Tomboy Style: June 2010

ICON | Julie Christie

photo of Christie shopping for groceries barefoot in Malibu by Ron Galella, 1968

"Her favorite article of clothing is a woolen newsboy cap, and she's a 25-year-old British tomboy with a whipcord-and-piano wire body, legs that bow and stringy hair. Last week she won the Academy Award as the best actress of 1965." —Nadine Liber, LIFE April 29, 1966.

ICON | Jennifer Aniston

photo by Alexei Hay for Elle

"Jennifer Aniston is the tomboy queen of New York cool."—The Independent

SCREEN | Over The Edge

still frame from the film Over The Edge, 1979

Carl: You know, I think you're really beautiful. You are.
Cory: No, I'm not.

ICON | Tilda Swinton

photo by Hugo Glendinning

“When I was nine or 10, I wasn’t pretty anymore–which is a big advantage. It must be a nightmare to be a beautiful teenager. I got this strange kind of androgyny. I was everything girls don’t want to be—incredibly tall, incredibly thin, and unimpressive. For years it’s still been possible to hide as a sexual being."—Tilda Swinton

ICON | Patsy Pulitzer

Photo by Slim Aarons, 1955

"At the time she was Patsy Bartlett and I photographed her for a Holiday cover because she was quite social and sporty."—Slim Aarons

CONTEMPORARY | Anna Dello Russo

photos by Garance Dore

"Vogue Nippon’s Fashion Director Anna Dello Russo’s ditched her Balmain shoulders and Mary Katrantzou prints for a boyfriend blazer and classic white shirt. We like it." —Britt Aboutaleb

NOISE | La Roux

"La Roux's Elly Jackson played a gig at the Viktor & Rolf menswear fashion show today in Paris wearing a men's tux by the label. 'I love suits,' she told WWD. 'I wouldn't feel comfortable in girls’ clothes.' " —Sharon Clott, MTV Style

(Thanks Haydee)

ICON | June Carter Cash

photos from the LIFE archive

"June Carter spent her early years as a self-described tomboy. She'd milk cows or gather kindling wood at her family's Maces Springs, Va. home, or take delight in riding on a motorcycle with father Ezra Carter. Once, Ezra ran the motorbike into a ditch, shooting his daughter into a cornfield. 'I survived with only scratches and an eager yearning to do anything my father did, to follow him and do anything his boy would have done. Only I wasn't a boy. I was a girl. But I really tried hard not to be. I wanted to be Daddy's boy.'"—June Carter Cash, in an excerpt from Along My Klediments.

UNIFORM | Stella McCartney

photos by contactmusic, shinystyle

“I don’t think that a lot of women today are feminine, feminine, feminine. I think most women have both sides to them; they are forced to. Because we’re working, and we are not only mothers and girlfriends and wives, we identify with all of that; I think men do too. It is a false myth that women are this and men are that; I think there is a balance in everyone.” —Stella McCartney

ICON | Eunice Kennedy Shriver

photos by The Associated Press, UPI

"Of all the Kennedy girls in her generation, Eunice cared least about her appearance. Here she parted company with her mother, who tried to interest all of her girls in haute couture, attractive make-up, and sophisticated hairstyles. Rose wrote hundreds of letters to her children (boys and girls), and then grandchildren, offering advice on everything from wardrobe to grammar. Eunice was simply too busy and too much the tomboy to take time from her frenetic pace to absorb her mother's lessons on style and image. Yet, Eunice made up for her sometimes unkempt appearance with another of her mother's traits: unbounded enthusiasm."—Barbara A. Perry, author of the upcoming book, Rose: Mother of the Kennedy Image.

CONTEMPORARY | Carolina Adriana Herrera

photos via popculturepost, LIFE archive

"I tell you, we went away to India on a trip, just the two of us, and we'd go walking and then riding on elephants and wading through rivers, and by the end of the day my hair was matted and I'd lost a shoe and I'd turn to look at my mum and she'd still be perfect, not a hair out of place, and yet we'd done exactly the same things. So now I think she was just born that way, not me." —Carolina Adriana Herrera

CONTEMPORARY | Jennifer Connelly

photo by PulsarMedia

"As a kid I was into Matchbox cars, climbing trees, and jumping off things." —Jennifer Connelly

MOMENT | Courtney Cox-Arquette and Laura Dern

Courtney Cox-Arquette and Laura Dern leave their husbands at home for game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals

SCREEN | Victor Victoria

photo via tout le cine

King Marchand: I just find it hard to believe that you're a man.
Victoria: Because you found me attractive as a woman?
King Marchand: Yes, as a matter of fact.
Victoria: That happens frequently.
King Marchand: Not to me.
Victoria: Just proves the old adage: "There's a first time for everything."
King Marchand: I don't think so.
Victoria: But you're not a hundred per cent sure?
King Marchand: Practically.
Victoria: Ah, but to a man like you, someone who believes he could never, under any circumstances find another man attractive, the margin between "practically" and "for sure" must be as wide as the Grand Canyon.

