A little Joan Crawford meets punk, with her tattoos as accents to peplum jackets and vintage cocktail dresses, Princess Julia is a legendary DJ who enjoys fads, but does not follow them. Suspenders with a red pencil skirt and suede lace ASOS pumps are as trendy as she gets. Unphased by standing out in her Westwood pirate patent mary janes, she considers herself a pioneer in lifestyle as well– between her love for music and writing, and her immersion into the cultural eclecticism of London. “My grandmother was stagey and flamboyant,” says Princess Julia, who feels that old ladies have the best style of all.

If you love Princess Julia you may also like Diane Naegel, Sorcha O’Raghallaigh and Paisley Dalton.

For Fritz and Christina there are no boundaries between life, style, and their zeal to help people heighten their own self-awareness. Life is their stage. Fritz’s criteria for an interesting outfit is whether or not it can be recognized while he is a blur running in it, often over the Williamsburg Bridge. This is why he never wears jeans. Instead, you might see him in his red “filmmaker’s” ensemble, or a gold jacket and unisex leggings — kind of signature for him, as is his mustache, the “international passport to being male,” Fritz says. Once, leaving a play in the metallic piece, a member of the audience was certain that Fritz had been in the cast. By making a “difference” in the world, he feels, maybe somebody will be a little more of themselves. “I think the interplay of our similarities and our differences can take us to a new place in terms of social progress and personal satisfaction.” Christina, in a vintage Pucci dress, toile Dr. Marten’s, torn stockings over crocheted ones, and a Victorian jacket worn backwards, explains that, for her, being “in style” can make you afraid to have fun with how you dress, not to mention what you miss when you get that feeling of finding an unexpected treasure.

When Fritz first met Christina, he put her in his phone as “Christina Punk”. It takes guts to add an exaggerated Mozart wig to a white lace dress while walking down the street, but going against the grain is what creates change; the truest definition of punk. It’s not just dressing up in leather and studs. Punk is what Fritz’s father was living when, as a Roman Catholic priest in New Zealand, he tried to introduce Planned Parenthood and suffered the consequences: getting excommunicated from the priesthood. And Christina’s sewing together a shirt out of his father’s old ones for Fritz is another form of punk; making a conscious and original choice, no matter how small, matters. In his new book, How To Live The Good Life, Fritz explains its main character, who is trying to make other people happy by making his own life happy; someone who is doing something a little bit beyond himself.

If you love Fritz & Christina, you may also like Max Vernon, Lizzie Brandt and Hannah & Landon.

Christian is known for designing stage costumes for Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, beginning with the deconstructed prom dresses she was making when first she started out as a designer. Their collaboration evolved and persists; Christian recalls a seminal moment for herself as an artist on the band’s tour for 2003′s Fever To Tell. Karen wore a colorful hand-made skeleton suit — “Kind of Day of the Dead,” Christian says — with lots of embroidery, a three-dimensional heart, and arteries. But what excited the designer most was the thirty feet of intestines that could be pulled out by the audience. Christian never stops creating. “I constantly think about it. I dream about it.” Everything in her apartment is silk-screened, from the pillows to her linens. 

Christian’s clean, slicked-back hair and classic red lips make her feel as though she can go a little further out on a limb with her clothing, and reveals the conscious detail with which she approaches everything. A white jumpsuit looks “Bohemian chic” with a burgundy scarf tied like an ascot, matching socks, and shoes covered in her abstract Sharpie patterns — and one of her own silk-screened, floor length skirts with a black tank, and a vintage necklace with bold, “unusual combination of colors.” But most poignant to me is how Christian’s sense of peace in creating manifests in how cool she makes a simple breton shirt from Lands’ End, Ralph Lauren pants and an Ann Taylor belt with her splash-of-paint-on-the-oxfords look.

If you love Christian, you may also like Susi Kenna, Jessica Repetto and Shail Upadhya.

A dedicated yogi, comfort with his age is an understatement for Andrew, who is as timeless as the clothes that he has made by his tailor in a little place called Vrindavan. It’s a small Medieval city dedicated to Krishna, where his tailor has a little room near an open sewer where cows wander by. “You step back three hundred years,” he says. In an ensemble of rich marigold yellow silk, Andrew speaks of his love for crowns, orbs, scepters, and robes. They evoke a sense of ritual he feels man has lost. “Ritual is such an important thing because it denotes your passage through life. I’m fascinated by India because they still have these rituals.” Andrew started designing rings when he saw a traditional Indian wedding that he found magical: The groom arrives on horseback to meet his covered bride, and the first he sees of her is her reflection in a mirrored ring she wears.

