Ashton Michael from Stylelikeu on Vimeo.

“Always remember that a big slice of humble pie is best with a shot of whiskey, sarcastic smurk, and realness.” Ashton Michael

occupation: designer

Ashton was born and raised in East LA, where he was a child actor, growing up on tv and movie sets. Today, the bow tie tattoo on the front of his neck, and his “Dali” moustache exclaim the dramatic, “dapper dan” in him. However, don’t let his highly visual appearance fool you, as today, Ashton is all about focusing on the background artistry, “behind the scenes.” With his partner, Marko Martone, they are center stage as the founders of The House of Infinite Radness, where performers experience a 360 in fashion and beauty styling, head-to-toe, including access to Ashton’s own “glamourized, ghetto punk” clothing line. Ashton says, “give me a treatment, give me a direction..and I will kill it.” The stars may come to him for dressing, but Ashton is the lead in his own style story. There is the collection he designs, and his “dailies” (aka what he relies on to feel himself or “presentable”). These include his Lanvin shades, his “bling bling” earrings, his high top sneaks (he never leaves home without them), despite the fact that he feels that everyone should own a pair of creepers and his own brand of harem trousers, that can be dressed up or down. The New York in him is hard working to the point of exhaustion, but it’s all with passion. He would rather be “beat, after working eighteen hours, than be tired from doing nothing.” Whereas the “LA” side adds a certain lightness and self deprecation, like when he refers to his underwear and socks as the “president” of his outfit “foundation.” The foundation, he believes is essential and right now, it’s about the classics, like, black and white, and houndstooth. Ashton feels there is no challenge too big for him, just like the prominent coi-fish (fish who swim upstream) tattoo on his arm will tell you.

If you like Ashton, you may also enjoy Craig Robinson, Asher Levine, and Emmanuel Limon.

“As long as you are comfortable and confident in what you’re wearing, than it will look good. Confidence is everything.” Gregory Alexander

occupation: promoter and accessories designer

Gregory has our whole SLU office running out to DIY Army/Navy boots in his dead on interpretation of black and white court jester chic. They are so ultra-modern and classic that when worn with his Gray Ant floor-length skirt, crisp Margiela striped button-down, and vintage maitre’d's jacket, Gregory takes on the aura of English butler-meets-2010′s version of Gosford Park. Had Anthony been hanging in the turn-of-the-century French country side at the horse races, Edgar Degas might have painted his portrait in his Raf Simmons futuristic version of jockey sophisticate shirt, Commes for H&M jodphurs, and bondage knapsack of his own design. In fact and sad to say, the gentry of the late 1800s/early 1900s might have been more accepting than his own Orange County compadrates of today of Gregory in his YSL killer wedged platforms, color-block blazer from Le Marais, and beret. Fingers crossed that good taste in all things, material and humane, will come back in style.

If you like Gregory, you might also enjoy Sonny Groo or Paul Alexander.

“Fashion is, by design, mood-depending, and energy-altering. That is my favorite thing about it.” Lesa Amoore

occupation: creative director, consultant, stylist, and photographer

Lesa is a mom with a successful modeling career under her belt, including Vogue covers, world travels, and that “less is more” style that comes from experience. When you’ve been around enough of the new season’s runway boots, you develop an eye for the eternally perfect ones that take you everywhere and go with everything, like her buttery leather Margiela ones that have a nail for a heel. As she says, “they are just rock and roll enough, without being over-the-top or losing any classic perks.” It’s hard to deny their classic, edgy power when worn with anything from a clean black dress to leggings to jeans. Lesa’s penchant for the understated brought on an interesting dilemma when iconic hairdresser Oribe convinced her to play with the color of her natural blonde locks. She discovered that when she was a redhead and dressed just a hint provocatively in garders and stockings, she would attract just the right kind of guy. However, as a platinum blonde in a similarly suggestive outfit, all of the “wrong” heads turned in the room. When Lesa gets a little frilly, it’s a state-of-the-art Martine Sitbon vintage blouse – the designer herself, like Lesa, is minimal and modern.

If you like Lesa, you might also enjoy Camille Rushanaedy or Celia Ingesson.

On writing Do or Die: “It woke me up in a lot of ways. Consciousness begins to uncoil and the antennae begin to pulse, because you’re seeing things you’re not used to. I wasn’t that far from having been a model, where all you had to bring were your cheekbones. Suddenly, how I looked didn’t matter.” Leon Bing

