Comfortable in herself — tailored but not uptight — in an American Apparel tanktop and Opening Ceremony trousers, Wandie finds being alone, even while traveling, a luxury. Autonomy is a constant theme in her life. She produced an independent feature film in the past year that was inspired by the work of British director Mike Leigh and his method of creating characters and a story from the ground up. Wandie’s mom, a great source of strength for her, brought individual fruit cups made up of watermelon, kiwi, and pomegranate to everyone on the set on the first day of filming. Behind her oversized Karen Walker sunglasses and glamorous, very “LA” vintage sundress, Wandie feels that breaking down every day helps her when she’s under extreme stress. Either that, or a trip to Laguna Beach and one of her favorite shops– The African Hut.

If you love Wandie, you may also like Nadia, Sophie Assa and Wamuhu Waweru.

“Dirty hippy” or “Lesbian” — you name it, she gets it in the fearful taunts of her peer group, but Lucia is unfazed and tosses off those who ascribe to the dummied down culture of her generation in favor of an insatiable hunger for consuming and creating art and liberating the world from the very prejudices she is the object of. She is a member of the Riot Grrl Scouts, “we have sleepovers once a month and talk about feminist issues, body image, pro-choice… we organize events and activities,” she states. Her fortitude and passion are not surprising given the tight nuclear family of artists, musicians, actors, and painters that surround her. Lucia appeared in a Beck video when she was 8 rapping and dancing (he is her uncle) and sang with Kimiya Dawson after the singer saw Lucia on Facebook working on a cover of one of her songs. She is committed to her art, with pencil being her strong suit. Lucia loves drawing the human form and accentuating a subject’s most unique features.

Attending school in make-up inspired by Ziggy Stardust, electric yellow leggings she got from Sia after performing together and her mom’s jean jacket — “From a long time ago,” she says — it’s clear that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree when it comes from a lineage of independent minded people. Her 97-year-old grandfather still drives himself around and takes care of himself; her great grandmother designed and built dollhouses, and her grandfather has spent his entire life in bands and owns a Thai restaurant full of murals he painted himself. Her grandmother made ceramics, her father is an actor and her Mom is an interior decorator. Beyond her years, or just how you might be if educated about life with an open mind, Lucia says, “If you don’t find the naked body beautiful, then you suck.” I second that.

If you love Lucia, you may also like Annakim Violette, Kay Kasparhauser Goldberg and Sarah Temple-Raston.

Angel has lived in Maui, New York, Mexico City, Berlin, Paris, Uganda, and Toronto– just to name a few. “I keep going,” she says. Working at a refugee camp near the Sudan, Angel helped build a school and found her inner zen in nature walks, passion fruits, a pet deer, and total freedom from Facebook and text messages. I love that she sat on her roof for a month, hiding from Western civilization after returning to America. Abandoning consumer culture was Angel’s M.O. back in the States. Now living in Los Angeles, she is not in a “fashionable phase” – just lots of ’80s and ’90s swimwear, she says. But Angel never needs much to be distinct; in her mother’s watercolor wrap dress and vintage ’70s wedges, with or without the drama of her blue lamé dress she is extraordinary.

If you love Angel, you may also like Lizzie Brandt, Zandile Blay and Ashley Shaw.

In a Madman-like emerald green straw hat, cordovan Brooks Brother’s loafers (he calls them “the French black”), an Acne shorts-suit, an Hermes ring – and his signature epic watch, in this case a Cartier, Cameron says that he always asks himself: “Would Cary Grant wear this?” History figures are Cameron’s biggest influences, like Dirk Bogarde, the Baron de Rede and Napolean, but he always throws the most seminal and dramatically contemporary into the mix, like a studded Katharine Hamnett leather jacket that she made for George Michael, his collection of Louboutin studded shoes and a McQueen Botticelli-printed shirt and blazer. Once, Ali McGraw said to him, “It’s all drag– what’s yours today?” Cameron’s only rule is that fashion should be fun. “Anyone who comes into the store must leave us happier than when they arrived, whether they purchased anything or not. Being nice is paramount.” Just like you should feel when you leave the theater.

If you love Cameron, you may also like Marcelo Burlon, Maurice Harris and Jarka Cole.

If you love Coury, you may also like Ashley Shaw, Lizzie Brandt and Marina Munoz.

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.

It’s all about the composition, Maurice feels, like his grandmother’s hats. A milliner herself, she wore a hat to church every Sunday, encrusted with jewels, plumes and petals. You need to dig to find the gems when it comes to beautiful things, he feels, whether it is the cuffs of hammered gold sequins on his classically striped Dries van Noten shirt or the chandelier in his dining room to which he added opulent black rooster feathers. In his dreamy, meticulously-crafted floral arrangements he often incorporates just such a fantastical surprise. Despite Maurice’s obsession with the specifics of aesthetics, he manages to make everything look completely effortless, in that “LA” kind of way,” like the way he adds a fringe necklace or a sparkly clutch to a long sleeve tee-shirt, pink pants and Vivienne Westwood plastic tassle loafers to go out at night.

