A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style by Tim Gunn, Kate Maloney
Authors: Tim Gunn, Kate Maloney
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her—sheis an excellent sartorial inspiration. Three decades ago, la Smith found a look that worked beautifully for her and has stayed faithful. We should all be so wise. Viva la Smith!
And now for a rocker born three decades ago: the singer-songwriter Chan Marshall, who performs as Cat Power. Continuing the rock tradition of loving denim, Ms. Marshall is most often in jeans and either a tank or a plaid shirt. “How thrilling,” you mutter. But look again: She chooses pieces that subtly show her figure and she offsets her utilitarian clothing choices with heavy bangs and eyeliner. It makes the whole thing more Françoise Hardy than farmhand. Ms. Marshall is a great example of a boyish, even gamine look on a woman who is neither boyish nor tiny.
Signature Look
These women wear denim that is sexy because it still retains a little of its blue-collar past. This means you actually have a chance to break in a pair of raw denim jeans. This is also a look about loyalty. Your favorite T-shirt becomes your only T-shirt. Take something extremely basic and make it your own, just as these women have taken unconventional looks and lives and made them art.
THE BOHEMIANS
Beatrice Wood—Edith Bouvier Beale—Donna Karan
This is the category for the woman who loves to layer. Whether it is strand after strand of beads, wrists a-jingle with bangles, or a snappy sweatshirt head-wrap, for the bohemian, more is always more.
Beatrice Wood, who died in 1998 at age 105, was a potter who lived in Ojai, an orange blossom–scented bastion of bohemia in the mountains of Southern California. A protégé and lover of Marcel Duchamp, Ms. Wood is renowned for her work as well as her liberated lifestyle. Just as she adorned her pots with layers of beautiful lustre glaze, Ms. Wood adorned herself in layers of luminous textiles, topped off by hands and wrists decorated with jewelry, and bright red lips. Her philosophy of life and work drew from both East and West, and her wardrobe followed suit. Her memoir
I Shock Myself
is a wonderful read.
Edith Bouvier Beale had none of Ms. Wood’s artistic accomplishment or freedom, but she just might be more famous. If you haven’t seen the Maysles Brothers’ documentary
Grey Gardens
, you absolutely must. Bump
Doctor Zhivago
if you have to. The film is not only riveting, it is a fashion touchstone, season after season. Edie was Jackie Bouvier Kennedy’s first cousin. She lived with her mother at a compound, Grey Gardens, in East Hampton, New York. Surrounded by cats and raccoons, the two women play out a mother-daughter power struggle that has been going on for fifty years. Through it all, Little Edie, as she is called, is clad in the most spectacularly odd outfits that she creates herself. Her famous “Revolutionary Costume” involves a pair of girdle shorts over nude hose with a skirt fashioned out of a piece of brown material that, as she helpfully offers, can be worn as a cape as well. This is a simple transition because the “skirt” is fastened on with safety pins. On top she wears a brown fitted turtleneck and a black sweater as a head-wrap pinnedunder her chin. This is certainly eccentric, but many a designer has cribbed from Ms. Beale. The film is also an excellent cautionary tale for those who feel there is no harm in moving home. Suddenly, thirty years have passed and you are wearing flea collars around your ankles.
In a raccoon-free home also in East Hampton dwells another bohemian, the mega-designer Donna Karan. Although her work has provided a wardrobe for a whole generation of chic working women, Ms. Karan is now an excellent mentor for the polished bohemian looking for something a bit less far out. Present in her wardrobe are all the bohemian favorites—flowing skirts, layered jewelry—but done with enough restraint that she looks like she just came from the beach, not a gypsy caravan.
Signature Look
The bohemian draws from many sources; there is
And now for a rocker born three decades ago: the singer-songwriter Chan Marshall, who performs as Cat Power. Continuing the rock tradition of loving denim, Ms. Marshall is most often in jeans and either a tank or a plaid shirt. “How thrilling,” you mutter. But look again: She chooses pieces that subtly show her figure and she offsets her utilitarian clothing choices with heavy bangs and eyeliner. It makes the whole thing more Françoise Hardy than farmhand. Ms. Marshall is a great example of a boyish, even gamine look on a woman who is neither boyish nor tiny.
Signature Look
These women wear denim that is sexy because it still retains a little of its blue-collar past. This means you actually have a chance to break in a pair of raw denim jeans. This is also a look about loyalty. Your favorite T-shirt becomes your only T-shirt. Take something extremely basic and make it your own, just as these women have taken unconventional looks and lives and made them art.
THE BOHEMIANS
Beatrice Wood—Edith Bouvier Beale—Donna Karan
This is the category for the woman who loves to layer. Whether it is strand after strand of beads, wrists a-jingle with bangles, or a snappy sweatshirt head-wrap, for the bohemian, more is always more.
Beatrice Wood, who died in 1998 at age 105, was a potter who lived in Ojai, an orange blossom–scented bastion of bohemia in the mountains of Southern California. A protégé and lover of Marcel Duchamp, Ms. Wood is renowned for her work as well as her liberated lifestyle. Just as she adorned her pots with layers of beautiful lustre glaze, Ms. Wood adorned herself in layers of luminous textiles, topped off by hands and wrists decorated with jewelry, and bright red lips. Her philosophy of life and work drew from both East and West, and her wardrobe followed suit. Her memoir
I Shock Myself
is a wonderful read.
Edith Bouvier Beale had none of Ms. Wood’s artistic accomplishment or freedom, but she just might be more famous. If you haven’t seen the Maysles Brothers’ documentary
Grey Gardens
, you absolutely must. Bump
Doctor Zhivago
if you have to. The film is not only riveting, it is a fashion touchstone, season after season. Edie was Jackie Bouvier Kennedy’s first cousin. She lived with her mother at a compound, Grey Gardens, in East Hampton, New York. Surrounded by cats and raccoons, the two women play out a mother-daughter power struggle that has been going on for fifty years. Through it all, Little Edie, as she is called, is clad in the most spectacularly odd outfits that she creates herself. Her famous “Revolutionary Costume” involves a pair of girdle shorts over nude hose with a skirt fashioned out of a piece of brown material that, as she helpfully offers, can be worn as a cape as well. This is a simple transition because the “skirt” is fastened on with safety pins. On top she wears a brown fitted turtleneck and a black sweater as a head-wrap pinnedunder her chin. This is certainly eccentric, but many a designer has cribbed from Ms. Beale. The film is also an excellent cautionary tale for those who feel there is no harm in moving home. Suddenly, thirty years have passed and you are wearing flea collars around your ankles.
In a raccoon-free home also in East Hampton dwells another bohemian, the mega-designer Donna Karan. Although her work has provided a wardrobe for a whole generation of chic working women, Ms. Karan is now an excellent mentor for the polished bohemian looking for something a bit less far out. Present in her wardrobe are all the bohemian favorites—flowing skirts, layered jewelry—but done with enough restraint that she looks like she just came from the beach, not a gypsy caravan.
Signature Look
The bohemian draws from many sources; there is
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