They are not only each other’s muses in their dedication to escaping sexual stereotypes, but as inspiration for their respective business’. Dynasty, with her finesse at mixing an animal print head wrap with a camouflage jacket and yellow printed hoodie, is a clothing designer, who designs with her sister’s more graceful, rich and effortless layering in mind. Her modern take on a unisex cargo pant is just the right combo of slim and baggy and is filled with concealed details, as exemplified by the multiple pockets in all the right places. Soul, with her classic button up to the neck, vintage vest with a Victorian watch fob, bloomers, luxe tassel belts and floral tights, is a metal smith who explores the significance of ancient geometry in her jewelry with her sister’s attraction to the oneness between masculine and feminine in mind. I love Soul’s square and triangular bangles and the strong, simple, gender-neutral feel of her rings.

Dynasty & Soul’s mom, Josephine, taught them to dress, and thus live, with a sense of freedom and individuality. As a result, they are handsome as they are beautiful and “not the book that you would assume to know about when you pick it up to read it,” as Dynasty says.

Find Dynasty & Soul’s designs here: BRZE SIGHT & ALKHEMI9.

If you love Dynasty and Soul, you may also like Trae Harris, Karen & Sara Brown and Kate Ross.

When I came to shoot this feature on Sara, I knew that I would be overwhelmed (in the best way) by her passion for dressing, but I didn’t expect there to be as much as I found. Sara’s affection for all things Native American goes way beyond her seminal squash blossom necklace that she paid for on lay away in 8th grade. A white leather coyote bag with feathers that she made hangs in her closet, while white fringe Isabel Marant boots are on her “must get” list. In fact, boots play a close second to jewels for Sara in order of obsession. Haider Ackermann over-the-knee ones are drop dead sexy with a floral dress and Gaultier ankle booties, that she cleverly wears with American Apparel athletic socks, giving a tough feel to a Vivienne Westwood halter dress and bloomers. While rock and roll lives on in a big way with Sarah in her American flag leather pants and a Rick Owens fitted jean jacket that makes all others pale in comparison.

But the utimate inspiration for me about Sara is her “I don’t give an fuck” attitude in general that reflects not only in her style, but in her willingness to be out of the box in her self-expression, even if it means flying under the radar when she is more talented than most. Nothing can get in the way of her attention to detail, for her, art means more to her than commercial success. Sara will alter something until it’s right or she will make something if she can’t find anything as great, like her Victorian silk bloomers. I envy both her blunt honesty when she says, “I just like to make shit” and her unsual humility when she pulls out this spectacular, embroidered coat that she made while on vacation. Creative purists like Sara fascinate me, I am attracted to them like a magnet because of the part of me that isn’t one.

If you love Sara, you may also like Jimmy Webb, Kay Kasparhauser Goldberg and Sarah Temple Raston.

In what Maad refers to as her James Dean meets Madonna look, she wears black leather shorts with over the knee socks, a fringe shirt and one of her many black leather studded jackets. Like one of her tattoo’s that is an ode to the Maya Angelou poem, The Caged Bird, Maad finds her ultimate freedom in her voice as a singer/songwriter. Her song Glitter is a reference to Maad’s fashion icons and the spirit of NYC of the 80′s. However, one cannot see her pitch black “Queen Nefertitti” bob and not recognize the monumental influence of Diana Ross on Maad’s style. Maad’s long silk vintage dresses with cinched waistes and lots of leg, have glamour high priestess written all over them. But diva is all the more refreshing on Maad Moiselle for her humble aesthetics as well, which are exemplified in her classic Ernest Sewn jeans and Reformation colorful silk blouses that are accented with her signature MAC red lips and of course, monster Fendi wedges.

If you love Maad, you may also like Fatima Robinson, Mia Christiana and Jean Lebrun.

Revisit Uffie’s closet.

Growing up neither from “here nor there” during a time when xenophobia was high freed Rajive from life in the monoculture of suburban American life. That state of non-belonging instilled in him a voracious, life-long wanderlust and identification with Bardo, the Tibetan state of becoming between one thing and the next. Not one to stand in front of a monument and take a photo, when Rajive travels, he says, “I try to associate myself with the parts of that culture that I identify with… then, I create images to bring the experience back with me.” Everything from folkloric Tibetan boots, beaded vests, loafers, and Shetland sweaters fill his closet. He speaks Spanish, French, Hindi, Urdu, Thai, and a smattering of German, Khmer, Finnish, Vietnamese and Dzongkha, switching as easily between them as he fuses Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man with Shiva, the deity of destruction in one of his paintings. Rajive renders Western superheroes in the ancient Thai style of Khon mask-making, re-imagining the American demi-god Batman as a demon out of the Ramayana.

