Style Icon: Neil Young

Our little Style Icons series comes to an end, and it's been a diverse group: Emmanuelle Alt, Lisa Bonet, Sofia Coppola, Amelia Earhart, Richard Hell, Jennifer Herrema, Eva Hesse, early Madonna, Kazu Makino, Anita Pallenberg, and Patti Smith. (That's one helluva dinner party right there.) And now we finally come to our last: NEIL YOUNG! It's fitting that he is the last in our lineup. Even though we're egalitarian and eschewed rankings, Liz, Laura and I all know he's the One, the #1, the one who will always steal our hearts. If this was a countdown, he'd deserve the precious final slot. Neil is really our angel, and this is why we love him.

Kat: It is impossible to write about Neil and not try to write about all the men I have loved as an adult woman, because there has been something Neil-y in all of them and that has been entirely by design. Basically my romantic life was a mess till I decided to make things easier on myself and not give my heart to anyone that didn't echo of Neil in some way or another, at least in spirit. I have a cocktail-party theory that straight dudes are either (Bob) Dylans or Neils (Young). Because while Dylan was elliptical and clever and sometimes heartfelt and often really smirk-y, elusive and witty-mean, Neil will always be earnest and sincere, even when he's being all tough and incendiary (and smart-ass enough to keep things entertaining). It's a question of head vs. heart, mental vs. emotional, words vs. gestures. A Dylan type will always look sharp and angular shambling elusively down a street, talking miles about himself or nothing in particular, but a Neil type will always wrap you up in his perfectly worn blazer when it's cold out, even when he's decrying the state of the world or threatening to hit someone in the face. A Neil type is hard to impress and hard to read at first, always looking out at the world through lowered, suspicious eyes, but he finds strength in being achingly vulnerable without the inherent egocentricity of being "emo"; he knows what's going on in the world and what's going on with his girl, and he's always on your side. Neil Young fucking cares; he doesn't posture, he doesn't get up and try to pretend he's all cool and detached and all that. The man is genuine and true, which is why his music is the perfect surrogate boyfriend. I realized this, of course, after listening to After the Gold Rush one crazy night a long time ago during those darknesses of the soul that hits you every now and then in the quest for love. Basically I was listening to the record over and over again in my bedroom, watching the shadows of my ceiling grow from the fading light outside, and feeling all-around blue. Then, somewhere around "I Believe In You" for the fiftieth time, the thought came to me: A man who can write songs like these obviously possesses exquisite emotional sensitivity; there's gotta be more like them out there. Long story short, once I got my act together and looked for the inner Neil in all my suitors, my heart felt ten times better and my head ten times smarter. (This doesn't go into all the dudes who are Dylans-pretending-to-be-Neils and Neils-who-wish-they-were-Dylans, but that's like for a whole 'nother book.)

Such warmth and straightforwardness is echoed in the rugged authenticity of what he wears. The secret to Neil's style iconicity is that it is a type of anti-style: it is less about what he wears and more how it is worn. It doesn't matter where you get your shirt -- on the road, on the floor, in a box by the road, stolen from a lover -- as long as it's worn-in to the limits of affection and weathered by life and adventure. Clothes aren't about being cool or sexy or fabulous; Neil is so beyond that, it's not even funny. And of course, all this -- the sincerity, the raw, plangent emotion, the gorgeousness found in the humble and everyday -- is reflected most beautifully in the music, which I love best of all about Neil. Unpredictable and willful, Neil has always charted his own course in terms of music, from the singer-songwriter perfection of Harvest to the total fucking weirdness of Trans to the shambolic ragged genius of most of his Crazy Horse records. The trick of Neil is that he's a maverick -- of sound, of songs, of matters of the heart. He goes his own twisted, ambling way, and if that's not the mission statement of this blog, well, I have no idea what is. So, yeah, Neil Young. Our hero, our friend, our imaginary boyfriend, our shaman, our favorite dude; words almost cannot express.

Laura: Neil Young is for the bad times.

In my life, the pattern goes like this: the worse I feel about anything and/or everything, the more I love Neil Young. It's an entirely exponential process, which is somewhat encouraging; if I woke up one morning to find my skull shaved bald, a horse's head tucked beneath my bedsheets, my apartment incinerated, my dog runneth over, and a note from my boyfriend saying he'd skipped town with some girl who was totally prettier than me, at least I'd know that Neil would sound better today than he ever did before. When every single thing in your life feels completely hopeless, it actually isn't! Neil is always there for you. Misery loves company, after all.

The fact that Neil Young is a Scorpio proves that astrology is real. The fact that Neil is a Scorpio and I am a Cancer proves that we are perfect soulmates. The fact that Neil is a Scorpio and I am a Cancer and we are both native Torontonians proves that we are such perfect soulmates that the words "perfect" and "soulmates" do our deep connection absolutely zero justice and that I will never love any man as much as I could potentially love Neil. Something I like to do when I am depressed or bored or waiting in line at the bank is picture in my head a fantasy dreamworld I like to call "Laura in the Beatles". "Laura in the Beatles" is a complex narrative that I have been developing since I was in my mid-teens.

