Betsey Johnson, The Original Cool Girl

My mother and I were wrapping up a shopping trip in SoHo, and as we strolled Mulberry Street, we saw what can only be described as a true sartorial apparition. It was Betsey Johnson, clad in some combination of jet black and hot pink — or was it her once-signature Breton-esque striped shirt? — with a young girl of about 7 or 8 clutching her hand as they walked.

I nudged my mom to ensure she saw her coming, but we needn’t use words to confirm who was in our midst. Johnson’s look is iconic; a dedicated aesthetic worthy of the word well before we started calling everything and anything “iconic.”

“Love your stuff,” my mom offered casually as Betsey passed, and she thanked her warmly without breaking pace. To my high-school self, the whole interaction felt ridiculously chic. When Johnson was far enough away, we giggled like schoolgirls.

There was a time when the streets of New York City were Betsey Johnson’s natural habitat. But in 2016, just a few years after our brief run-in, she left the city she spent roughly 53 years in to call the West Coast home with her daughter, Lulu, and her granddaughters (one of whom I recognize now as the young girl we saw on Mulberry Street).

Today, Johnson is still in California — and fresh off celebrating her 84th birthday this past August, she’s still an inspiration to young girls and accomplished women everywhere.

“I’ve realized the secret to staying popular is getting older,” Johnson admits when I applaud her on her six decades in the industry (and counting!). “It’s wild. But I'm happy for every second, every day. And I'm still trucking. It's amazing. It feels like forever, and then it feels like a second.”

When you’ve been an icon for as long as Johnson, the passing of time feels less like a limitation and more like proof of concept. Johnson tells me that sometimes, she still feels 25 — at that age, she was already a designer on the rise in the 1960s, bringing her creations to life for Paraphernalia, the Youthquake boutique that helped make Johnson’s signature aesthetic synonymous with the era.

“I didn't know anything about fashion,” says Johnson of her time at Paraphernalia, where she spent the latter half of the ‘60s designing with free rein. “I knew how to cut and sew. My mom taught me how to sew when I was 3 or 4 years old, and I loved it.”

In lieu of connections, she cites her astrological chart — double Leo, Taurus rising — as an explanation for why and how she was able to exude the confidence and ambition required to succeed in the industry at the time. But it was also an innate, unquestionable cool that propelled Johnson and her designs into the spotlight.

In 1978, Johnson opened her first eponymous boutique at age 36. The hip young women downtown lined up to shop her tiny Thompson Street store, the way girls today wait hours outside of Dairy Boy in Nantucket, or the latest Rhode pop-up activation. Johnson’s designs shaped the street style trends of the moment — some of which thrive to this day. Any time you don a piece of cotton Lycra anything, you’ve got her first official Betsey Johnson collection, “A Wardrobe In Stretch,” to thank.

At present, the notion of the elusive, all-powerful cool girl has taken over popular culture. Online and in print, we are trapped within the cool girl commerce echo chamber. On TikTok and Reels, creators are waterboarding us with cool girl learnings, from lists of “Things I Find Chic” to “Cool Girl Guides” to everything from sun care to sex toys.

The implied homogeneity of the framework — that, to be a cool girl, we must all do certain things, wear certain pieces — completely eliminates the desired cool factor we so yearn for. Cool girls become cool not by following trends; rather, they start them by being wholly and uniquely themselves.

Betsey Johnson is, perhaps, the original “cool girl.” The coolest of them all — even when her competition deemed her unserious, even when buyers weren’t breaking down her door to nab up Day-Glo cotton Lycra. Johnson marched to the beat of her own very loud drum, long before folks around her knew making noise was even an option.

When I reach out to cool girls in my orbit to get their thoughts on Johnson, almost everyone comes back to me with a story from their teenage years. Caroline Vazzana, content creator and host of Pinterest’s shoppable streaming series “Bring My Pinterest Board to Life,” says she grew up watching old footage of Betsey Johnson runway shows on YouTube, dreaming of attending one herself. She loved the colors, the clothes, and most of all, Johnson herself.

“For those of us who want to stand out and set trends, not follow them, Betsey Johnson is the blueprint,” says Vazzana. “I specifically remember watching an interview she gave after one of her shows, and thinking to myself, ‘If everyone in fashion is as nice as Betsey Johnson, that’s where I need to be.’”

Creator Olivia Marcus might not have been streaming runways, but she was no stranger to the magic of a good Betsey Johnson piece. In fact, she took part in a phenomenon that can only be described as The Sisterhood of the Traveling Tulle Dress: “The most iconic dress I ever wore growing up wasn’t even mine,” she tells me. “My friend had a coveted black Betsey Johnson dress with bright pink tulle, and our whole friend group took turns wearing it for special occasions. I still think it’s the best I’ve ever looked.”

“I — well, my mom — purchased my first pair of Betsey Johnson heels when we were shopping for my prom look,” shares creator Carlita Landrum. She describes to me a pointed-toe stiletto with a lace-up front and teal sole, the mesh uppers absolutely littered with rhinestones.

“I remember gasping when I saw the heels sitting on the display, and I knew I had to have them for my look,” she raves. “They were fabulous. And I felt fabulous in them. I love how fashion does that.”

What made Johnson’s cool so damn marketable from the get-go? It all boiled down to authenticity. “I was very real, [designing] based on the kind of shit I wore growing up,” she shares. “I considered myself just like every other girl. I didn't think, ‘What am I doing? What do girls want? What do they like?’ I just thought, ‘What do I want and what do I like?’ And I just figured I was like all the other girls.”

