Cristina Cucca

occupation: designer

Angela, our Milan correspondant, said that Cristina’s love of the clean and linear comes from her experience of living in Berlin, which has been the capital of “rational aesthetics” since Walter Gropius of the Bauhaus. In fact, her love of shapes can be seen in her designs, where she creates conceptually conceived geometric pieces that allow a person’s personality to form the garment, rather than the garment forming them. For Cristina, it’s all about discovery, whether it’s finding fifteen different ways to drape a rectangle or digging through a pile of clothes at a psychiatric hospital, one of her favorite places to hunt (at one point in her video, Cristina points out how this institution uses the exercise of uncovering old clothes as a way of escaping their reality). I love how Cristina rolls up a pencil skirt and belts it, and the way she takes a man’s tie and throws it around her neck. In keeping with her Sardinian heritage, she loves black, but will venture out to white, navy, gray, and brown, always with the underlying minimal line. There are not many moments where I am tempted to leave my layers, Victorian bustles, and chunky rings behind, but after seeing Cristina, now is one of those times.

If you like Cristina, you might also enjoy Lauren Boyle, Fatima Al-Qadiri, or Crayon Lee.

Eliza Starbuck

occupation: co-founder of The Uniform Project and designer

“Being pregnant, I’ve had to sort of adjust the way I dress. I think the pregnant form is beautiful, but also sort of comical, so I don’t try and hide it much.” Eliza Starbuck

Good style often goes along with being ahead of one’s time and thinking individually, and can be seen in historical icons on the level of a Joan of Arc, whom Eliza champions as someone who had such a modern point of view in her bravery and fashion statements. “The short cropped hair that no one else was doing at the time,” and of course the capes and armor – Eliza has reinterpreted both aspects of the heroine’s style with such accuracy that the similarity between the two is eerie. Her fanciful imagery with dressing doesn’t stop there – “Where the Things Are” can be seen in her slipper fetish and the Russian folklore of Firebird in her embroidered dresses and feathered earrings. Eliza’s eye for the ethereal led her to approach Sheena, her partner on The Uniform Project (the feature previous to this one) on the subway, because she was dressed like a “vintage elf.” That meeting led to a genius “fashion meeting of the minds” that says everything about the future in their use of personal style to raise tens of thousands of dollars for Indian school children to have uniforms to go to school. Eliza is our first pregnant woman on SLU, and like her role models, stands out as a fearless innovator in the way that she is the architect of her life.

If you like Eliza, you might also enjoy Donna Harrison, Telfar Clemens, or Ellen Fisher.

Crayon Lee

occupation: founder and creative director of Studio11, and creative director of Kang Kiok, her mother’s clothing line

“I don’t do whatever is popular, with the top, bottom, shoes, and the bag, all matching with a Starbucks coffee.” Crayon Lee

One of the thousands of things that is so fascinating about interviewing the range and diversity of talent on this site is seeing the juxtaposition of someone like Crayon, who sees fashion as “real” and not a fantasy, with Miranda on the previous post, who finds it all about dreaming and imagining. Crayon has a quiet chic that makes a huge but understated impact. Her black uniform of leggings and a turtleneck, topped with a simple but forceful piece, porcelain skin, angular hair, and absence of jewelry and makeup, is strikingly clean and uncomplicated and reflects how honest and direct she is. Crayon doesn’t have an air about anything related to fashion and style, despite the fact that she has grown up with a high fashion designer mother. In fact, she tries to find the humor in it, and you can see it in the plastic blowup pillow jacket filled with feathers that she and her mom designed (it was inspired by the way pills are wrapped in Korea). What Crayon says about Christine De Lassus is true about her: “fashion follows her, she doesn’t follow it.”

Check out these music videos that Crayon produced here and here.

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

If you like Crayon, you might also enjoy Sharon Wick, Nana Taniwa, or Katia Hakko.

Stacey Clark & Harold Kuhn

occupation: designers of the fashion label Odilon

“[We are inspired by] the occult, the apocalypse, industrialism, architecture, textiles, Klaus Nomi, the Holy Mountain, travel, Odilon Redon, and rock and roll. We also really inspire each other when designing, dressing, and living.”

Harold and Stacey share a best friendship, a house, their personal style, and a line of clothes. They are a team with everything, Harold takes women’s blazers and adds shoulder pads to make them more masculine, which has in turn, influenced Stacey to want to add more structure to the next Odilon collection. I love that he is from West Virginia, with a father that was a logger, which has inspired Harold to take his dad’s suede fringe bags and add studds to the straps. And that Stacey, from her travels to Germany, has caused her to mature in her style and now likes to “weigh down” her looks, either with her heavy on the buckles Alexander Wang boots or draw on her eyebrows to make them super black. Made to be pieces that interchange like a uniform, Odilon’s silk chiffon army jacket works on both of them, each in their own way. He, elegant meets lumberjack, she, natural meets progressive. Together, creating a singularly stellar collection.

Check out Odilon’s website and blog.

To learn more about Stacey and Harold, click on the detailed captions page.

If you like Stacey and Harold, you might also enjoy Geoffrey Young, Ty McBride, Leo Cerezo, or Cindy Huang.

Ms. Fitz

“My favorite anarchists are the everyday anarchists. The misfits who make choices in their lives to tread a path less travelled, who question the boundaries of gender, art, and ethics. Philosophers like Michel Foucault, who argued that the future of our society is paved by the fringe members of our communities – I believe that too.” Ms. Fitz

occupation: stylist, designer, blogger, and former political activist

Born in a hippy commune in a small town in Australia and raised among a community of people with alternative lifestyles, Ms. Fitz is drawn towards anyone that looks at the world through different eyes and wants to create something that diverges from what you are “suppose to do and think.” Basketball-wear and bows with Egyptian-inspired designer clothes, and surf overalls with a glamorous vintage fur, is all part of her passion to be unpredictable but not “ridiculous.” Ms. Fitz is taking in everything right now, traveling the world to help her form the direction for her life as a stylist, designer, blogger, and overall quiet anarchist. Similar to the range of clothes piled on her couch when I came to shoot her, she loves to infuse all cultural references together when designing, like the bold neon edge she gives to her earthy, Afghany-inspired necklaces. Currently, Ms. Fitz is inspired by “chilly and beautiful” Amsterdam; for the arts, youthful vitality, and support of women’s rights there. Though the creative freedom of the ’80s reigns in fashion choices like her random but spot-on pick of a Genny primary-color blocked coat (she had no idea who Genny was, but had the eye to purchase the piece) and the ’90’s, in her adoration of “ballsy bitches” like Salt-n-Pepa, TLC, and MC Lyte from a Tribe Called Quest. For Ms. Fitz, unless it’s extreme, she doesn’t see the point.

To learn more about Ms. Fitz, go to the detailed captions page.

Check out Ms. Fitz’s website and blog.

If you like Ms. Fitz, you might also enjoy Sophie Flinder and Vanna Youngstein, Contessa Stuto, Athena Stuebe, or Alexa Winner.