Tomboy Style: May 2010

ICON | India Hicks

"The Prince of Wales is my Godfather. A wonderful one. But as a tomboy it was hard to forgive being asked to wear that frilly dress as a bridesmaid to him and Lady Diana."—India Hicks

CONTEMPORARY | Jessica de Ruiter

photos by The Sartorialst and Peter Miszuk

"My mother has very inspiring style and when I was young, she always managed to look incredibly chic by being creative with few resources. And Lauren Hutton is an fashion icon for me as well. Both are examples of natural, sexy, strong women who really look stunning in a men’s shirt." —Jessica de Ruiter

UNIFORM | rock tee

photo by Hedi Slimane

"See the way she walks. Hear the way she talks...
'Cause everybody knows, she's a femme fatale"
—The Velvet Underground & Nico

ICON | Cynthia Whitehead

photo from Wild World of Skateboarding

"I wanted to be better at something than my older brother—he was a star swimmer and water polo player. He couldn't even do a 360 on a skateboard."—Cynthia Whitehead

CONTEMPORARY | Lizzie Jagger

“I haven’t got a boyfriend, but I know that’s not what you want me to say." —Lizzie Jagger

UNIFORM | Barbour and Red Wings

photo from A Continuous Lean, taken from Brimfield, Mass. flea market

"Now THIS girl is cool." —Melan-Head Beige

ICON | Jean Seberg

photo from tout le cine

Mike Wallace: What moved you to try so hard to get [into acting]?
Jean Seberg: When I was twelve, I saw Brando.

An excerpt from The Mike Wallace Interview, aired January 4, 1958.

CONTEMPORARY | Pixie Geldof

"Pixie Geldof flies the flag for the tomboy."—Lauren Milligan, Vogue UK

ICON | Winona Ryder

winona ryder Pictures, Images and Photos

photo by Michael Thompson for W Magazine

"My dad took me to all the best rock and punk shows when I was growing up."—Winona Ryder

ICON | Françoise Hardy

"She always looked sexy without wearing ass-skimming or boob-flashing clothes."—Alexa Chung

CONTEMPORARY | Chloë Sevigny

photo by FlyingTelevision

"I was a tomboy [as a teenager] and went through a lot of different phases. When you shave your head and pierce your nose during your junior year in high school, that’ll do it." —Chloë Sevigny

CONTEMPORARY | Alexandra Richards

photo by K-Swiss

"Alexandra dresses like a laid-back tomboy, in big shirts and tight pants, a la Keith [Richards], whose trousers [she wears] around the house. She is into casual chic, and dresses down pretty frocks with skateboard sneakers."—Plum Sykes, Vogue

CONTEMPORARY | Kristen Stewart

"In an era in which every teen star has a stylist and a bland pop record, 19-year-old Kristen Stewart is the tough-minded, no-frills anomaly."
—Evgenia Peretz, Vanity Fair

WORD | Louisa May Alcott

"No boy could be my friend until I had beaten him in a race, and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences and be a tomboy." —Louisa May Alcott

ICON | Tatum O'Neal

Photo of Michael Jackson and Tatum O'Neal in 1979 by Michael Ochs

"Tatum has a spunky personality and marvelous husky voice." —Peter Bogdanovich

CONTEMPORARY | Drew Barrymore

"I'm like a 13 or 14-year-old boy who loves fun music and hot chicks and sport, and I like empowerment and women who are capable and humorous. I think I am extremely androgynous."—Drew Barrymore

UNIFORM | Strong Boalt trunks

"It's not a gang without the cool girls."—Walker Lamond

NOISE | Claire L. Evans

photo by Sarah Meadows

"I'm a straight gay. I have political and emotional affiliations to one world, as well as love for it, while biology dictates operations in the other. I'll leave it up to you to surmise which is which. I consider myself to be somewhat of a blank slate, and your interpretation of my orientation tells me more about who you are than tells you about who I am." —Claire L. Evans

CONTEMPORARY | Sarah Silverman

"Wait, am I dressing like a 14-year-old boy, or are all 14-year-old boys dressing like me?”—Sarah Silverman

NOISE | The Dead Weather

"It's a good group of guys to hang out with...we play games, we watch science shows, play mini golf, and shoot machine guns."—Alison Mosshart

ICON | Florence Knoll

photo by Margaret Bourke-White from the LIFE archives

"Her hands, with their short, unpainted nails, are the used hands of a busy, creative person, but the enormous emerald solitaire looks perfectly at home guarding her wedding band. She wears other emeralds so casually that she might have been born with them."—Virginia Lee Warren (an excerpt from the September 1, 1964 New York Times article "Woman Who Led an Office Revolution Rules an Empire of Modern Design")

