Kristen Stewart: The Unlikely Fashion Icon

She dresses the way she acts: raw, unpredictable , often beautifully disheveled, pushing the boundaries of beauty and elegance. Because Kristen Stewart is not a pleaser. That is precisely why we love her.

She is often hailed for her choice of roles in movies – Kirsten Stewart can now add successful director to her cv with her debut movie “The Chronology of Water”. She also get’s our attention on the red carpet. Her presence at Cannes this year was not only marked by her film’s premiere, but also by her bold fashion choices: a new tattoo reading “MINE” in all capital letters was is positioned on her right thigh, clearly visible beneath as she posed in a daring all-white Chanel suit that challenged traditional red carpet norms. According to the Cannes media channel, the tattoo was a tribute to her film, not her wife, to whom she married earlier this year. The style underscored Stewart’s continuous push against conventional boundaries, both in fashion and film.

When 18 year old Kristen Stewart first catapulted into global consciousness as a brooding Bella Swan in the teen-fiction series “Twilight“, a franchise that earned more than $3.5 billion worldwide and spawned tons of licence-products, it momentarily made her the highest-paid actress in the world. Everyone had great expectations of a young actor who seemed to have been blessed with a cool edge that clearly set her apart from her co-stars in the vampire-serial that also made her then boyfriend Robert Pattinson a star. Yet, no one saw her as a fashion icon. Yet. With her jeans and Converse sneakers on the red carpets and a famously aloof attitude toward Hollywood glamor, she was seemingly allergic to the very idea of style conformity. And then, disaster struck.

When Stewart was 22, she was caught on camera kissing 41-year-old Rupert Sanders, a married father of two and the director of her then recent film “Snow White and The Huntsman”. The cheating exposé turned Stewart into one of the most hated people in Hollywood, and meant she wasn’t asked back to audition for the “Snow White”- sequel. Many years later, when she was finally at ease with opening up to radio host Howard Stern about the intense slut shaming she was subjected to, she admitted it had been extremely hard, especially as she was so young, and didn’t really know how to deal with it.  A decade later she’s been highly acclaimed for her performances in thought-provoking inde-films, as well as becoming a promising movie director. Her choice of roles have been bold as her fashion statements. She was praised for her portrayal of Joan Jett. And when she took on the part of princess Diana in “Spencer” it earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. It lead the The New Yorker to describe her naturalistic acting style as captivating and labelled her as “the most interesting movie star of her generation”.

It may be bold to call her a style icon, because she has a style that come come across as whimsically grungy and dishevelled. But the taste makers of Chanel fell in love with her. The late Karl Lagerfeld and former creative director Virginie Viard both saw Stewart as a contemporary Coco Chanel – unwilling to conform to mainstream beauty standards. The collaboration with Chanel surprised many, not least when she appeared in the commercial directed by Inez & Vinoodh for Chanel’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection, styled as a modern version of fashion legend Gabrielle Chanel herself. And, just as Chanel once shocked the world by presenting the female body in its natural form—without a corset—Stewart shocks in her own way, a testament to the fact that the female body remains political.

Like when she posed on a controversial Rolling Stone cover wearing a leather jacket, mullet, and jockstrap—a bold and sexualized image that sparked major debate on social media. The photo was taken in connection with the film Love Lies Bleeding, a bodybuilding romance between two women. Stewart had insisted on appearing as “the gayest thing you’ve ever seen.”

The image went viral shortly after publication, divided the public, and ignited discussions in the media about the gaze, sexuality, and bodily autonomy.

During the Berlin Film Festival, Stewart responded to the criticism:

“The fact that there exists a female body that expresses a form of sexuality not tailored to the heterosexual male gaze is something many people still struggle with. That’s why I’m very pleased with the image.”

In Stewart’s debut as director she tells the story of American swimmer Lidia Yuknavitch and her visceral memoir of surviving abuse as a child. Variety called it “a stirring drama of abuse and salvation, told with poetic passion”, while Indiewire critic David Ehrlich said “there isn’t a single millisecond of this movie that doesn’t bristle with the raw energy of an artist”. In a deeply moving interview about her directorial debut at Cannes she was asked why she wanted to tell this particular story Stewart said:

“Being a woman is a really violent experience” and then declared, “I think having a female body is an overtly political act if you can get out of bed in the morning and not hate yourself.”

Last Easter she got married to actress Dylan Meyer whom she got engaged to in 2021. Two years prior Kristen Stewart had opened up about being non-binary in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar — and revealed she has actually been warned her sexuality could damage her career.

“I have fully been told, ‘If you just like do yourself a favour, and don’t go out holding your girlfriend’s hand in public, you might get a Marvel movie,'” she told the magazine, and: “I don’t want to work with people like that.”

As for style, she is by no means a puppet for Chanel, but rather someone who takes her own spin on their clothes and redefines what it means to be stylish in an era obsessed with authenticity. Whether she’s ditching heels for oxfords at Cannes or pairing a Chanel couture skirt with a punkish mullet and a smirk, she’s built a style narrative where elegance has plenty of room for edge and cool.