Hardly the ugly duckling that Lyfe claims she has been in her family, adversity has brought her to where she is now. She is perceptably sophisticated in silk wrap dresses with chunky clip-on earrings and confident in her destiny to be the mother of Mason, who Lyfe feels has taught her love in the purest form. Fortune would have it that her grandparents, who brought her up, taught her that the woman can be the man and the man the woman in a relationship. Lyfe will never be “suzie homemaker,” she states, with her sharp focus on becoming a holistic healer and her passion for dance, poetry and whatever creative force makes her tic in the moment. Her grandfather was “the greatest man ever,”Lyfe feels, “he is the woman” in that he gave her all she needed to appreciate herself, including being comfortable enough to know her pain.

If you love Lyfe, you may also like Wamuhu Waweru, Fred Butler and Trae Harris .

In what Maad refers to as her James Dean meets Madonna look, she wears black leather shorts with over the knee socks, a fringe shirt and one of her many black leather studded jackets. Like one of her tattoo’s that is an ode to the Maya Angelou poem, The Caged Bird, Maad finds her ultimate freedom in her voice as a singer/songwriter. Her song Glitter is a reference to Maad’s fashion icons and the spirit of NYC of the 80′s. However, one cannot see her pitch black “Queen Nefertitti” bob and not recognize the monumental influence of Diana Ross on Maad’s style. Maad’s long silk vintage dresses with cinched waistes and lots of leg, have glamour high priestess written all over them. But diva is all the more refreshing on Maad Moiselle for her humble aesthetics as well, which are exemplified in her classic Ernest Sewn jeans and Reformation colorful silk blouses that are accented with her signature MAC red lips and of course, monster Fendi wedges.

If you love Maad, you may also like Fatima Robinson, Mia Christiana and Jean Lebrun.

It took an individual like MJ to spot one like Fatima. The two not only share a birthday but are both fueled by sheer emotion, a relentless quest for truth, and the perfect accessories. With the King of Pop, it was never about the “counts” that measure the beat of a song, Fatima recalls, only the sound of the music. Moving to her own rhythm and beat comes naturally, enviably, to Fatima, whether riding her bike through Paris in the most colorful ensembles, like Cavalli leopard platforms, jodhpurs, a vintage Alaia jacket, and her signature armful of bangles. Her comfort with the “scary and the challenging” make her grow as a person. “The great part of what I do is ‘not knowing.’ I have to approach every kind of job in a different way. I may be on a music video this week, I may be doing a scene in a TV show, staging a show for eighty thousand people at a stadium… I like that journey, the figuring it out.”

“The studio is my canvas and the dancers are my paint,” Fatima says. She often avoids hearing a song until the day she begins the dance routine. Just as she freely imagines a pair of over-the-knee rubber army boots with a grader and mixes Fendi high-waisted trousers and stacked pumps with a lace bustier and layers of vintage and Hermes bracelets. Appreciating the “valleys” while soaring to the peaks keeps it real, and keeps Fatima close to her art. She chose to work on a play with George C. Wolfe, where she could learn something new, for a tenth of the money she would have made on a giant concert tour. So, too, does traveling in the summers to recharge, visiting friends in Barcelona, Prague, Cannes, and that place that she dreams of where she can let it all go, start over, and find the love and passion again: Paris. Spoken by one who knows exactly when to add balance to a sartorial moment with giant Monie’s cocktail rings or turn a simple turban in an Audrey Hepburn look with a gilded Calypso top, skirt, and flats: “When you do things in their proper time, everything flourishes.”

If you love Fatima, you may also like Virginie Sommet, Jenne Lombardo and Rashida Robinson.

Liliane says that she was “born a star,” with her feet turned out and “one foot above her head,” ready to become a prima ballerina (which she later did). Her mother, a milliner and dressmaker for Balenciaga who dressed with extraordinary care (Liliane reflects that she never saw her without her make-up until the day she died), got them arrested in Spain in the ’50s for how short Liliane’s dress was. “She wanted everyone to see her daughter’s legs.” During the war, when they barely had enough to eat, Liliane’s mother made her coats out of blankets, dresses out of drapes, and wooden shoes wrapped in the same material to match– a dress a day, so she never had to wear the same thing twice. So, when Liliane later saw feathers in a shop she loved, naturally she had them made into a dress by her favorite designer, Mark Bouwer (whom she intentionally supported for being, at the time, a total unknown). “You do not have to have money to be chic,” she says, wearing a fringe suede jacket that she bought in a Texas thrift shop.

