A Fashion Story: Edie Sedgwick

We live in a time where it’s easy to take things for granted. We tend to forget things, conversations, memories, happenings, people - we tend to forget everything. It’s because most of us were born in a world where you don’t have to fight for your freedom, rights (yes, most of us, not all of us, unfortunately) & we can do pretty much whatever we want. But we tend to forget that there were people going against the stream for things to be how they are now. We forget that there were people who took risks & set trends that are timeless even though decades have passed. And I think we should talk about these people more than we do & honor them as we can. And I want to honor the hugely inspirational 60’s ‘it girl’ Edie Sedgwick.

There are a lot of stories about Edie & her tragic lifestyle. But I don’t want to talk about the bad stuff. I started reading articles about her and exploring who she was after watching the amazing movie Factory Girl, starring Sienna Miller as Edie. The magic begun when Edie met Andy Warhol at a party after moving to New York city. She starred in his controversial movies and became a muse and a close friend of Andy’s. She started modelling and appeared on the pages of Vogue, Edie instantly became a New York socialite, an ‘it girl’ that young girls would look up to.

Sedgwick’s timeless style is still widely talked about and admired. She had an iconic ‘More is More’ approach to fashion wearing layers of leopard print and fur over striped t-shirts that she wore as dresses. Her trademarks were huge shoulder length chandelier earrings, exaggerated eye makeup and false eyelashes. Her style has been replicated not only by trendsetters like Courtney Love, Agyness Deyn & Emma Watson, but also by leading fashion houses like Marc Jacobs, Burberry, Louis Vuitton & YSL.

However, because of her troubled childhood & badly influential people around her, Edie went off the track. Her modelling carrier was ruined because of her involvement in the drug scene & Edie was constantly in and out of rehabs and mental hospitals. She died at the early age of twenty-eight in 1971. Let’s remember her as a style icon of the past century.