Heavy-metal band Winny Puhh plays during Rick Owens's spring 2014 menswear show in Paris in June 2013. AFP/Getty Images
TO PRESENT HIS spring menswear collection at Paris fashion week last year, American designer Rick Owens enlisted the help of Estonian heavy metal band Winny Puhh. As models paced the catwalk in black zippered leather looks, a hairy cloaked figure snarled obtuse lyrics, guitarists in wrestling singlets pummeled their instruments and a drummer spun upside down on a revolving podium.
Mr. Owens, who has compared his designs to Lou Reed's music ("sweet but kind of creepy"), explained that the Estonian band's "cheerful aggression" matched his own sensibilities.
Music and fashion have always been deliciously entangled. Rock stars and fans use fashion to amplify their rebellious values, while designers use music to articulate their collections. In fact, many designers are not-so-secret music nerds. When Marco Zanini took his bow after his debut collection for Schiaparelli, he was wearing a Smiths "Sheila Take A Bow" T-shirt. John Varvatos and Tommy Hilfiger have both written books about the elements of rock style ("John Varvatos: Rock in Fashion" and "Rock Style: How Fashion Moves to Music," respectively). And under Christopher Bailey, Burberry has launched its own acoustic music showcase.
It's a symbiotic relationship. When Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto was commissioned to make the Kabuki-inspired costumes for David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust tour, he was helping to create a persona as much as a wardrobe. And Vivienne Westwood's tartan-heavy bondage designs for the Sex Pistols more or less defined the nascent punk look, making its antiestablishment ethos shockingly visible.
For designers, stagewear offers an opportunity for creative freedom that's rare outside of haute couture. Worn for just a few hours, seen by thousands and free from commercial considerations, the costumes are often a playful, intensified taste of a designer's signature. Just look at Fausto Puglisi's gladiatorial cheerleader costumes for M.I.A. andNicki Minaj, or Saint Laurent designer Hedi Slimane's sequined tuxedos for Daft Punk.
Today, musicians are becoming so convincing at wearing designer clothes that they're threatening to encroach on the actresses who have encroached on models' territory as magazine cover stars and style influencers. The Council of Fashion Designers of America offered this year's Style Icon award not to some industry stalwart but to R&B singer Rihanna. The transparent Adam Selman crystal gown and do-rag the singer wore to accept her award perfectly exemplified her genius for embroidering controversy and credibility into every outfit. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised then when our greatest rock stars eventually become models.
The Guide // Muses
Models and musicians have long made stylish bedfellows. A look at three couples who rocked:
Iman and David Bowie at the Tribeca Film Festival Vanity Fair Party in 2008.
David Bowie and Iman
In 1990, David Bowie met his match. Like Bowie, who had unleashed Ziggy Stardust onto the world, the Somalian-born Iman was an otherworldly prospect for fashion when she began modeling in 1975. Her long, graceful neck and aquiline features appealed to designers with an emphasis on tailoring, including Yves Saint Laurent and Thierry Mugler, that Bowie later wore at their wedding.
Stephanie Seymour and Axl Rose
When Sports Illustrated model Stephanie Seymour became Axl Rose's girlfriend, she became an icon of '90s Americana rock royalty, her faded denim and corset tops henceforth the template for what a rock star's girlfriend should look like. Rose, for his part, seemed to respond to Seymour's casual glamour by pairing loose-fit blazers and tuxedo jackets with his customary ripped jeans and bandannas.
Kate Moss and Pete Doherty walking in London in 2007 
Kate Moss and Pete Doherty
The bohemian style now synonymous with Kate Moss—cutoff shorts, waistcoat vests, 1940s tea dresses—emerged in 2005 while she was dating Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty, whose penchant for military jackets, porkpie hats and English heritage brands like Burberry and Fred Perry was similarly vintage-influenced. Though no longer together, the style they created seems to be eternal.