1 Hair
Friedman, Amanda
STYLE IDOL
Issue #32
JESSICA REYNOZA
By Marisa Meltzer
Published: June 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
“Courtney Love was so off. She looked like a porcelain doll, but weird,” says Jessica Reynoza, the bassist for the Willowz. She is referring to the musicians whose style was most influential to her adolescent self: “Patti Smith. Chrissie Hynde never overdid it. Kim Gordon wears weird and retro-y stuff that still looks kind of new.” And then there’s the No Doubt–era Gwen Stefani, whose sartorial influence — bindis, Princess Leia buns, gold nameplate necklaces — on Californian teens really can’t be overstated. “Well, going into junior high, that band was huge. And she was from Anaheim, and I was from Anaheim.”
Today Reynoza is wearing a vintage yellow dress — “the kind you’d wear if you worked in a restaurant” — found in a thrift store in East Hollywood with black boots and fresh flowers in her hair. “Lately, I’ve been obsessed with solid, primary colors,” she says. “I’ll dress in red, white, and blue, or wear something with a big chunk of yellow.” At home, she’ll wear jeans and comfy long shirts, and lots of blacks and browns.
She’s going through a big dress phase, fueled at least in part because she thinks it’s hard to find pants that fit right, but also because they’re so easy to wear. Finding them, she says, is like a scavenger hunt. She has a bunch of her friends’ moms’ old dresses, and goes to a lot of thrift stores both at home (her favorite is a vintage shop called Out of Vogue in Fullerton, California, that she says no one knows about) and while on tour.
What she wears onstage has changed in the last few years. Now she’s into simplifying everything and fighting the urge to pile on makeup or to wear overly costume-like ensembles. But the band, whose songs have been featured in the last two Michel Gondry movies (Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and who will be touring for their album, Chautauqua, through June, started when Reynoza was in her late teens. “I used to wear these kind of super hero–style outfits,” Reynoza, who’s 23, says laughing. “Now it looks wrong. It’s like a woman wearing kids’ clothes. I think I’m too old for that.”
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