In Praise of Björk, the O.G. Patron Saint of Avant-Garde Designers

Björk and fashion...is there anything left to be said? Well, yes. As we approach the end of one decade and the beginning of a new one, it seems the right time to say thank you to the Icelandic performer.

For nearly 30 years, Björk has not only approached and appreciated clothing as a transformative art form but along the way she also became a patron of the arts, a sort of one-woman fashion fund who backs avant-garde talents by giving them opportunities and visibility. This September Björk performed in a hot-off-the-runway pleated circle dress by Threeasfour—almost two decades after being photographed in a denim-and-tulle ensemble from As Four’s Spring 2001 lineup.

Björk’s tastes are famously catholic, ranging from a Moomin T-shirt to bejeweled animal-shaped minaudières from Judith Leiber. Some of Björk’s most indelible looks, like the cover of 1997’s Homogenic album, were created by her friend Lee Alexander McQueen. More recently she’s worked with Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing. We know she’s not averse to luxury—the singer once asked Christian Lacroix to open his atelier on a Sunday so she could order a couture look—but Björk is best known for supporting indie brands, especially those that are exploring new and uncharted territory, as she is in her own work.

Stylewise Björk has consistently been drawn to dramatic, body-morphing silhouettes, like those created by Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons or by the science- and tech-fascinated Dutch couturier Iris van Herpen. There seems to be some correlation too between the singer’s own ethereality and her penchant for wing-like effects, whether expressed with a pleated sleeve or a neck-wrapping swan.

Björk’s self-presentation is wonderfully, and positively, other. The “Venus as a Boy” singer, as a scholar neatly noted, “reaches beyond the binaries.” And she does so in ways that are totally her own, whether she’s doing an airport run or performing in the form of a sea creature, as she did at the 2004 Olympics for all the world to see.

Here, an appreciation of Björk’s intergalactic style.