Yé-Yé Girls and X-Girl

Once upon a time Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth, Free Kitten, Body/Head) and Daisy Von Furth started a clothing line called X-Girl that was a ying of sorts to X-Large's yang (one of the original X-Large owners was Mike D of the Beastie Boys).

Their small store opened in the early '90s on Lafayette Street in New York City's SoHo neighborhood and across the street from X-Large. One of the highlights to the X-Girl brand was that artist Mike Mills created much if not all of X-Girl's iconic graphics and shirt designs. Limited posters of his gorgeous brand work were also available for purchase and I think of anything I regret not purchasing back in the day, it is these pieces of art.

The general look of the X-Girl clothing line was androgynous and simple. The idea was to produce timeless classics that featured clean lines and were form fitting compared to that time period's grungy counterpart. To be as accurate as possible, it was practically the Mac store of '90s fashion. The business was short lived as the shop closed at the end of the '90s and then the line was sold to Japanese company that still produced it to this day.

I would be lying if I said X-Girl clothes fit anyone above a size 10 but that is a different story all together. This believe it or not brings us to the subject of French Pop musiccalled yé-yé sung by girls and young women in the 1960s.

This genre of music was said to be inspired by The Beatles and their hooky line "She loves me YEAH YEAH YEAH". The fashion sense of these yé-yé girls (tasteful Euro-mod) were also said to be an influence on the X-Girl fashion line and often playing on the small TV inside the store was a video compilation of these original yé-yé  music videos. I had several friends that worked there, including my then boyfriend. As they were closing up the shop some nights, I would sit on the bench waiting and watching these campy and totally intoxicating videos. This was my introduction to French Pop and I have collected it obsessively ever since.

It should be noted that this genre of music spread like wildfire all over the world so there a are ton of groovy girl records from the '60s to check out from many other countries too.

Here are the kind of videos that were on the X-Girl VHS collection:

Read more about X-Girl here.