I love Style.com, although the site is getting so dense that often I just feel overwhelmed…but there’s one fun feature that you may not know about, called “Beauty Icon”. It’s a romp through fashion history with short bios and often a great slide show of 9 – 12 photos.
The folks at Style.com never actually state their criteria for this list, and the only hard and fast rule I can detect is that for the most part no fashion executives or designers are included (Estee Lauder and Mary Quant being the sole exceptions so far). The archive is a great way to appreciate well known fashion icons (C.Z. Guest, Greta Garbo), those lesser known but equally worthy (Gloria Guinness, Mona von Bismarck) pleasant surprises (Amelia Earhart, Florence Griffith Joyner), controversial mavericks (Bjork, Grace Jones), and few head-scratchers that are sure to provoke Barry Bonds-like arguments (Sofia Coppola, Chloë Sevigny).
It’s fun little time sink!
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THE SEWING DIVAS sewing, design, fashion 
I didn’t know about that feature on Style.com, thanks for pointing it out!
Comment by Tany — July 22, 2007 @ 4:03 am
I have a book from several years ago “Great Women of Style” (will have to go look at it to quote exact title/author) with lovely chapters on several of the women you listed here, Phyllis.
Also there was a laundry list of the greats, without much substance in the text, in the monthly column on the last page of W by what’s her name, the faux contessa. The contessa was chiding the modern day socialite types as having no style.
So I guess this topic is very au courant. My favorite currently is Doris Duke, in her Honolulu phase. I guess in these listings, having lots of money helps one to develop style.
It would be interesting to explore what is style and how to emanate it, here at The Sewing Divas. If you can sew, you can do it your way – no need to rely on designers, and RTW.
Comment by georgene — July 22, 2007 @ 4:58 pm
Have you perused The Sartorialist’s site? (http://www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com/) During certain fashion weeks he publishes his photos on style.com, but his standalone site is worth bookmarking.
Comment by Lisa — September 14, 2007 @ 11:17 am