The biggest style icons to me are French girls. I think Bridgette Bardot is so sexy and Jane Birkin pulls off a blouse and t-shirt to perfection.
I love watching Zendaya or Victoria Beckham hit the red carpet, but my real style icons are the women that I see walking around every day.
To me, true style icons have been few and far between. Elizabeth Taylor comes to mind. I never got to meet her while she was alive, but she is one of those people I have always admired in terms of her sense of style.
The people I tend to look to and reference are Hollywood icons; Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Rita Hayworth.
My icons do not raise up the blessed savior in elaborate cathedrals. They are constructed concentrations celebrating barren rooms. They bring a limited light.
I am not so bad, actually, at doing my own makeup, so for more low-key events, I'll do my own, but for something like 'Harper's Bazaar' Icons Party, I would definitely get a makeup artist or a hair artist if I had time.
I look at the careers of people I'm standing on the shoulders of. People like Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., and Sarah Vaughan. These are icons I wanted to emulate, and I feel like they've been holding me up for quite a long time.
There is no time and space in the digital world. People chat and collaborate through social networks. Cultural icons garner millions of fans online in locations they have often never been themselves. The boundary between public and private life is now everyone's business.
When I was old enough to know better, I ate a bar of soap in the shape of the Muppets' Fozzie Bear, because I loved him so much I wanted to consume him, even if doing so made me ill. I didn't yet know the word 'foreshadowing.' Fozzie was the only first of many pop-culture icons I feel shaped by.
With high fashion, it's a performance. You're trying to interpret a fantasy in a very physical way, and you really are playing a character. I've played men, dead people, famous people, historical icons, and it's no mean feat. It's quite an insular experience even though the crowd is in front of you and there's an expectation.
