Paying homage to beauty's most iconic looks and the women who created them

Iconic in it’s simplicity, the album cover for Bjork’s 1993 first album, the appropriately-titled Debut, managed to encapsulate the entire pop-grunge era inside one photograph.  Listen to Venus as a Boy any day of the week and it will still sound as fresh as the day it was born. Most of the songs were written in honour of her then boyfriend, DJ Dominic Thrupp (who later got together Jenny Frost of Atomic Kitten fame – such is the surreal merry go round world of pop).

The thing about Bjork is that she was the most eccentric, cerebral and oddest thing the 90s had to offer. She wasn’t a ladette, nor did she squawk on about girl power whilst teetering about in 7-inch flatforms and crotch-skimming dresses. She was – and is – defiantly unclassifiable.

But this stripped-back image begged the question; who was this little Icelandic creature with the doll face and fierce, almond eyes? The scraggy jumper, the woodland brows and the partially dreaded hair staring back at me? I’ve looked at this album cover a gazillion times over the last 20 years (is it really that long?) and, quite brilliantly, I still don’t think I’m any closer to knowing who Bjork really is.

And yet, without even trying here, Bjork managed to put forth the message of having been of a higher order, in possession of a supreme intelligence and an understanding of things. In that single photograph, I recognized shades of the emerging coffee shop culture (Friends was to start a year later in 1994), poetry open-mic nights, hash cakes and lava lamps. But also a depth of knowledge that was – is – unquantifiable.

It’s as modern and relevant today as any image taken from Karl Lagerfeld’s recent book for Chanel, The Little Black Jacket. Except she’s not wearing a Chanel jacket and nor would she. A higher order, you see. Bjork isn’t one for maxing out her Amex on material posessesions (though did go on to collect ‘car parts, bottles and cutlery’ in her follow-up album, Post).

From all of this, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to reason that Bjork also cared little for the gifts of the beauty world, or at least the ostensible glamourizing it offered in the early 90s. That’s not to say she didn’t partake at all, note the cosmic addition of two little silver sequins placed just under each eye. It’s that unexpected added extra is what takes a photograph from beautiful to iconic.

Inside those little sequins sits everything you need to know about Bjork, the higher level stuff, the mysticism, the cosmic power of nature, a woman who sees the world through a mysterious lens. And yet, serves to keep you – and I – the outsider, at a very safe distance from who she really is.

And god, she’s just so cool isn’t she? I don’t mean the swan dress, or boffing airport photographers in the head, I mean here, craggy jumper, gap-year dreads and sequin eyes. She is a woman who knows more of herself than any of us ever will, the antithesis of a pop princess who gives it all away on a thousand interviews and first dates. That’s Bjork.  

 

1. MAC Brow Set in Beguile, £12.50
2. Topshop Eye Palette in Game On, £12.50
3. Groves a la Mode Trimits Essentials 5mm Sequins in Silver, £1 at John Lewis
4. Estee Lauder Double Wear Stay-in-Place Lipstick in Stay Honey, £19.50 at House of Fraser 

Photography: Hugo Yanguela