UNIFORM | rag & bone

Spring/Summer 2010 runway slides via rag & bone

"We went back to our roots, so the collection is tailored and tomboy. We want everything to look like a real, cool girl would wear it. Someone we’d see walking down the street and who we’d think looks dope.” —Marcus Wainwright

ICON | Brooke Shields

photo by Oliviero Toscani reproduced courtesy of Vogue for On Your Own, 1985

"I love the sexy allure of menswear styling." —Brooke Shields

ICON | Martha Plimpton

photo of River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton by Alan Light, 1989

"I don’t consider myself unfeminine at all. I think I’m very girlie. I like lots of products. I like unguents and creams. I could spend hours in a really nice drugstore. But I’m not sure that I match the regular standard of girlie — vulnerable, lovable, malleable." —Martha Plimpton

UNIFORM | YSL Le Smoking

photo by Helmut Newton, 1975

"The thing about a tuxedo is that it is virile and feminine at the same time."—Catherine Deneuve

ICON | Dorothea Lange

photo by Rondal Partridge, Farm Security Administration 1936

Richard K. Doud: It seems to me that at that time photography would be a very unlikely choice for a woman to suddenly decide to pursue, because I don't think that photography was really that commonplace when you decided to become a photographer.

Dorothea Lange: [My] family thought that the quickest way for a woman to earn a living was to go into teaching, which I didn't want to do at all. I didn't argue it; but my mother and grandmother used to use the phrase, "But it's something to fall back on," you know. And that, I think, is a detestable phrase for a young person. I decided, almost on a certain day, that I was going to be a photographer.

An excerpt from an oral history interview with Dorothea Lange, May 22, 1964, courtesy of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

NOISE | Beach House

photo by Betthany Smith

"If I could be anyone for just one day, I'd be Mick Jagger."—Victoria Legrand

GEAR | Fender Telecaster

photo of unnamed model by Hedi Slimane

"Any idiot off the street can play the guitar, but you have to have attitude...I kick doors down, I literally kick doors down. I have to go buy new doors all the time."—Katherine Thomas, one of Guitar One magazine's top ten fastest shredders of all time.

ICON | Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes

Florence learned the spectrum of hunting, fishing, and camping skills from her father. She is even known to have gone horseback riding with the young George S. Patton, Jr. across the Alhambra plains. However, her upper-class upbringing and her mother's fears about her wild tendencies and tomboy-like attitude led to a 1919 marriage to Reverend C. Rankin Barnes of South Pasadena. The peaceful life of a clergyman's wife was not for Florence. After inheriting the family fortune, she abandoned her family, disguised herself as a man, and stowed away on a freighter bound for Mexico, joining a banana boat crew once there. In San Blas, Mexico, she jumped ship with a fellow crewmember and began to roam the Mexican countryside with him on a donkey's back—reminding her male companion of the character he erroneously called "Pancho", this is when Florence Barnes first became known by her nickname of Pancho. She was known by it for the rest of her life.

NOISE | Siouxie Sioux

photos by Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

"It was trying to break down the stereotypes and it was the kind of thing where, for the first time, women were on a par and not seen as just objects. Though girls were objectified still."—Siouxie Sioux

ICON | Mia Farrow

photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, LIFE Magazine May 5, 1967

"I remember once she punched a paparazzo when we were shooting in New York."—Roman Polanski

UNIFORM | Dior Homme Petite Taille

photo of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in Dior Homme

"Kris Van Assche couldn't have picked a better time to debut his Dior Homme Petite Taille collection of smartly tailored seperates for women. Van Assche took classics like dress shirts, skinny jeans, and, of course, the tuxedo jacket from his regular Homme line and refit them for women. Another reason to say J'adore Dior."—Anne Monoky, Harper's Bazaar

NOISE | M.I.A.

ohnotheydidnt: How do you think you’d have fared on [American Idol]?
M.I.A.: I would totally flop.

ICON | Jane Birkin

photos from the LIFE archives, 1982

WWD: Do you have a wardrobe of ballgowns at home that you secretly like to dress up in?
Jane Berkin: Not at all.

ICON | Anjelica Huston

Photo by Craig McDean

"Wes [Anderson] understands the dilemma, that when women become too forceful, they get accused of being masculine. If they state their opinions, or if they assert themselves, they won't be thought of as lovable or feminine."—Anjelica Huston