Written by The Strategy
Even if you aren’t particularly stylish or particularly fashionable, you still have a style icon. A shining star in the sea of muses that stands out to you like a beacon in the dark. They embody everything you aspire your personal style to be, and then some. It can be anyone from a celeb to a model to an Instagrammer with impeccable taste and a knack for good lighting.
Or maybe it’s all three.
You see, some people tout on and on about a specific style icon they look up to. It’s always Sienna Miller or Alexa Chung or Gigi Hadid or this person or that person. Recently I’ve been wondering, why can’t we have them all?
A kind of style dream team, if you will.
If I’m equally as inspired by Leandra Medine’s ability to take risks, Nicole Richie’s ability to be goth/casual/simple at one time, and Chloë Sevigny’s ability to wear anything (AKA her cool factor), there has to a be a way to make them all make sense. I want to have my style cake and eat it too.
Speaking of Alexa Chung, style icon to the masses, she recently took to the Uncle Fabulous role on the Villoid email rounds and spoke about something very similar. She’s come up with what she’s begrudgingly titled “Frankenstein Fashion.” Basically, when you like a bunch of different ideas that don’t typically go together you have to just jump in head first and see what you can mash into one. There are no rules, other than not dressing an artichoke salad with Nutella nor a cashmere sweater with a feather boa, so one has to simply pull together all their inspirations and get to work.
When you think of style icons in that Frankenstein’s Monster way, your options open up. It’s a patchwork of style icons meeting the best place in your life to direct the inspiration you get from them. Some things work together, like Kate Bosworth and casual daytime looks. Or Olivia Palermo and elegant events. Others need a little more thought.
Each time you come across someone you would grace with the title ‘Style Icon’ think about what you can filter out of their style and into your own. Even something as seemingly trivial as how someone has cuffed their jeans. The end result is realizing that there is no need to feel like you’re supposed to have a signature style icon that you stick by like a perfume or that one nail colour that never lets you down.
Style dream teams are the way to go.
Written by Katrina Garofalo