occupation: author

I love how Leon says, without an ounce of pretension (after a career as a muse for the legendary designer Rudi Gernreich), that she was never trendy. She arrived in New York City to model in jeans and left in jeans. I “found” Leon in jeans when I came to her home in Pasadena do this feature. I discovered Leon when I read a review of Swans and Pistols in the Style section of the New York Times (that captures, among many things, her successful stint as a ’60s catwalker). Ironically, tracking her down was miraculously effortless. Soon after I saw her book review, I interviewed a fellow model/muse to Rudi, Barbara Flood, and there was my entre to Leon. Leon’s mother was actually the glamourous clothes horse and Leon was the one with the body to wear clothes, but was never big on the consumption of them. Her style is as much about her natural beauty and bone structure as it is about her brain cells. Anything looks good on her, including her photographer boyfriend Gareth Seigel, whom she adoringly refers to as “The Mister” – he is much her junior, and taught her “the meaning of unconditional love.” (She is writing a piece for Vogue on the “gestalt” of their relationship.) Leon left the galaxy of modeling for her current, beyond-passionate writing career – she recently penned an in-depth and first-hand insight into the culture of gangs in the inner cities. She is proof of what a prophet Mr. Gernreich was when he grabbed Leon’s looks for the runway because she “resembled a spy.” Not only has Leon helped to create a look for a time but a social conscience. After reading an article about two black youths shot dead, Leon thought to herself, “this would be on the front page if they were white.” She infiltrated downtown Los Angeles, started to ask questions, invested herself in these youths’ lives, and ended up writing a best-seller. Leon’s Tibetian necklace is one-of-a-kind, as she herself is.

If you like Leon, you may also enjoy Barbara Louis, Lucie Porges, or Reece Solomon.

“Go out, open your eyes, see different things, get out of your comfort zone. That’s what makes a person grow. It’s all part of living.” Nick Fouquet

occupation: professional adventurer, actor, Sundance Kid, and designer of Fouquet, a line of espadrilles and accessories

Nick is the spitting image of his free-spirited hero Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Rugged and tanned, in his chambray shirt and Peruvian cowboy hat tilted back, he is inspired by the quote, “Quo non ascendet?”, or “To what heights can I not rise?”. Lofty in his goals, Nick wishes to surf a tsunmai wave, and unrestrained in his lifestyle, his favorite person on SLU is Zarzan, because he has no boundaries. The outer limits are where Nick has gone already, fearlessly backpacking alone for a couple of years from South America to Nepal, Brazil, Thailand, Australia, and many places in between. It’s hard not to love the authentic stylistic touches that come along with traveling to indigenous countries, like a hat made of palm fronds that Nick wears with his toile pineapple pants and studded classic french espadrilles. Not a lot stops Nick from leaving any comfort zone, and once back from his third world excursions, he found himself paddleboarding around Manhattan with professional surfers, which landed him in a loft in Chinatown for a stint before getting evicted and moving to the mountains of Colorado on a whim. The influence of the West can be seen in the most irresistable real-deal Indian beaded moccassins and signature silver lapis cuff with wooly mammoth tooth details made by his uncle. Nick’s present utopia is Venice Beach, where he lives in an adorable bungalo by the beach, complete with hammock and citrus tree. I love how Nick feels clothes come to him as easily as they go – “It’s like a layer of yourself that goes on and falls off.” For him, it’s a symbol of renewal. Nick attributes his open attitude to his travels – he feels it’s necessary to experience new things to live and grow. A moment that he feels has most changed him was a night in Nepal, after two weeks of treking and eating rice and beans. He was welcomed into a house by a local family, and after dinner, the ten-year-old, in her usual ritual, went to another room to pray to her Hindu god. There was something about her faith for Nick that had an impact – she seemed happier than anyone he had ever known and notably, without a BlackBerry in sight.

If you like Nick, you might also enjoy Ash Epps and Nick Cohen.

“I have kept a lot of stuff. I think it is really important to keep a part of you…It’s just weird to me when people totally reinvent themselves, erase themselves, and then do it again. You’re kind of losing your soul.” Natasha Ghosn

occupation: blogger, t-shirt designer, and manager of Bess in Los Angeles

Natasha’s passion for authenticity is so charming in her Gena Rowlands-inspired pink pants suit that she bought on a whim in Palm Springs and rarely wears out, but loves because she can see herself hosting a talk show in it, but only one that is on par with her favorite emcee Dick Cavett. A lover of unique and authentic personalities (from Bette Davis to Graham Parsons), Natasha yearns to bring back a TV show like the aforementioned one, because the legend himself took the time to delve into each person he interviewed to the point where he might actually sing a song with them, “not like today, in and out in ten minutes.” Natasha says that she always has an icon in mind when dressing (“there are no secrets anymore”), which ultimately synthesizes into something that is soley her. This is probably best epitomized by the mix of her children’s Oilily multicolored furry jacket that she calls her “Seditionary sweater on acid,” her grandmother’s Victorian mourning ring, her favorite coconut bag and her uncommon use of white accents, as in the Casio watch that she likes to wear because she doesn’t look at her Blackberry as much (she doesn’t like to be one of those people that always has their nose in the phone) and her Pierre Hardy wedges for Gap. Whether she is “Courtney Love as a fairy” in her chiffon dress and star print tights or finding virtue in a plastic Bank of America-giveaway flower power necklace, style is emotional to the point of intellectual for Natasha. On the legend Peggy Moffitt, who is still has the same Vidal Sassoon haircut and is in Rudi Gernreich everyday, Natasha says, “she doesn’t look like a child or a teenager. She doesn’t say, ‘this worked for me back then.’ She just looks like an icon.”