The story goes something like this: Laura (me) was born in 1940 and grew up next door to John Lennon in Liverpool, joins the Beatles as bassist/feminist icon (in case you're wondering, John and Paul could trade off on rhythm guitar depending on who is doing the lead vocal), has long hair when the boys' is short, then short when theirs' is long. Laura-Beatle runs away to the West Coast during the Summer of Love, meets/falls in love with Neil Young, brings Neil on the legendary Rishikesh trip (which is where they write the majority of their collaborative cutesy-wutesy Liverpool-meets-Los Angeles double LP chock-a-block with some of the best duelling male-female vocals you've ever heard), the Beatles break up, and Laura-Beatle and Neil move to the country and make their own jams and/or compotes and live happily ever after.

My point being? I'd pick Neil over a Beatle. Case closed.

Here is a video of Neil Young performing Heart of Gold in 1971 at the apex of his Lurch-y hotness. This performance practically emanates manic depression and is so tortured, tragic, morose, heartfelt, and melancholy that nine out of ten times I watch it, I can't help but cry a little.

Liz: It's funny being a girl who's crazy about Neil Young. You'd think boys would be the ones to totally get it, but then they say the dumbest things when you try to talk about it with them. Like the dude I was drinking whiskey with a couple weeks who told me, all eye-rolly and dismissive, "Oh, everybody goes through a Neil Young phase." (First of all: Hi, not true. And secondly: It's not a phase, it's an all-consuming love made of mystery and magic!!) Or another bloke who, in response to my lengthy sighing over Neiler's creepy hotness, shot back: "Yeah, he was hot for like two seconds 35 years ago!" Whaaaa??

So apparently boys fully grasp neither the love nor the lust aspect when it comes to old Shakey. And that's all right, 'cause it means lots more fun for us girls. And for me so much of that fun has to do with taking in the creepy hotness of which I spoke last paragraph - in fact, not since my early-20s Stones obsession has there been a rock star I've so enjoyed just looking at. And not since my early-teenhood Kurt Cobain obsession has there been a rock star who's so directly influenced my personal fashion sense. There's some similarities between the two - the plaid flannel, the blue jeans faded to the point of threadbareness - but Neiler's got that whole Western thing, with the buckskin and beaded jewelry and occasional fringed poncho. It makes sense that I'd find him now that I've been living in California a while and gotten to the age where moving even further west and turning into a total beach hippie sometimes seems like the best idea. I haven't quite managed to make that leap yet, but for now I'm cool to just hang out in my sorta-new cowboy boots and coyote's-tooth-and-wolf-charm necklace, wear out my copy of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, and look at stuff like this little movie of Neiler singing "Down By The River" in 1969, quite possibly at the height of creepy hotness:

Style Icon: Patti Smith

Kat: Patti got the highest score on our list! (Yes, we had a process to come up with our style icons and it took time and it was very methodical and kind of involved.) What can I say? I know dudes who dig Charles Bronson and Rambo and all that, and that's cool because some days we all want to be tough in this cruel, beautiful world of ours. But Patti's my personal Clint Eastwood: she lives by this code of honor where being a stand-up kind of dame means your artistic integrity extends all the way from the tips of your unruly, wild hair down to the tips of your cowboy boots. Just in the way poetry boils down meaning to the bones of phrases and words, Patti's aesthetic is distilled down to a few key gestures: a white shirt, a tie, a worn t-shirt, a perfect pair of lived-in boots to stand in as she glares defiantly down a subway tunnel. She may get dressed up in Ann Demeulemeester (a fellow Patti worshipper), but she still stands for a social philosophy of rebellion and resistance, a sort of working-class American bohemianism where freaks, punks and outcasts still stand strong, defiant and beautiful. (Patti is tough, but she's nothing if not romantic to her bones.) Plus, no one else spits quite like her on stage. The woman's still fire after all these years; respect to that, and Patti forever.

Liz: In a lotta ways Patti Smith's kind of my world: One of my most prized possessions is this 7-inch of "Piss Factory" b/w "Hey Joe," autographed by Patti and lovely Lenny Kaye, bought for me by a boy who still won't confess how he ever got his hands on it (and this was back before people did eBay and stuff). I first got way into her during my freshman year of college, after the aforementioned boy played me Horses in his dorm room, and pretty soon I was devouring her poetry book Early Work and memorizing every word to "Piss Factory" and listening to the song "Land" about 900 times a day. At some point I bought a probably-unauthorized biography, and what I remember most is the stuff about Patti's teenage lust for Mr. Bobby Dylan. It was the first time I'd ever heard of rock star owning up to being so over the moon for another rock star; I guess before that I just figured that all rock stars were born cool, and thus were eternally immune to such big geeky obsession.

