Who Is Grace Jones? Androgyny in Art

During her time in the limelight, Grace Jones has held a variety of roles, including singer, composer, supermodel, actor, androgynous fashion icon, and music producer. But it wasn’t until she met Andy Warhol and Keith Haring that an idea of her as a muse began to take shape. She befriended three of New York’s best-known artists in 1984: Warhol, Haring, and Robert Mapplethorpe. She spent over fifteen hours in Mapplethorpe’s studio before coming out decorated in the distinctive patterns made by Haring.

Grace Jones: Birth of an Icon

During the 1980s, artists became celebrities. Andy Warhol was of course the best at it. He frequented the famous New York club called Studio 54, along with celebrities like Edie Sedgwick, Mick Jagger, Madonna, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Grace Jones, the famed disco diva, joined Warhol’s group here. She achieved the fame that Warhol craved and became one of his closest confidantes.

Jones had already become a unique symbol of style, music, and elegance by the 1980s. When she was just sixteen years old, in 1966, a scout saw her and signed her to the prestigious New York modeling firm Wilhelmina. She settled in Paris in the 1970s and collaborated with renowned fashion experts like Guy Bourdin, Yves Saint-Laurent, and Kenzo Takada. Jones’s face was even on the covers of Elle, Vogue, and Der Stern.

Her unique, androgynous, assertive look was well-received by the Parisian fashion world. But still, Jones’s gender-contradictory look in the 1980s shook the public. Her androgynous fashion style also influenced many.

Jones used her physical attributes as a model to defy gender and racial stereotypes. Jones tended to wear men’s attire in…