Lucky for Johnson, all the other girls did indeed respond well to what she liked. Edie Sedgwick, Twiggy, Penelope Tree, and more clamored to wear Johnson’s designs, whether on the runways or out and about. Fast-forward a handful of decades, and all the coolest girls are still Betsey Girls. Olivia Rodrigo, Meg Stalter, Gabriette, Jennie, and Charli XCX have each donned a Betsey Johnson look or two (or three) in recent memory.

More often than not, stylists are reaching for Johnson’s older pieces — a fact that thrills her, as she’s always considered herself “a vintage freak.” “I'm a total flashback vintage lover of every era and decade. And I grew up in vintage. I never shopped. I didn't like anything. I just went to thrift stores.”

Macy Eleni, creator and author of Second Chances: The Ultimate Guide to Thrifting, is the same way. In fact, she credits her passion for shopping secondhand with helping her secure her first Betsey Johnson piece.

“I will never forget finding my first ever Betsey dress at my local Salvation Army when I was in high school,” says Eleni. “At that point, I had only been able to experience Betsey through the pages of my cherished childhood magazines that were planted all over my bedroom walls, so the gasp I let out upon finding one of her iconic creations at the thrift store was probably heard round the world. It felt like the fashion gods had shone down upon me in Dayton, Ohio.”

Steph Ermer, an avid Betsey Johnson collector with a social media account dedicated to her closet of pretty, punky pieces, knows sourcing items from Johnson’s most popular collections means going head-to-head with some of the industry’s top stylists, many of whom are trying to track down Betsey holy grails.

“Even though Betsey has been designing since the ‘60s, there is a 10-year window from 1995 to 2005 that collectors gravitate towards the most,” shares Ermer. In particular, she highlights the Spring and Fall 2000 collections as highly sought after, as well as the “ribbon dresses,” which have become the most envied portion of Ermer’s archive.

The vintage ribbon dresses have become so popular, in fact, that the brand released an updated style with a classic Betsey fruit print for those who can’t source an original.

“I don't think girls really really change that much,” admits Betsey when I ask why she thinks her older designs remain coveted after all these years. “It goes from rock and roll punk, to pretty Victorian, glamorous gorgeous… I think that, if it's good, it's timeless.”

Or perhaps it’s an even simpler truth: Once a cool girl, always a cool girl. “Betsey is the ultimate cool girl not only because of her iconic personal style, but her entire ethos,” Ermer declares. “She is unapologetically herself, always.”

And as anyone who gets the privilege of a brief chat with Johnson can attest, her cool endures in part due to her warm disposition. “Betsey is incredibly kind. There is nothing cooler than a nice girl, and a girls’ girl — and Betsey has always been both.” Ermer cites Johnson’s willingness to champion LGBTQIA+ talent as undeniably cool, along with her activism around Breast Cancer awareness, particularly after receiving her own diagnosis around 1999.

“Betsey’s unmatched energy and true care for self-expression are things so rare when it comes to designers and how they show up to the public,” points out Eleni. “Even through a glossy page or TV screen, I could feel her passion, not just for clothing, but for making people feel like they could be themselves, no matter how messy or chaotic that may look to others.”

“She represents a subculture I’m a part of,” agrees Landrum. “I’m bold and loud, same as her, and we reflect that in our style choices. [Betsey is] someone who paved the way, and I’m forever grateful for every person who decided to be their unique selves before me. It gave me permission to do it, too.”

Vazzana concurs: “Betsey Johnson is known for being bold, being herself, and I think that’s stayed true for me and my brand,” she says. “She taught me that it’s OK to not fit into a box, that actually you can draw your own box.”

While Johnson adores each and every one of her Betsey girls, there are two in particular whose stamp of approval keeps Betsey going after all these years: her granddaughters, Layla and Ella. Scrolling TikTok one afternoon, I come across Layla’s public TikTok account. In between shopping hauls and college orientation content, she gives her followers a private peek into Johnson’s grandmother era.

In one video, Layla shares a haul of some pieces pilfered from Johnson’s closet. “My grandma is the most generous human on this earth,” she declares as she shows off a pair of leopard-printed Betsey Johnson sandals with a carved wooden heel. In another, she shows a clip of Johnson hunched over a palette of paint as she sketches out a portrait of her granddaughter. This inspires a comment section filled with fans, young and old, hoping to convey to Layla just how special her grandma truly is. “Wore a pair of her shoes on my wedding day,” writes one user. “Tell her she designed the best prom dress in 2011,” comments another, sharing a photo in a black ballgown with layers of signature Betsey ruffled tulle.

There are a lot of designers out there making cool clothes, wearing cool clothes, and hiring cool talent. But Johnson’s cool is the stuff that stands the test of time. The modern viral moment pales in comparison to a career that’s lasted long enough for everything that’s considered cool now to have already gone in and out of fashion and back again (and again, and again, for that matter).

“As someone that has often felt like a fashion ‘outsider,’ she gave me the confidence to keep spreading my unique sparkle, always,” says Eleni. “Spreading joy and kindness, while creating something that makes people feel free to be themselves, is probably the most ‘cool girl’ thing you can do.”

It’s possible Johnson herself started half of our current cool girl trends back in the ‘60s, without ever intending for them to live on. Not that she’s keeping track — she’s too busy doing her own thing, as always. “You either get her, or you don’t, but she was going to be designing what she wanted and cartwheeling down the runway either way,” Ermer reveres. “To me, there is nothing cooler than that.”