Sofia sees dressing and fashion as a part of art and I love how she inspires others in the way that she wants to be inspired herself. Like her own mix of vintage, indigenous and inherited clothes, she is drawn to things when they tell a story about the past and help her to understand something she didn’t understand before. Or in her words, how closely connected material objects are to what a culture or people are saying on a deeper level. As an example, her desire to never wear jeans and to always wear her mother’s decorative medallion stone necklaces, can be as illuminating as how the Swedish avant-garde was created as a reaction to its heavily folkloric traditions (which was the subject of one of Sofia’s exhibitions). Martin Margiela is another great inspiration to her for the spider web of thoughts in his collections, Sofia states. It took her two weeks to understand what he stands for when Sofia was working on a retrospective on him at The Mode Museum in Antwerp.

In order to be a good curator of how a culture adorns itself, Sofia travels to and studies many different countries– it’s like social anthropology, she says. She is possessed by how, through her exhibits, she can highlight the juxtapositions in society and understand the collective thinking and soul of a society. What Sofia loves about fashion is the way in which someone can visually awaken her by dressing the body in an experimental way, or how one can create surprising themes, shapes, crafts, patterns, cuts, colours or techniques that help her to understand something that she didn’t understand before. In her antique Chinese silk pastel robe over a floral pastel dress, with a leopard shawl from Africa, artistry and vision is what Sofia brings to the all to homogeneity of today’s fashion world.

If you love Sofia, you may also like Saga Sig, Josefin Arnell and Kimme Aaberg.

They are not only each other’s muses in their dedication to escaping sexual stereotypes, but as inspiration for their respective business’. Dynasty, with her finesse at mixing an animal print head wrap with a camouflage jacket and yellow printed hoodie, is a clothing designer, who designs with her sister’s more graceful, rich and effortless layering in mind. Her modern take on a unisex cargo pant is just the right combo of slim and baggy and is filled with concealed details, as exemplified by the multiple pockets in all the right places. Soul, with her classic button up to the neck, vintage vest with a Victorian watch fob, bloomers, luxe tassel belts and floral tights, is a metal smith who explores the significance of ancient geometry in her jewelry with her sister’s attraction to the oneness between masculine and feminine in mind. I love Soul’s square and triangular bangles and the strong, simple, gender-neutral feel of her rings.

Dynasty & Soul’s mom, Josephine, taught them to dress, and thus live, with a sense of freedom and individuality. As a result, they are handsome as they are beautiful and “not the book that you would assume to know about when you pick it up to read it,” as Dynasty says.

Find Dynasty & Soul’s designs here: BRZE SIGHT & ALKHEMI9.

If you love Dynasty and Soul, you may also like Trae Harris, Karen & Sara Brown and Kate Ross.

She claims that she is a quiet observer due to the critical disposition of her Virgo sun. People born into this astrological sign seek to attain an appearance of perfection, Emilie says. You can see it in her quintessentially quaint decor of dried roses and antique cameras next to candle sticks covered in melted wax, as well as the continuous blank slate she pursues when it comes to her clothing, attained through buying and selling things on Ebay. Those under this sixth astrological sign of the zodiac also have a crazy side, she claims, which would explain Emilie in her drapey, black Bernard Wilhelm kaftan dress, love for Bram Stroker’s Dracula and passion for Jesus and Mary Chain. Quiet or crazy, in denim cut off’s from her mom, a vintage tee with DM’s on Emilie is laid back, while all so enviably chic, as only the French can be.

If you love Emilie, you may also like Kristine Barilli, Mia Christiana and Nadia & Hassan.

The Virgo in Cassandra has to order the world by hues. Her clothing is separated by palettes of beiges, creams, whites and blacks. I love how clean and strong she appears in a monochromtatic black ensemble of a cut out one piece, high waisted linen shorts, a blazer and wedges. The beauty of the female body can be the perfect backdrop to simple, unaffected good style like Cassandra, in worn denim and a crafty woven dress, much like her icon Bridgette Bardot, who could wear a towel and have style. One day Cassandra wants to live by the beach, wake up and surf, design in her studio, have a farm, grow her own vegetables and have her own animals, which, for me, is the height of fashionable.

