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Stevie Nicks declared “time makes you bolder” when she and Fleetwood Mac released the hit “Landslide” in July 1975 — 50 years ago.
Now she’s 77, in the middle of a national tour and bolder than ever with her signature songs, boho looks, re-release of the “Buckingham Nicks” album and a new album coming next year.
If you do an Internet search for “Stevie Nicks style,” page after page of black, sheer maxi dresses at all prices will pop up.
You might not think Stevie’s flowing dresses are “classic” wardrobe items that any 70-something can wear. And yet … her pieces have a timeless quality that you can adapt into an ageless look. Here’s how…
A uniform of many airy layers: When Nicks was starting out, rock goddesses looked like Janis Joplin, and Nicks knew she wanted another look, an ethereal and feminine costume, her longtime designer Margi Kent told me. She and Nicks, in their 20s then, started sketching and dreaming. Their first sketch was a handkerchief-hem skirt dress with a jacket, long droopy chiffon sleeves and velvet platform boots.
Kent used those proportions — form-fitting top with swinging sleeves and long flowing skirt — to create a “uniform” for Nicks that she still wears.
Black skirt. Little black French corset. Black form-fitting top. Black tights and black boots. Capes, jackets and ponchos for drama. Everything in a flowing silk chiffon with embroidery and velvet — for “diaphanous and sensual” volume without stiffness or bulk, Kent says.
Because Nicks is tiny, her bat-wing sleeves enhance her dance-like movements and help her project a big image onstage.
“She wraps her sleeves in creative ways, sometimes twisting them around her arms so they hang down like scarves, or she’ll wrap a poncho a certain way,” says Kent. “She knows what she wants to look like in a specific part of a song.”
A costume communicates a message — whether you’re a singer or a secretary.
Their magic collaboration works, Kent says, because “Stevie creates a picture in my head with her music, and I help her project that picture onstage.”
Nicks wore her famous “Stand Back” cape — a “really beautiful” black and gold shawl of French chiffon — when “Stand Back” was released in 1983 and also when she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for the second time in 2019. It’s still in pristine condition, Kent says. “Chiffon is a beautiful thing when you know what to do with it, using bias cuts and angles and using layer over layer. Really good quality silk chiffon doesn’t wear out.”
On Nicks’ “Bella Donna” album cover — her first solo album, released in 1981 — she wore essentially the same dress she wore on 1977’s Rumours album cover, but this time her airy layers were all white.
Kent has heard Nicks’ new album — due for release in 2026 — and reports it has the “energy of ‘Bella Donna,’ which is pretty amazing after all these years … it was a very emotional listening party.”
Nicks wrote the album, which she calls “The Ghost Record,” while she spent three months in a hotel after fleeing the Los Angeles fires.
Here are some get-your-groove-back fashion tips inspired by the timeless Nicks' look:
Rock a wrap dress: Nicks' iconic outfit on the Rumours cover—now on display at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland — is a marvel of engineering.
The top is a wrap style, with seams that run diagonally under the breasts. This construction highlights the smallest part of Nicks’ body — her ribcage — and allows the rest of the outfit to flow. The silk chiffon of the bat sleeves and handkerchief skirt made the 5-foot-1-inch Stevie a presence next to the 6-foot-6-inch Mick Fleetwood on the album cover.
Diane Von Furstenberg popularized the jersey wrap dress in 1974, but she wasn’t the first to sell the style. Vicky Tiel, 81, made a mini wrap dress for Bloomingdale’s in 1968. Four decades later, she sold versions of that wrap dress on HSN. Those dresses are so flattering. I own 10 of them, and I just bought another one on ThredUp, the resale site, for $15.
The miracle of corsets: Tiel’s most famous dress design uses some of the same techniques as Nicks’ Rumours outfit. This, too, is a masterpiece of structure and silk: the sultry red evening gown Julia Roberts wore in Pretty Woman in 1990.
That gown is pure femininity — a sewn-in corset provides the scaffolding to enhance a woman’s curves — and the dress still sells. Gayle King wore her green Pretty Woman dress to the 2025 Tony Awards in June. Tiel’s good pal, the late Ivana Trump, had the Pretty Woman gown, too. (Want one? A black version recently showed up on 1st Dibs for $3,000. Mass-market versions cost around $150 online.)
Dress for who you are: “Invest in your wardrobe with classic lines that are your classic lines — and I don’t mean a button-down shirt,” Margi Kent says. “You just need a mirror. Try on a few things. Look at silhouettes. What’s a flattering spot on your body, and what do you want to hide?”
She and Nicks both still wear clothes from 40 years ago — they feel no need to change their style because they are no longer 25.
“Here’s the thing women forget: When they get older, they think they need to dress a certain way,” Kent says. “No. No. No! Dress for who you are — not for who you think you are supposed to be.”
Fit the smallest part of your body: Both Kent and designer Steven Stolman — who is known for the silk taffeta ball skirts he creates for J. McLaughlin — believe in enhancing the smallest part of your body. As Stolman says, “Find the place on your body that hasn’t changed all that much and play off that. For women, it’s usually the ribcage, and that’s why empire-waist fit-and-flare dresses are so great.”
Gypsy inspiration: Nicks channeled her own gypsy goddess — Vilma Banky, a silent-movie star of the late 1920s — when she and Kent began collaborating. Banky, an ethereal blond from Hungary, starred opposite Rudolph Valentino a century ago. She retired from movies in the 1930s and is mostly unknown today. But she has a surprising legacy: Banky resembled Nicks, and they both lived in the same house in the Hollywood Hills. Plus, Banky used voluminous sleeves to convey emotion.
Triangles are timeless: That first costume Nicks and Kent sketched had a handkerchief skirt — featuring a pointed hem that added movement. Here’s a truism about triangles: angles flatter curves.
In 1970, Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter, Liza Todd, came to visit Vicky Tiel at Vicky’s farm in France. “Liza had a scarf with a bias point, and I was inspired,” Tiel recalls. “We got 10 colorful scarves and made a skirt, with points all around, and then we sewed another layer to put on top of the skirt — and that became ‘the Liza caftan'."
Elizabeth Taylor, then Tiel’s business partner, lived in those caftans. Tiel eventually sold the Liza caftan on HSN. It was so popular that she sold 20,000 in one day.
Kent, too, has used bias cuts in Stevie Nicks’ clothes for 50 years.
Why? The music — and the fabrics — move them.
“People have a mindset about what age is,” Margi Kent says, “But if you dress for yourself, you are timeless.”
What kind of fashion/style do you find yourself gravitating towards? Let us know in the comments below.
AARP (Getty Images, 2)
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