Erykah Badu recently sat down with Vogue to discuss her influential style. Inside she shares how she feels about her street style and on stage plus things she loves to wear….
“I make no distinction between what I wear on the street and the stage; it’s all just my style,” she says speaking from her home in Dallas. “I don’t work with a stylist, and I never plan what I’m going to wear, it’s always an of-the-moment thing.” To illustrate the point she describes what she is wearing in her living room at that very moment: green workwear-inspired overalls that she picked up at Yellow Rat Bastard, the now-shuttered downtown New York streetwear boutique, a pair in which she’s been known to rock the crowds at Coachella.
“I’ve always enjoyed dressing my head, whether it’s head wraps, hats, or wigs, I’m not sure why,” she says. “I think that’s just where my mojo lives.”
Take a look inside her jewelry box, and you’ll find she has a lot of magic at her fingertips too. The ankh rings that she’s worn since the nineties were designed by her uncle, and come finished with all manner of semi-precious stones and crystals which, Badu explains, have special healing qualities. There are the ankle bracelets that she picked up in Swaziland (“because I like jewelry that makes music when I walk,” she says) and the talon-like knuckle-duster rings she designed in collaboration with Lillian Shalom. “Accessories really are everything for me,” she says. “I travel with a black body bag full of them when I’m on tour. I’ll threw in my Yoruba beads, my Maasai beads—and there’s space for six hats in my hat box.” (And if there’s anyone in recent history that can top Pharrell’s millinery game, surely it’s Badu—the hat she wore to the Met Gala in 2014, was the crowning glory to her Givenchy look, and stood literally head and shoulders above her tiny five-foot frame.)
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