Inside the Closets of 15 Stylish People

As described by her personal aide of 20 years, J.: Even if she didn’t have anywhere to go, you’d come into her room and be like, “Iris, where are you?” And she would be in the closet. She would try on everything even though she’d tried it on a thousand times. She took joy in it. Her clothes were an extension of her expression of herself. When you saw her, you got a sense of who she was just by what she was wearing. She was never trying to dress to impress anybody. She didn’t care what other people said about what she had on. She had things that were very much high-end couture, but then she also loved the low-end things. She wasn’t a Chanel type of gal. She loved Ralph Rucci. She had everything from Valentino. When we were packing, she would do it herself 90 percent of the time. She was on point: “You have to stuff this one. You have to lay that one flat.” I can see her right now doing this interview. She’d be in the bed, and she’d cross her legs. And then she would say, “J., did I answer everything right?” And I’d say, “Yeah.”

Standouts: Her bracelets. “If she ever wore an outfit and didn’t have her bracelets on, it wouldn’t be Iris.”

The first word that comes to mind when I think of my wardrobe is casual. Also, individual. I dress the way I dress, not the way somebody else dresses. Even when I was a kid, I had my own taste. I don’t buy anything that I don’t understand, and I don’t buy clothes because of the label. I buy what looks good to my eye that I think I can wear well. I like clothes that have an attitude. I like color. I don’t want to look boring and be boring. Interesting is very important; if it’s not interesting, it’s not worth it. Even with people, if a person isn’t interesting, there’s nothing to do. What are you going to do with them? I see everybody — they all wear a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt. I don’t mind it, but everybody wears it. It’s like, “Can you wear something else?”

Standouts: Many pairs of Trash & Vaudeville jeans. A yellow Stephen Sprouse coat covered in red writing.

My life is not a runway. Everything has to be comfortable. The great Willie Norris, my favorite designer and one of my sweetest friends, and I were talking about why I love wearing suits. And Willie said, “Suits are a solution.” And I was like, “You know what? Thank you. Suits are a fucking solution.” And I think that’s how I dress. I am trying to solve an important problem for that day. As for organization, there are labels everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. The most intimate relationship that a woman can have is with her label-maker. The closet cannot be a place where I spiral out. I have a rule: If I buy a new thing, a thing has to leave. If I really like something, I take a picture of it. I want the memory, not the outfit.

Standouts: A T-shirt thrifted in Austin when she moved to the U.S. for college. Her late mother’s fur coat purchased when the family moved to Belgium from Nigeria.

There has been a clothing rack in the living room ever since I moved in here. On one level, I like that it’s the hearth of my apartment. People come over and they go look at things and it’s a conversation starter. But at the same time, if my closet is messy, that means my entire apartment is messy. I’m at a point where I feel like it’s just too much. Recently, the clothing rack broke. When I shop, I’m focused on vibe. When my friends are shopping, they’ll say, “Well, I don’t know if it’s practical. I don’t know if I’ll wear that.” But I get to try on clothing for a living, and so the more fun and impractical the piece is, the better. I actually kind of forget to buy basics.

Standout: A 2004 canary-yellow marabou-ostrich Tom Ford–era Gucci coat owned by her boyfriend Van’s grandmother: “If someone ever threw paint on me while I was wearing it, I would actually lose my mind.”

I’ve made many of my best decisions as an adult while in my childhood bedroom visiting my grandparents. Being there helps me remember the foundation of who I am. So I created this apartment to make me feel like a child, and it’s super-healing. A lot of my inspiration for it, aside from my grandma, is from rom-coms, especially my two favorite movies: Big Daddy and Uptown Girls. I treat my life like I’m in a movie, and I’ve decided I’m in a rom-com, and I don’t care what people say. I look up to these characters. They raised me in a way. My mom had me when she was 20, so we were growing up at the same time, essentially. That’s why I love Uptown Girls so much. I have the Blumarine dress from the movie. My friend found it on Depop — I bawled. I bought it shaking. I wanted this dress for so long; I told every person in my life. Fashion is therapy for me — to dress up and discover who I am. I mainly just shop vintage, because it feels like there’s a story to it. Back in 2020, my grandparents started making me go to Shopaholics Anonymous, but three sessions in, I just ghosted my coach’s Zooms. The emails I got from him are so funny. I’ve never responded. He’s like, “I’ve been checking in. I am really worried. Have you been shopping?”

