Yoko Ono has been dubbed many things: home-wrecker, avant-gardist, witch, virtuoso.
Now, a new title is catching on: fashion icon. Marc Jacobs's fall/winter '07 ready-to-wear collection looked like something out of Ono's closet 20 years ago: men's wear revisioned as women's wear, replete with long, masculine coats, trousers with stirrups and boxy jackets.
"Everything comes back," Ono says in a phone interview from New York. "In those days, I used to wear androgynous jackets and suits all the time. It's a really great changeover time. Soon we'll be back to twenties style and Victorian prints."
But the glam shots she posed for to promote her new album, Yes, I'm a Witch, are anything but androgynous or Victorian. With big sunglasses, stilettos and legs that go up to here, she's a refreshing picture of what it looks like to be 73 (she turns 74 on Feb. 18).
Trust an artist (her first career) to know how to work an image. Clothes, she says, "are artistic messages, sculptures that you wear. Even underpants, pants or blouses are like Van Gogh's paintings . . . they are expressions."
As for what's "age-appropriate"? "People should wear what they want," she scoffs, "no matter how old they are. As long as we are led by our love for whatever we do, it's a beautiful thing."
Ono's life right now is a beautiful thing. "I feel reborn," she says. "The renewed interest in me is exciting. I'm so inspired."
The resurgence started three years ago when Ono turned 70 and had some DJs remix her song Walking on Thin Ice for the dance floor. The song topped the Billboard Dance charts and she followed up by rerecording Every Man Has a Woman (who loves him). Only she did it as Every Man Has a Man and Every Woman Has a Woman.
Her new CD was on high rotation in many a club during this past New York fashion week. It gathers 17 performers, including Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, Cat Power and the Flaming Lips, to "restyle" previously recorded tracks.
Toronto's own Peaches, who adds her spin to Kiss Kiss Kiss, says Ono's influence is "futuristic and fearless" and credits her as one of dance music's main innovators.
The disc title "is purposely ironic," Ono laughs. "For years, people were saying, 'Oh, she's a dragon lady' and I was feeling hurt. Now I'm glad that people think I'm a dragon lady, because the dragon is a powerful creature. So is a witch. Witches have a very bad name, but their male counterparts -- wizards -- have a good name. Think about that! I've turned it on its head."