"Yeah, my legs and the boobs - they're my things," muses 20-year-old singer Amy Winehouse as she leans back in the diner booth to admire her aforementioned attributes. The point is somewhat superfluous as both, as she makes clear to the stylist within minutes of her arrival at the fashion shoot, are to be shown off to their proud best for the photos. "I ain't doing no long dresses!" she can be heard crying out from behind the dressing room door in her gum-snapping cockney accent, tempered with a teenage lilt. She has an inbuilt radar for finding the items on the overflowing rail that are "really me" - namely miniskirts and sexy tops. She picks up an oversized sweatshirt, which, the stylist suggests, could be worn with a pair of H&M cropped trousers. Winehouse disagrees. "Nahhhh, I'm gonna wear it with just a pair of heels." And would Amy like to wear a New Look coat over the evening dress? Amy would not: "I'm not really a coat kinda person," she explains. "I'm more of a walking-round-without-enough-clothes kinda person." It is a fairly safe bet that Winehouse won't be paying too much attention to this season's swerve to the ladylike look.
Not that she has ever really followed any trend. Her debut album, Frank, released last year, is a sexy, bluesy shout of protest, not just at her ex-boyfriend who was then her main inspiration (What Is It About Men? is one typical title), but also at the kind of bland baby-baby pop albums we have come to expect from British solo female singers under 30. It promptly went platinum and Winehouse garnered a reputation for being a woman who speaks her own mind. (In one interview, she claimed that her breakfast consists of Jack Daniel's and Coke. But when you are being cited as the Next Big Thing before your 20th birthday, a little self-mythologising is excusable.)
Even her looks - as heavily dark as a Goya painting, pretty, but almost too large for her surprisingly small body - defy the current celebrity trend for something more prettily elfin.
But Winehouse's attitude typifies something more general. It is one of the more satisfying ironies of fashion that the very people whom the industry adores most - the too-cool-to-even-think-about-school young folk - probably pay less attention to its diktats than most. Aside from the fact that few teenagers have the money to buy into high fashion, they have yet to be convinced that looking In Fashion is sometimes more important than looking good, which in teenage girl-speak translates as one thing only - flaunting it. "Are you sure you don't want to see my legs?" she shouts more than once during the shoot. She is much happier when perched on the counter and, within the space of two shots, she can go from looking like a pretty girl enjoying her good looks to a pastiche of an FHM model. "Let's button up your jumper ... " is one typical fatherly interjection from the stylist as he tries to keep her looking more like the former.
Probably for that reason, Winehouse has little time for stylists or anyone else who tries to control her appearance. The only style adviser she brings to the shoot is her best friend, and she insists on doing her own hair and make-up. "Why would someone who's only known me for one day know what looks good on me better than I do?" she asks in a "like duh " tone of voice. From the mouths of babes, eh?
She does subscribe to Vogue, but usually just flicks through it, finding it all "really, really ugly. I only ever like the Louis Vuitton bags."
Of course, she clarifies, waggling a greasy chip for emphasis, she doesn't actually buy Vuitton - "I'm Jewish, so I'm really into knock-offs" - instead taking advantage of the increasingly good copies from the local markets. "I bought this great fake Vuitton a while ago - pink, metallic, but that makes it sound really gross, doesn't it? Also, I like the fake Chanel stuff." Not, she quickly adds, somewhat contrarily, that she buys them for the label, but "just for how they look".
She may claim not to be interested in labels, but she certainly knows her stuff. Her favourites are "Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs - what he's done at Vuitton is great. And also labels that have a real legacy, like, well, Vuitton again, but also Missoni and Chanel." She is equally, and unsurprisingly, clear about which ones she doesn't like: "Michael Kors and MaxMara - they just look like really bad high street." Not that she dislikes the high street - "I ain't no snob" - and, being a good north Londoner, she loves Camden Market above all.
What about people in the music industry? She approves of Christina Aguilera's newly covered-up style: "She's a talented girl, but you couldn't really see it before when she was wearing those chaps with her ninny hanging out." Madonna, naturellement , also gets a nod: "I love the way she's so comfortable with her sexuality." But in the main, she has little time for so-called style icons, and the idea of copying anyone else's look causes her huge eyes to roll. "Even Sienna Miller," she says, referring to this year's current style icon, as decreed by the tabloids and Heat magazine. "She's got nice clothes, but she just looks like a high-street poster girl, like, really ready-made. I don't want to be the prettiest or the sexiest or whatever. I just want to look different and to look like me."
http://www.theguardi...on.amywinehouse
