“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.

“I feel lucky that I overcame it (referring to her height). When I see beautiful sixteen year olds and they have the old slouch and you can tell that they don’t want to be in that room with eyes above everyone else. They have the flattest shoes on and they are so self conscious. I just want shake them and be like you are gorgeous and you are beautiful and so what if you get neck aches when you kiss boys and your trousers aren’t long enough? It’s ok! It’s a journey and I would really like to give that to people.”
Jessica Hannan

occupation: writer

It is hard to imagine that someone with the statuesque beauty of Jessica, suffered for being tall with those enviable long legs, when she was 5’10″ at twelve years old. Today she’s a proud 6′ and can carry off anything, including black and white striped tights under a delicate, sheer vintage 1930′s dress that she aquired from the high end antique clothing shop that she manages on Portobello Road in Notting Hill and is where we shot her for this post. Jessica loves her hosiery and has many from her beloved High Street, which her enthusiasm for took me a minute to understand. The Brits are proud of their fast fashion, High Street is the place where much of it began and it is of a higher level of quality in London, Jess explains, compared to other places. Her Sonia Rykiel for H and M, very ’60′s mini dress over matching hose, is all horizontal lines of colors and if she had told me it was a priceless original, I would have believed her (which also has a lot to do with the person in it.) Jessica’s Ossie Clark “traffic light dress” from the ’70′s, was for me one of the quest enders of all quest enders in the fifteen months of doing this site. When seeing her in it, that feeling of wanting to throw everything else away that I own came creeping up, her taste raises the bar and was in the stars from the beginning. “If you look at the little girl I was, it would make sense what I am doing now… [my sister and I], lived in our heads. Now, I have this job where I dress up all day and people come in and buy the drama. They love the drama and we talk about clothes and intellectualize fashion.”

You might also enjoy Ally McCormack, Amber Doyle and Angela Grossi

“ My next work is going to be ‘The Urban Tribe.’ Now, we travel with people we feel connected to aesthetically. Next, we are going to travel with people we feel connected to spiritually, because we are going to transcend apprearance.” Virginie Sommet

occupation: artist, writer, curator

Virginie has dedicated her life to art that exposes the rigid and profoundly harmful social boxes (or ghettos) that permeate society everywhere and that most people do not realize exist. Her mixed media sculptures and installations educate the viewer to the truth behind “lobotomized” group thinking, in the hope of creating a bridge to more evolved behavior and to initiate “chaos in a prejudiced or racist brain.” Virginie grew up with extreme norms in Normandy, France, where everyone was conservative, bourgeois, Catholic and dressed in “Brooks Brothers.” Colors were dark green, burgundy, pale pink, sprinkled with some liberty prints, skirts were below the knee, headbands were velvet and shoes were limited to moccassins. You are not allowed to pierce your ears ever if you are part of the French bourgeois (so as not to look like the “Portuguese cleaning lady,”) and makeup and jewelry were out of the question. Today, in New York City, Virginie says that her ” tribe is her work, in the sense that I am always focusing aesthetically about the outsider..the others.” Virginie’s style is unencumbered by rules, trends and any fashion pretension. She never shops, has worn the same things for twenty years and looks as current and edgy as if it were all bought yesterday. I wanted to take home her 1970s clogs, the best I have seen around and a lot more character than the Celine interpretation. Virginie’s signature Bindi adds an indigenous beauty (for a WASP) and her own jewelry designs are chunky and bold, made from the inside of mechanical objects, like tape recorders and tvs. Dressing for Virginie is all about a purity of thought and integrity of mind, she gives soul to everything she touches.

If you like Virginie, you might also enjoy Jenny Shimizu, Susi Kenna, or Lindsay Jones.

On writing Do or Die: “It woke me up in a lot of ways. Consciousness begins to uncoil and the antennae begin to pulse, because you’re seeing things you’re not used to. I wasn’t that far from having been a model, where all you had to bring were your cheekbones. Suddenly, how I looked didn’t matter.” Leon Bing

occupation: author

I love how Leon says, without an ounce of pretension (after a career as a muse for the legendary designer Rudi Gernreich), that she was never trendy. She arrived in New York City to model in jeans and left in jeans. I “found” Leon in jeans when I came to her home in Pasadena do this feature. I discovered Leon when I read a review of Swans and Pistols in the Style section of the New York Times (that captures, among many things, her successful stint as a ’60s catwalker). Ironically, tracking her down was miraculously effortless. Soon after I saw her book review, I interviewed a fellow model/muse to Rudi, Barbara Flood, and there was my entre to Leon. Leon’s mother was actually the glamourous clothes horse and Leon was the one with the body to wear clothes, but was never big on the consumption of them. Her style is as much about her natural beauty and bone structure as it is about her brain cells. Anything looks good on her, including her photographer boyfriend Gareth Seigel, whom she adoringly refers to as “The Mister” – he is much her junior, and taught her “the meaning of unconditional love.” (She is writing a piece for Vogue on the “gestalt” of their relationship.) Leon left the galaxy of modeling for her current, beyond-passionate writing career – she recently penned an in-depth and first-hand insight into the culture of gangs in the inner cities. She is proof of what a prophet Mr. Gernreich was when he grabbed Leon’s looks for the runway because she “resembled a spy.” Not only has Leon helped to create a look for a time but a social conscience. After reading an article about two black youths shot dead, Leon thought to herself, “this would be on the front page if they were white.” She infiltrated downtown Los Angeles, started to ask questions, invested herself in these youths’ lives, and ended up writing a best-seller. Leon’s Tibetian necklace is one-of-a-kind, as she herself is.