Putting well-known archetypes in a foreign context is Rajive’s way of re-inventing the status quo, which includes himself, teaching high school art in the New York City public schools in vintage army jackets covered with jewels, the newest Doc Martens or a Tibetan rosary made of human bones. In American blue jeans, crocodile-skin cowboy boys and a red silk shirt from Thailand, the kind you get on any street corner in Bangkok for 100 baht (about 4 dolllars), tattoos that recall everything from his mother’s Catholicism to Eastern ritual daggers, a silver Nepelese medallion with turquoise and coral as his go-to necklace and his grandfather’s signet engagement ring from 1939, Rajive is a potent reminder of the liberation that can be found in the space between cultures. “I wasn’t bound by anyone’s rules,” he concludes.

If you love Rajive, you may also like Virginie Sommet, RZA and Mitch Alfus.

It’s always the ones who say they don’t want to pretend to be original who are. Margaux is part of the generation who grew up on Sex and the City and an obsession with Louboutins, but she feels of the status symbol shoes, “Je ne pas de tu.” Instead of kitschy plastic or diamond jewelry, she has a wrist of earthy gemstone bracelets and wears a long t-shirt dress with army boots or a hoodie and jeans with the effortless, edgy quality of a Stones girl. Adverse to “Upper East Side” culture, the aesthetics of a Jim Jarmusch film and the iconic lifestyle of the West Coast skateboarding community, chronicled in Lords of Dogtown, are more Margaux’s speed. Growing up with a rock n’ roll Mom and an art dealer Dad, pushing boundaries is in her comfort zone. Margaux is turning her renegade voice towards making music of her own, and she hopes to travel and see “everything in this world… I am always unsatisfied, I always want things bigger, bigger, bigger. It’s not good,” Margaux excitedly laments.

If you love Margaux, you may also like Krystal Simpson, Annakim Violette and Kenyon Phillips.

At twelve, Brian was hanging out in Cincinnati with giants, men that had shared a stage with legends like Count Basie, like the drummer Jon Von Ohlen and veteran pianist Ed Moss. “I was always around music– I picked up the trumpet at nine years old,” he says, “Because I thought it would be easy. It only had three buttons.” By the time he was fourteen he was making his debut in the Cleveland jazz scene, playing for packed clubs. For Brian, timelessness is everything– Cole Porter, George Gerswhin and the Great American Songbook never age. Neither does the Rat Pack swagger of Frank Sinatra. “Either you’ll see me in jeans and a t-shirt, or a suit… classic man stuff,” Brian says, behind his cool-as-ice black shades. His left arm is a sleeve full of traditional, old-school tattoos; “Sailor Jerry-like,” he says. The most prominent tattoo was also his first, modeled on a lion-head ring with diamond eyes given to him by his father which he wears on his pinky, like one of his mentors might have. In a charcoal handmade pinstripe suit from Against Nature and Swank cufflinks pulled right from the 50s, like his love of storytelling through music, the elegance of the “old guys” lives on in Brian. “On stage,” Brian reflects, “you lose sense of what time it is and what era it is.”

If you love Brian, you may also like Michael Arenella, Dandy Wellington and Justin Dean Thomas.

Revisit Antino Crowley’s closet.

The reappropriating of divergent vintage clothing that Jean does with ease – like the Nantucket picnic basket bag he wears around his neck over a polka dot button-down with an ebony and gold medallion necklace, couture tribal jeans, Nike sneakers and an handmade American Indian wooden pouch with feathers slung around his torso – speaks to his refusal to cop to the usual divisions between people. He is the leader of an artistic collective in his hometown called the “Jersey Klan” aka “NJ Street Klan,” that was inspired in part by a collaborative called A.L.I.E.N NYC, which stands for A Legion In Every Nation, and expresses themselves so freely with music and style that Jean vividly recalls their exciting intermingling of streetwear like ninja pants and shoes meets skater punk. The Jersey Klan is a collective that promotes artists of all kinds, from concerts to art exhibits. Jean is an artist himself who raps and writes his own music, but the coordinating of his events is driven by a passion to give a platform to others, espcially young kids who would otherwise not have a chance to be exposed to the public.

The attendance at NJ Street Klan affairs are as diverse a tapestry as Jean’s genres of dress. He laces his Air Classic Kicks with zebra laces, mixes a camouflage top with a multicolored patchwork jacket and a Davy Crockett hat, and wears a Hawaiin print shirt with DIY studded Eskimo boots. “Punks, college kids, street kids…come together for the music… if you’re white, black, Asian, whatever color you are, it’s for everybody. It’s not about where you’re from and what race you are, it’s about the music, the culture, the word, the energy, the vibe.” He is so intense about the ability to express oneself though music that he produced a project called “No Faces,” that is a freestyle mix without any visuals in an effort to promote the importance of pure music, free of the pervasive hype of celebrity and “faces” over substance. Of his music and “No Faces,” Jean says, “You don’t have to know who I am… listen to my words… it doesn’t have a color…it’s something that I love to do…we are surrounded by too many people who just want to be celebrities and not leaders.”