Once rejected from entering the Ritz in one of this vibrant suits for not having a tie on – instead he wore one of his breathtaking jewels on his neck – Andrew claims that he is “kind of crafts” and “kind of performance.” As art should do, it challenges the norms and makes you wonder why someone would be rejected for wearing something as magnificent as Andrew’s cosmic egg necklace instead of some piece of fabric. It is meant to convey, with its opulent mirrored glass, where we have come from – and where we are going. “You can see in it eternity,” he says. He is a humble as the materials he uses – mirrors, he points out, are made from sand, or from the Earth, a material of the universe that extends light and is meant to be a window into the next world. Unfazed by the cracks in his pieces, Andrew sees those lines, like the ones in his face, as nothing more than graceful maturation. Of them, he says, “It’s a bit like life.” Fashion, for him, provides us with a means to transcend. “I’m very interested in taking something that’s in the gutter, like a rusty old bit of tin and making it look like a million dollars.

If you love Andrew, you may also like Terence Koh, Natalie Gibson and Virginie Sommet.

Growing up neither from “here nor there” during a time when xenophobia was high freed Rajive from life in the monoculture of suburban American life. That state of non-belonging instilled in him a voracious, life-long wanderlust and identification with Bardo, the Tibetan state of becoming between one thing and the next. Not one to stand in front of a monument and take a photo, when Rajive travels, he says, “I try to associate myself with the parts of that culture that I identify with… then, I create images to bring the experience back with me.” Everything from folkloric Tibetan boots, beaded vests, loafers, and Shetland sweaters fill his closet. He speaks Spanish, French, Hindi, Urdu, Thai, and a smattering of German, Khmer, Finnish, Vietnamese and Dzongkha, switching as easily between them as he fuses Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man with Shiva, the deity of destruction in one of his paintings. Rajive renders Western superheroes in the ancient Thai style of Khon mask-making, re-imagining the American demi-god Batman as a demon out of the Ramayana.

Putting well-known archetypes in a foreign context is Rajive’s way of re-inventing the status quo, which includes himself, teaching high school art in the New York City public schools in vintage army jackets covered with jewels, the newest Doc Martens or a Tibetan rosary made of human bones. In American blue jeans, crocodile-skin cowboy boys and a red silk shirt from Thailand, the kind you get on any street corner in Bangkok for 100 baht (about 4 dolllars), tattoos that recall everything from his mother’s Catholicism to Eastern ritual daggers, a silver Nepelese medallion with turquoise and coral as his go-to necklace and his grandfather’s signet engagement ring from 1939, Rajive is a potent reminder of the liberation that can be found in the space between cultures. “I wasn’t bound by anyone’s rules,” he concludes.

If you love Rajive, you may also like Virginie Sommet, RZA and Mitch Alfus.

Wearing a Rick Owens for Revillon fur that is savage in its raw, bold rectangular shape, Scarlett reveals a tattoo on the center of her chest– a symbol, taken from her studies of sacred geometry, meant to be the eye of her heart shell, which brings focus to this passionate part of her body. On matters of emotions, she has never been one to be content with the surface of things. As a kid, she remembers liking the challenges of a European math test, as opposed to the American ones. They demanded discussions on theory and writing and not just checking boxes. Of her art, like a teal-and-lace sweater worn backwards, she explains, “I want to inspire other people to be themselves as much as possible, to understand what wholeness means for them. I want to be critical, but critical in a way that still wants to create peace. I think it’s interesting how politicians are always ‘fighting for peace.’” Rather than dwelling on the fear of the news, things like symbolism, archetypes, myth, and magic are what pump the blood in Scarlett’s veins, like her one-of-a-kind, Gothic/Egyptian Rick Owens leather jacket with a crazy hood that has a ‘wizard’ vibe. Scarlett gets all of the “weird things that Rick tries (and doesn’t sell)… in other words, the best things.”

A multi-media artist, Scarlett is no shrinking violet, either in red tights with Gareth Pugh futuristic white and black commanding sandals or in the subject matter she raises questions about. She paints stories, often inside of sculptural objects of her own creation, like her ostrich egg series, which on its most simple level is meant to highlight how we tend to “stick our head in the sand” and watch Friends when we are afraid. Her over-the-top decadence — seen in her handbag (made by a friend) of bloody fingers and fake French nails, her Jackie-O shades, and her love of quirky, embroidered, Irregular Choice furry boots worn with a chic black Rick Owens dress — is inspired by the cross-dressers that were her nannies, like Vaginal Davis and drag artist Glen Meadmore (who is almost seven feet tall). Never one to avoid making a statement, Scarlett says, “I was happy, when I moved back to LA, that I could wear color again. In France, especially hanging out with Rick and Michelle, you start to feel uncomfortable in color because they’re always in drab putty. You would sit next to them, and feel like the pink elephant in the room.”

If you love Scarlett, you may also like Licsi Lichiban Szatmari, Kristine Barilli and Lika Volkova.

