True Trendsetter: Amazing Grace Jones!

The clear sign that personality and postmodern style are above gender. Amazing Grace Jones!

 

“I have both a woman and a man in me. It is all a matter of channeling the energies in the sense that you are going to use them.”

Even before he triumphed around the world with his music shows and records, Grace Jones already had a style of her own:  An aggressive image: (Karl Lagerfeld would go on to say: “¡Grace Jones! She looks so fierce that I could have her as a watchdog in my castle”; Androgynous  I like to dress like a guy” It must be said that she was the first woman to shave in the American military style, the so-called Flat hairstyle- top. Regarding this, Lady Gaga declares:«I love Grace Jones and David Bowie because they both played with gender and with what sexy means»; Extreme thinness; appeared in New York with only a backpack on his shoulder, it carried a collection of Kenzo knit scarves and shawls (given away by the designer ) with which Grace would create envelope aesthetics which consisted of stylishly putting one or more scarves around the body.

For years her only complete outfit consisted of a Chenille quilt., topped with tassels the size of golf balls, who used the same to be in the pool as for his wild nights of parties and drugs. The own style was not limited to the look; also to his uninhibited personality , strong and somewhat rogue which sometimes led to scandal.

Grace Jones was born in May 1948, daughter of a protestant pastor, In Jamaica, Although soon she would go to live with her family in New York where she studied theater and was hired by a modeling agency that exported her to Europe with the correct criterion that she would succeed sooner in Paris than in America.. Allí, in fact, became a model of success; trabajó con Yves Saint Laurent, Issey Miyake , Kenzo, Montana…and it would be the cover of magazines like Vogue or Elle. She was not the first black supermodel woman since that honor falls to the model Donyale Luna , friend and "teacher"” de Grace.

Muse of artists like Andy Warhol (silkscreen prints with fierce colors background, Red lips, totemic image) with whom he kept friends until the death of the artist; Keith Haring. that he would paint his body as a Maasai warrior for the video «I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You)»; Helmut Newton photographing her with her then husband Dolph Lundgren as muscular new Adam and Eve; o Jean Paul Goude, with whom he had a long relationship and who would photograph her for the covers of his albums, renewing, already in the eighties, her look towards more extravagant and surreal extremes.

Leaving aside the moda for the music, facet for which today it is known worldwide, became a true Pop Star. Behind him numerous albums and hit songs such as the "Vie en rose", “Slave to the rithm” or the version of “Libertango” by Astor Piazzola, “I’ve seen that face before.” He recently just released a new album titled Hurricane / DUB, loaded with electronic rhythms that you can listen to by clicking here. We must also highlight her work as an actress, taking part in more than twenty films such as “Panorama to kill” of James Bond or “Conan” con Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In his shows he liked to create controversy and was able to enter the stage mounted on a motorcycle, destroy the scenery of the Sanremo festival, swing on 2000 people at a concert in Paris or even let the public tear off her clothes until she undresses. It was all a style statement in those years 80, Grace was exponent of theatricality, the coloring and the exaggeration. These days you can see it in the Victoria museum & Albert of London, an exhibition titled Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-90 where one of the rooms is dedicated to the styling of Grace Jones.

Today it continues to offer concerts and shows, still active from the height of a legend not only of music but other facets such as fashion, art or style. With wisdom, pride and mastery of "knowing how to be” of an old queen, who even dares to refuse to work with Lady Gaga «Lady Gaga asked me if I wanted to work with her but I said no. I prefer to work with someone who is more original and not with someone who is copying me. I would never go see her live«

And is that Grace Jones has the gift of originality and visual power, contributed to questioning notions of style, gender and identity, carrying with it new airs of freedom. She herself.