Standouts: Her grandmother’s ivy-print YSL scarf. Her late father’s purple robe. Her pink Juicy Couture sixth-grade backpack, stained by an old dog. Vintage Getty Oil T-shirts. A Disney mouse-ears hat.

My house, where I live with Anna Delvey, is over 100 years old. Almost everything in the closet is completely black. I think I have four pieces in there that have color. People come up to me a lot and they’ll say, “Why don’t you wear color?” And I go, “What are you talking about? Black is all color. White is the absence of color. I wear more color than anyone.” When you start in fashion, you’re consumptive. The first time I went to Paris Fashion Week, I spent $9,000 on clothes at Kenzo. But then after you work in the business for a long time, you kind of become — I don’t want to compare this to drug dealing, but it kind of is like that. You don’t really buy what you sell.

Standout: A “super-witchy” Paco Rabanne velvet wrap with “big car-wash paillettes.”

My mom, Lolly, is in the photo up there. She cleaned houses in the Jim Crow South, and she was my first fashion icon. She dressed impeccably. If you came to my parents’ apartment and my mom had on jeans, she would apologize. She always wore heels, and she passed that on to her daughters. Shoes are the way I start getting dressed in the morning. Like, Do I want to tip around, or do I want to have a stride? My signature walk is a tip — when you mince your steps and you’re very measured. I want to walk into a room and have people know I’ve arrived. My clothes show up and show out the way I do.

Standouts: A Gucci–Dapper Dan cape worn to the Met Gala. Versace heels covered in pink crystals and worn to Lolly’s funeral.

As described by her daughter, Miriam Westheimer: Day-to-day, my mother did not care one bit what she was wearing. She dressed to be clothed, and she ate to not be hungry. She wore the same three or four blouses so much that my daughter sometimes would say, “We’re going out. Don’t wear the same blouse that you wore last time.” And Merrell shoes. My mother never wore anything but those. Clothing didn’t matter because she knew how precious life is. She lost her parents at such a young age, and she was alone most of her life. What she was able to accomplish and the people she was able to be with and to help, that’s what mattered to her. Nothing else

Standout: A washcloth embroidered with K. S.: “It’s the only thing she had from before the Nazis. She kept it her whole life. Her birth name was Karola Ruth Siegel.”

I owe myself the dignity to dress the way that will be powerful for the work I do. If I can’t present myself well, then I can’t very well leave my house. When you’re trans, it’s a beautiful thing to walk in your closet and have accessibility. My closet is a refuge of some sort, and I’m leaving a little bit of history. I’m thinking of the future, of the girls — the trans women — who may not have access. I have no problem letting go of things. When my brother got married, I let the girls raid my closet for the wedding. That was a beautiful night — to watch them in awe, trying on stuff. I knew a piece of me was in the universe.

Standouts: Her handmade gowns. A Chloé baby-doll dress she wore as the 2021 New York City Pride grand marshal.

My closet is like the trash pile from Fraggle Rock. It’s a hoarder’s nightmare of crap, and it’s jam-packed full of clown suits. All of it stinks because half of it is 100 years old. I don’t really know how to wash what’s there. I’m the explosive type who comes home after a long day and immediately throws my clothes on the floor. But then the colors paint an interesting picture, and I go, Wait, that’s an amazing outfit. A lot of times, my outfits come to existence from the floor. The clown-suit collection started when my best friend, Ruby McCollister, was working at an arts day care and she stole a raggedy clown suit from the costume bin for me. She was like, “You’re gonna need to perform in these.” Everything was leaning toward clown, but I hadn’t gone full clown suit until Ruby. It’s easy, it’s breezy, and it’s opened up the world for me.

Standouts: Sequined vintage jackets. A yellow sweater with a veined eyeball knit by her grandmother. A foam “clown tie” by Mondo Guerra.

In those bins, I have well over 100 T-shirts. I have broad shoulders and I’m not tall, so T-shirts are the easiest thing in terms of fit for me. Also, I’m in the kitchen all the time and I’d rather wear a raggedy T-shirt than an apron. I like really good vintage, plain, solid-color T-shirts, but I also have T-shirts from when I was 13 years old. I have T-shirts from exes. I have novelty T-shirts. I also tend to buy a few designer items each season. I approach my style the way I approach my cooking. I want my food to look beautiful and taste delicious, but I also want it to be approachable. And I like taking some ingredients and tweaking them and slightly elevating them. With clothes too, I want to wear a beautiful pair of flannel Comme des Garçons pants that are tailored well or a Lemaire jacket. But then I also want a $10 T-shirt that I’ve had forever. It just looks better.