The spirit of Patti's Dylan worship is fairly well captured in this old interview with Thurston Moore, in which Patti says: "If you're 15 or 16 and you can't get the boy you want, and you have to daydream about him all the time, what's the difference if he's a dead poet or a senior? At least Bob Dylan...it was a relief to daydream about somebody who was alive." Having spent my entire adolescence daydreaming certain rock stars into the role of personal boyfriend, I felt so validated by her words, like maybe there was some cool secret psychic purpose to all that weirdo infatuation I'd been wrapped up in. But while my interaction with the beloved rock-star boys of my youth has mostly been limited to sightings at the farmers' market or the local diner or PJ Harvey shows, Patti ended up actually getting to know her make-believe boyfriend, first crossing paths with him in New York City sometime in the '70s. ("He came over to me and I kept moving around. We were like two pitbulls circling. I was a snotnose. I had a very high concentration of adrenaline. He said to me, 'Any poets around here?' And I said, 'I don't like poetry anymore. Poetry sucks!' I really acted like a jerk.") At that point she'd already adopted what she called Dylan's "Don't Look Back walk," strutting around the city in blatant emulation of her idol. In fact, I'm pretty sure her whole world back then must've been painted in Don't Look Back's gritty black-and-white.

My favorite thing about Patti's Bob Dylan love story is that, by the time she actually she got Dylan into her life, she'd basically completely out-cooled him - and she did it by totally stealing his act (along with Keith Richards's haircut). And my favorite thing about Patti in general is that she's got this wildly powerful way of convincing you that stealing from your favorite rock stars is maybe the whip-smartest and soul-savingest shit you could ever pull in this messy world. She believes in the rock-and-roll dream 10,000 percent, and for her that dream is about transformation and transcendence and whatever else it takes to ensure that your life is not one of crushing boredom. She comes off like the toughest boy in the world, and then she confesses that "all my toughness comes out of my desire to be cool and be accepted by cool people. But basically I'm shy and nervous, especially around girls, but I think I've learned how to use all that to my advantage." So then you think about how to use all that to your advantage too, and you listen to "Land" 900 times and memorize all the words to "Piss Factory", and you get your imagination going again, and suddenly everything's a lot more exciting than it was a little while ago. I don't know what the hell else you could ever ask of a human being, but in case you need a little more persuasion, behold these beautiful photos and please please please go visit Patti Smith and her band next time they're in your fair city. I've seen her seven times now and I hope to see her seven million more.

Style Icon: Anita Pallenberg

Liz: When I was 23 I fell like a ton of bricks for the Rolling Stones, obsessively hunting down all their records (Tattoo You and earlier, anyway) and playing them ad infinitum in the little closet of a bedroom I lived in back then. And at work, when I should've been doing writerly-type things, I spent many hours skulking around online in search of beautiful pictures of the band from the 60s (the decade when all my then-favorite Stones records - Aftermath, Between the Buttons, Their Satanic Majesties Request - came out). That was probably the first time I ever set on eyes on Anita Pallenberg, and she really meant the world to me at a moment when I fretted that there were no more fabulously scary rock-and-roll dames left for me to discover and worship. I soon rented Performance and drooled all over Anita, completely taken with what Marianne Faithfull once dubbed her "evil glamour."

But my main interest in Anita has everything to do with her role as muse to Brian Jones and unofficial stylist to the band at large. 'Cause I'm quite sure that I couldn't love the Stones maybe even half as much if it weren't for the look, that thing that's so flouncy and foppish but still supertuff. In fact, I can't think of any other band where the style's just as vital to me - if not more so, even - as the substance. I mean, "Under My Thumb" will never not be one of my favorite songs in the world, but what's the fun of it when you're not dreaming up Mick Jagger all done up like some delinquent dandy?

So, even though the laws of nature essentially forbid the existence of a girl Rolling Stone, I'm joining the ranks of those who've crowned Anita as the sixth band member. And it's so fun to dig up old interviews and discover that even the boys themselves were thrown by her devastating foxiness. Quoth she: 'They looked at me like I was some kind of threat. Jagger really tried to put me down, but there was no way some crude, lippy guy was going to do a number on me.' Oh, Anita, we love you so.

Kat: I have to confess that of all our Style Icons, I was the most blase about Anita initially. Not because I think she's unstylish (I'll be damned if the woman doesn't exude style) but because her witchy hippie style's been so absorbed into the culture that it seems as natural a fact as water or air. I mean, take the ever-stylish, ever-present Kate Moss, who we love: total Anita acolyte, if not to the letter, then definitely in spirit. But then it hit me when I was standing in the balcony at Webster Hall the other night for the Gutter Twins show, completely surrounded by chicks wearing toughed-up hippie dresses, hair dyed platinum or raven, smeared heavy black eyeliner, cleavage pushed up to there. It was rock chick central up in the balcony, almost like a convention for Anita's spiritual daughters. (Anita lives!) But Anita never offered herself up on a plate; she exuded elegance, power and even a bit of witchiness. You could tell she made the Stones feel out of her league, and they were always going to have to Prove It for her. Which, of course, is the natural order of things with Anita Pallenberg; she's a queen in her court, regal, blithely defiant, sublimely wicked.

