STYLE ICONS VOL 8 – Babes

Certain creatures possess the primal spark, no matter how many bad tattoos they get or limousines they fall out of. Somehow the more accidental the power, the better. Chloe Sevigny, a fashionista and arthouse muse. One who claims she is not pretty enough” but she still has the bullet proof body of a pole dancer and the innate style of a thousand good looks on The Sartorialist.
Like Kate Moss, she was universally christened an “IT” girl, but then it was also revealed that she could act. Quite brilliantly. Her mouth looks like it is about to swear. Her eyes are deceptively sleepy. She’s got something. And it is fragile. We want to watch her, dressed as a boy or dressed as a Mormon wife or famously teetering in Balenciaga boots. In a sea of cookie-cutter noses, her asymmetry looks something like revolutionary and it is the small nuances that feed the myth. And confer class.

Freckled Eva Green looks more like a society Bohemian in a painting by Gustav Klimt than a Bond girl, yet she is a bit of both. Her face is ancient and romantic and it’s quite impossible to imagine her sipping a slushie in an LA car park. Or rocking UGG boots. Like Monica Belluci, she embodies European élan and can talk at length about the freedom of art and nude scenes. The French, Italian and Spanish kittens are a bit existential about their beauty, a bit doomed. Penelope Cruz dares to play heroines who are beaten, hunted or haunted, the dark side of the mirror. Bellucci once said “They can forgive your intelligence but they don’t forgive beauty” adding sagely “In the future, I’ll be better because beauty can’t be at the centre of everything.” But it is, Monica, and it always will be.