Liliane says that she was “born a star,” with her feet turned out and “one foot above her head,” ready to become a prima ballerina (which she later did). Her mother, a milliner and dressmaker for Balenciaga who dressed with extraordinary care (Liliane reflects that she never saw her without her make-up until the day she died), got them arrested in Spain in the ’50s for how short Liliane’s dress was. “She wanted everyone to see her daughter’s legs.” During the war, when they barely had enough to eat, Liliane’s mother made her coats out of blankets, dresses out of drapes, and wooden shoes wrapped in the same material to match– a dress a day, so she never had to wear the same thing twice. So, when Liliane later saw feathers in a shop she loved, naturally she had them made into a dress by her favorite designer, Mark Bouwer (whom she intentionally supported for being, at the time, a total unknown). “You do not have to have money to be chic,” she says, wearing a fringe suede jacket that she bought in a Texas thrift shop.

It’s that “I-can-do-anything” attitude that found Liliane in Hollywood with a seven-year studio contract in the ’50s, despite not speaking a word of English. When the producer John Houseman saw her dancing with her ballet company in NYC, he had to have her audition. She read a part from For Whom The Bell Tolls phonetically, but added that she “must have looked cute.” During her seminal years learning how to sing, tap dance, and fence, Marlon Brando took her aside during the filming of Young Lions and tutored her. “He made me think of the part I was playing… from the inside.” Montgomery Clift took her to the Actor’s Studio, where she met and roomed with Marilyn Monroe. She hunted ducks with Clark Gable in Oregon. Her diamond rings, given to her by “the man she adores, but does not see enough,” didn’t command attention until he gave her twenty-five of them, one for each year of their relationship, that she now stacks on her fingers, just as the movies never fully satisfied Liliane’s passion for the thrill of the moment on stage. In the theater, she says, “You are with the public. You don’t cheat. If they don’t like you, they don’t like you. If they love you, they love you.” When asked what her most memorable role is, she says, “None. It’s yet to come.”

If you love Liliane, you may also like Barbara Flood, Lucie Porges and Jake Oliver.

Ironically, Selima feels that kids can be more judgmental than their parents. When Zoe says that her mom’s Dolce and Gabbana dresses are too super-sexy, Selima’s response is: “Why not?” Pretty much her response to everything she wants to do. When avant-garde French eyeglass designer Alain Mikli hired Selima to work for him in NYC in 1990, she went. When Selima fell in love with a space at the corner of Mercer and Broome, she opened her own eyewear store. When celebrities want her glasses for free, she says no, but then gives them to the people who don’t have the money to buy them. When I asked her to get into the bathtub to shoot her in her red top hat, veil, and Balenciaga blazer, she jumped right in. With Pierre Hardy heels.

Equally her own, but leaning towards a more classic understatement in the Breton stripes and eyelet that her Mom sometimes refers to as her “grandma clothes”, Zoe is not disinclined towards the Balenciaga dress that her Mom bought for her. She has been brought up not to care about what others think when it comes to dressing, including her Mom. However, Selima does admit that her daughter’s style often ends up in the windows of American Apparel, years later. Classic red bermudas and Madewell lace-up boots express Zoe’s unassuming mindfulness. She is concerned with the present state of the world, and her responsibility to it as someone of privilege. “Since I’m surrounded by everything that’s good, I think I should focus on the bad, so I can make it better for everyone. Like with the oil spill– No one went to jail for it. How?!” she says. Clearly her mother’s daughter, Selima lives by thanking God for everything that she has and trying, always, to be as good as possible despite the fact that she is not (yet, anyway) wearing vintage Claude Montana like her Mom.

If you love Selima and Zoe, you may also like Valerie and Jean, Marcelina Kieskiewicz and Karen Robinovitz.

Hats and hatmaking are the ultimate enchantment for Heidi, as they can be made with your own hands, spark a conversation and carry a certain mystique. One of her happiest childhood memories took place at the Queens Botanical Gardens, while wearing her favorite white beach hat with a rose – her golden Kodak moment. As if the illusion of being naked is not chic enough in her chainmail dress that she likens to string theory or how the galaxies net together, Heidi wears it with her melting clock hat, a reference to Salvador Dali and her own attunement to vivid dreams. Heidi’s mom, whom she looks up to for her effortless ability to be gung-ho about everything, remains both a role model and a provocateur for Heidi to push for her own excellence. Heidi describes a dream about herself and her mom, explaining, “There are two beds…both of them identical. One side is me, the other side is my mom, and we would have these joint competitions with each other where we’d both have to make our beds. Every time, my mom would be able to beat me, a split second better.” A haute hat made up of strange plastic flowers and ferns is a creation spawned by Heidi’s interest in how fungi grow out of ants’ heads, worn with a Search and Destroy leopard and lace slip that she describes as Philistine with an old Roman feel to it.

