Category: What Are You Wearing?

Anthony Muñoz, 37, is a photographer and an art director at the marketing agency Upshot. He’s planning to launch a visual culture magazine, Cheetahfight, and is the new father of a baby boy. Tell me about your outfit. I’m wearing a wool hat I picked up in a bazaar outside the 14th-century mosque Mecca Masjid […]

Bradley Crandall, 21, is double majoring in economics and political science at DePaul and works part-time at Brooks Brothers. Tell me about your outfit. Standard, gray three-piece Brooks Brothers suit, a very spread cutaway collar shirt from Paul Stuart, and a Brooks Brothers tie. The the lapel pin I got online from J. Press. I […]

Shelly Kurzynski Villasenor, 38, does Web design for a medical publisher and plays in the bands Telenovela and the Congees. Take us through the evolution of your style. I think my style has definitely evolved as I get older. When I was younger, it was the sparkly stuff and loud crazy prints. I used to […]

Frederick Wells, 34, a DJ, programmer, and design student at Columbia, says getting dressed is “a thought-out process. There’s usually a concept.” Here a gray wool hood by Berlin-based designers z.B. caused him to imagine “a postapocalyptic future–it seemed like the appropriate hood to have when I’m doing battle for gas and water.” Because he’d […]

A lot of people think of college as a chance to reinvent their style–but not Harry Kagan, who’s 18 and fresh out of Walter Payton College Prep. At freshman orientation at Ithaca College, he says, just his regular street wear was radical enough: “It didn’t seem like anyone really understood my fashion sense. Most of […]

Several people tried on Agga B’s unusual leatherlike lacquered twill skirt with pointy pockets, but only Jamie Hayes, 30, was game to be photographed in it, citing its “nice 40s feel.” Hayes, an accessories designer and fabric buyer for the handbag boutique 1154 Lill, says she thought the skirt’s architectural shape would make for a […]

In some ways, she says, this form-fitting jersey dress by MelanieNicole represents a departure from Lani Granum’s usual semibohemian style, which incorporates found objects and ethnic influences. “I can appreciate a good pinstripe suit once in a great while, but normally I’m much more free-form and colorful,” says Granum, a 56-year-old yoga teacher and psychotherapist. […]

Painter Nicholas Freeman, 28, who’s also the proprietor of the nonprofit Finch Gallery, says he likes to tweak the standards when it comes to his personal style. That’s why he snapped up his yellow shoes when he saw them online: “When you buy clothes for dudes, you get black, brown, or gray,” he says. He […]

Obi Nwazota, the 38-year-old owner of Orange Skin, a design firm and high-end European furniture showroom, was born in Nigeria and travels the world for his work, which has no doubt influenced his cosmopolitan style. He leans toward items not readily available elsewhere, which is why he likes to shop at Gamma Player, a Wicker […]

“When everything you have is a great thing, it’s really easy to put things together,” says Tania Bowers, which is why she puts a lot of thought into everything she buys. Bowers, 32, works at and designs accessories for Robin Richman’s boutique in Bucktown and sings and records as Via Tania. She was drawn to […]

Our selection initially gave Argelia Chavez pause–she’s into “tailored, clean lines” and most of our clothes were outside her comfort zone. But the 29-year-old fourth-grade teacher decided it was “good to challenge myself” and ended up putting together an ensemble she was surprisingly happy with: Abigail Glaum-Lathbury’s cropped linen pants with a pocket lining in […]

“Amelia Earhart would be my fashion model,” says Ashley Siple, 25. A former curatorial assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Photography who’s headed for London to study at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Siple likes “pea coats, trench coats–anything that has to do with sailing or aviation.” Her choices here are a little more glam […]

Bathsheba Nemerovski, a 35-year-old hairstylist at Sine Qua Non in Lakeview, buys very expensive or very cheap clothes and nothing in between. “Midpriced clothing is a waste of money,” she declares. “Everyone has it, there’s nothing interesting about it, and you’re not getting a bargain.” Asked to clarify her idea of “interesting,” she explained, “I […]

Preschool teacher Diane Lena, 38, has a fair-size vintage collection–mostly mod–but she likes to mix it up with current pieces from new and independent designers. “I feel like I’m a patron,” she says. She breaks out the more radical stuff after hours, when she plays synth and sings with the electroacoustic rock act Istvan & […]

Nina Fabicon, 27, said her style was a mixture of understated and very feminine, so we were surprised when she chose Agga B’s black plastic bubble skirt. Fabicon, who’s studying art history and French at UIC, admits the moldable material, which invites S and M associations, was pretty weird for her, but she loved the […]