Edie Sedgwick Style: This It girl’s reign returns to the runways this season

by Randi Bergman August 28, 2013

See Edie Sedgwick’s style in life and on the runways »

Though she dominated just a sliver of time at Andy Warhol’s Factory in the sixties, Edie Sedgwick’s platinum blond bob, magpie style and tragic penchant for the excess has transfixed designers and artists alike long since her death by drug overdose in 1971. This season, Sedgwick is back into the spotlight thanks to perennial cool maker Marc Jacobs, who opened his Spring 2013 collection with one so unquestionably Edie look: a simple striped black and white T-shirt worn over hot pants, a platinum blond bob and low slung kitten heels. The look transformed for Fall 2013, with boudoir ready looks hitting the runways over and over at Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent.

The original Poor Little Rich Girl splashed onto the art scene starring in the Warhol-directed at film of the same name in 1965, and quickly deemed a “youthquaker” by Diana Vreeland, then editor of Vogue. She entered icon territory when rumoured paramour Bob Dylan left traces of her within “Just Like a Woman,” and “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat.”

Sedgwick embodied the freewheeling sixties with her more is more approach to layering fur and leopard print over striped T-shirts (worn simply as dresses) while accessorizing with shoulder length chandelier earrings, exaggerated mod eye makeup and false lashes. Since, everyone from Courtney Love to Agyness Deyn and most recently Emma Watson has replicated her style. She’s become an inspirational mainstay over the years, re-appearing every few seasons in a new form at Burberry, Proenza Schouler and Dior Couture and more. Even Sofia Coppola fell under the spell, with a onetime capsule collection designed as an ode to Sedgwick in 1994. Sedgwick’s popularity reached fever pitch a few years back with the 2006 biopic Factory Girl starring Sienna Miller, whose own style was bound to Sedgwick’s at the time.

Only a few seasons later, Sedgwick has been resurrected for the whole of 2013 with spring’s off-kilter layering and silver stripes at Prada, Christian Dior and Jonathan Saunders. Both at Louis Vuitton and his namesake line, Marc Jacobs felt the Sedgwick urge for the second season running, channeling Edie’s look into seductive, bed-ready collections of lingerie dresses, fur trimmed coats, pyjama shorts and disheveled elegance.

Something about Sedgwick feels so right, so now. But give it another five years. Those amphetamines and pearls will feel all right all over again.