Raquel’s love for the obscure and avant-garde makes her the kind of person whose brain I want to pick, on topics ranging from her red lipstick to foreign films and magazines like Found, which she introduced to me when I went to shoot her. So when it comes to her clothes, which she says she needs to feel and experience when she wears them, I am all eyes and ears.

Though Raquel is from a small town of seventy outside of Madrid, she is larger than life when it comes to her discriminating rare taste, whether it is the classic Gucci loafer, the Commes des Garçons white chunky opposite of a Louboutin pump or the Bernard Willhelm Palace Guardette shoe. Powerful in her subtlety, Raquel’s Henrik Vibskov trousers are not just high waisted but corseted and the cuffs on her Bless shirt are not just French but unorthodox in their exaggerated sleeve length. And Raquel’s colorful, conceptually designed socks that she layers with everything give her understated minimalism texture and bite. I love how self-assured and progressive she is about appreciating the wrinkles in her garments and how she knows just when a knit legging needs holes at the knees so as not to look even close to normal.

However, it is her choice of Iris Apfel as an icon that most defines Raquel’s ability to identify the less obvious but most intriguing. Raquel is so attached to the style legend’s trademark oversized glasses that she feels like a stranger to herself when she is not wearing them. “I have to feel something special, because for me, clothes are about your personality… and not about what everyone else wears… The glasses make me feel safe,” Raquel says.

If you love Raquel, you may also like Monica Seggos, Brandon Acton-Bond and Stefania Pia.