totally rock. They smoke until they're lit up, they're not afraid of pleather pants and bandanna boots, they hang with Lemmy, they look like the coolest girl in a local bar today, the sport multiple rat tails that put my little brothers' from the 90s to shame, they like to have a laugh, and they f-ing own black leather jackets.

More images can be found on their myspace page.

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Posted on March 9, 2009

Style Icons: Female »Lou Doillon

lou dillionAs you might be able to tell from a perusal of my style icons, I have a hard time identifying with the fashionable of my generation?but there's just something special about Lou Doillon. It could be those quirky good looks she inherited from her gangly beauty of a mother, it could be those top hats and suspenders with high waist that have earned her a job as fashion designer (an honor bestowed on all sorts of vaguely famous youth – but this time perhaps to justifiable ends?), or it could be that one of her few titles in a meager career as an “actress” includes a Chloe Sevigny remake of Brian De Palma's brilliant split screen thriller Sisters.

But no, no obviously no! That last one is no way to make friends with me and certainly no way to get on my style list, so there must be something else to make me so utterly enchanted with the titless it girl of the moment.

And that something is this spectacular shoot in the spectacular French Playboy. I've mentioned it here before, and still the rabbit ears and short alls rouse me with their flat out coolness. Ahh, j'tiame Lou sans v?tements! (Pardon my French).

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Posted on March 2, 2009

Style Icons: Female »Vivienne Westwood

vivienne westwoodYou can't under estimate the impact Vivienne Westwood has had on style and fashion over the past few decades. The strong willed eccentric was at the center of shaping the punk movement with friend Malcolm McLaren. The two of them opened Sex Shop on King's Road in the seventies and for a decade it supplied London's angry youth with fetish gear, shocking tees, and other wild accouterments.

As Westwood segued into high fashion, she's introduced stunning collections for decades. Just today her latest fall collection will be coming down the runways, but she's never strayed too far from her roots. Her work is as subversive as it is frequently gorgeous. I covet her signature corseted ball gowns and would do just about anything for the graffiti cape from her Spring '07 collection.

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Posted on February 23, 2009

Style Icons: Female »Theresa Russell

theresa russellWhy do I mention her now?

I have never really gotten the images of her sartorial magic in Bad Timing out of my head. I even began a new collaborative website (which I will be telling you all about soon enough) with a collection of images from the film. From polka dots to fantastic brooches, from braided up dos to bejeweled bodices, I think her style is perfection and worthy of another look.

Here's what I said back on 1/23/06:

I was never a huge Theresa Russell fan until I saw Bad Timing, not that Wild Things isn't a pretty sweet movie. I would like to do a bonus movie suggestion for Bad Timing (1980), a sexually charged Nicholas Roeg film where Russell and Art Garfunkle play crazy and or sociopathic lovers in Cold War Vienna. It drags at times, but is one of the most exquisitely photographed films I have seen in a long time. You will also understand why Theresa Russell is this week's style icon – those hairstyles, those pants, that craziness – I absolutely love her.

imdb

CRITERION

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Posted on February 16, 2009

Style Icons: Female »Elizabeth Taylor

elizabeth taylorDespite her current feelings on matrimony, Elizabeth Taylor built a career playing romantic leads, made headlines with her romantic life and defined a kind of champagne and caviar 80s romance with those White Diamonds commercials that seemed have to run for decades, I guess they still bring her luck.

But that wasn't totally true, was it Elizabeth? The silver screen goddess with violet eyes once called, “a secret wrapped in an enigma inside a mystery” was married and divorced eight times and two of those were to Richard Burton, to whom that quote can be attributed.

While her main job these days is simply to remind us of golden ages past, her work is truly inspiring and exciting. My personal favorites are A Place in the Sun, where her dreamy frothy ball gowns inspire murder; her sultry and sad turn as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; her fiery divaesque hysterics in The Taming of the Shrew; but I most love her razor edged, forceful but vulnerable Oscar winning performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (the play I wrote a high school senior paper on).

And Jim also has a pretty major crush on the Liz of the late 60s.

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Posted on February 9, 2009

Style Icons: Female »Megan Whitmarsh

Embroidery Artist

I really love Megan Whitmarsh‘s bright, quirky embroidery art but now, after taking a class in embroidery (at the Make workshop – more on that next week), I have even more respect for her craft because –?et me tell you – embroidery takes a whole lot of time and patience.

Her creations are spastic?and bright – a mixture of pop culture iconography like Big Foot and Elvis, plus those traditional Mexican embroideries that remind me of worry people. I’ve imagined that her crafty wares are tiny and intimate from the hours I’ve spent poring over them on her awesomely designed website, but I’d love to see them in person, though she mostly shows in LA at the esteemed New Image Art.

She also works in paint and (lately) felt that she forms into three dimensional plushy piles that resemble a mountain made of the things found under a teenage girl’s bed in 1988. Her work is super fun, she had this to say in a Fecal Face interview: “I am inspired by a desire to be optimistic about the future of humanity.”

She’s at the forefront of the very feminine, very playful craft movement that has inspired legions of girls (and probably some boys too) to pick up a sewing needle and get to work.

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Posted on February 2, 2009