In an iridescent, ecto-plasmic “kind of jelly fish shirt” that Heidi finds playful for its contours, shapes and a voyeuristic peek at the body, she wears her umbrella hat inspired by Issey Miyake, math and architecture. “There’s an alchemy that’s happening that’s interesting. And I go with it and then it’s a whole new concoction. A lot of times, it’s exploratory… but I am always happiest when I am wearing a hat,” Heidi says.

If you love Heidi, you may also like Goldie Rush, Ran Q Huang and Kristine Barilli.

Experiencing a place like Cuba at an impressionable age left Gabriel indelibly instilled with the idea that you don’t need a lot to be happy and even when you are told that you can’t be yourself, you can still find a way. He recently quit modeling after one of his first jobs with Bruce Weber for French Vogue because he couldn’t deal with other people trying to dress him. Gabriel is very particular about going for the real McCoy when it comes to his uniform of cowboy boots, vintage bandanas, wife beaters and Levi’s, all of which reflect his zeal for engaging authentically in this world. Once back in his Washington state hometown after living at sea, while most others during pre-adolescence were “finding” themselves on Facebook (he still doesn’t have one), Gabriel started taking part in Native American ceremonies like sweat lodges (which is about going back into the womb, cleansing yourself and being reborn), pipe smoking and pow wows. At twelve, Gabriel was adopted by ceremony into the Omaha tribe through the Making of Relatives, where, if you love someone as family and they love you as family, you can publicly name them as such. Essentially, Gabriel has the good fortune of having acquired another set of parents of Native American descent, whose crests are tattooed prominently on his left ankle, along with the moon and stars of his adopted deer clan and a wolf for his wolf family.

The UT tattoo on Gabriel’s left forearm stands for urban tribe and commemorates a portion of Gabriel’s adolescence in which he was involved with putting on hip hop shows, rapping and playing with GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan, Hieroglyphics, AC Alone and Abstract Rude. Fast forward to Gabriel’s time spent in New York City, and possibly the definitive kinship for him to date is that of his band Dog Soldier Society, which was formed when he was part of Collective Hardware, an artist colony on The Bowery. The band’s first song, “Fire on the Bowery,” which was not about a physical fire but the passion and dedication to making something outstanding and beautiful, eerily foretold the burning down of The Collective and all of Gabriel’s belongings along with it. He was left homeless once again with just the clothes on his back, including all of his traditional pow wow dancer regalia, eagle feathers, hooves, a bustle, a staff, a wing fan and art.

The actual Dog Soldiers are a Cheyenne warrior society that went into battle with a sash of rope tied around their waist and three arrows, which are tattooed on Gabriel’s right forearm. They’d pin the rope into the ground and when the battle started they could only fight as far as the rope would let them go, like a dog tied to a leash. The symbolism of the ritual was that there was no surrender, simply victory or death. You weren’t able to retreat and that was your chunk of land. “That’s the way we try to live with this band – no retreat, no surrender, victory or death,” Gabriel says. “I prefer to make my connections with a smile and a handshake and a hug or through my music.” Of his new leather jacket, Gabriel explains that he bought it along with a whole new vintage wardrobe so that he could hold his new nephew, Ira Joaquin Friedman, whose birthday – the eighth of the third month, in the eleventh year – is represented in a tattoo in honor of his bloodline: “He’s the first of the new generation.”

If you love Gabriel, you may also like Chris Ford, Ludget Delcy and Naomi Melati Bishop.

Ruining the flirtiness of a chiffon pleated skirt with studded Converses and a tuxedo jacket, complementing a “man-getter” evening gown with an army jacket and a fur vest or wearing body-revealing red skinny jeans with a leather shirt over a button-down shirt and under a chambray shirt are among Leandra’s tricks for repelling that guy that objectifies women: “My blog is a process of elimination. It helps you weed out the bad ones.” Leandra comes from “a rare breed” of authentic dressers, including her Turkish grandmother, whose closet is Leandra’s favorite vintage shop. Two of her favorite heirlooms from her grandmother are an ostrich skin Hermes clutch and green vintage Chanel bag that Leandra will be passing down to her own children and will not be wearing with a plain t-shirt dress, at least not without her brother’s cardigan or maybe her most prized mustache necklace, which she wears on her face.

If you love Leandra, you may also like Sabrina Diaz, Kristen Lee and Preetma Singh.

Hannah is Canadian born with the characteristic “flower shop-owning, thrift store clothing-wearing…super laid-back love for nature, golden retrievers, skateboarding, [and] hikes in the mountains.” Her obsession with the nostalgia of mint lace dresses and floral veiled hats inspires Hannah to design vintage lingerie and collect and sell antique clothes, but leaves her resisting the pressure of chronic questions about the future: “What are you going to be when you grow up? What do you want to be? What school are you going to go to? Where are you going to live? It’s always looking forward and there’s not much emphasis placed on the beauty of now.” Landon has his own sense of nostalgia, with a particular regard for wild nomads like Huck Finn, whose childhood on the river was nothing like his own, growing up in Phoenix – the character’s sartorial influence can be seen in his signature straw hat. Of his art, Landon says, “I try to think of it as remembering a painting instead of creating something. It existed, you just take it… it’s all about perception.” I love how Landon wants others to see in his paintings their same source of creativity that he draws from and how Hannah loves to step outside of her own style when buying for other people, we’re all interconnected after all.