Considering herself a dandy who loves a good uniform and likes to be comfortable and dressed up, Rashida makes no apologies for expressing herself visually. Like her roots, she is powerfully eclectic whether in a vintage tuxedo pant and bolero, a native-print corset, her mother’s marching band hat and patent Moschino flats or in a vintage Oscar de la Renta sequined top with denim cut-offs, a jeweled belt and Chanel mary janes, all topped off and made lush by her jewelry from Abu Dhabi and Thailand. Beginning in high school with tennis clothes and leisure suits until today, in rodeo embroidered clown pants with a sheer, classic American Apparel shirt and leopard wedges, it is clear that the once misfit is now getting the last laugh. Though aware of her power, wielding it in the professional arena is where Rashida struggles. She admires the people who, though they may not be supremely confident, appear to be: “When it comes to being an artist, you’re sensitive… I’ll tear something of mine down before anybody has a chance to praise it. There’s a hurdle for females.” The women portrayed in Rashida’s art are the true, indomitable originals, from Josephine Baker to American Indians. With her dark, penetrating stare framed by the halos of her hats, Rashida says of her art, “It’s all in the eyes. They are the window to the soul.”

If you love Rashida, you may also like Lindsey Caldwell, Angelica Nelson and Kaylee Boyer.

Besides falling in love with the multitude of fascinating people she’s worked with, from her first job at the very beginning of Interview Magazine to thirteen years of PR at Epic Records where she was the first female VP and finally her own PR company, Susan’s other “drug of choice” was a guy named Mark Walsh, who “dealt” her vintage Chanel, Balenciaga and Hermes bags. When she first met Andy, she was wearing things like feathered tops and Malcolm McLaren miniskirts called SEX with chains and “sha-na-na on the back,” which prompted frequent features in the Talk of The Town section of the New Yorker. She says that Andy “would point out people on the street and the way they looked, and the people that he liked would be very Burberry, in a trench coat, very straight stuff.” At some point, Susan made the transition to the understatement of a Jil Sander black knit dress, all the while working with Andy to open many another’s eye to the unconventional. During her time at Epic, he would assist Susan in breaking talent like Cyndi Lauper, Boy George, Luther Vandross, Sade and Michael Jackson, to name just a few, by putting many of the then unknowns on the cover of Interview or on his TV show. “Andy was collaborative… Andy got you talking,” Susan says.

The days of finding yourself at Studio 54 with Michael Jackson (Susan used to take him and the rest of the Jacksons there) are sadly evocative of another time, as is the feeling that people are working together and making a difference, the days when a PR person was an artist who understood other artists, and a time when you’d find your publicist to be such a warm, open and free spirit that they’d wear a pink satin bathing suit to the release of a movie soundtrack as she did.  Susan reminisces, “Of the years and all of the rock stars and different talented people I worked with, I still see things as an artist… being an artist really helped me understand the artist.” Patti Smith signed a book of hers that says, “’To Susan, more than a blonde’ because my name is Blond, Susan Blond. I just thought that that was such a great thing because it was all of us girls… it was like we were all pioneers.”

If you love Susan, you may also like Sharon Wick, Malcolm Harris and Grethe Holby.

Growing up with three brothers made Emily feel that clothing was an extravagance, which makes me think of how chic and understated she makes a vintage diamond ring look. Most of what she wears is minimal and uncomplicated with touches of femininity – like her calico shift from high school – and masculine functionality, like her staple Frye boots and high-waisted denim bellbottoms that are worn during the long hours spent working on her art from eight in the morning until seven at night. Emily picked up her discipline as an artist from her grandfather, an illustrator during the fifties whose large body of work could often be seen on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. He also did portrait work, with a resume of notables ranging from Princess Grace Kelly to Jimmy Carter and his family. Much of his artwork can be found in the Smithsonian. Reserved and sentimental in a long black skirt with a belted circle scarf that she wears when having people over, Emily speaks of how much she adores the soulful community of Nashville because people don’t care as much about talking about art as they do about making it, and as Emily puts it, success is a byproduct of loving what you do.

If you love Emily, you may also like Lindsey Caldwell, Lexie Smith and Brigitte Conti.

Hannah is Canadian born with the characteristic “flower shop-owning, thrift store clothing-wearing…super laid-back love for nature, golden retrievers, skateboarding, [and] hikes in the mountains.” Her obsession with the nostalgia of mint lace dresses and floral veiled hats inspires Hannah to design vintage lingerie and collect and sell antique clothes, but leaves her resisting the pressure of chronic questions about the future: “What are you going to be when you grow up? What do you want to be? What school are you going to go to? Where are you going to live? It’s always looking forward and there’s not much emphasis placed on the beauty of now.” Landon has his own sense of nostalgia, with a particular regard for wild nomads like Huck Finn, whose childhood on the river was nothing like his own, growing up in Phoenix – the character’s sartorial influence can be seen in his signature straw hat. Of his art, Landon says, “I try to think of it as remembering a painting instead of creating something. It existed, you just take it… it’s all about perception.” I love how Landon wants others to see in his paintings their same source of creativity that he draws from and how Hannah loves to step outside of her own style when buying for other people, we’re all interconnected after all.

If you love Hannah and Landon, you may also like Samantha Pleet, Adam and Karolina and Dustin Hollywood.