“I don’t really obssess, , because if I want it, I get it. I think obsessing is when you want what you can’t have. I always find a way.” Natalie Joos

occupation: casting agent and writer

When I scouted Natalie at a show during last season’s fashion week, I had no idea that she was a highly esteemed casting director in NYC. However, I could see instantly, that she had that comfort in her skin and in her style that makes my head turn. It has been a lucky twist of fate for me in doing StyleLikeU, that I usually don’t know (and don’t care) “who” I am stopping to approach for a closet interview, other than the instinct that they pique my visual radar. Not trying too hard can often be when the magic happens, as it was for Natalie when she decided to come to New York, from London (originally, from Belgium), early in her career life. With two suitcases, and an open attitude, Natalie says that she came with no expectations, and was approached by “all of the right people” as a result. “I am just going to do this,” and “I never said, ‘if’ it doesn’t work out, that I am going to go home.” Natalie says that she dresses in characters, depending on her moods, which is what she did as a child in the small village that she grew up, which had “lots of castles and green.” Already into Dior at thirteen, ( which her mom would reproduce for her), her appreciation for effortless and seminal pieces is as intense as ever. I am still dreaming about her black double-breasted Givenchy jumper, and I share her passion for expensive shoes. Natalie loves vintage, but, for her, the most current in designer shoes, just one pair can set the tone of everything. I am completely fascinated by the fact that Natalie wrote her college thesis on “The Ideal Standards of Beauty and the Influence of Mass Media.” It basically analyzes the high and low “conjunctures” of body image and how it changes over time based on the cultural influences. “There were times in history, where being fat was a sign of being wealthy.” Natalie is in congruence with my own feelings, that we are heading to a time where we celebrate “real” people, for lack of a better phrase. I like to look at it as we are entering a Renaissance, where we value the indivdual as a whole, and the outside as a reflection of what’s inside, both equal in importance. For example, someone like Natalie, who’s inner and outer, effortless, beauty, brings to life something as simple and classic as Ralph Lauren’s version of a Pendelton cardigan, she makes you want to own one.

Check out Natalie’s blog, Tales of Endearment

If you like Natalie Joos, you may also enjoy Julie Kauss, Ashley Wick and Frederique van der Wal.

Shelly Bromfield from Stylelikeu on Vimeo.

“I would never go to an event without a necklace. I would walk in the room and feel physically sick. The room would spin. I keep it next to my bed at night.” Shelly Bromfield

occupation: fashion designer and consultant

Shelly loves her jewelry and accessories, with a PASSION, and she comes to the (taste) table with creds. She was the Design/Inspiration Director for Donna Karan for twenty-one years, and began her career working for one of the original department stores, John Wanamaker, in the ’60′s, where she was considered the “crazy assistant buyer running around half naked… in very minis.” At that time, she and Betsy Johnson fell mutually fell in love with one another’s style. Shelly has one of the most drop dead, enviable jewelry collections of some of the most epic designers from the past thirty years (all of whom I too consider to be iconic in their art), like Stephen Dweck, Patricia Von Muslin, Robert Lee Morris and Erickson Beamon. Shelly is so dedicated to her jewels that they are worn in piles, on whatever limb will hold them. She is so well know as a possible security risk at Kennedy airport, that the security guards have given up on frisking her and just let her go through. In addition to the designers above, Shelly loves her “bling bling,” and would rather have something from the street, like her amazing ten dollar leather studded bracelets, than a diamond one, anyday. In fact, if one of her twenty something boyfriends gave her a couple of diamond rings, she says, “I would just say no… but if you want to give me some of those bling watches that Nelly wears, ‘I’ll take them.’” Then there are Shelly’s “spiritual-design” friends, like Rachel Brown, whose Kabbalah-inspired jewelry, I personally LOVE. The chunky rings and large plate-shaped necklaces, with hebrew writing, look like one of those gorgeous extravagant ornaments that wrap around the Torah, kind of old testament ghetto. Shelly was a regular at Studio 54 decked out in leopard, and today, she frequents the Boom Boom room, also decked in leopard. However, as always with Shelly, there’s no need for drugs and alcohol, as she’s just way too high on life, showcasing her talented ebony, ivory, silver and crystal, larger-than-life friends.

If you like Shelly, you may also enjoy Jermaine Jagger, and Barbara Flood.

