Lizzie Garrett Mettler on ‘Tomboy Style’ | Fashion | The Guardian

Lizzie Garrett Mettler is a 28-year-old writer from Los Angeles, California. The Guardian Fashion team became a bit obsessed with her blog, Tomboy Style, and we asked her what she finds inspiring:

Lizzie Garrett Mettler of Tomboy Style Photograph: Lizzie Garrett

LGM: I launched Tomboy Style in May 2010 after noticing I was reading my husband’s magazines and men’s style blogs much more than fashion magazines geared towards women. I found his reading material to be a bit more grounded and more inspirational than the typical women’s fashion magazines. I really wanted to look at that from a female perspective. I like clothing that is about purpose, but I’m not against having fun—I try and straddle those two elements with Tomboy Style.

Tomboy Style is made from equal parts wardrobe and spirit. Often a tomboy is identified by clothing borrowed from or inspired by menswear, but what makes a tomboy is an inherent sense of confidence, rebelliousness and adventure.

The tomboy look seems to be really hot right now, so there are certainly a lot of clothes to choose from. In the couture world designers like Isabel Marant, Stella McCartney and Celine have me drooling. But, my pocketbook dictates that my threads more often come from places like J.Crew and Madewell, the local vintage T-shirt shop, oh and one of my all-time favourite places to shop: my husband’s closet!

Jane Birkin and her daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg. Both rocking some serious Tomboy chic. Photograph: Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage

Katharine Hepburn is certainly an undisputed icon of tomboy style, but for me the ultimate tomboy woman is Jane Birkin. Her hair was often tousled and her signature outfit was no simpler than jeans and a white T-shirt, but somehow she always looked chic. I mean, she could make a motorcycle helmet look sexy! Most of all I love how the most coveted Hermès bag on the planet is named after her but she couldn’t care less about its ‘status’ — in fact, her Birkin bag is typically adorned with stickers and worry beads and is all scuffed up from actual use — to me that’s tomboy style at its best.