The Stylish Stylist

These casually soignee women (shown with just the right llama, just the right sunglasses, just the right cigarette) represent a stylish sampling of an ever expanding breed for whom style is a verb, a vocation, and, often, a religion. They are stylists, and they assemble the varied wardrobes and props for album covers, clothing shoots, ad campaigns, ad infinitum. Assiduously dotting the i in image, they belong, like the arbitrageur, to a profession which blossomed in the eighties—a decade in which much of life, as the media presented it, came to look increasingly like a fashion spread.