“As an artist there will always be a moment where my attention is interrupted by something around me. These forces in life that are constantly grasping our attention. They take away from our ability to really be ourselves. I try not to let them control me.” Ansoni

occupation: composer and artist

Ansoni grew up in Japan, where the structure of rituals and traditions have played a role in shaping his ideals and his appreciation for the meticulousness of deeply rooted aesthetics. Grounded, like a modern day Buddha, with his warm and dreamy inner smile, he speaks fondly of the Japanese tea ceremonies of his childhood, “they follow the rules religously…certain colors, all the ornaments have to be in the right order.” Ideologies like these helped teach him to look at things holistically, while also creating his appreciation for detail. “I find in myself, whether it is getting dressed or making music… how clothes look as an entire composition not just from the front. I try to listen to my music in totally different scenarios.” By simplifying and eliminating, it is within the strict rules that Ansoni finds his focus and stride, including in his clothes. Underpinnings of crisp white shirts, fitted blazers with attached vests and sleeves pre-rolled up, and just the right combinations of shades from black to white are a constant, like OM. Focused and committed to “strict ideals,” there is an inner peace and wisdom beyond Ansoni’s young years, “it could be the way I dress, or paint, or compose..it’s important to filter what you are not interested in and have concentration.”

If you like Ansoni, you may also enjoy Fatima Al Qadiri and James Gillespie.

“I wanted to be anything but what I was. I think that over the years being exposed to blogs, to different people and seeing different types of beauty has really helped me own [my own beauty].” Diane Naegel

occupation: jewelry designer

What has happened, that even in New York City, when Diane wears a black ’30′s cocktail dress with a cocktail hat, people are yelling at her, “it isn’t Halloween?” It does makes you question why we are so dulled out as a society from caring about our appearance and expressing our uniqueness. And why do we need Halloween to let loose or to care about how we leave the house? “It was really strange to me that the place that is supposed to be the pinnacle of style, glamour and indivduality, that someone in 2010 would find it really weird to see someone dressed in evening attire with accessories to match.” Hopefully, we are moving toward and back to a more forgiving and authentic world where blending in and dummying down is not God. Diane attributes a newly found appreciation of her own idiosyncratic beauty, meaning definitely beautiful but not in the all too prevailing, Jennifer Anniston kind of way, to blog culture and its exposure to all different types of physical attractiveness. “I thought my nose looked like a witch and I would never want my photo taken.” The rest speaks for itself, Diane is an inspiration in the confidence with which she wears her ’40′s bathing suit, her “bitchy, Joan Crawford” fox and her ’30′s and ’40′s dresses for their reverence of curves. Diane’s signature pageboy, bob haircut is modeled after her idol, Louise Brooks, the Follies dancer, who became a rebel actress, (she loathed and bucked Hollywood in the ’20′s.) A testament to Diane’s attraction to individuality and a willingness to stand alone, Louise is a relatively obscure (for today), but eminently worthy heroine. She was fiery, independent and talented, possessing the ingredients to become an icon, but most of all, for her value of integrity above success.

If you like Diane, you may also enjoy Lux Leekley and Kimme Aaberg.

“Some artists that have really influenced my style are Yinka Shonibare, Egon Schiele, Henri Matisse, Kay Hassan, Cindy Sherman, and Nick Cave (an artist who focuses on, “the sound and the effects that a costume elucidates when it’s being worn”). When in need of inspiration, I usually turn to an art book before a fashion magazine, because there are so many ways to interpret art via clothing, and I am able to combine the two things that I love!” Ariel Adkins

occupation: student, blogger and artist

Anyone that has cried over a pair of Marni shoes that were found on the last day of the Barney’s warehouse sale, for 90 percent off, in your size, that were jammed under the shelf, is a member of my tribe. We see completely eye to eye on the fact that it is more about the hunt and visual stimulation, than it is about purely consuming. Ariel says that things in life are intense for her, “I like intense color, intense fashion and I am very emotional… people say that I am Pisces to the max” (I am also a water sign, Scorpio, and intense is an understatement.) I love Ariel’s passion for detail in the way she describes her Bill Blass vintage two-peice, pastel set, how it reminds her of the contemporary designer, Isabel Marant, and how the neon fuschia pump she wears with it has nothing to do with it stylistically, but works perfectly color-wise. Ariel approaches clothing like the art historian that she is. She wrote her thesis on “Clothing as a Cultural Medium in Contemporary Art,” where she enlightens us about artists that reflect on the cultural phenomenon of clothing and are completely divorced from the marketing of it. Among a few she is particularly inspired by is virtuoso Yonika Shonibare, who turn garments of dutch wax printed textiles into opulent theater. She was the first girl to wear a tie to school in her hometown of Virginia Beach, a town with a vibe that she carries into her current urban life in her floor length Diane Von Furstenburg printed dress and pink floppy hat. However, the “greatest thing” that she owns is her red Valentino gown that she got for fifty dollars at a sample sale, and of course, she cried when she got it.

