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.

Emanating an edgy sophistication in a resin coated canvas “leather” jacket and a bow tie, a tribute to traditional gentlemanly rituals and Pee Wee Herman, Joshua feels, “The problem with fashion is that it’s not just about your own person, it’s about putting out a message and that’s where it gets complicated.” Often asked when speaking to design students at Parsons why the icon of the villain is so celebrated in the fashion world, he says, “Because it’s the easiest path to power. If you’re going to be a hero, you have to have purpose and knowledge, and that takes work. To be a villain, you don’t have to have any knowledge. You can be nuts, and still have power.” A Burberry ad featuring a model wearing a spiked leather biker jacket, Joshua points out, is hypocritical. “They’re taking on this rebel iconography. It’s sort of the rebel without a cause thing.” Even wearing vintage can promote the wrong message when it looks hip. In reaction to this empty posturing, he is involved with The Pinnacle, an initiative of fashion industry professionals who are trying to reinvigorate the discussion about fur and this idea of being a real rebel. “The wild animals who spend their entire lives in tiny cages, goes against everything they have evolved to do,” Joshua says. “A wild animal is evolved to explore a vast amount of area and space. You can see they go crazy. They pace in the cages. They spin in circles, they resort to cannibalism, often. They literally go insane. And it isn’t so much the death that’s the problem, it’s that life of psychological torture.”

Joshua describes his adolescence in Poughkeepsie, New York, as torturous. The descriptions of his sculptures seem to echo the sentiments of his youth, “In our relationships with each other and the natural world, we decompose both literally and figuratively from our living conditions. We are products of our own creation.” Dressed in JNCO in jeans, he found refuge in poetry, comic books and punk music at local club The Chance, Joshua says that he was searching to determine that he wasn’t doomed and also that the things that concerned him concerned others, as well. Revenge for Joshua comes not only in the form of animal rights, but exposing the “assholes” who label and marginalize gay men as the ones who need an identity check. “I feel like male identity in our culture is powerful but also incredibly limited and stifled…if you’re a man and express any identity outside of the four Bs of mainstream manhood, which is boobs, ball, beer, and beef… you are considered less of a man.” On his blog, The Discerning Brute, Joshua explores the idea of male identity in relation to sustainability. “I see mainstream male identity as a roadblock to sustainability because compassion is seen as a weakness for men and if you express compassion, whether it’s towards an animal or another person or an ecosystem…it’s a red flag and you’re less of a man.” Far from the days when he identified with dorky Dawn Weiner from “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” no one would mess with Joshua these days, his arms full of tattoos of everything from germinating seeds (the symbol for awareness), to insects with halos (representing their sacredness, as they support all of our lives) and hundreds of species of extinct birds.

“[Style is] the most powerful form of personal identity that you can express, and it’s unspoken. If you know who you are and you know how to express that through the way you look… that says more about yourself than you could explain with words,” Joshua believes. His inked- arm candy with a message mimics the intensity of Joshua’s ’70s patterned Marc Jacobs pants. He wears them with vegan John Fluevog shoes and an Alter vest made from a restructured suit with an organic cotton American Apparel tee underneath. (The conventional cotton industry in Uzbekistan, the cotton-producing capital of the world, is like Chernobyl he revealed – children there are being born with no limbs because of the excessive amounts of pesticides on the crops.) However, after witnessing disciples of the four B’s in droves at a recent U2 concert at Giants Stadium, I’m not sure if Joshua’s theory that men will be able to expose their legs in short shorts like women do without ridicule – a notion that has come from his newfound love for pulling his socks up over his pants – is going to catch on anytime soon.

If you love Joshua, you may also like Dylan Treleven, Freddie Leiba and Max Vernon.

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.

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.