It’s that “I-can-do-anything” attitude that found Liliane in Hollywood with a seven-year studio contract in the ’50s, despite not speaking a word of English. When the producer John Houseman saw her dancing with her ballet company in NYC, he had to have her audition. She read a part from For Whom The Bell Tolls phonetically, but added that she “must have looked cute.” During her seminal years learning how to sing, tap dance, and fence, Marlon Brando took her aside during the filming of Young Lions and tutored her. “He made me think of the part I was playing… from the inside.” Montgomery Clift took her to the Actor’s Studio, where she met and roomed with Marilyn Monroe. She hunted ducks with Clark Gable in Oregon. Her diamond rings, given to her by “the man she adores, but does not see enough,” didn’t command attention until he gave her twenty-five of them, one for each year of their relationship, that she now stacks on her fingers, just as the movies never fully satisfied Liliane’s passion for the thrill of the moment on stage. In the theater, she says, “You are with the public. You don’t cheat. If they don’t like you, they don’t like you. If they love you, they love you.” When asked what her most memorable role is, she says, “None. It’s yet to come.”

If you love Liliane, you may also like Barbara Flood, Lucie Porges and Jake Oliver.

If there were ever a case for learning outside of the traditional classroom, it’s Natia, a dark beauty whose life reads like one of the many classic pieces of literature that she is an expert in. While I am trying to figure out how to keep this passage down to one paragraph, I have windows open to all of her routine references: Proust, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Baudelaire and her favorite of all, The Master and Margarita (for its dreamlike kindness and devils) by Bulgakov, someone I have never heard of but is now on top of my huge stack of books on my bedside table. I also made an immediate dash to the All Saints site once she extolled their aesthetic virtues – Natia’s obsessed with every leather piece. She studied ballet beginning at eight years old, far from her home of the Republic of Georgia, as in succeeded from Russia in 2003, where she lived through the revolution and remembers being cold in a big house with memories of her family huddled around the one oil heater and where “there was no food at all.” Her dance teacher had escaped the Ramonovs and was given her school by Grace Kelly (this is too fascinating a tidbit to leave out). At thirteen years old, she moved to Paris, where she met people like Jean Paul Gaultier and modeled. Natia switched to acting when she came to New York and though she is classically trained, trusts her instincts more than “a method,” as she does with her style. Her mother is a big fashion influence in her life: “She could wear a skirt down to her ankles with a sweatshirt and gloves…she gets a lot of attention.” Natia buys herself a lot of the basics, like Rag & Bone and vintage band tees and mixes the more dramatic pieces in, many of which are hand-me-downs from her mom, like her crocheted Gaultier cardigan. Most things are given a street-rocker edge by Natia, like her prim Viktor & Rolf blouse and Margiela blazer. She embraces her love and the influence of Pete Doherty and Kate Moss, but Natia does it very much in her highly cultivated way of a “boyish punk chic” with a touch of theater and romance, and always with a certain not “in your face” simplicity.

To learn more about Natia, click on the detailed captions page.

Nova has the emotional depth, range of expression, and vulnerability that screams film ingenue, akin to a young Natalie Wood in Leonard Bernstein’s ‘West Side Story’ and Elia Kazan’s ‘Splendor in the Grass’. She can slide into character in her girly trench, fedora, and peacock pumps as easily as she can wear tribal face makeup in Victorian meets Surreal Circus, as muse for designer Michael Calloway. Nova is self-possessed beyond her years, which she attributes to the unconditional love of her mom and having had the unique perspective of being home-schooled. She was never subject to the boxes and labels put upon you by most typical school system experiences, and hanging out with kids her own age solely is actually odd for her. It wasn’t until her intensive pursuit of a professional ballet career at The Joffrey that she started to experience the usual peer pressures. However, the freedom and confidence to be and to explore herself is evident in that Nova is as comfortable as a provocative screen siren, in the pillow case she made out of a dress, as she is as a fragile heroine in her grandfather cardigan and riding boots.

Check out Nova’s website.