Style Icons - celebrity or blogger?

Who is your style icon? Last Friday I asked my Twitter followers to name their celebrity style icon. I wasn’t surprised when many of them had a hard time coming up with a celebrity whose closet they would like to steal. Instead, many of them offered the name of one or more bloggers whose style they love and closets they covet. I have to agree with them. As a style and fashion blogger I find inspiration everywhere, but there is something especially attractive about the way a fellow blogger manages to put together an outfit or her signature style.

There are so many icons. I’d love to own a small portion of the sparkly items Kristina stocks her closet with. I would take all of Liz’s pencil skirts, especially the ones of the animal print variety. Sign me up for the hand-me down accessories of Christine! I’ll take the hair of Andrea and the hair color of Elissa. I also love the shoe collection of Vahni’s and the purses of Keira! The list of inspiration and style icons is long and complex, but that is the beauty of blogging - we can all be different and draw inspiration for many different sources. Then we take that, shake in our own sense of style and get a blog-worthy outfit.

If I had to pick one blogger whose sense of style I love and whose closet I would willingly take over in a heartbeat it would have to be Kendi, of Kendi Everyday. Why do I love her style? To me she manages to work with some of the most basic elements of a wardrobe and mix them into combinations that are completely unique. Skirts and blouses are a staple in her style. But she pulls them off with the addition of bold colored accents - a bright belt, a chunky necklace, a wrapped scarf - and suddenly the basics aren’t so basic anymore.

Which blogger would you say is your style icon?

For the second Jane by Design Style Challenge we were given a white t-shirt and told to re-work it into the style of our fashion icon. For me, this wasn’t so much a matter of reworking the t-shirt as it was about pairing it as Kendi would (or at least as I interpret she would.) She wears t-shirts just as they are. But her combinations is what makes it unique. Below are three renditions of white t-shirt outfits that I think represent some of what Kendi achieves in her outfit posts. Of course these are sorely lacking her smiling face as well as her great shoes, purses and other accessories that wouldn’t fit on the dress form.

The Style Challenge is sponsored by ABC Family as a precursor to it’s premier of the fashion-show Jane By Design. Several bloggers are taking part in this 7-part challenge in which they are given various tasks as a way of ‘interviewing’ to be the blogger for the show’s fashion house, Donovan Decker. Find out more on the Facebook page - and if you want to leave a comment mentioning ModlyChic and your style icon I would appreciate it.