Style Icon: Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead

When I first moved to New York many moons ago, I wandered around the city a lot in little black boots and dark rinse A.P.C. jeans I had bought as sort of fashion insurance for myself at the time. (It worked: they went with everything.) I held a series of freelance jobs and felt incredibly insecure about nearly every facet of my life, not just my finances. I saved up to buy clothes at the old Steven Alan outlet in the East Village; back then girls wore bright little kerchiefs in their hair and knee-length patterned skirts, and they skimmed along the summer sidewalks in Dr. Scholls or those black mule-type shoes with a raised platform heel. Sometimes I was sad and lonely; sometimes I was excited and exhilarated. Often I found myself on a rooftop somewhere looking at the skyline of New York, marveling at how I was actually here. I went dancing at a sort of mod club on 13th Street that played a lot of northern soul and 60s garage, and I was often in love, usually with someone tantalizingly distant or gobsmackingly inappropriate. Everything felt like a great adventure, and I was sort of waiting to figure out what kind of person I was becoming. I was kind of hoping to meet her somewhere along the way, I suppose.

Throughout my little travels in the city, I often saw Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead out and about, living her life like any other person. I think I saw her at an Unwound show at Brownies or Tramps or some place like that; once I saw her wearing Dries Van Noten somewhere, maybe at the Cooler when it was still open? (Ah, the Cooler; how I miss that place, even though it was always so fucking hot in there.) I saw her at Film Forum once with Amedeo from Blonde Redhead; and sometimes I'd see her in Nolita or the West Village, coming out of Cafe Le Gamin or something. Not see her in a stalker way, but in that way where New York seems really small and almost provincial because you see the same people everywhere -- in that nice way when you know you really live in a city. I came to think of her like my fairytale almost-neighbor, not just an indie rock musician whose work I happened to love. In those days of great uncertainty and inchaote longing, seeing her semi-periodically was like a reassurance that whatever strange path I was on must be good if she's floating around it.

Kazu was never the most loudly stylish person in the room, but your eye lingered on her when you saw her, and she always seemed so elusive and self-contained, almost in her own world. And, to me, that is the most appealing aspect to evoke in matters of style: a private, mysterious universe where gestures have secret meanings, where things are worn to illuminate tiny, jewel-like facets of a hidden fantasy that is hinted at but never made explicit. It is a take on style that keeps its secrets close to its chest. So she wears lots of Mayle and her apartment's been featured in Domino in all its discreetly romantic, gentle glory. Those are all nice things. I still like it best when I see her in the corner of a room, whispering in someone's ear, out in the world but really in her own. I always want to be completely uncool and say something when I see her. But then I remember that I'm on my own way somewhere else, looking for what I still look for and will probably spend all the years of my life seeking. Which, of course, no one ever finds, because who ever stops growing -- both in and out of clothes, and in and out of lives?

And of course this entry would not be complete unless there was evidence of Kazu's graceful stage presence. Blonde Redhead playing "In Particular" at McCarren Park Pool last year:

Style Icon: Madonna in the 80s

Kat: I was reading rock/culture critic Chuck Klosterman recently and he talks somewhere about how Madonna is something like a "failed sexual icon" -- someone who desperately wants to be a sexual icon (say, Pamela Anderson or Marilyn Monroe) but fails at it. Now, this statement of Klosterman's confused me, and not for the reasons you may think. I didn't say to myself, "This guy's wack! Madonna's totally a sexual icon!" Rather, I was all, "Dude, of course she's not a sexual icon." It got me thinking a little bit about my reaction, about how, even when she was all Sex-y and rubbing her crotch, I never read her as trying to embody some male sexual fantasy. To me, Madonna is all about the pure joy of being a girl, about getting your flirt on, dancing the night away and having a joyfully indomitable spirit. The fact that this is the truest sentence I'll ever write is probably due to the lucky sociological accident of being born at exactly the right time: being nine years old when Like A Virgin came out, in fact.

It goes something like this: imagine you're a little girl and you spend your childhood years kicking it, having fun, digging around in the dirt, running and shouting like a maniac, making up dances to Miami Sound Machine on the lawn for hours and blissfully driving your neighbors nuts. Suddenly weird things happen and before you know it, everyone's starting to get all up in your grill about behaving and boys and periods and popularity and boobs, making the whole business of being a girl suddenly annoying and complicated. And here comes someone who bounces onto the scene, being kind of obnoxious and cheeky, humping onstage in a white dress like the one worn by your beheaded Barbie doll, and generally indulging in naughty and outrageous behavior -- and she becomes basically the hugest thing in the world because of it. That was the impact of Madonna in 1985: a girl who sings about being a virgin, who has the audacity to rip off Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for her video, who got slagged for having no talent and being too sexy -- and becomes a national phenomenon! No wonder I became a bona-fide Madonna "wannabe," buying jelly bracelets by the pound, using lacy tights as a headband, sneaking into a movie theater to watch Desperately Seeking Susan and trying to convince my Catholic friends to steal rosaries for me to pile around my neck. Hers was the first look I tried to emulate, and it had nothing to do with wanting to be fashionable -- it was all about participating in the greater narrative of female rebellion that she epitomized at the time. Since then I've always been drawn to girl rebels and adventurers of all stripes, but I'll always have a soft spot for the first in my pantheon of awesome lady-ness. Madonna: my girlhood guiding light, and always my lucky star.

