Kim Gordon Gives her Secrets on Badassery

Gordon with some sort of evil, man-sized muppet.
Photo: Getty Images

Kim Gordon has always represented unstudied badassness to us, so when we spotted her in three front rows — 3.1 Phillip Lim, Anna Sui, and Marc Jacobs — we were determined to ask just how she pulls it off. The answer: H&M.

On Anna Sui.
She's always made clothes that reference periods when clothes represented something meaningful to musicians. I don't really wear her clothes. I sort of feel like a lot of the stuff is too young for me, quite frankly. But I feel like lately I’ve seen things that look more like I could embrace as a woman.

On thrift-store shopping.
I will sometimes, but not anything that sort of looks vintage. Because I kind of feel like when I dress in vintage stuff that represents the seventies and sixties, I kind of did that. I’m more conservative now. I’m so boring.

On finding age-appropriate stage clothes.
It’s kind of a challenge [laughs]. There are certain requirements. I like to wear a dress because it’s against type. And it can’t be black. People think of extreme music as black leather. There are certain ideas of what you’re supposed to look like if you rock. I like the contrast between something that looks vulnerable and this hard music. I like a party dress. I’ve worn stuff from Sue Stemp recently because it’s a dress that doesn’t look like a dress. And I bought a white dress at H&M recently. It doesn’t look like anything. I don’t necessarily want to wear anything that screams a [certain] designer.

On not shopping at Forever 21, starting now, in solidarity with friend Anna Sui, who's suing them.
Oh no! Are they ripping her off? I just went there the other day with my daughter [grimaces and shrugs]. I’ve definitely bought a dress at H&M that looked a lot like Anna Sui. What can I say? It was really cheap. —Jada Yuan

A Fashion Week Bicycle Thief

Stylist snags Rowley’s wheels.

• By Jada Yuan

(Photo: Thomas Concordia/WireImage )

Designer Cynthia Rowley’s Fashion Week show ended with models biking down the runway, but one bike never came back. “I know who stole it, but I can’t say,” Rowley told us later in the week. “Okay, my stylist, Sally White, stole the bike.” White was an obvious suspect. The inspiration for Rowley’s bike-themed collection, she’s “almost six feet tall, and she rides her bike all around town wearing giant platform heels and little short chiffon dresses,” Rowley says. Since then, “she’s been all over town with it,” according to Rowley, appearing at Marc Jacobs’s and Ralph Lauren’s shows. White, reached by phone while—what else?—riding her new bike, was aghast. “What does she mean? Like I just stole it? Lies!” White says her old bike broke down and Rowley told her she could take one after the show. (She grants she may not have had proper clearance that night; she rode off while Rowley was doing interviews.) White proudly lists other shows the bike attended: Bill Blass, Narciso Rodriguez, Anna Sui. And Rowley is willing to let go. “Oh, Sally can have the bike,” she says. “She did a good job.”