Check out Ariel’s Blog.

If you like Ariel, you may also enjoy Haley Wollens and Sarah Hamilton.

“I’m not bound to any conventional sense of what’s ugly and what’s not ugly.” Byrdie Bell

occupation: actor

When I showed up to film Bryrdie, it was also the first time I had met her. She answered the door in a terry bath robe, wet-haired and makeup-free, exuding right away her open and willing-to-share all spirit. While she was lacing up her plastic platform stripper boots, it was easy to get drawn into her stories of being an outsider in Greenwich, CT, where the dress code was topsiders only. The key to Byrdie’s impeccable style is how she pairs these clear massive platforms with the sweetest of floral vintage dresses and her hair swept up. When worn this way, the boots go from trash to class, the latter being what Byrdie is all about. She’s currently obsessed with finishing everything off with her new boxy secondhand jean jacket, and is never sorry about the pieces she has spent alot of money on, like her Rick Owens leather one. Byrdie wears her ultra chunky Dior booties with everything from the riding jodhpurs and white eyelet blouse to the sequin vintage “Balmainesque” evening dress and black leather jacket. It is innate in Byrdie to know exactly what the “essential” pieces are in her wardrobe that give her that eye-catching ease. She is as comfortable and natural in the Dior platforms as in her terry robe.

If you like Byrdie, you may also enjoy Sophie Conti, Ashley Wick, and Sabrina Diaz.

“I would come out of my body as a child, and I would go into my body… I think it comes from my heritage. My father says that my great grandmother is Blackfoot and my great grandfather is Cherokee.” Kelly Mills

occupation: fashion publicist

Kelly began her career as an archeologist and as a result, brings a uniquely macrocosmic perspective to her present incarnation as a publicist within the fashion business of New York City. Her interest in archeology began with “always having had this spiritual connection, a need to understand more than what she could see.” Kelly’s heightened attunement drove her early in her career, to go back to her roots and learn about where she came from, not just her own geneology, but way back to the origins of man, as in Middle Eastern cultures. Eventually, Kelly’s inner voice led her to New York to study Fashion History and Exhibition design. She arrived in her archeologist wardrobe, “all Gucci by Tom Ford” and never left Manhattan, despite the omen of arriving two weeks before 9/11. I see it all as fateful, because Kelly is a healer and a visionary. Today, she is rocking it as a conscious public relations maveric. She has shed her ’90′s duds for the globally-minded, indigenous and futurisitically focused, burgeoning designers that she represents, such as Telfar Clemens, LaQuan Smith (closet to come) and Mari J Brooklyn. Together and as a whole, Kelly leads her company on a path to help rid the world of the “secrecy of fashion… making it part of the community, a charity, not a competition… and making international connections.” In a sense, Kelly is herself, a child of the world, with different sets of grandparents that were African American, Caucasian and American Indian. She says that she does what she does because she actually loves people, a “peace” that personally I find has been missing from fashion PR today. On the contrary, Kelly is a voice of the inclusive. She says, “designer clothing is something for everybody, no matter what size, what color, what sexuality and no matter what the cost.”

If you like Kelly, you may also enjoy Joanne Petit-Frere, Dalad Kambhu and Jolieba Jackson.

“I do a lot of research before designing a collection. I’ll immerse myself in the reading of amazing books, watching films, and drawing lucidly… It’s a really enjoyable time. It’s a time of searching.” Samantha Pleet

