90 DECEMBER 2017
HAIR: DIANE GORGIESKIMAKE-UP: PETER BEARDSHOT ON LOCATION AT THE OLD CLARE HOTEL, SYDNEYALL PRICES APPROXIMATEDETAILS AT VOGUE.COM.AU/WTBnyone given the task of profiling
musician, burgeoning filmmaker
(with an adaptation of The Picture of
Dorian Gray in the works), artist and now
guitar designer Annie Clark, a.k.a St. Vincent,
has quite the job on her hands. The 35-year-old
Los Angeles and New York resident has
mastered the art of keeping her layers close to
the bone, preferring instead to let her highly
nuanced music and visuals speak for her.
Each album has explored some kind of
twisted female archetype, which she painfully
dissects, edits and obsesses over. After
‘housewives on pills’ (Strange Mercy) and
‘near-future cult leader’ (St.Vincent), her most
recent release, Massseduction, sees Clark
channel “a dominatrix in a mental hospital”,
with lashings of mania, hyper-sexualisation
and anxiety. Stylistically, she pairs this with
punches of leather, lace, latex and florescence,
making up a lean, hyperrealist image.
“I really am going all theway,” she says of
thischapter in her style, noting fashion as one
of her biggest communicators. “It’s so on the
nose with sexuality, it’s pushing past it and
into theabsurd.” She adds: “It’s very aware of
the male gaze. I was like: ‘We need more
bondage gear!’” She laughs. “It’s ridiculous,
butyou have to have fun ... it goes hand in
hand with the music.”
Masseduction is out now.A
Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent, with the sleek guitar she designed to suit a woman’s body.
Above: Givenchy jacket, $3,500. Daisy jumpsuit, $480. Paloma Picasso for Tiffany & Co. ring,
$43,000. Prada shoes, $1,710. Right: Saint Laurent dress, $30,645. Giorgio Armani top, $3,400.
For musician
St. Vincent, self-
expression doesn’t
stop with the music.
By Noelle Faulkner.Body
of work
SINGULAR STYLESTYLING BETHIE GIRMAI
PHOTOGRAPHS JAKE TERREYVOGUE VIEWPOINT