My favorite vintage Madonna song, "Burning Up" (I still love the white dress she wears in this):

Liz: I first experienced Madonna at age five or six, "Borderline" playing on MTV in my grandparents' living room one day after school. Pretty soon I started stealing my grandfather's neckties and wearing them tied around my head in imitation of that big-ass bow she's got on in the video. Then, of course, there were the black jelly bracelets, many of which were purchased with skee-ball tickets won at the arcade in the mall. And when it was time for my first communion, the first thing I did with my rosary beads was slip them around my neck like Madonna on the cover of Rolling Stone, and I couldn't understand why mom wouldn't let me go to school that way.

Twenty five years later, I still wear those damn jelly bracelets every now and again. And I still, whenever I'm in New York, drop by Love Saves The Day in hopes that the rhinestone boots or the pyramid jacket from Desperately Seeking Susan might've made their way back to the store. No more neckties in my hair or rosary beads around my neck, but I've got nothing but pride when I look back on either display of goofy ingenuity.

More than anything, though, I can't imagine what early girlhood would've been like without Madonna to worship and mirror, what dress-up games I would've played instead (probably Little House on the Prairie, which no doubt has its merits, but we'll get to that in another entry). And like Kat, I feel hugely lucky to have born just at the right time to end up with such a smart-mouthed and shameless fireball of zany ambition for my number-one pop idol. 'Cause it's the ambition thing that's always mattered most, and that's why this 20-second clip will always encapsulate the Madonna I love more than any other. The images that go along with it are incongruously sophisticated, so close your eyes and conjure up lots of lace, spandex leggings, fingerless gloves, bad hair accessories, and, yes, tons and tons of black jelly bracelets.

Style Icon: Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse, Atelier

One of the best feelings in the world comes from buying a new and frivolous clothing item that matches nothing you own and/or is in every way innappropriate to the lifestyle you lead. There is a whole 21st Century city-girl ritual surrounding such retail experiences: you blow your last five paychecks on some impossibly impractical minidress/platform sandals/leather trousers/etc, come home, lovingly fondle the garment, try it on ten zillion times just to ogle at your own newfound hotness, hang the thing up in your closet, let it sit around and marinate in its own decadent beauty for months, obsessively ideate over what would be the perfect way to wear it, finally brainstorm it up, put way too much effort into making the whole look as flawlessly cool as is humanly possible, then finally execute and carry out the fruits of your labour. And then for the rest of your life, you can always think, "Boy, did I ever look hot on that day I had to meet my thesis advisor for coffee, bought the new British Vogue at Barnes & Noble, and ate Indian take-out for dinner!"

Okay, but the actual best feeling in the world is when you wake up late, don't shower, throw on whatever the hell happens to be clean, rush out the door, possibly spill your coffee all over yourself, miss your train, and don't even bother looking in a mirror until you run past a glass-panelled building-- and then get that moment of "Oh my Lord- I look so fly today!" The last time this happened to me was about five months ago, when I slept through my alarm, woke up to a self-induced panic attack, and arrived at work ten minutes later sporting the navy leggings I slept in with giant sunglasses, a safety-pinned grey t-shirt, insane bedhead and a neon green v-neck sweater. I'd accidentally crafted a masterful No-Wave day look that screamed, "I was the bass player in an early incarnation of Elvis Costello and the Attractions but then left the group to hand-draw 7-inch sleeves for the Slits after that sell-out played SNL!"

Skillfully-crafted, Sartorialist-approved "looks" can certainly make you look hotter, prettier, classier, chic-er, less like a crazy hobo, more like the sort of person who should be employed by whoever the heck you're trying to get employed by. But one thing pre-planned dressing can never do is make you look cooler. And if being a Style Icon isn't above all else about looking cool, well then, I'm kind of lost right now, and am probably unfit to write this article. The intangible semblance of "cool" in fashion is something that can really only be borne from happenstance, from carelessly throwing together all your least-favorite clothing items in a mad rush, then lucking into something so weirdly killer you find it hard to believe that it's 3 PM and you still haven't been stopped on the street by Nicolas Ghesquiere inquiring if you would like to be his new muse.

Apparently, this accidental-chic effect happened for the minimalist artist Eva Hesse on every single day of her life. That must have been nice for her.

It has taken me awhile to fully come around to Eva Hesse as Style Icon: she's my boyfriend's dream girl, so my most basal impulse is of course to hate her. I'm pretty much obligated to- I think it says so in The Rules or something. Maybe I'm thinking of Ten Commandments? Either way: when we first started dating, a photograph of Eva Hesse was actually his desktop background (when you date an art historian, you get used to this kind of thing). But, as I've grown more confident and learned to trust that I probably won't get dumped for the ghost of a late Minimalist, I've come around to Eva Hesse. In fact, you could even say she's my dream girl.

Eva Hesse described her art as being about 'the total absurdity of life'- I would have described her art as 'an impeccable and innovative coalescence of the visceral creative impulse with a decidely cerebral communicative methodology and aesthetic language,' but hey, who's counting? My point is: Eva Hesse was way too busy crafting some of the most important artwork of the late Twentieth century to spend very much time on personal style. Hesse's approach to dressing was something along the lines of laissez-faire nouveau-Beatnik: messy hair, lots and lots of black, brilliant art as accessory, no frills.