If you love Cassandra, you may also like Sophie Assa, Shae Detar and Preston Davis.

Part American Indian, Julius’ family history has the overtones of the romance and dramatic beauty that he lives for. A tidal wave in 1900 in Galveston, TX propelled his ancestors to the East coast. His big persona makes Lily Pulitzer pants debonair with a navy double breasted blazer and a white shirt unbuttoned so as to reveal a crystal choker. Radiating good energy, through the rocks he wears on his body and the plethora of authentic collectibles that he lives among, is a calling for Julius. His hyper-artistic sense of dressing is surreal, like an embroidered kimono with ivory bangles to the elbow and antique claws on his fingers. “There’s no bull shit with me,” Julius states. He even admits in this interview that he is a hundred and one years old.

If you love Julius, you may also like Natalie Gibson, Louise Ingalls Sturges and Patrick McDonald.

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 huge fan of the uniform (he has worn the same pair of pants, designed and refined by him over ten years, for the last four months), with an emphasis on fabric, Rogan primarily buys anything traditional Japanese because they are a culture of “makers.” They repair a piece of fabric or a garment until it becomes something new. Like his workwear kimono suggests, for him it is more about the love of textiles than strictly clothing. And the pants which Rogan feels no need to change for any occasion are a Western version of an Eastern pant, with the long rise and pockets in all of the right places for all of the right things, including his pocket knife for his time spent reductive landscaping. Growing up between the Midwest and Middle East has had its own aesthetic imprint.

As a designer at Loomstate and ROGAN NYC, he describes his aesthetic mantra as “soulful minimalism,” embodied in a button down shirt that is slowly shredding (my favorite kind!). He’s so driven to simplicity that even the t-shirt isn’t quite there– he makes them out of one piece of fabric wrapped around the body in order to cut the number of seams from two to one. Rogan considers his monk-like devotion to his aesthetic, right down to his side braid, a sharp contrast to an industry catering to men who are so beaten down by the commercial convention of fashion that they stick to either their “bling” or their five-pockets jeans like glue. Preacher-like in mostly black and clean lines, everyone’s trying to get control of one’s purchases, as opposed to just letting people be themselves, he states. It’s all commerce and little creativity. For Rogan, evolution and constant change are inspiration– for example, a set of carpets in his home were never quite “perfect” until they were faded by sunlight. “You want to control it, I try to control it, but you can’t. You just have to give in,” exactly the wabisabi-type approach to thinking that Rogan has to take while he is doing one of the things he loves most: surfing.

If you love Rogan, you may also like Preston Davis, James Gillespie and Nick Fouquet.

Like the combination of her floral chiffon shirt and denim cut-offs, Yara walks a straight line between masculine and feminine, never veering too much in one direction or another. She is covered up but revealing in a body-hugging but sporty Preen dress, and the leggings from her Spring collection are a a sophisticated riff on athletics. “There was a point of feminism where it was like acting like a man, dressing like a man — I think we’ve moved beyond that, to where it’s celebrating womanhood,” Yara says, which, for me, makes her, in a Zero + Maria Cornejo jumpsuit and vintage denim jacket the exact kind of comfortable-chic that might see her cast in Woody Allen’s Manhattan II and a mirror to her style icon Georgia O’Keeffe.

If you love Yara, you may also like Rachel Ballinger, Camille Rushanaedy and Kaelen Haworth.

Elisa’s French upbringing does not belie her love of perfume, breton stripes, and bags. She has one of Marc Jacobs’s bags from his first collection, a nautical Coach from the ’70s, and one from the legendary Roberta di Camerino. After working in Paris shoulder-to-shoulder with her mother, the designer Lolita Lempicka, Elisa came to New York seeking a change. “I wanted to see what my value was outside of my family,” she says, and crossed an ocean only to find herself in another family workplace, with Betsey Johnson. Of her two maternal mentors, she says, “They both know what they want– they have a style and they stick to it.” Just like them, Elisa finds a certain harmony in her life now that she too is a mother, and seldom strays from her distinctly understated and clean-as-ivory style in a cream ‘30s vintage dress and Marc Jacobs patent sandals.

If you love Elisa, you may also like Erin Bazos, Dalad Kambhu and Nana Taniwa.