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"&amp;nbsp;Has there ever been a more indelible fashion image than the cover of Fleetwood Mac\u2019s megahit 1977 album, Rumors? Stevie Nicks \u2014 outfitted in an ethereal sheer black gown \u2014 assumes a mannered, flamenco-like courtesy, her diaphanous batwing sleeves billowing as she supplicates to the willowy, arrogant-looking Mick Fleetwood, a pair of wooden orbs dangling suggestively between his legs. These are the thoughts that spring to mind as the soft-rock juggernaut of a band and its iconic frontwoman prepare to play Jones Beach Theater, New York, on June 22 \u2014 part of their sold-out world tour.This ineluctable image of tattered romanticism is the lovechild of Nicks and stylist Margi Kent, who has worked with the singer since joining Fleetwood Mac in 1976. The look, which Nicks herself calls  the Stevie Nicks thing\u201D is an unmistakable witch\u2019s brew of flowing sleeves, sheer chiffon, Victorian lace, fringed shawls, top hats, feathers, feathered top hats, and shit-kicking suede platform boots. No one else has yet harnessed the potent, signifying punch of the Big Sleeve. Onstage, Nicks\u2019s shawl unfurls like the patagium of a flying squirrel, like the wings of a butterfly, like a flag of self-actualization. Her clothes, the public soap opera of her love life, addictions, her songs (with their mystical, new-agey titles like \u201CGypsy,\u201D \u201CRhiannon,\u201D \u201CGold Dust Woman\u201D) coalesce into one tight little narrative.\u201CStevie was the only woman in rock-and-roll to really go there with her costumes,  Kent has said.  She really did have a concept, a look and a character in mind that she was projecting when she was on stage.\u201D This character is familiar in her mysteriousness: she is the itinerant rock-and-roll gypsy sorceress, the Byronic dark lady, the changeling child of Julia Margaret Cameron and Robert Plant. \u201CI\u2019ll be very sexy under 18 pounds of chiffon and lace and velvet,\u201D Nicks asserted, \u201Cand nobody will know what I really am. I will have a mystique.\u201DMore than any other rock star, Stevie Nicks has been the subject of parody and straight-up imitation. The annual pageant-cum-dance-party, Night of a Thousand Stevies, has been running for 23 years, drawing countless tambourine-wielding, ribbon-dancing drag queens and superfans. The Rachel Zoe-led cult of \u201Cboho chic\u201D ripped countless ideas from the Stevie Nicks playbook, transforming a legion of spray-tan-worshipping, midriff-baring, velour-sweatsuit enthusiasts (looking at you, Nicole Richie) into carbon copies of J.W. Waterhouse paintings. Besides giving spiritual birth to lace-loving alt-pop songstress Florence Welch, Nicks has inspired countless designers including Marc Jacobs, Hedi Slimane, Karl Lagerfeld, and Anna Sui, who once dedicated an entire collection to her. I'm timeless,\u201D Nicks once said proudly. \u201CI got that Dickensian, London street-urchin look in high school. I'll never be in style, but I'll always be different.  Nicks\u2019s timelessness is both a blessing and a curse. The Stevie Nicks look has become reified and overdetermined in its iconicity, coherence, and resistance to change. There\u2019s something both seductive and embarrassing about \u201Cthe Stevie Nicks thing\u201D and its ungirdled, hyperfeminine romanticism. Should a modern, putatively empowered woman be flouncing about on gossamer wings, dressing the part of Laurel Canyon Ophelia, or \u2014 worse \u2014 Sienna Miller circa 2005? At a moment when harder-edged, futuristic styles like minimalism, electro, and neo-punk are the memes du jour,  the Stevie Nicks thing  feels like fashion's equivalent of Judy Chicago\u2019s \u201CThe Dinner Party\u201D \u2014 awesome but somehow kitschy and essentialist in its goddessy affectations.I\u2019m irresistibly drawn to all the major Nicksian tropes (lace, fringe, diaphanous fabrics, burnout velvet, wizard sleeves, asymmetrical hemlines), but I can\u2019t shake this nagging feeling that it\u2019s somehow regressive and goofy. \u201CCome on, do you really want to look like a consumptive rat catcher lady dressed by a flock of white doves?\u201D asks one style blog, snarkily? So, what if I do? Is that such a sin? This summer \u2014 as Nicks tours the globe, sprinkling gold fairy dust and&amp;nbsp;proselytizing a message of lace, love, and going one\u2019s own way \u2013 we face a choice: to hide in a purgatory of crop tops and jorts, or cash in on our third-wave privileges of sartorial self-determination and performativity, live every week like it's shark week, and embrace  the Stevie Nicks thing\u201D with a wild heart.Click for a slideshow of Stevie Nicks through the years.Follow @BLOUINFashion"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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