Standouts: A white Ford Motor Company shirt with a blue collar and cuff: “It’s just horny and very ’70s.” A new black silk Bode shirt with beading on the back and the collar. A vintage Raf Simmons button-down on which the side seams have been split open. A rare Ministry band tee that Barghani bought as a teenager.

I feel like myself when I am wearing bright colors — like my outside matches my inside and people are gonna get what they expect. I’m like, This is what it is. For a little while, there was a jumpsuit section at the end, and things were sort of color coordinated. But not anymore. Now it’s just a full mess. Are other people organized? I just — I could never be, and so I am not. I sort of assumed that this was how everyone lives. The fun part about having an extremely crowded, messy closet is that I always forget what’s in there. Only if I really go on a digging expedition will l find things that I haven’t seen in months. And I think, Oh, right, I forgot about that. And then it gets pulled out. It takes very, very little for me to add something here. I’ll just shove it in. I like to shop at consignment stores, so it’s not like, Oh, I’ll buy it in six months. Most of the time I’m like, I’m never gonna see this dress again, so I’d better buy it. I am an unrepentant shopper.

Standouts: Her father’s watch. Outfits custom made to match her book covers for book tours. Colorful mumus: “My very favorites I’ve had for probably 15 years now. Some of them are falling apart, and I’ll be sad when they do. But I’ll find something else.”

My wardrobe is definitely a little kitschy. Most of it is pink and baby blue. I’m a mixed bag — there’s kind of a Kawaii-preppy situation going on. I feel like it’s been ingrained in me since I was little. There’s not that much difference from how I was dressed as a baby and what I wear now. I buy either vintage or from the younger designers I work with. I never really buy full-price luxury items. I am not a careful person, so I don’t trust myself with delicate fabrics. I once had a Marc Jacobs jumpsuit in a finer silk fabric that Gnocchi, my cat, clawed, and that was really annoying.

Standouts: A Chanel vintage dress from 1993. Her mother’s skort-onesie dress, also from 1993, which she wears often. A giant white bow from Bad Binch TongTong that she wore as a backpack on her wedding day.

I often say that getting dressed up is a mood stabilizer for me. The more extravagant of a look you see me in, the worse morning I had, because I’m trying to cheer myself up. It works. My style is playful. At the core, it’s playing dress-up because as a little kid, I felt prettiest when I was wearing princess dresses. My friends and I have had many after-hours here where we just get dressed. It’s a service that I like to provide — dress-up at Miss Claire’s closet. I’m grateful I have a walk-in. It’s a blessing. I was going through it last night and moving things around a little bit. Whenever I do that, I see things differently. I like to keep the front as beautiful as possible — it’s where I put whatever looks the prettiest.

Standouts: A white jersey fabric scrap from her studio that she ties around one shoulder and on her back, cinched at the waist to form a slouchy top. A Galliano runway catsuit gifted to her by David Moses and Patric DiCaprio from Vaquera her first year in New York. A Cottontail Original collared, red plaid babydoll dress that Sullivan wore to her father’s funeral as a child: “I didn’t want to wear black to his funeral, so I wore this.”

I wear jeans and a T-shirt — usually a black T-shirt — every day, and those are folded in my dresser. I like how I look when I leave the house and I feel good. I really don’t open my closet. Once in a while there are things I might come in here for, but it’s really my deep storage. I appreciate the idea of the objects in my closet. Like the fur coat. One time, I did a road trip for Christmas, and I brought this recycled fur coat thinking I would want to pop out in it on New Year’s. But I’ve only worn it once or twice in ten years. The same with the leather pants. And this shoe holder — there are pairs in there I’ve had for ten years, and I keep telling myself I’m going to repair them, but I don’t. This is a closet of hope.

Standouts: At least five pairs of black tuxedo pants from Little Black Tux for occasions when jeans aren’t appropriate. Her grandmother’s embroidered mink stole. A white collared shirt gifted to Haynes by the designer Christopher John Rogers to wear at the opening of the gallery at 52 Walker.