One of the coolest things about Eva Hesse's now official designation of Style Icon is that her art itself often serves as an equally inspiring jumping off point for awesome self-styling as does her actual personal style. Hesse's 1964 Untitled, a study in gouache, watercolor and ink, says more about how I'd like to dress myself than any dumb outfit ever could.

Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding grinding grinding away at yourself. Stop it, and just DO!

-Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse, 1965

Style Icon: Jennifer Herrema

Up until a year ago I hadn't thought about Jennifer Herrema in a long time - she was just the girl from Royal Trux, the one who kind of skulked around the stage looking deeply scary and strung-out in her sunglasses and poncho the only time I ever saw the Trux live (fall of '98, in Boston). But then her latest solo record (RTX's Western Exterminator) came out last March and I kind of went bananas over Jennifer, quickly claiming her as my number-one style idol in the world ever - like, to the point where I can't even imagine how I ever got by without her.

It's mostly got to do with the way she smashes together every look I gravitate toward most: Southern California surf/skate scrappiness, mellowed-out beach-rat grunge, full-on 70s-rock-style glam. Take, for instance, a signature outfit Jennifer broke down for The Wit of the Staircase last year: Powell-Peralta Bones Brigade t-shirt, baja hoodie from the Salvation Army, black Levi's cords, down vest, snakeskin boots. And you know she decked it all out with lots of clunky metallic jewelry, and possibly a few animal pelts. And that hair! The hair itself is an accessory. I would kill for that hair. In fact, I think maybe Jennifer Herrema's hair might be my spirit animal.

I still find her deeply scary: When I went to see her at Safari Sam's last year I resisted taking too many pictures, out of fear that maybe she might rip my lungs out or something. (I did manage to snap that stage shot below, however.) For more of the scariness, check out this video from '95, then go get yourself a huge-ass fake-fur coat to go with your tight-as-hell, slightly shredded stonewashed jeans. And while you're at it pick up a copy of Royal Trux's Cats and Dogs and listen to "The Spectre" till your ears fall off.

Style Icon: Richard Hell

As I wrote a few days ago, it was Sofia Coppola who got me through eleventh-grade English class. One year later, I found myself thrown back into the tedious terrain of symbolism, King Lear and Robert Frost. It was twelfth grade, I was seventeen years old, and I was as cool and angsty as anyone had ever been. By then, I'd reached peak levels of boredom, dissatisfaction, and overzealous eyeliner application. Gone were the days of channeling my frustrations into daydreaming about fashion shows, cuffed jeans, and chunky knits. Yeah Right! I was seventeen now; I'd seen shit. I needed a new, more relevant Style Icon: somebody mean, fast, miserable, and hard as hell.

And after countless nights spent obsessively Audiogalaxy-ing and/or Allmusic-ing, I found him. And his last name was even Hell! Come on-- how perfect is that??

Weekday mornings were spent sitting in the back of my English class listening to the Voidoids on headphones, ignoring my classmates' vapid presentations on Robertson Davies' The Fifth Business, scrawling metaphor-heavy short stories about beautiful tortured lovers in my black-and-white Mead notebooks. I can't remember if I was referring to Richard Hell specifically when I wrote the grandest sentence of my entire literary career: He looked like a cross between a zombie and a member of the band The Zombies. I have dwelt upon this particular sentence near-obsessively since I wrote it, liberally inserting it into dozens of short-stories, articles, poems, e-mails, mixtape tracklistings, etc. I'm quite sure it'll make it into my first novel, seeing as it embodies pretty much everything I love about boys, in general, at all. I love that sentence so much, I even managed to stick it into a No Good For Me post!

But it ain't all for naught. Now that I think about it, I really can't imagine a boy more aptly described by this sentence or sentiment than Richard Hell circa 1975 thru 1977. His aesthetic reads as 50% fey, 50% undead. His eyes seethe, jab, corrode; his skin, so white it's blue. He stares confrontationally into camera lenses as if they killed his mother. His t-shirt may read "Please Kill Me", he may have scrawled "VOID" across his forehead in black marker, but such acidic gestures could have easily come across as petty or unpleasant had he not a distinctly poetic ferocity of spirit to back those infamous statements up, give them clout.

But Richard Hell's a Libra, you know. I've known a lot of Libras in my life; they're great, but always really annoying people. I can totally handle Geminis, I love them in fact; see, Gems are always cognizant of their double-edgedness, they prize it. Libras, however, over-emphasize their relationship to The Scales, thinking it means they're somehow more stable than the rest of us, when really they're completely unbalanced. Take old Richie, for instance, preening and pouting like he's a member of the Living Dead, all the while entirely oblivious to his little-boy sweetness- ie. his member of the Zombies side. Oh those bee-stung lips of his, pursing as he croons, aping Sinatra in black and white. It's so obvious he'd be a textbook Perfect Boyfriend, all roses and bathtubs full of Evian. He's pretty as "hell", girlish even.

