Karen O is one of rock music’s most fearless frontwomen. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs vocalist came up in New York City’s turn-of-the-millennium music scene, where Karen and her bandmates carved out a niche for themselves with their art-rock sound and wild live performances. Both the band and Karen herself have since transcended the early-aughts microcosm, earning a place within the annals of American rock with high octane albums like It’s Blitz and, of course, the most eternal of all torch songs, “Maps”.
Subscribe to i-D NEWSFLASH. A weekly newsletter delivered to your inbox on Fridays.
On stage, Karen’s known for her outrageous antics as much as her audacious costumes, designed by longtime friend and costumier Christian Joy. The duo met back in Karen’s NYU days, while Christian was working at Bowery fashion boutique Daryl K and designing her own garments on the side. In 2001, Karen enlisted Christian to design one of the singer’s very first stage looks and the rest is history. From Fever to Tell’s “garbagey” prom dresses to It’s Blitz’s wild patterns, we’re celebrating the rockstar’s birthday by revisiting some of her most iconic stage looks.
Playing at the Brixton Academy in London, 2002
In 2001, Karen asked friend and designer Christian Joy to create a dress for her to wear to a 2001 show at The Cooler. “I had one night to make it,” Christian told The New York Times. The next day, she delivered Karen a tattered blue prom dress. The look would come to define the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Fever To Tell era, during which the band released their iconic single, “Maps”. In the song’s video, Karen wears a similar ballgown, spray-painted and ripped to shreds. Here, Karen performs wearing another one of Christian’s “car crash prom dresses” in hot pink.
At a benefit concert, 2003
Christian recalls Karen’s early-career style as “art-student chic”, while the designer-slash-musician herself, affectionately, refers to them as “garbagey,” and “a hodgepodge” of mix-and-matched pieces. Here, Karen wears one of Christian’s earliest designs, a collage-style dress with a print inspired by one of the designer’s very first works of art.
Playing The Forum in London, 2004
This very Ziggy Stardust-inspired look belongs to what Christian calls “the leotard phase of Fever To Tell”. According to the designer, Karen’s wild onstage antics inspired her to pull this old leotard pattern from her archives. “[Karen] needed something she could easily maneuver in and that wouldn’t poke her if she fell down,” she wrote more recently on Instagram.
In the “Zero” music video, 2009
In 2009, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs released their third studio album, It’s Blitz with electro-pop single “Zero”. For the music video, Karen asked Christian to design her a leather motorcycle jacket. The result was this über-studded confection, which Karen describes as “a little slice of rock heaven.”
In the “Heads Will Roll” music video, 2009
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs followed up “Zero” with second It’s Blitz single, “Heads Will Roll”. In the song’s horror-inspired music video, Karen wears a crimson lamé dress with a set of leg-of-mutton sleeves which Christian made from a dollar-store shower curtain.
At Coachella, 2009
“What I wear onstage and how I present myself brings a lot of joy. That’s at the heart of it. It’s not about a trend. It’s just the joy of creating,” Karen O told The New York Times this year. Here, performing at Coachella she’s wearing one such joyous look: a cape made of enormous gold sequins.
At a MoMA party, 2010
Karen and Christian first started dabbling in prints in 2006, during the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Show Me Your Bones era. Things only ramped up from there. By 2009, as the band was touring It’s Blitz, clashing patterns had become Karen’s signature. Here, the singer wears a cape dress with a custom pattern by Christian. It’s artsy, it’s outré, and it’s completely Karen.