We are just one week into the new year and without a doubt, the majority of us are still deep in planning mode. We’re trying to sort out how we’ll change the course of our day-to-day lives, maybe by altering our diets or our sleep habits. Perhaps we’ll revisit our fitness goals or vow to redecorate our homes. For many others, resolutions come in the form of a wardrobe rehaul, one that involves reinvigorating ourselves with new clothes and ways of wearing them. Though we may be moving forward into the future, there’s no shame in looking back in search of style inspiration. Enter Gabriel Held, Instagram’s most celebrated vintage dealer and fashion historian who has taken his already-enlightening feed and amped it up with a very special, very resolution-worthy hashtag.
Over the last couple of months, Held has been categorizing images of fashionable yet slightly underappreciated female fashion icons with #unsungsherooffashion. There are images of the pixie-cut ’90s actress Lori Petty dressed in checked overalls and a sequined hot pink sheath. Held gives praise to Parker Posey and her bright blue snakeskin dress, and to China Chow in her John Galliano for Dior newspaper slip. Rita Moreno, who starred in the original West Side Story, also makes the list in printed corsets, as does Goodfellas babe Debi Mazar in an S&M leather bodysuit and a monochrome Tweety Bird ensemble. Held also shouts out to singer Kelis, model Roshumba Williams, and Mexican superstar Thalía.
Held sums up the philosophy behind an #unsungsherooffashion with two very distinct quotes. The first, he says, “is from Fran Drescher’s autobiography, in which she recounts trying to bond with Princess Diana at the CFDA Awards by mentioning that they were both on Mr. Blackwell’s list, to which Diana replied, ‘Yes, but I was on his best dressed list and you were on his worst.’ Drescher then said, ‘You have Princess Margaret on your list but I have Madonna and Demi. You’re on the wrong list, Princess!’ ” The second passage, Held explains, is a line from the Marlo Thomas song “Free to Be . . . You and Me”: “A person should wear what he wants to, not just what other folks say. A person should do what she likes to, a person is a person that way.”
What all of the women have in common is a fearlessness in the way they approach fashion—beading, feathers, and leopard prints included—which is how we all might want to approach our individual style in the new year. Held does have some of the pictured pieces available to purchase, including former MTV VJ Ananda Lewis’s graphic print Anna Sui top and the Todd Oldham shrug once worn by singer Kate Pierson. That said, #unsungsherooffashion isn’t a shopping tool. Rather, it is a compass pointing us in a fresh, unbounded, and maybe slightly quirky direction: how to be our own unsung sheroes of fashion in 2019. As Held puts it, “I have always been drawn to people with unique style that may lie outside the established realm of good taste.” He adds, “20 years later, we remember Lil’ Kim’s 1999 VMA look, styled by my fashion mother Misa Hylton, but we don’t necessarily remember those who have played it safe and followed trends and rules. I think that should be a lesson to us all.”