If you like Leon, you may also enjoy Barbara Louis, Lucie Porges, or Reece Solomon.

“I think girls with short hair look more feminine and confident. I like this boyish look that I have.” Shirine Saad

occupation: cultural fashion journalist

Shirine loves the quiet scenes, aesthetic beauty, and psychological intensity of Ingmar Bergman movies. Like him, she expresses a similarly subtle elegance in her style that is imbued with a powerful point of view that is both impactful and understated. From the beginning, in her home of Beirut, Lebanon, Shirine had a urban-glamorous role model in her fashion designer mom, whose most dressed-down look consisted of silk saris and tunics, piled with jewels and flowers. “Even as a child, my mom would cut my hair asymmetrically and put me in ties and plaid pants. I would always say, ‘I want a pink dress like everyone else,’ and she would tell me, ‘you are are not like everyone else, Shirine!” So it’s no surprise that Shirine does not believe in dressing for men (or for anyone else), but for asserting her own personality. She loves bold architectural shapes, a blend of tough and sophisticated. Her hair remains a striking, geometric, short cut, and her clothes are often sculptural, like her state-of-the-art YSL oval-shaped trousers, shoulder-enhancing nude Margiela bodysuit, and Gaultier statement choker that is tribal-meets-medieval and anything but common. I love and whole-heartedly agree with her when she says that you don’t have to show skin to feel feminine, and that you can never know as much as you need to.

If you like Shirine, you might also enjoy Magda Berliner or Amanda Doman.

“With fashion, there is constant rediscovery and ability to evolve. You can take style through stages of your life, minimizing, expanding as you see fit. Some pieces become personified and imbued with meaning as they are worn and develop a narrative that ties to your personality; other pieces are fun, but fleeting. My most precious items are as much a part of me as my fingers and toes. They’re stuck to me, because they have so many memories attached to them, a certain kind of utility and magic.”
Naomi Bishop

occupation: blogger, writer, student, and entrepreneur

I love how Naomi points out that we are all multifaceted prisms, and that we can choose to see the different sides of a person or reveal the different sides of ourselves – “more power to you” if you can show it all at once. To me, one’s willingness to expose their fragility is a sign of ultra-strength and depth, and Naomi wears her heart on her sleeve, or more literally, on her hand. Every finger has a ring with a story, and she never takes them off. Two are from her dad (a silver one from Ibiza that covers her nail and another that she has worn every day since she was eight, and has calloused her finger from doing so), one with purple crystals from her boyfriend, one that is a claw (representing the year of the tiger honoring her birth), a gold and turquoise YSL one, a Tibetian prayer ring, a silver bark one from her best friend, one from a trip to Santorini, one on each thumb, a gold and turquoise YSL one, and her most “precious” one of all, which is her mother’s, that she hides underneath another ring to shelter it.
Naomi’s mother was from Indonesia, a princess and a dancer, and her father, a transplanted New Yorker, whom after first seeing Naomi’s mother on the streets of Jacarta, waited for 31 days on top of a castle until he found her again. (He had always dreamt of marrying someone who looked like they were from a Gauguin painting.) Naomi, who similarly resembles a muse in one of the same post-impressionist paintings, admires much of what she refers to as the magic in the Muslim culture that was native to her maternal side of the family, like women dressing up in florals and wearing blossoms in their hair. And then, she clearly has the free spirit, very 1970s flair of her dad, with his ease of wearing women’s hats and blue eyeshadow if he felt in the mood. Naomi carries a leather fringe bag that he gave her around her neck, and wears his same eye makeup.
However, Naomi sees her love of beauty most embodied in her coveted Pamela Love dagger and petal earrings that she says encapsulate her – “the whole idea of dark and the mysterious and the terrifying, sometimes the macabre, and then the romantic, and the deep love of life and all of its experiences. I think that’s the two sides of all of us, or life in general.” (and knowing Pamela, I can attest that this is how she would hope whomever was wearing them would feel).

If you like Naomi, you might also enjoy Ziva Naumann and Tziporah Salamon.