Which is why I'm sitting here ode-ing on and on about Richard Hell rather than some spotty-faced, jerk-off zombie type (Keith Richards, Arthur "Killer" Kane, any Ramone, Sex Pistol, or, ahem, Dead Boy) or a banally saccharine "member of the band the Zombies" (Peter Noone, Richard Lloyd, Paul McCartney, any actual member of the Zombies). Richie's a bewitchingly cool contradiction-- half-demon, half-lover, half-boy, half-man, half-scruff, half-fashion icon; in so many words-- he's got it all.

"Please Kill Me"? More like "Please Marry Me"!

Style Icon: Amelia Earhart

Some of you may or may not know this, but "Queen of the Air" and daredevil aviator Amelia Earhart was a fashion icon in her day: she licensed her name to a line of clothing, was photographed regularly by the fashion press and influenced peeps like Katharine Hepburn with her no-nonsense, streamlined, yet powerfully elegant style. Look at how she wore pants, for Christ's sake! I love her because to say her name is to evoke adventure, risk-taking and a certain exhilarated mode of living: things that fashion sometimes promises us we'll find when we wear certain clothes, but often never do. Earhart's clothes didn't have to help her be strong and capable; she was already those things, and she dressed to allow those qualities to express themselves fully. In an age when we clad ourselves in clothes to make us seem cooler, richer, more beautiful or just more anything, such a pragmatic (but no less expressive) approach seems almost revolutionary.

Style Icon: Sofia Coppola

Kat: Sofia's almost a no-brainer for a "style icon" list, what with her little Chanel and Alaia dresses, her fabulous fashion friends, her rich, connected family and all that. She's got her "little rich girl" thing happening, livened up with a bit of French chic and shot through with plenty of Marc Jacobs of course. But my favorite Sofia will always be the more West Coast Sofia, when she was with Spike and wore color and lived in a Case Study house and made flip-flops the thing. She's never been scruffy or scrappy or bad-ass or anything like that; her unerring good taste and quiet discernment seem as much a part of her general temperament as a matter of style. But that's kind of what I like about her; it's less about her actual closet and more about her consistency and unwavering commitment to fragility, girliness and the aesthetic of the little girl lost. She's gentle but intransigent; she persists in her relentless good taste and casual elegance. So I give in.

Liz: I just realized that my interest in Sofia Coppola as style icon has little to do with her actual fashion sense. (And this in itself probably has lots to do with another recent realization, which is that I basically couldn't care less about Marc Jacobs anymore - eek!) The thing is, though I recognize that Sofia's a total class act style-wise, I kind of need that scruff and scrap of which Kat speaks in order to feel all inspired. That's just my scenario.

So here's why I still consider la Coppola to be one of my number-one style icons: More than any other artist I can think of, Sofia seems keenly aware of the value of what I'm going to call "private glamour" (in spite of my fear that that may sound like I'm describing a photography studio specializing in nude portraits). Most of my favorite moments in her movies are the ones that give a glimpse into the secret world of girls as they play at being glamorous - like Lux dancing in the meadow with flowers in her hair in Virgin Suicides, or the mean girl in Lick the Star reading Edie Sedgwick's biography while costumed in vampy lipstick and black nail polish, or Charlotte quietly posing with her pink wig and cigarettes in Lost in Translation. It's about fantasy and trying out new versions of yourself, and not just as practice for the Real World. I'm so excited to see what she'll show us next.

Sofia's short film "Lick the Star," part one:

Laura: Scotch-taped to the front of my eleventh grade English notebook was a photograph of Marc Jacobs, Robert Duffy, Zoe Cassavetes, Lisa Marie, somebody else, and Sofia, all lazing about on a marshmallowy white hotel bed. This picture was taken right in the heart of the beginning of it all -- Marc looking about fifteen years old, scraggly-haired and sporting red Converse -- these were days long before his neck brace, weight gain, weight loss, Spongebob Squarepants tattoo, "I eat at Better Burger" diamond studs, etc. Marc by Marc was only a rumor; The Virgin Suicides had not yet been released. Because 1999 and 2000 were the first years in which I really began to care about fashion, I will always be of the probably rare opinion that those years were the best high-fashion ever has been, ever could be.

Whether that photograph had been taped to my notebook or not, I would have spent at least 90% of English class zoning out and daydreaming. But having that picture before my eyes gave me a pretty decent jumping-off point. I was fifteen years old, stuck in suburbia, bored to tears, and would have described myself as "starved for glamour" or something equally melodramatic. That image gave me a glimpse into the particular brand of scrappy, lo-fi dazzle that I so needed. In those days, Sofia was me. She wasn't a starlet or a phenom or a wunderkind- she was a skinny, doe-eyed scamp with a protracted nose. Her hair was mousy. She wore jeans and plain sweaters; when she did get dressed up (all-time choicest Sofia eveningwear: most definitely the plummy, ruffled one-shouldered prom dress from MJ Fall '00), she never bothered to do her hair, put on make-up, or wear heels.

