It’s safe to say that London Fashion Week, which kicks off today, has secured its reputation as a force to be reckoned with, from its extraordinary roster of talented designers to the boisterous tribe of idiosyncratic English lovelies and social media stars (see Cara Delevingne who seem to spark trends just by getting out of bed.
Not that the Brit girl phenomenon is anything new. Who could forget the original waif, Twiggy, whose coltish frame, boyish pixie, and long-lashed eyes made androgyny cool decades before a young Kate Moss challenged the bodacious beauty ideal of the supermodel ’90s? Or the sight of Elizabeth Hurley’s Versace-clad bombshell body in the safety-pin dress that propelled her from Hugh Grant paramour to pop culture sensation with a single stroll down the red carpet?
But it’s not just models that stoke our Anglophilia. Consider punk’s reigning queen, the eternally Manic Panic–ed Vivienne Westwood, whose anarchic spin on Victorian beauty is impossible to separate from her corseted tartan gowns, or true royal, Princess Diana, whose effortless elegance remains riveting over 20 years after her death.
These days, FKA twigs’s coiled braids and signature septum ring and Adwoa Aboah's chameleonic buzz cut redefine our notion of what it means to be a distinctively English stunner. And we’ve all watched Victoria Beckham evolve from pop-confection pinup to smartly bobbed Marc Jacobs muse to an all-around style icon in her own right. Here, a look at our favorite British beauties of all time.
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