NOISE | Leslie Feist

"She’s much more than just the torch singer leaning against the ballad with a lone spotlight on her. In a past life, she was a shouty battle of the bands teen queen in a Calgary punk band. She’s stubborn and meticulous about things like the EQ level on the stereo and her long honed guitar tone. She’s been placed in the role of the most unlikely fashion icon, but mostly she’s a tomboy who doesn’t really do make-up." —A&C Records

ICON | Alice Roosevelt

"Alice was known to slide miniature bottles of whiskey in her elbow-length gloves and smuggle them into teetotaling houses so she could present them to her male dinner partners. In her purse, she could be counted on to carry four essentials: cigarettes, a fertility image (no doubt sanctioned by the R.S.C.), her green snake named Emily Spinach (after her thin aunt), and a copy of the Constitution." —Stacy A. Cordery (an excerpt from Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker)

ICON | Frances McDormand

on the set of Laurel Canyon, 2002

"I like hard rock, and classic rock, and even metal."—Frances McDormand

UNIFORM | Phoebe Philo

photo by David Sims for The Gentlewoman Magazine

"I just wanted to make a pair of trousers that made my arse look good." —Phoebe Philo

ICON | Carole King

Carole King, Paul Simon and Gerry Goffin in 1959

"I have been told by some people that I was the first woman they ever actually saw give a downbeat. Fine, cool." —Carole King

CONTEMPORARY | Sofia Coppola

photos by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin

"She is young and sweet and beautiful. The epitome of this girl I fantasize of."—Marc Jacobs

SCREEN | Some Kind of Wonderful

"You break his heart, I'll break your face."—Watts

ICON | Marlene Dietrich

“The most intriguing woman I've ever known.” —John Wayne

CONTEMPORARY | Agyness Deyn

"I’ve had short hair since I was 13, and when I was 17, I had a skinhead."—Agyness Deyn

NOISE | Charlotte Gainsbourg

Heaven Can Wait by Charlotte Gainsbourg + Beck

ICON | Joan Jett

"I grew up in a world that told girls they couldn't play rock 'n' roll." —Joan Jett

UNIFORM | Steven Alan

Mr. Alan knows how to dress a tomboy.
Super Basic sunglasses ($117); Boyfriend pullover ($158); Keds ikat slip ons ($68); Fidelity waxed scooter jacket ($210); Levi's 1960 Black Tab shorts ($195); Sunshine + Shadow wrapped belt ($198); Filson original briefcase ($218); Selvedge scarf ($98).

ICON | Annie Oakley

Annie Oakley by Andy Warhol, 1986

"My mother was perfectly horrified when I began shooting and tried to keep me in school, but I would run away and go quail shooting in the woods or trim my dresses with wreaths of wildflowers."—Annie Oakley

ICON | Lauren Hutton

"Raised by her mother and stepfather (she never knew her natural father, who died in his mid-30s) in the deep south, [Hutton] was indeed a tomboy who explored the swamp behind her house with the regularity of a Mark Twain character." —Alex Simon, Venice Magazine

NOISE | Chrissie Hynde

"I was never too interested in high school. I mean, I never went to a dance, I never went out on a date, I never went steady. It became pretty awful for me. Except, of course, I could go see bands, and that was the kick. I used to go to Cleveland just to see any band. So I was in love a lot of the time, but mostly with guys in bands that I had never met. For me, knowing that Brian Jones was out there, and later that Iggy Pop was out there, made it kind of hard for me to get too interested in the guys that were around me. I had, uh, bigger things in mind."—Chrissie Hynde

CONTEMPORARY | Ellen Page

"The Breakfast Club really bothered me. This is, like, an iconic movie, and the coolest character, Ally Sheedy, goes from being this interesting, quirky girl to being made 'hot' so she can make out with frickin' Emilio Estevez? Give me a break!"—Ellen Page

ICON | Ricky Lauren

"When I was a little girl I would watch old black-and-white cowboy movies on television every Saturday morning and afternoon, rain or shine. I would dream of being a cowgirl, of riding the range and roping the steers, of sitting on bales of hay and singing to the strains of guitars at evening campfires."
—Ricky Lauren

NOISE | Cat Power

photos of Chan Marshall by David Black

"I'm not that hot new chick." —Cat Power

UNIFORM | J. Crew 2010 Fall collection

"...everything looks gorgeous, old-fashioned and tomboy-ish."—Joanna Goddard

NOISE | Tina Weymouth

Talking Heads bass player Tina Weymouth in 1978

"Ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale says Tina was queen because she had that 'Jean Seberg thing going', that short-haired look of the actress who played Joan of Arc for Otto Preminger. The New Wave tomboy who hawked The Herald Tribune in Godard's Breathless. Both Jean Seberg and Tina Weymouth seemed adorably feminine because to paraphrase Seberg's lover Carlos Fuentes, 'to get those two you had to negotiate the twist and turns of androgyny and homoeroticism.'" —David Bowman (an excerpt from This Must Be the Place: the Adventures of Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century)