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.

With a love for the music of the ’60s like The Kinks and style icons like Marianne Faithful, Kristin has an eye for the decade’s severe eyeliner, tons of mascara and pale lips. Those roots, along with working extensively in fashion with the greats like photographers Patrick Demarchelier and Peter Lindbergh as a makeup artist, has contributed to her well-curated aesthetic. Kristin doesn’t buy a lot but when she does, it’s lasting. I love how she wears a more classic red Givenchy dress with one long Pam Love cross earring and a pair of chunky Ann Demuelemeester ankle boots (I have the same), or an asymmetrical Margiela dress with a pair of her favorite skin-tight and comfy Tripp jeans that have one white and one black leg. It’s all evidence of Kristin’s perfected choosiness and magnetic ease with herself, just as she is.

If you love Kristin, you may also like Kristine Barilli, James Gillespie and Dotti.

The romantic influences of Justin’s past are poignant – the way his white creeper/oxfords resemble the ones Joe Strummer wore and his skull ring is cast from the same mold as Keith Richards’. Justin’s aunt, Barbara, babysat for Jack Kerouac and he remembers a picture of her, smoking in a pencil skirt with the legendary author in front of a ’49 Studebaker. Justin read “On The Road” at thirteen, which prompted him to hitchhike all over the country later in life and echoes his childhood, growing up with “vagabond” parents who moved around a lot. His father was a drummer for Island Records and met his mother, a former model, when he picked her up while driving a taxi. Justin’s mother turned him on to records, including Paul Revere and The Raiders, Pet Sounds and The Monkeys, which prompted him to start playing music at ten years old. To this day, Justin is obsessed with studying the roots of music, like how the Stones were into Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and all of the Delta Blues musicians. In deference to his mentors, Justin got into poetry through songwriting when he read that Dylan said, “If you ever wanted to be a great songwriter you have to study the greats.” He has now read lots of the classics, including Tennyson and Yeats. Lord Byron is one of his new favorites, of whom Justin poetically says wasn’t wearing any sensitive sweaters and crying in his Earl Grey, but “left this earth in a malestrom of women, hedonism and revolution.”

Lord Byron said, “Every day confirms my opinion of the superiority of the vicious life.” Accordingly, Justin describes his band, The Bowery Riots, as floor to floor rock and roll with a social consciousness, an appreciation of the past that strives to have the impact of a band like the Clash, who took a stand by painting a picture and not drawing hard lines. The romance for nostalgia is everywhere from his Levi’s jeans, original Rat Fink jacket and windowpane plaid pleated trousers with a foulard shirt to his longing for the time of session players when they all knew each other and it was a community. Justin has a photo of “The Million Dollar Quartet” -comprised of Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lewis and Elvis – which he keeps as an example of the possibility of being in the studio with icons before they were icons. Referring to the internet, Justin says, “I don’t think there’s the same player aspect of knowing different musicians, like Paul Butterfield when he was back in Dylan’s band, or The Band who was playing with Ronnie Hawkins, they knew each other. Jimmy Page was a session player for so many different albums from The Kinks to The Who because Townshend couldn’t write his own solos, and so Page had to come in and play on the album for ‘My Generation.’”

The folklore surrounding musicians of yesteryear is missing for Justin. Gone is the time when they gave themselves their own names, dressed a certain way, projected certain things and created a world that had mystery. You bought into that world and it meant something to listen to the whole of the album to share in the obscure meanings, as opposed to the lost context that comes with the iPod. Justin feels that people used to take music more seriously, “look at the liner notes…see who wrote the song, when it was recorded. Now you’re just that band that got on the Twilight soundtrack.” Similarly, fashion for Justin is more about craftsmanship, like his interest in old cars and his collection of two-toned wingtips. In a Paul Smith watch plaid classic trench or a distressed leather jacket from the ’50s, Justin says, “It’s just a world I live in, everyone has one. Call it whatever you want.”

If you love Justin, you may also like Philip Crangi, Sibyl Buck and Ashton Michael.

The river that runs through Angelica’s grandfather’s village in New Mexico was named after the town that her grandmother was from – a time warp, Angelica says. It’s the kind of simple existence that the young Brooklyn mom wouldn’t mind living in one day, although Berlin, where Ben once lived while pursuing his music career, remains an option for its present purity of the arts. Angelica’s mother is her biggest influence, a “true lover of life and food, extremely giving and exciting and never afraid to be herself,” as her daughter recalls. She was the sort of free spirit that is deserving of the name, the kind that a designer would would emulate on the runway and the kind that makes Project Runway look like the uninspiring empty filling of space that it is. At times, she was in high-waisted pants with a shirt tucked in and wrapped leather sandals, or skirts worn high with Peruvian socks and Birkenstocks or clogs. At other times, she dressed like a man to avoid being noticed. Always with a camera over her shoulder, her long dark flowing hair and arresting beauty in the vein of Ali MacGraw, she could be wildcrafting or picking herbs in Sedona and then, on an impulse, drive three hours with her kids for dim sum in Phoenix. While some wear Pendleton in search of genuine design, Angelica was wrapped in the scratchy but handsome prints throughout her childhood.

