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07 May 2008

Who/what in popular culture has influenced your "look"? [More:]In other words, what [famous] people have you stolen fashion ideas from?

Kind of embarrassing, but:
In 5th grade Matt Dillon's hair in My Bodyguard inspired me to finally lose the uber-dorky bowl cut and go with a more hip feathered butt cut (I didn't quite have the cajones to go fully slicked back like Dillon).

Towards the end of high school, I got a white jean jacket and grew my hair out, because I liked Joe's look from Suburbia (the 1984 one).

More recently, I sorta copped the frontal fringe of Smiths' drummer Mike Joyce's hair, specifically from this picture (far right).
I pierced my nose in college because I thought Grace Slick was pretty.
posted by jessamyn 07 May | 11:51
I got a white jean jacket and grew my hair out

That pic is marked private so I can't view it. Is it that bad?
posted by essexjan 07 May | 11:52
jessamyn: I did the same thing! (only it wasn't Grace Slick, it was a girl on campus)
posted by crush-onastick 07 May | 12:00
That pic is marked private so I can't view it. Is it that bad?

Jan, yes, it is.
posted by Hellbient 07 May | 12:03
awwww! And your friend is hilarious. I love you both.
posted by taz 07 May | 12:19
I was going through some old pictures while cleaning out my mom's house last week (more about that later) and was amazed at how little my "look" has changed in the last 25 years or so. Levis, T-shirts, untucked button-down shirts (sloppy then, stylish now) and NB running shoes. I still get my hair cut twice a year whether I need it or not, although there's somewhat less of it now than there was in my twenties.
posted by octothorpe 07 May | 12:51
- they called me Cyndi Lauper in high school (they were jealous!)
- I always wanted feathered hair like Cadi Chapman down the road whose mom was a stewardess and very fashionable. She was aiming for Farrah Fawcet I suspect.

Having a Dad put a zillion photos of your childhood on Flickr pretty much means you can't pretend you were ever smart in the fashion department. Sometimes I pretend it's a skill I had once and then lost. Not so.
posted by jessamyn 07 May | 13:03
I thought blonde hair was stupid and went for a certain princessy Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth brunette thing when I was 17.

Now I'm going for an Breakfast Club Ally Sheedy or Adventures in Babysitting Elizabeth Shue chunky layered bangsy thing. I guess with the intermittent pink in my blonde, I have to cop to Jem too.

Uh, any guesses which decade I was a child in?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur 07 May | 13:21
It looks like I don't have the quintessential picture I'm thinking of scanned in yet, but in early high school I was told I looked like Molly Ringwold a lot, and after a while I gave in and did my hair like her. I never really thought I did very much, and after about a year I grew out of it anyway.
posted by Sil 07 May | 13:34
I'm trying to remember why I've made the choices I've made, sartorially speaking, but really, I can't. I think I've been trying to be cool, like my heroes have been...these people include, but aren't limited to:

Joe Strummer (but NOT Mick Jones, GAWD!), Iggy Pop (which is kinda funny, cos I'm so NOT built like Iggy, but then again, who is?), Jim Morrison (that one started when I was 12!).

Oddly enough, my normal, real-life look, has has been made up of Levi 501 jeans and dark, plain t-shirts for about 23 years now.
posted by richat 07 May | 13:47
Argh. I forgot to confess. What with the two full closets, what with the hot pink, and the "power jewelry" and the stilettos and over-the-top everything, and the fact that I was inexplicably given 42 of her over the course of my childhood:

Barbie.

Fat Feminist Fabulous Barbie?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur 07 May | 14:08
OMG, Sil. You are TOTALLY Ringwald!

I'm not posting any pictures, but I blame many of my sartorial misadventures on Lisa Bonet. Damn you to hell, Denise Huxtable!!!
posted by jrossi4r 07 May | 14:33
Oh jeebus. Here’s where I tell a few tales on myself. Fortunately, there are no surviving pictures of me in my 20s – or if there are, I don’t have access to them. They’d either be at Mom & Dad’s or, possibly, in the possession of former girlfriends with whom I’m no longer in contact.

Hair first: Early 20s (which would be the early 80s) – somewhere between Elvis Costello’s pseudo-quiff and Pete Farndon’s mullet (far left), with an ill-advised rat-tail from about 81-83. (I so coveted the Bruce Foxton mullet but couldn’t get my hair to do that – in retrospect, not such a bad thing.) By 1984 I’d started doing theater, so what my hair looked like depended on what show I was doing. Between gigs, though, it was back to the Farndon do.

In the late 80s, I figured out that it was easier to just grow my hair out between shows and then cut it as needed for whatever role I might land. This sorta defaulted into a Mellencamp-type thing.

As far as clothes go, I used to be fairly picky about such things. The prevailing mental image of myself is a slate-gray suit coat over a band t-shirt (or possibly my beloved “eat the rich” shirt – mine was red), several band badges on the lapel (most of which I still have, somewhere), levi’s, chucks. I’ve also always loved white oxford shirts, and shirts with the tab collars so beloved of various garage bands. By the late 80s, I was doing the REM thrift store thing. I’d also started wearing flannels again, as I had in high school. Mostly because I was working in a warehouse, but there was also some band influence, too. These days I do it because, as our British friends might say, I can’t be arsed.
posted by bmarkey 07 May | 14:42
Well, you can see some pix of me in '80s here, and here.

Oh, wait. That's not me, that's Annie Lennox. um, yeah.
posted by taz 07 May | 15:24
Hmmm. I'd have to say that I love the wardrobe selections made on House, and since I've been told I look similar to House, it follows that what he wears also looks good on me. It doesn't influence me too much, but it helps to see something and think "Oh that looks like something House would wear." Odds are it's a good look on me.
posted by CitrusFreak12 07 May | 15:39
Every damn cartoon I ever read (props to the hernadrez brothers!). Barbarella and Audrey Hepburn.
posted by dabitch 07 May | 15:40
Being in New York in the seventies/ early eighties.
Punk rock, club kids, genuine hippies, beatniks, ravers, 40s 50s 60s retro chic, cocktail hours, cartoons, but mostly friends who did it themselves and made me a crazed vintage shopper when it mean something and was remotely possible.

It's all costumes and make up.
When it breaks down, it's always durable goods that can take punishment and still look half decent.
Auditions are open for the right shoes, the right pants, the all purpose dress, the full purpose shirt, and the perfect underwear.
posted by ethylene 07 May | 16:01
Currently wearing the free shirt and the giant underwear.
posted by ethylene 07 May | 16:02
I want to find the right cruelty-free belt.
posted by box 07 May | 18:18
My what?
≡ Click to see image ≡
posted by Pips 07 May | 18:19
Nonsense, pips. You don't have a kettle.

*ducks*

I dunno that it was influenced by anybody so much as it just kind of evolved. I wore my dad's flannel shirts when I was a pre-teen and grew to like them and wore them so much that anything else feels weird. I don't try to make an 'ensemble'or anything but every once in a while some item (the screwhead earstuds, the minor league hats, some of my t-shirts) will just strike my fancy and I'll see that I've never seen anyone else wear them. Those are the items that I get complimented on the most. Today 4 people complimented me on my new Frank zappa t-shirt, for instance.
posted by jonmc 07 May | 18:59
This is the look I was going for in 1980. I achieved the hair ... never the talent.
posted by netbros 07 May | 22:17
Please don't tell me this is airbrushed. || I need a creative team name!

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