Cute little Shirley Kurata!!!
I kind of don’t even know where to begin when writing about her. She’s probably a perfect human being, and where can you start with someone like that?
Just look at her. Baby has infinite style, and she’s all about vintage. She’s thisclose with the super amazing photographer Autumn de Wilde, and she styles runway shows for Rodarte. RODARTE. And they all hang out together. How do I get invited to that game night?
Two of my favorite things about Shirley: one, she got into vintage the exact same way that I did. “In school, I wasn’t finding new stuff that I liked in stores at the malls, so I just tended to wear vintage,” she says. “…And [I had] an obsession with the 60s.”
That is pretty much me, friends. And I feel like she may be the only other person on the planet besides me who approves of Yoko Ono (unless that shirt below is steering me wrong.)
The other main thing I love about her is that she really hustled to get where she is. Shirley wanted to be a designer since the age of ten, so she asked her mom to teach her to sew. She made dresses for herself and went on to take sewing classes throughout high school, and eventually studied fashion design in Paris. When she decided that starting her own fashion line would be too large a task to take on at first, she began costuming and styling for low-budget films and TV shows. And when she heard that Rodarte needed help styling/organzing their second runway show, she flew herself out from Los Angeles to go help. Since then, she has styled the likes of Zooey Deschanel, Miranda July, Jenny Lewis, Michel Gondry, Nancy Sinatra, Devendra Banhart, and loads more (most recently Lena Dunham and the cast of HBO’s very popular new show, Girls). She also styled for the 2009 Oliver Peoples ad campaign. Shirley is renowned for her editorial work, which includes a memorable Karlheinz Weinberger-inspired shoot for i-D, and (my favorite) a shoot for Paper based on Francesca Lia Block’s book Weetzie Bat. So awesome.
Shirley herself draws inspiration from designers such as Yves Saint Laurent, André Courrèges, Rudi Gernreich, Ossie Clark, and Cristóbal Balenciaga. While I love those guys too, I have to say I draw just as much inspiration from Shirley herself. What an incredible person.
This post was written by Tori.
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