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Here is an honorific that we should have been keeping track of more closely: Huffington Post's monthly "Woman of Style." This award is bestowed by HuffPo blogger and author Lesley M.M. Blume, who, according to her bio, "has devoted herself to the study of irreverence, chic eccentricity, and extravagant personas." A worthwhile and rigorous pursuit! Though Blume is—we have to be honest here—a somewhat more over-the-top writer than her skill level and a sense of prudence would dictate. This month's Woman of Style is Faith-Ann Young, "A free-wheeling music reporter and photographer for Monocle, Flavorpill, MOG, and Blender," whose style "at once evokes a 1960s and 70s free spirit — and also the anarchism of the internet generation." Do tell!

You can probably sense it: this spring is different from last spring.

Is it the different digit on the calendar year?

Change is in the air, stronger than it's been in years.

Aha!

Freshness and new direction have once again become national priorities. And in some circles, fashion is picking up on these cues.

Those are the circles that contain Women of Style, I am willing to bet!


Introducing our third Woman of Style, Faith-Ann Young, whose personal style embodies and mirrors the new national mood.

I knew it!


Fashion editors might do well to ask: is youthful counterculture staging a comeback? If Miss Young (a self-described "bohemian indie pixie") and her peers have any say in the matter, the primness of recent fashion cycles will soon be as relevant as the hoop skirt.

Let us all hope that she and her peers have some say in the matter, then!


Miss Young represents part of an increasingly reactionary generation, one that is turning its back on certain Republican, materialistic values embodied by the Bush-Cheney war machine and a fashion industry that declares that $1000 pairs of shoes and $3000 handbags are the norm.

That paragraph is contractually required in all blog posts on the Huffington Post.


Eschewing this trendy ridiculousness, Miss Young is a modern-day Ali McGraw, who, like her iconic predecessor, turns found items into works of wearable art — whether by turning old skirts into dresses or donning vintage bathrobes as silken overcoats. It is the height of irreverent resourcefulness.

Adjectives!

Viva la Revolución.

Urg.

I don't have the heart to do the Q&A portion of this piece, but you can read it all here. Now try to wrap your mind around this photo of your fashion icon:

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Caption: "An Urban Outfitters headband, worn 60s-style."