Katy Perry

VOGUE Culture

Photograph by Annie Leibovitz. Published in Vogue, July 2013.

With a high-gloss personal style leavened by a healthy dose of frequently zany humor, Katy Perry became a style, as well as chart, phenomenon. She has been attracting attention with her cartoonish persona—which manages to be wholesome and friendly while still being sexy—and her infectious singles since her debut pop album, One of the Boys, hit the airwaves in 2008. Born in Santa Barbara, California, to a married pair of Pentecostal ministers, Perry grew up singing at church functions and by the age of fifteen had recorded a gospel CD. But after a friend introduced her to nineties MTV icons like Gwen Stefani and Alanis Morissette, she decided to point her career in another direction. She moved to Los Angeles at seventeen. After several false starts, she hit gold with the release of the mildly scandalous single “I Kissed a Girl.” Perry admitted, “I think people love the idea of a good girl gone bad.”^[1] Her second album, Teenage Dream, produced five consecutive hit singles and cemented her star status A natural blonde who dyes her hair jet black (as well as blue, pink, and purple, often to match her candy-colored outfits), Perry has an affinity for retro fashion that began when she was a teenager observing followers of the swing-dancing subculture. “These girls would get out of their old vintage Cadillacs with their pencil skirts and their tight little cardigans and their bullet bras and I thought it was so unique and different than what was going on in the 2000s,”^[2] she said in 2009. She brings a kittenish burlesque appeal to the red carpet, the concert stage, and her music videos. The whipped-cream bra she wore in the “California Gurls” clip may be the most talked-about undergarment since Jean Paul Gaultier dreamed up a cone bra for the protopop provocateur (and girl-kisser) Madonna; she’s also worn a voting-ballot sheath, spinning candy-cane dress, and a skimpy nutcracker leotard with epaulettes and plumed hat. Still, she isn’t particularly arty or remote (like, say, Lady Gaga). As Perry’s good friend and fellow fashion risk-taker Rihanna said in the documentary Katy Perry: Part of Me, “Katy has always been very true to herself, and I think that’s why people relate to her.”^[3]

HISTORY

1. 1984

Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson born in Santa Barbara, California, to Mary Perry Hudson and Keith Hudson, both Pentecostal ministers.

2. 2001

Releases a Christian album as Katy Hudson.

3.2004

Signs with Columbia Records—to be dropped from the label after a few years.

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