The year is 1977, it is the peak of disco, and Studio 54 is alive and vibrant. On your left, you spot Andy Warhol, the iconic pop artist from Pittsburgh. To your right is Debbie Harry, the punky lead vocalist of Blondie. Cher sits casually with a Cosmopolitan in her hands. Yet, emerging out of silver disco lights and dizzy dancers, is the divine androgyne herself, Grace Jones.
Grace Jones’s style has always been prominent in the elegant yet extreme Avant garde. In a 1989 interview with Joan Rivers, Jones said she’s been taken for a man, “Oh my God, so many times. Even in Paris”. It is humorous, she adds, that even in Paris she has been mistaken for a man because so much of street fashion pushed gender barriers that seemed impossible to surpass. For example, Jones’s iconic sailor suit, designed by Anthony Price, made the star appear to be a U.S. Navy Captain. The look was macho and highlighted Grace’s ability to be both masculine and feminine all at once. Jones’s androgynous looks, however, truly skyrocketed with her work with photographer Jean-Paul Gaude.
In one of the early instances of “breaking the internet”, Gaude’s work titled “Blue Black in Black on Brown,” pictured Jones as smartly and boldly composed. In this piece, the viewer is immediately confronted with Jones’s powerful presence, most highlighted in her intense stare. However, what makes the photograph masterful, is the blurred conceptions of gender displayed by Jones’s features. She wears her hair in a short, boxy fashion which was considered atypical for a black woman in the 1980s. Further down, a cigarette adorns the right corner of her mouth which has been painted with fine crimson shade. Her mouth creates a strikingly beautiful dichotomy between masculinity and femininity; the cigarette a symbol of the former and the lipstick one of the latter. Gaude focused on strict angularity, placing emphasis on Jones’s chiseled cheekbones and her smart V-shaped suit jacket. The look as a whole makes Jones’s otherworldly. Such divine androgyny beauty is seldom achievable.
Perhaps Jones said it best herself, “The future is no sex. You can be a boy, a girl, whatever you want.”
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