“I want to be a fashion comedian.” Mari J Brooklyn

occupation: photographer, fashion writer, designer, magazine coordinator, and artist

Clothes are so much about whom is wearing them. Mari J has backpacked the world, inhales ideas, and it shows. She derives cultural references for her style from Tokyo to Bob Marley to Disneyland. I admire her freedom with creative impulses, like cutting her hair on the spot or throwing her three-year-old’s “happy birthday skirt” with pompoms in the hem under a dress to give it the right volume. Everyday is Halloween for Mari J, in the sense that she is unafraid to fully express herself and she doesn’t feel she needs a reason to, whether it’s picking herself up and traveling to India and Indonesia, hitchhiking through Japan, or recycling African fabric into art. Mari J redefines the rules in the most creatively exciting way, mixing Scottish plaid with camouflage and Chanel or Mickey Mouse ears as accents to a Hirajuku hoodie in a suits-of-cards print. She says that she will be traveling soon with her daughter Lino (whom is nicknamed Hemp), “to Mars possibly.” If having a sense of humor with fashion leads to this kind of joy with clothes, it might be worth having a private moment with our inner-child every so often to remember the abandon.

If you like Mari, you might also enjoy Rinat Welsing and Shayne Oliver.

“I [always] knew that I wanted to study art history. I like the idea of seeing something visual and translating the story behind it. In a lot of ways, I’m interested in curating thoughts and things I like, and making my own world.” Naomi Nevitt

occupation: fashion and art writer and new media specialist

In college, Naomi’s thesis was on “Situationism and Graffitti,” and the idea that art is supposed to be something that everyone can partake in and make their own. Given Naomi’s fascination with the artistic dialog between the artist and his or her audience, it is not a big surprise that she has ended up as the new social media specialist for a fashion PR company. Her job is to inform the brands they represent of the new power base of the bloggers, and the influence on culture of their personal and instantaneous interpretations of style (she told me a great story about Tavi and how she stashed an upside-down Barbie in a dress inside of her Miu Miu jacket pocket, so that it looked like a flower). Naomi, like myself, is ecstatic that the internet has created a new space (similar to the subject of her college paper) where the viewer can see how creative people interact with clothes in their own respective universes. For her, as for many people, how someone wears a bag eight ways, one hundred ways, or for a lifetime is more interesting than how that bag is placed in an editorial. She herself has a very original and self-possessed approach to dressing that has everything to do with her life and interests. Naomi looks for clothes that are seasonless (like her overall denim dress), or things that she can wear for an extended periods of time (like her best friend’s cardigan from high school that’s falling apart), or things that have character (like her Egyptian necklace), or things that she can wear on her bike rides to work (like her clogs). When she was living in Paris, she was greatly inspired by by the French school boys in their striped sweaters and perfectly cut peacoats, and thanks to this blog, we get to see how that influence can inspire us in her breton tees, baggy men’s trousers, and jumpers with oversized boy’s button-downs. When Leonardo da Vinci gave the Mona Lisa a little smile, instead of the usual blank Madonna stare, it rocked the art world. Naomi is on it in terms of how we are now consuming fashion. It’s the meaning behind the visual now that intrigues us, and not just what is at face value.

If you like Naomi, you might also enjoy Ally McCormack, Lauren Buxton, or Alessandra Calabi.

occupation: editor of upcoming DIS magazine

“I think that what makes our generation kind of special or new is how we appreciate the lowest, you know, trashiest stuff and the most refined things and one is not better than the other, they are all sort of on the same level. Its just up to your interpretation and your usage.” Lauren Boyle

When I asked Lauren what happens if she goes out and doesn’t feel herself on a given day, her response was, “Maybe I should try it. That could be really fun. Just go out absolutely not me at all.” So uncontrived and confident in who she is, there is no armor when exploring Lauren and her style. She is who she is, low or high end, it’s all interesting, and it makes her energy and ideas so fresh in the most explosive yet natural way. For example, she makes “conservatism” the epitome of cool in her mother’s matching suede ’80s Ruff Hewn ensemble and her signature Bally loafers. Everything she wears is about an idea or a feeling and her instincts are acute, like her McQueen suede apron/dress and black leather vintage trench, which are both archetypal and elemental in shape and design. Lauren is a connoisseur and collector of fashion magazines, particularly the older originals and pioneers. She is soon to launch her own “pseudo-fashion magazine” called DIS. Lauren’s too much of an observer not to be a leader and express her own vision and it’s in keeping with her comfort in being a “real outsider” as opposed to the “accepted outsider.” I have a feeling it will be groundbreaking in terms of what is happening in print right now, but in the most unpretentious way.

To learn more about Lauren, click on the detailed captions page.

If you like Lauren, you might also enjoy Fatima Al-Qadiri, Lucy Carr-Ellison, Sarah Hamilton, or Bradley Smith.