20 British Beauties Who Redefined It Girl, From Victoria Beckham to Twiggy

It’s safe to say that London has secured its reputation as a fashion force to be reckoned with, from its extraordinary roster of talented young designers to the boisterous tribe of idiosyncratic English lovelies and social media stars (see Cara Delevingne) who seem to spark trends just by getting out of bed.

Not that the Brit girl phenomenon is anything new. Who could forget the original waif, Twiggy, whose coltish frame, boyish pixie, and long-lashed eyes made androgyny cool decades before a young Kate Moss challenged the bodacious beauty ideal of the supermodel ’90s? Or the sight of Elizabeth Hurley’s Versace-clad bombshell body in the safety-pin dress that propelled her from Hugh Grant paramour to Estée Lauder superstar with a single stroll down the red carpet?

But it’s not just models that stoke our Anglophilia. Consider punk’s reigning queen, the eternally Manic Panic–ed Vivienne Westwood, whose anarchic spin on Victorian beauty is impossible to separate from her corseted tartan gowns, or Marianne Faithfull, whose wispy tapered fringe is nearly as famous as her smoky-voiced ballads.

These days, FKA twigs’s coiled braids and signature septum ring and Adele’s soulful flick of winged liquid eyeliner define our notion of what it means to be a distinctively English stunner. And we’ve all watched Victoria Beckham evolve from pop-confection pinup to smartly bobbed Marc Jacobs muse to an all-around style icon in her own right. Above, a look at our favorite British beauties, just in time for London Fashion Week.

 

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