This Ought to Be A History Essay. It's Not.

If I started a segment on here dedicated solely to documenting the fashion atrocities I see everyday as I wander the sidewalks, would I be an elitist bitch? 'Kind of', I think, is the answer. So I won't do it. But it's tempting.

It's just . . . I mean, there was a guy today with a rugby stripe shirt (stripes as wide as the Mississippi, mind you), which he er, creatively, paired with plaid shorts of an awkward mid-way non-commital sort of length and an entirely different colour scheme. This beauty was topped (well, bottomed) off with a pair of slip on Nike sandals in a blue semi-plastic. I am not saying he is a bad person, or any less of a worthwhile individual human being than anyone else, or that his sense of fashion is right or wrong... I just thought it was worth comment. Sadly, I thought it was worth derisive comment. Does this make me a bad person? Perhaps I should dress like that one day and teach myself a lesson.

Anyway, I am deftly avoiding the slings and arrows of academic responsibility by honoring today a woman whose style and bad-ass-ery currently have a lot of influence on my own aspirations. Her name is Alison Mosshart, and she is the only female musician I think is sexy. Yes, yes, I am sure many will disagree, and I respect that. I just personally have this thing where I usually don't like women in rock and roll, or most any genre, except perhaps select Celtic ballads. It's just a personal flaw. Lily Allen is close, a few others perhaps... Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Amanda Palmer, Cat Power... respectable, certainly appreciated from time to time, but I just don't find myself jealously and zealously fawning over them as I do every time I encounter Miss Mosshart. Oh, I lie, Mosshart and Lady Gaga. I'll write more on my surprising and unprecedented Gaga love later, but for now, I would like to pay homage to a woman of fabulous style who positively oozes edgy, sexy, rock.

Maybe I am so fascinated with her because she works with Jack White, who I think might secretly be a god. Maybe. But maybe it is just that, introduced to her work via my obsession with Mr. White, I found in her a woman I could aspire to be. In some ways. Few women are so shamelessly, well, cool. The men of rock run around all the time in tight black clothing with leather and a devil-may-care attitude, but it seems that most women supply arm candy or just fleeting shadows of these figures. Not Alison Mosshart. 

I saw her live with the Dead Weather a few months back and felt every tendril of my white upper-middle class youth repressed self boil with rebellious zeal and envy for that kind of unadulterated soul. Her stage presence is delightful-- brooding, dark, passionate, edgy (that word again, but it works), doing it for her own sake but willingly drawing the audience in with her awesome vocal tones and excellent 'I-just-rolled-out-of-bed-looking-like-a-sexed-out-rock-goddess' style.

I also saw with the Kills, her other band, a while back. I was there at the time for the Raconteurs and only vaguely familiar with the Kills. I discounted them a bit, as I was blindingly dedicated to the notion that no female vocalist could entrance me like Robert Plant or Mr. White. The show was fun, but it wasn't until later that the true talent and gravity of Ms. Mosshart hit me.

In the picture below, there she is on the street (ooer) with Kate Moss, girlfriend of her Kills bandmate Jamie Cullum. She's like the yin to Kate's Yang, chocolate to her vanilla, and both have worked with Jack White (see Sophia Coppola's 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself Video' or your life is bizarrely incomplete).

I realize this has been kind of an admiring ramble with arguably repressed homosexual undertones (not the case, Americans, open your minds and stop judging, jeesh), but mostly she just proves to me that women can be that strong, that, well, awesome in a field generally dominated in the strong and sexy category by cracked-out men in overtly effeminate garb. I hope the pictures I am including speak as to her distinctive style, which is not overtly original per se, but is pulled off with such panache that she is a real style icon in my book, and hopefully one day in yours. Today can be that day. Rock on.

VIDEOS- SEE HER IN ACTION