occupation: fashion designer

In high school, Samantha sat at the theater table, next to the kids at the “Star Trek” table. Presently, she lives in Brooklyn, a long way from home, by Oak Road in Philadelphia, with horses and a peach pit style diner known for their banana splits. There is a fairy tale sweetness and clean Americana novel, feel glittering beneath Samantha’s urban edge, in her signature Madeline meets Hasidic-style hats, high waisted shorts, jumpers and shrunken blazers. The seeds of her bringing fables to life were in the cafeteria at school. Today, she says, “I like to take influences from books, films, characters and history… my clothes tell a story.” When Samantha gets dressed in the morning, it’s admittedly for “whatever adventure might happen that day.” Her red and white striped dress that she wears with a vintage straw hat was derived from a narrative she created for her Spring 2010 collection, where clothes pack easily into one suitcase for a road trip to upstate New York, and one might end up at a waterfall. She told me that next collection (Spring 2011) is inspired by J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey . I love that classic bohemian glamour of ’50′s, Smith College, Princeton University, waspy intellectuals emotionally stifled, but loveable in their upper crust Manhattan nervous breakdown lives. I can see lots of worn cashmere and loafers. Samantha could herself be stepping into the New York Yacht club for a weekend at home from college in her red and navy Chanel dress that her grandmother gave her. Perhaps, Diane Keaton, one of Samantha’s icons, who she fantasizes will play her in twenty years (should there be a movie of Samantha’s life) could be cast as a character in the tale of her new collection as an iconoclast Smithy, she’s the perfect free spirit in tweeds and plaids.

If you like Samantha, you may also enjoy Hannah Dilworth, Nova Landaeus, and Ashley Wick.

“Too many artists are afraid to call themselves artists. Too many artists are afraid to follow their heart. Acting is the most important thing to me. When I am in a scene with another actor, and they are putting in 100%, and I am putting in 100%, it’s the most beautiful thing in the entire world.” Dani Baum

occupation: actress

I love how ungarded and effusive Dani is about life. To decompress she “dances like there is no tomorrow” and she is so refreshingly honest about the trouble she has finding a middle ground, “people say to me all of the time, ‘you are either all or nothing.’” Her driving force and the reason she gets up in the morning is to act, “life beats down and crushes our souls and theater reminds us that we have one,” a Sanford Meisner quote that she read during her first year in acting school. Life is Dani’s stage as much as theater is. In 7th grade she arrived to the school dance fearlessly, in her crushed velvet, tie dyed Betsey Johnson jumper from TJ Maxx. Today, one of her top ten favorite pieces is a dramatic houndstooth wool cape that she wears with alluring, point d’esprit over the knee hose and a high waisted pair of underwear, which are inspired by one of her latest obsessions with the ’40′s. Most of her wardrobe is one of a kind and her favorite pieces are from her mom and aunts, like her prized Van Cleef and Arpel clover necklace (there is a funny story in the video of how she almost lost it in bear costume.) Dani says that she has always been addicted to being who she truly is, “like a moth to light,” despite often being misunderstood. With her head proudly wrapped in her mother’s peacock scarf, she admits that wearing things that are not thought of as the most typically beautiful, is challenging for her father (who calls them schmatas), but are fine with her. Dani is a sparkling version of Grey Gardens chic in her turban with her Roberto Cavalli print dress and Calvin fringed shoes. One of her favorite dress’, a hint of headmistress chic, is a vintage pleated knit shirt dress that she wore as Martha (the owner of a boarding school set in the ’30′s), in her favorite Lillian Hellman play, “The Children’s Hour”. Like the true thespian that she is, Dani compares two pairs of shoes that she owns to herself, “One is dark and one is light. One is shiney and one is matte. One feels hard to the touch and the other, soft. “I just think that I am all of those things….and there are not many people out there who are willing to show you all sides of their personality.”

“Who cares about what celebrities are wearing? Someone told them to wear it. [I like] Faye Dunaway and Barbara Streisand back in the day when she wore the see through pajamas. Yes it’s something that I wouldn’t wear but she could pull off anything.” Brooklyn Babydoll

occupation: civil servant, burlesque, go-go dancer, and pin up girl

Brooklyn Babydoll says that she comes across as a bitch, but she is a total goofball and she spends a lot of time cracking herself up. She cracks me up, like when she goes off on the people at the opera in jeans and hoodies, “were they just walking down the street and decided to go to the Lincoln Center?” Brooklyn Babydoll is an old fashioned girl in that everything has a matching purse, a hat for all occassions and I am guessing an obsessive cocktail dress collection (so much so that she takes inteference on eBay as a sign from the universe that she doesn’t really need another one), kind of way. Dressing up in the way that a 1950′s ingenue did in the movies is what Brooklyn Babydoll does everyday, like her cotton candy prom dress that got her “accosted” on the Metro in Paris. Poufy jackets are a bad word, except that she feels that their popularity keeps the price of her precious vintage furs down. I too, like Brooklyn Babydoll, mourn a culture lost to jeans, sweatpants, crocs and flip flops as acceptable on any occassion let alone a special one. However, you might find me in the most artfully ripped jeans at the opera, but never with flip flops.

If you like Brooklyn Babydoll, you may also like Nan Ahern, Shien Lee and Patricia Fox.