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Something always struck me about Grace Jones’ nonconforming personal style: her avante-garde fashion sense and rebellious character. Truly ahead of her time, the 73-year-old singer, model, and actress paved the way for gender-fluid dressing and creating original art in the late ’70s and ’80s. She’s a strong believer in the importance of originality, of finding oneself—and that is why she is an inspiration to anyone willing to take risks for the sake of self-discovery.
This kind of message certainly resonates today, but in Jones’ time it was harder to be open and free-spirited. Jones left her abusively strict upbringing behind when she went to college to study Spanish and theater, and there she eagerly adopted a lifestyle of experimentation and party. Jones would later pursue a career in modeling, first in New York and then in Paris where she met big designers like Yves Saint Laurent, Claude Montana, Issey Miyake, and Thierry Mugler. She also collaborated with some of the most iconic photographers of all time, including Helmut Newton and Jean-Paul Gaude. Through working with these designers and photographers, Jones would become a legendary character in fashion history, creating provocative images that went against commercial notions of beauty.
By the mid 70s, Jones started out on a musical career that would span disco and new wave genres. Her first album, Portfolio, was released in 1977 with the smash hit, “I Need A Man”. Jones achieved mainstream success with many more hit songs throught the 1980s, like “I’ve Seen That Face Before” and “Slave To The Rythm”. It was during this decade that Jones’ acting career really took off, performing in Saturn Award-nominated Conan the Destroyer and the James Bond film, A View To A Kill. Jones’ music and acting careers cemented her image as an original and avante-garde beauty, as sexy and androygnous, as a daring and powerful pioneer in pop culture.
Jones’ sartorial choices (by the way, she didn’t use a stylist) reflected her rebellious and bold character, featuring power suits with heavy shoulder padding, fluorescent colors for clothes and makeup, geometric shapes, and garments that exposed and highlighted the shape of the body. For Jones, fashion was a means to express her hunger for originality, which reminds us that clothes can transform how we feel, how we act—they can compel us to feel confident and powerful. We’re taking note from Jones with with sharp tailoring, bright colors, body-hugging numbers, and sleek geometric shapes.
