There is no overstating the value of an iconic style to help define and immortalize a musician. Whether through fashion or visual spectacle, they expand our cultural palettes and test the borders of their own artistic definition in the public lens.
Below, we’ve compiled eight of the most defined and recognizable characters of style. Each represents their own trajectory of musicianship and visual accompaniment, each a fascinating study of their own.
Björk
She perplexes the world’s greatest fashion designers, photographers, and producers. She is an enigma independently, and collaboratively a beacon by which great artists can blossom wildly. While her music increasingly evolves into an enchantingly alien cascade of eroticism and emotive exploration, her visual and stylistic adventure continues in tandem. She is Björk, and she is the weirdest girl we’ve ever fallen in love with.
Kanye West
Was anyone wearing leather sweatpants before Kanye? No. The egomaniac and aspiring fashionista has entrenched himself in the industry, with high-art features reaching deep enough to warrant serious attention to his continued multimedia immersion. “I love being back at my fashion office learning and creating,” Kanye wrote. “It’s so challenging and fun and I’m surrounded by amazing people. They say you only live once but every time I come to work I feel like I’m starting a second life.”
The Ramones
Leather jackets. Converse. Never smiling. The image spoke almost as loudly as their three-chord creations did, and remain just as vibrant decades down the line.
Madonna
Whether it be the provocative lace and metallic cone-breasts of her early days or her more recent enlightened-fashionista sensibilities, Madonna has had a fantastic run as a maven of style.
Prince
The funky enigma, that paisley weirdo with the unpronounceable name oozes style in purple hues. Prince flipped the alpha masculinity of ’70s power ballads and immersed modern culture in androgyny. We can deal with the pompadour, and even the sequins, but the assless pants?
Eddie Vedder
Two words: corduroy jacket. The unkempt “grungy” look that leapt from lumberjack necessity to Macy’s mannequin was the uniform of the culture, and for better or worse the pivot point in the commercial feeding grounds was Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder and his infamous corduroy jacket.
Lady Gaga
Meat dresses, embryonic oddity and Madonna mimicry is all in a day’s work for Tony Bennett’s latest duet partner. She claims her style choices are therapeutic. ”Those are the things that freed me from my sadness, from the social scars,” explained Gaga. “I am in no way encouraging anyone to emulate my fashion sense, but rather setting a, hopefully, liberating example for anyone to look inside and know they can become any image or projection imaginable.”
Janelle Monáe
No woman has ever rocked a tuxedo quite as well as Janelle Monáe, and with her signature bouffant and a bright lipstick completing the package she is a style beacon unto herself. Adhering tightly to 50s-era class and sophistication in her style presentation, she’s aware of her potential as a role model. “I feel like I have a responsibility to my community and other young girls to help redefine what it looks like to be a woman,” she said. “I don’t believe in men’s wear or women’s wear, I just like what I like.”
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