Style Icon: Paula Abdul

Forever Your Girl

Quite often I find myself watching some musical angel or other on YouTube for like, 3 hours. The most recent focus of my beam of internet attention was Paula Abdul. I like that whole 'wholesome American girl' vibe that she sometimes has (particularly in the video for Rush Rush, which is like Rebel Without A Cause except Keanu Reeves (who stands in for James Dean) is all like "have u ever been in love, dude?" and then she snogs him. I love that video and I love the way she wears a hair scrunchie. This is probably a good time to mention that two cartoon girls who were style inspirations to me as a kid were Jenny from Oliver & Company and Jeanette the chipmunk - a couple of hair scrunchie cuties who actually have very similar character designs. I guess hair scrunchies have been slowly calling to me since childhood. So that's a look. This is also present in the Opposites Attract video where she's wearing a stripy shirt and I think leggings and her hair has the cute scrunchie look going on, but it's less of an 'I'm an innocent girl encouraging boys to drive over cliffs' look and more of an 'I love to basically wear pyjamas all the time' look, which is a look I'm very familiar with. It's very cute.

Paula also has this great blazer/pressed slacks look as seen in lots of places in many variations. Of particular note is the cool high waisted trouser suit thing going on in Knocked Out and the red blazer and black tights combo in this awesome 1990 awards show performance.

Basically, I love her and she gives me life with all her dance moves and her puffy trousers and stuff.. Check out this video of her talking about how Straight Up became a hit, and go collect the biggest hair scrunchie you can find!

Knocked Out

Opposites Attract