If you love Hannah and Landon, you may also like Samantha Pleet, Adam and Karolina and Dustin Hollywood.

Ultra-critical of himself, Eric leaves little room for anything outside his own well-curated spectrum when getting dressed. He attributes his self-imposed perfectionism to being a Libra and takes it as far as not needing to own a full-length mirror. It’s just “Check the face, go,” he says. “I tend to land on one particular thing I love for a while and I stick with it…Isabella Rossellini said that her closet is only navy blue, black, and gray because she doesn’t have the time to make decisions. It’s very smart.” Eric wore one outfit- his YSL tuxedo jacket that he says makes him feel important with a Rick Owens’ take on a tuxedo pant, an Acne sweatshirt and Prada patent loafers that he feels make the look traditional and not Goth – every day for months, withstanding people’s stares for its chic priest or “rabbi/Amish-gone-awry” look. He owns a vintage French linen Ungaro shirt that is disintegrating, but the boxy, very wide ’80s fit and the fabric is so unsurpassed that he takes it to the bathroom sink as if it’s the “holy grail.” Eric will go through a phase where he’ll wear all rings and then one day “wake up and think, ‘I look like a fucking hairdresser,’” and then not wear rings forever and go to bracelets, moving on yet again to necklaces in the summertime. “It’s one thing or the other, it’s not everything together.”

Rei Kawakubo, whom Eric admires, says that her work is an exercise in suffering and that that is the time you are the most creative. Considering the despicable pain that Eric has had to endure throughout his life for being gay, it is clear that his share of hurting must inform his resourceful creative talents. He’s been jumped by someone in a Cadillac who smacked him in the head with a Yellow Pages and has been shot with a BB gun by a neighborhood kid – the assailant’s parents claimed he had to be innocent because he had accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into his heart just the weekend before the incident. Getting older and losing it is something that Eric fears, “becoming bland like applesauce…my mom always said if you have too many friends, you lose your edge.” But between his life’s experiences and insights, obsessing over the ideal leopard print accent and giving the same clever answer to what his least and most favorite thing is about fashion – “It’s like a private club and a special ed class” – it’s unlikely that he will ever be considered milk toast or applesauce, no matter how hard he tries.

If you love Eric, you may also like Jake Oliver, Julie Kauss and Kevin Hwang.

Larkin has made six official albums and it wasn’t until she turned twenty-one that she realized that putting on more lipstick might sell more of them. Her mom was determined to have her daughter focused on her accomplishments rather than being beautiful by making sure that no one on the commune complimented Larkin on her looks. This was in part her manifestation of a rebellion against the fashion industry’s effects on Larkin’s grandmother, who was a model and suffered from a lifetime of bad eating habits which eventually killed her. It wasn’t until the age of ten that Larkin had a notion of what being pretty was, which gave her the indescribable gift of being confident in her thoughts and opinions and unconcerned with the prospect of growing old and nobody finding her attractive anymore. “People were always complimenting me on being outwardly creative…[my mom] was teaching me how to sew and how to paint and fix things, and there was always this idea that if we want something, first we’re gonna try to make it.” Instead of spending money on a wedding dress, Larkin bought a sewing machine and made one herself for the first time out of a bunch of older wedding and lace dresses and feathers. The result wasn’t something hippy dippy, but instead a sculptural, three-dimensional couture creation that lends her more of a regal air than a Stepford wife in wedding white.

Endlessly multidimensional, Larkin is as much a sweet country girl in her floral dress with a hyper crinoline, as she is a slick and dark sophisticate in a coat she made out of Persian upholstery fabric. She plays psychedelic folk music and travels all around the world singing about “morbid and grim things” that are “definitely influenced by the Grimm fairy tales which my mother read to me all the time because she was so proud that my father was somehow distantly related to the Grimm brothers. Children fairy tales are so dark and I always wanted to make music that was kind of like that, that children would love and people would find beautiful but just below the surface, there’s all of the strange and dark things that are very real in human life.” Whether in haunting wings on a lace-up corset dress or earthy and authentic Cherokee moccasins, she is as omnipotent on the stage as she is in life with what she refers to as her freak sensibility. When studying sculpture at her alma mater, Larkin discovered her inner musical artist by turning her art exhibits into performances in an effort to exaggerate what she felt was her misfit status there. “Some people are just never satisfied [with the status quo] and I think a lot of those times, those people become artists,” Larkin keenly points out.

If you love Larkin, you may also like Oliver and Kira, Joanne Petit-Frere, Sielian Lie and Guillaume Boulez.