Fashion rocks
Lily Allen’s frocks, Bat for Lashes’ headbands, even Beth Ditto’s leotards - today’s rock chicks are being embraced as improbable fashion icons. Alexis Petridis reports.
Natasha Khan laughs. The noise she makes is somewhere between a nervous giggle and a derisive snort. “I’m a female rock style icon?” There’s a thoughtful pause, then another laugh. “Um, thank you,” says the Bat for Lashes frontwoman, in the same way you might say thank you if someone handed you a summons. She is, she says, not much of a fan of the fashion world. Some of her ideas about clothes are what you might politely call a little esoteric: her penchant for wearing headbands on stage has less to do with style than with a book of symbolism she once read that “said anything you wear around your head is drawing the attention of the gods to your consciousness, connecting you to the muses”.
Regardless of her reservations, however, even Khan admits she’s started to influence the way others dress. Her striking on-stage look involves not just consciousness-expanding headbands but feathers, “good-luck charms and animal totems, which are linked to that shamanistic idea of having spirits and luck charms and energy from historical sources”, glitter make-up, and “mixing modern and ancient together, like a strange 1920s beaded necklace with a hip-hop vest”.
The look is inspired by what she calls “powerful women with a cosmic edge” (a category that apparently includes Jane Birkin, Nico and Cleopatra) and has started to spawn imitators among her fans.
“When I went to America recently, there was quite a lot of headband-wearing and glitter adornment going on in the crowd,” she says. “Even among the boys, which I really enjoy. It’s quite surreal.”
If Khan seems an unlikely candidate for style-icon status or mainstream celebrity, it’s probably worth noting that stranger things have happened with female rock stars recently.
Eighteen months ago, you would have got pretty long odds on an overweight, lesbian avenger with a predilection for leotards being the subject of rumours, alas false, regarding designing a clothing line for British high-street chain Topshop. But that was before the inexorable rise to fame of the Gossip’s Beth Ditto.
Similarly, anyone trying to bet that people would shortly be taking fashion cues from a woman with sailor tattoos, a ratty beehive, make-up apparently applied while wearing boxing gloves and an alcohol problem would have been steered gently but firmly out of the bookies. But that’s precisely what’s happened as a result of Amy Winehouse’s success.