Take 3: One of Anglelica’s most prized dresses is one that her mother wore when she was pregnant with her. There is a photo of her mom in it, standing in the Aravaipa Canyon creek where Angelica was born. Angelica was my assistant for three years when I was a stylist and there wasn’t a day that I wasn’t bowled over by her inner poise and effortless stylish charm. It was a shock to me during this interview that she said that she was inspired by my outifts. Both Ben and Angelica have that actual careless, unaffected ease in their clothes that comes with knowing who you are. You are so comfortable with life that you don’t need much and what you have looks like alot. She, in her Burberry trench with a layer of flannel, the better-than-Celine-for-a-lot-less modern take on a classic clog and her hair in a bun, or in one of her multiple vintage Indian dresses and heirloom jewelry piled on, with each piece having a meaning. He, in a loden military trench with a layer of flannel or a fedora, Uniqlo jeans and a pom pom necklace from a friend that he makes masculine and serious. Every picture tells a story, and the one of Ben’s white Vans – the same ones, like much of his wardrobe selections, since he was ten – and Angelica’s blood red moccasin booties from the source in New Mexico tells this one.

If you love Angelica and Ben, you may also like Gerard and Valeria, Reece Solomon and Ian Bradley.

As if she is actually a character from a film based on the ’50s, Dominque feels that she is an “old lady at heart” and actually sets her flaming Karen Elson-inspired red hair with pin curls and setting lotion. There is a 1956 Oldsmobile Rocket parked outside her house, saddle shoes are what she wears to walk the dog and Dominique boasts that “There’s nothing like big boobs, a skinny waist, a huge full skirt, little ankles and real high heels.” Especially interesting is the mix of her very prominent peacock and rose tattoos into the retro red lips and overall feminine pin-up style.

There is no replacing the enrichment that a grandmother with lots of furs and jewels and parents who listened to a lot of blues can bring to a child’s creative world, like it did for Dominque. Similarly, there’s no substitute for the true celebration of the art of cinema and the actors in it, not even another evening gown. Eccentricity is a gift and it comes from the celebration of life, not commerce. Just take a look at the spirit of one of Dominique’s icons, Marchesa Luisa Casati.

If you love Dominique, you may also like Diane Naegel, Michael Arenella and Kimmie Aaberg.

I’m guessing that moderation is not in Kimi’s vocabulary. She plays the guitar, keyboards, and drums, sings and has a wrist of silver bracelets that climb up to her elbows. Just as making music is such a deep passion that she’s willing to be a starving artist, it’s not just about the façade of owning things for her, either. The rituals of putting on jewelry is as important as the sound it makes when she walks. Life in her Lindsay Thornburg hooded cloaks and her grandmother’s robes allows Kimi to disappear into her very much alive childhood obsessions with witches, warlocks and elves. In fact, Kimi feels that she is presently in her ultimate playing dress up phase. She wears a belt as a necklace, triple-X sweaters with elaborate lace tights and is so loyal, as Scorpios are, to her combat boots that she glues and tapes them together.

Kimi is all gypsy and not only in appearance. She was born and spent most of her childhood in a small village outside of Munich and moved to Colorado as a teenager. Though she is comfortable in long feather earrings, sheer Stevie Nicks-like caftans and being on the road touring with her band, she finds the constant of music in her life grounding. The fortresses Kimi built as a kid playing house in the “magical woodlands” of her youth are now altars of figurines and drapes that she brings with her while traveling, in an effort to feel at home. The Libra in her is “in the clouds” and has a tattoo from The Last Unicorn that says, “I am always dreaming, even when I am awake it is never finished.”

If you love Kimi, you may also like Marika Wilson, Pamela Love and Sarah McGovern.

Currently, she is in an anti-fashion mood, due both to the dedication to her music, which she believes is more powerful if the focus is not on how she dresses, and to the overdose of it when you have been born and bred in The Big Apple. Sam quit modeling because they wanted her to wear dresses to castings, but she couldn’t be someone other than herself. I admire the fact that she refuses to use her “sex appeal” to make it. The Kardashians, Snooki… makes you wonder whether women’s liberation even happened. Sam’s shredded-to-a-pulp Converse tell not only the story of her endless passion for concert-going, but of how good taste is really born out of being true to yourself, not giving your power away to anything or anyone else. Every time you try to fit in or be who someone else wants you to be, it shows.

If you love Sam, you may also like Sarah Temple-Raston, Max Hurd, Siena Fleming and Jenny Shimizu.

If you like Emma, you may also enjoy Debra Rapoport, Hannah Dilworth and Susan Cianciolo.

If you like Eri, you may also enjoy Ashton Michael, Magda Berliner and Cayon Lee.

If you like Jelone, you may also enjoy Tatum, Rocky and Louise and Michael Calloway.