If you like Natasha Ghson, you might also enjoy Rachel Trachtenburg and Santiago Costillo.

occupation: jewelry designer

“[My favorite thing about fashion is] the transformative aspect of it. You can don the life of a post-apocalyptic cat-burglar or a hedonistic prince of Monaco: there are no boundaries. It’s like singing, screaming, and reciting prose without saying a word.” Tiffany Lee

I love how Tiffany says that she is a million different labels, which for me is really saying that that she cannot be labeled at all. Subconsciously, she says she channels a pirate, Little Bo Peep, and Harry Potter, depending on the day. One of my favorites is her “homeless equestrian clown” look, in her high-waisted jodphur, printed vintage shirt, black waistcoat, and lace-up boots. Tiffany is a wealth of originality; I love the satin head ribbon as oversized bow on the ruby Gucci blouse, the lapel as suspenders, the hand-painted Guns and Roses image on her vintage LV bag, and her ingenuity of wearing one dress open over the other, plaid over stripes. Much like she’s “all about” the fun she finds in wearing a miniature hat on her head, Tiffany is making jewelry by reappropriating something thats “not considered precious,” but looks expensive. She got the idea when a friend made her a necklace made out of shrinky dinks that look like Andy Warhol.

If you like Tiffany, you might also like Monica Seggos and Sabrina Bacon.

occupation: blogger, designer, and model

“I’ve always gone against the grain. I haven’t figured out why yet, but there’s a reason…I was never popular in school, and I was always doing something off the wall…I’m here to make known the unknown, and that’s what’s important to me.” Krystal Simpson

Krystal started her blog because she didn’t want to work for anyone else – “I’m completely self-made. I hate the middle man. I don’t want to have to go through somebody else for them to say okay or not okay. If I want to put it out, I’ll put it out.” Amen, especially when the middle man has become an epidemic of pandering to the lowest common denominator. Let’s see, the cover of an unnamed fashion magazine with a super model grinning a wooden smile in clothes that she feels no affinity for, with cover lines that say “Shape up for Spring” (oy vey, haven’t we heard this before)? Or Krystal, in her newly coveted Bess studded kimono that she loves so much that she sleeps in it, and with so much to say about why we get stuck in life and how to get to the bottom of your core repetitive reactions to things, that any dose of her is like a huge injection of seratonin? It would be hard not to be chic as hell (in that ’60s/’70s rebel kind of way) when your mom was single, fiercely independent, and never lost the sense of her roots of hanging out with the Kinks and Hunter S. Thompson and attended the Monterey Pop and Altamont music festivals. I love her adoration for the Stones’ girlfriends as much as the Stones’ and it is haaaard not to mention the Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg comparisons. I don’t think you can ever get enough of those most meaningful of style idols anyway and especially when it is channeled so seamlessly through Krystal’s free spirit. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that when I was magnetically drawn to her glowing energy at Bryant part in some perfection of high waisted pants, denim shirt, neck scarf, and her signature red lipstick (because she doesn’t wear any other makeup) that I had come across a gem. And it doesn’t get much better than digging into her immeasurable style and story and being left with the thought that “Nothing comes to you in physical reality that you didn’t first comtemplate,” or would you rather “My Three Facelifts: A Twenty-Year Nip and Tuck Diary.”

If you like Krystal, you might also enjoy Chase Cohl, Byrdie Bell, or Philippa Price.

occupation: retired executive director of a nonprofit law firm that she co-founded

“I’ve moved from one country to another, leaving everything behind me. Taking just what fit into a suitcase. I took the pieces that are not replaceable.” Ziva Naumann

Ziva was born in Palestine and was in the Israeli underground, transferring illegal arms, food, and documents. Her great-grandfather and grandfather were from Poland and had a textile plant that supplied fabric to Saville Row and the Russian Army. I can see her heritage coming through in the “guerilla tactics” with which she monomaniacally pursues authentic clothing that does not have a stitch of machinery in it. She has the instincts of a bloodhound when it comes to the handmade details of anything from the Sinai or that is native in origin, whether it be Bedouin, Yemenite, Indian, or Mexican. She rarely frequents a conventional shop. Accumulating happens in the most unconventional of ways, and Ziva is her own designer. When she saw a village of people wrapped in a fabric she loved, she stayed an extra night to have it made into a dress, or she buys a bag made by a woman on the street that is being sewn from discarded leather strips. While in Jericho, she convinced the owner of a restaurant to sell her an embroidered jacket off of his wall. As deeply as she is into every thread, Ziva is equally dedicated to assisting the working poor of Los Angeles and family law, which she has been doing since 1981. Soulful and stylish, Ziva is our own modern day tribal warrior for the cause of being memorable and mattering.

If you like Ziva, you might also enjoy Ellen Fisher, Luxor Tavella, or Donna Harrison.