Michèle LAMY

Michèle Lamy is in a hotel room in Venice along the Grand Canal, sunlight streaming in through sheer curtained windows, the calls of seabirds in the air. In addition to being one of the world’s most genre-confounding creatives, Lamy is also one of its most idiosyncratic dressers. On various occasions, she has worn sphinxlike headdresses and suction cups on her forehead; enormous, sculptural jackets paired with short shorts and foot-tall platform boots (for British Vogue’s “Inside the Wardrobe” series); and a purse fashioned out of an eerily lifelike replica of her husband’s head.¹ 

So I ask what she’s wearing today. “I’m wearing a cashmere sweater,” she tells me, “but upside down.” Her arms are through the sleeves, but the neck hole is dangling down by her waist. �...