Elaina's 'Truly Outrageous' Fashion Icon

Happy Fashion Week everyone! We hope you have some fab plans for tonight’s FNO. Us? Well, we’re working {some fab parties}, so please enjoy a {fashion} night out for us!

To celebrate Fashion Week on our blog, we begin with a personal post from our very own Culinary Style Director, Elaina. Please enjoy!

My first fashion icon was Jem. She was the ‘truly outrageous’ lead singer of Jem and the Holograms, my favorite Saturday morning cartoon. In my book, there was no one more fashionable than Jem–with her pink and blonde hair, sparkly wrap dress, killer pumps, sleek white guitar, magic star-shaped earrings, oh, and let’s not forget her super hot boyfriend, Rio Pacheco {the perfect accessory!}. There was no denying it — she was THE quintessential “it” girl. I had the two-sided cassette tape that came with her doll and would belt out “glamour and glitter, fashion and fame, Jem is truly outrageous, truly truly truly outrageous…” The music was indeed contagious…and, in hindsight, pretty outrageous. If anyone out there is familiar with this song, you know what I’m talking about! 🙂 But I digress; Jem was way ahead of her time—in music, fashion, and even in technology. Let’s review, shall we?

Jem was really two people: By day she was Jerrica Benneton, owner and manager of Starlight Music; but by night she was the uber fabulous Jem, lead singer of the Holograms. Using a computer named Synergy and magic earrings with remote micro-projectors, Jerrica was able to project the Jem hologram over herself to morph into the Jem character. This is how Jem, the badass rocker chick, was born. Earlier this year, Coachella made headlines after an epic Tupac hologram concert; it was hard to miss with social media all abuzz about it. It’s not the first reported hologram concert, however—the earliest reports actually date back to early 2000s. Even still, Jem premiered in 1985, almost 20 years earlier—ahead of her time, indeed!