If you love Jean, you may also like Matt Parrotti, Erica Yarbrough and Ian Bradley.

Annakim grew up traveling and, as a result, does not consider herself part of one world. To her, every person is so unique and connected at the same time that whether you’re part of a cult, in a family or married, there is the potential to have a twin or soulmate in any part of the world, no matter their seeming disparaties. As she puts it, “You can take people that are in diifferent places in the world, [who] have never met, and have a collective that could be so similar that it’s terrifying, yet their experiences are completely distinct from the people around them.” Dressing up every day is a meaningful ritual for Annakim, even if she is just an ornament in her own house. “Music is like liquid, and I feel like clothing should be more like music. It’s like a song that you love. It shouldn’t be about something that’s trying to fit in or out of the world. It should be something that’s bringing people closer to the world… it’s one of those things where it makes me not take life so seriously. I feel like clothing should be the opposite of anxiety.” We live in a society that is very addictive, she continues, “I feel like the only way I can really relate to people is to get past all of the labels. Is this person college-educated or not, sober or not, do they know fashion or not?” Instead, Annakim concerns herself with figuring out why we’re illuminated here when people are being bombed all over the world. “Every person has earned the right by being born onto this planet to be a part of it. So if you can start from that cave level, then I can hold a conversation with somebody,” she says, “We’ve all come from a whole place of viewing people on a level that has always been deeper than our current surroundings.”

Annakim has a room dedicated to her closet, filled with clothes and beautiful things that reveal her passionate world. Passion itself is her inspiration. Her friends’ closets make her heart skip a beat and she is fascinated by how people view their strengths and their weaknesses in their sartorial armor, as well as the memories that their belongings conjure up. She pulled out a printed multi-colored Alexander McQueen dress from the bottom of a mound of eclectically patterned fabrics, not because it’s a known brand, but in an effort to explain her zeal for rainbows. The colorful rainbow apparition is fascinatingly vivid, but also a manifestation of storm clouds and clashes. Annakim explains that from one’s macabre side comes rebirth: “It’s like Day of the Dead or one of these festivals where they celebrate that actual death brings on this huge rainbow of rebirth. The looping reminds me that I can’t take myself too seriously or the world too seriously…I can’t be afraid of change.” Similarly, her cobweb dress reminds her of all the things that she loves about living in Los Angeles and the insane pieces that you know had to have belonged to somebody that you would have loved to hang out with, but you’re never going to meet. “So it’s not vintage in the sense of like retrolicious, it’s vintage in the sense that I feel like it’s reborn.”

Whether in her rastafarian vampire cape and an astounding pair of psychedelic glam ’70s boots, both made by the artist Summer Harrison, or her Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs bedsheet dress with a butterfly necklace that has the gravitas of something science-fi and delicate simultaneously, Annakim has been both lauded for her “outlandish” dress and denounced for her androgyny. What she takes from these various assumptions is the craziness of it all – there’s an entire society of women who aren’t allowed to show their faces without incurring violence, yet people choose to discuss her clothing choices. For Annakim, androgyny is not about driving a wedge between people, but rather about shedding light on duality and bringing people together. Vaguely resembling Ziggy Stardust in both her handsome and fragile beauty with sparkles scattered across her face, Annakim sees the turmoil of Bowie’s fantastically beautiful character as a beacon of hope for humanity, calling people to attempt to understand those that might seem falsely foreign to us. Annakim is interested in a certain detachment that stems from beauty – to her, it’s more than just lighting and retouching.

Annakim feels that hatred comes from the same place as love, just as a treasured, cheerful hot pink ’80s Betsey Johnson gun-print dress makes you consider the fact that we live in a gun-permissive country. Furthermore, darkness and humor are not negative energy for her. She adores Rodarte’s blood dresses for their politically incorrect and intricately classical yet futuristic beauty. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland was given to Annakim as a child, and she’s adapted the story as a template for her life. “People are always trying to go by this very rational harsh thinking, but it’s so detached and it’s not pragmatic eventually. It doesn’t ever lead to the circumstances that we’re seeing next.” So open your eyes and put on an embroidered ’20s tulle dress with Grecian Prada sandals, like Annakim does to get coffee and join in on her rant, or what she refers to as her creepy automatic poetry. “Aaaahh, to be a kid again and honor everything as a verb,” Annakim says. “Keep moving like a shark so that you won’t get eaten, you can actually make what you want in the world… we are jaded to think there is nothing original anymore… there’s so much that hasn’t been done, and that doesn’t mean regret, that just means you can start anywhere.”

If you love Annakim, you may also like Mary Lee, Natalie Gibson and Kay Goldberg.