Style Matters


DEBBIE HARRY: ICON

When I look around at the young hipsters today I wonder how many young girls and women don’t even know the debt of gratitude they owe Blondie lead-singer Debbie Harry.  Debbie Harry is not only a great front-person, singer, and actor but she is a style Icon.  

Her mid 70’s look was like a sexy Bardot Euro pin-up done on a budget and she created a cool, sexy, downtown vintage-glamour esthetic.  Almost 40 years later, this is still a cool way to dress and at some point, designers started making really expensive versions of this (Hello Miuccia Prada).  

In the beginning, I think Debbie was doing a 60’s retro thing and with her exquisite beauty she was like nobody else then.  Blondie’s first album cover is completely timeless and so cool.  Debbie foresaw the black trend that would be ubiquitous by the 80’s and rocks a detached, deapan stare that chicks in rock are still trying to perfect.

Blondie get a lot of credit for their music but they also came along a few years before the video age and if anyone was every perfect for music videos it was Debbie.  When she performed she looked hot and elegantly wasted. She wasn’t trying hard to be cute or pretty and it came off as super cool.  With her mix of “fuck-you” and “come-hither” blonde frontwomen from Terri Nunn to Courtney Love to Taylor Momsen are doing what Debbie did and putting their own spin on it.  Every blonde in a band is following in her footsteps in one way or another (see what I did there?).