I'm not the first teenager in all of history to long for something she don't got. To dream about New York City, downtown infamy, a fashion designer best buddy, a famous father. These are pedestrian dreams that anyone with a half a mind for escapism flock to without even barely thinking first. But for me, Sofia made these reveries seem a little bit realer. That photograph of Jacobs and coterie was it for me because it didn't feel insurmountable. I looked at that photograph and knew I belonged there; there was no evidence to prove otherwise. Sofia's relaxed, accessible approach to dressing is something that the fashion obsessive can always rely on. Just think: since that photograph was taken, she's won an Academy Award, moved on up to occasional Us Weekly spread, and acquired some pretty intense fame, yet her delicate take on tomboy casual has not changed one bit. Sofia style's will always be relevant because it makes you think: If she's a style icon, well then, I must be too.

"Lick the Star," part two:

Style Icon: Lisa Bonet As Denise Huxtable

A funny thing happens when you watch "The Cosby Show" on reruns. Everyone looks way dated: Bill Cosby with his brutally awesome Chess King sweaters, Theo with his designer sweatshirts (Benetton, anyone?) and Vanessa and even little Rudy with their bright pastels and shaker sweaters. (Shaker sweaters! Dude, so 1980s!) Everyone except for Denise Huxtable, played by the ever-lovely Lisa Bonet, who looked a little different then and still looks a little quirky now: kind of hippie, kind of preppy but also kind of tomboyish and sporty at times. She wore things like palazzo pants with slippers with a man's tuxedo shirt and a tailored jacket over it all -- combinations that were off-beat but not flamboyantly eccentric. I didn't really know much about fashion at the age of my peak "Cosby"-viewing experience. (Really, all I knew were British Knights and florescent colors, you know?) But I did know that she was cool and smart and she lived in New York and she did things like go to Africa, and who doesn't want to participate in that? Denise got more and more bohemian as both "The Cosby Show" and "A Different World" progressed, but she always had a "twist" in her outfits, making her a sort of mixmaster before "mixing it up" became fashion's biggest cliche.

Now that I've ingested lifetimes of fashion information, I can appreciate how she evokes a strand of late 80s/early 90s fashion, one centered around a sort of global chic -- not really bohemian in the old-school tatty sense of the world, but more embodied by designers like Rifat Ozbek, Romeo Gigli and even WilliWear, who took modes like European couture or American sportswear and spun ethnic and street elements within them. (I wonder if these guys will "come back" -- I was looking at the "sunken crotch" pants I saw on some runways this season and was reminded of Ozbek's "samurai" pants from the early 90s.) Anyway, Lisa Bonet/Denise Huxtable gets on my style icon list because no one could look like her then, and no one can look like her now -- a sort of ineffable mix of elements that looked relaxed and off-hand and hasn't quite been duplicated by anyone since.

It's a bummer that there aren't a lot of stills or even YouTube clips of Ms. Bonet, but you should check out this clip from what is probably my favorite episode of "The Cosby Show" ever. It's the one where Cliff dreams that spores contaminate the water supply everywhere (except in New Jersey) and somehow impregnate thousands of men, including himself, his sons-in-law and Theo. What I love about this is not the fashion (although Sabrina LeBeauf wears a very awesome skirt suit thingie with a shot of yellow -- very now), but how Lisa Bonet, LeBeauf and Phylicia Rashad almost crack up during this entire scene.

Style Icon: Emmanuelle Alt

Vanity Fair's got a list, some dude named Mr. Blackwell's got a list, so why not us? (Why not us indeed? And why not you?) So this is it: our list of end-all, be-all, time-withstanding style icons. The people who kind of lurk in our subconscious while we're surveying our closets day after day, like little fashion devils sitting on our shoulders telling us, "Yes, wear that insane shoe, even though you might impale yourself with it." Or people that we think look incredibly awesome and inspiring and talented and flat-out love to pieces. Some of the people on the list are veterans of many other lists, being professional fashion types; others would never show up in any other grouping but our own. We hope you enjoy our list; we enjoyed dreaming it up. We are ticking them off one by one, day by day, till we reach twelve, so without further ado, we go to the first person to kick off our Style Icon Fortnight: Emmanuelle Alt! (We're going in alphabetical order; we are oddly systematic that way.)

All of the Vogue Paris posse are a famously, intimidatingly stylish lot: grande dame Carine Roitfeld, of course, and rising stars like junior editor Melanie Huynh and Geraldine Saglio are Sartorialist regulars. But my personal favorite is probably fashion director Emmanuelle Alt, who is sort of the bad-ass of that crew: sharp, often androgynous, and very sexy in a non-obvious way. (She also looks like the meanest Vogue Paris editor, too. Or maybe she just gets pissed off with people taking her picture?) What I love about her is that she often dresses really simply and almost boyishly: skinny jeans, cargo pants, sharp little jackets, scarves, counterpointed with outrageous shoes whose architecture defy physical laws of nature. Yet it's her unerring eye for fit and proportion that elevate humble elements into something kind of rock 'n roll. "Fierce" is a word thrown around a lot in fashion-speak, but that's what she looks like: incredibly cool, kind of elusive, never pandering and incredibly confident.