“When you don’t fit into something, it forces you to create what you need to create in order to live. I think that’s informed my practice of everything,” Maurice says. He wears a broach instead of a tie, boldly striped socks with his penny loafers, and deadstock vintage ribbons as pocket squares. And he is never without his signature collection of tribal bangles, no matter how traditional the rest of his outfit. Maurice describes his “Brady Bunch” family as typically Christian; his father was a pastor. The four kids, along with the parents, moved in single file, spoke only when spoken to, were proper and mild-mannered and followed the rules. It was not until it all crumbled when his father left his mother, that his view of religion – and of the status quo – shifted. “In a weird way… being a closeted gay person, there was no way for me to be me until this happened. Instead of being an android, I manifested in my own direction.”

If you love Maurice, you may also like Cator Sparks, Thomas Khadafy and Nick Fouquet.

“I don’t like to pre-think shit too much– just go with it.” As a photographer, Magda understands the importance of “the moment.” This extends to the rawness of her captivating photography. Having fewer expectations is her most current head space for success and Magda lives her life like she’s taking a photograph. She bought her enchanting house on the spot with her savings for the car of her dreams, a ’68 Chevelle. Today it is her own slice of Americana, a place where she can relax in her red, white, and blue jeans and army jacket and work– and, once she gets her chickens to go with the garden she’s working on (despite some fits and starts– “I’ve got a black thumb,” she says, not discouraged), she’s “never fucking leaving.” She loves waking up to the breeze through the windows, putting on Led Zeppelin, lighting some incense and throwing on a fringe shawl with leopard-print hip-huggers, “How are you ever gonna be a bitch or in a bad mood?” she says. Not to mention the company of her two dogs, Bob and Captain Pickles, both of whom were found while hiking and having lunch respectively. Mr. Pickles chose his own name from several Magda tried out for him.

Magda splits her time between photography and music. “I do not sing. I play guitar. I sit in the corner and headbang a lot,” she says of her music, which is equal parts Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. There are no high heels in her collection of worn-in leather boots and shoes (“Carrying eighty pound amps in heels? Back problems for life!”) and there’s no turning off her instincts as a photographer. When she and her band are being photographed, she’s still looking for control, setting up the shots. A total tomboy who picked up a love for skateboards and dirt bikes in Arizona, Magda was supposed to be a boy named Adam. Neither she nor her parents have any regrets– when she was just learning to skate, she took her Dad to the park to show her what she could do. All he could ask, stunned, was: “How do you just get back up after you fall down all the time?” The answer is obvious to me: Magda says her parents are the coolest people in the world, just like her.

If you love Magda, you may also like Sarah McGovern, Sam Quartin and Louise Ingalls Sturges.

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.

Today, when he isn’t acting, Preston teaches students at his Smiles Surf School how to surf the same way he learned– one hour, one day at a time. Being competitive with himself is second nature. “I started questioning these things, and detaching myself from what society says I’m supposed to be, and feeling this crazy connection to nature and God and seeing that I wasn’t separate from the water. Everything’s touching something. We’re all connected.” He wears his feelings literally on his sleeve, pairing a pink silk kurta from India with a flowing ikat vest from Pakistan, two nations traditionally at odds, so effortlessly it seems they were made for each other.

Preston grew up watching his father treat everyone, whether it was a janitor or his boss, with “the same respect– the same love.” He carries that same love with him every day. His clothing line, Pronounced Love, is all about returning to an inner child not yet programmed by society. The symbol on one of his t-shirts is a triangle that stands for the unity of “body, mind, and spirit.” Preston doesn’t buy anything that doesn’t make him say “Oh my God!” when he sees it, from his perfectly patched jeans to his southwestern blanket blazer to his chunky charmed indigenous necklaces. Everything he wears has a story, whether it is vintage or designed by a friend and he freely passes its legacy forward by giving everything away frequently. Preston’s generosity is probably most startling in its unusual magnanimity when he gave an entire paycheck to a visibly exhausted, working class mother that he happened to pass when she was picking her child up from school.

Of life, Preston says, this is just a shell, “I don’t believe we ever die.” Like his twenty year old collection of pastel Converse sneakers, the spirit of everything lives on. When you direct your thoughts, you change everything. “Most of the time, your greatest direction will come from your greatest rejection… and what you put in,” he says, “is what you get out.” So, by eating lots of compassionate foods, wearing lots of color, and making eye contact – even in the NYC subway – it is clear that Preston has chosen to embrace the envelope that says life is always abundant if you open your eyes.

If you love Preston, you may also like Nick Fouquet, Ludget Delcy and Chris Ford.