Tiffany Tuttle worked as a professional ballet dancer until she was 20, followed by stints in New York (studying at FIT), Paris (designing for Givenchy) and, finally, Milan, where she merged her talent for fancy footwork and her fashion credentials in shoe design. Androgynous style has always been key to LD Tuttle (the brand bears the initials of her husband), and in recent collections she has created several unisex styles, including heavy boots, fold-down gladiator sandals and, this season, a somewhat adventurous 2-inch heel for men. The unisex aesthetic, she says, encapsulates “a cleanness and simplicity that I am drawn to—something that is a little bare and raw, where you can see the underlying contrasts and tensions.” Her top five gender-bending style icons are as follows:

Elizabeth I (of England)

I have always been obsessed with her.  She’s not traditionally thought of as androgynous or unisex, but she expertly played with male/female tensions. She seemed to understand from very early on that she would need to be able to work with, and exploit, the contrasts that existed within her.

Egon Schiele

I love the angles, the shapes of his body.  His self-portraits—paintings and drawings—express very elemental ideas of tension and sexuality.

Joan Didion

She has that sense of simplicity and individuality that is what I think of as androgynous. Her incredible style seems to expose who she is rather than covering her up with a whole bunch of embellishments.

Kouros

I am currently looking a lot at these ancient Greek statues (and also Richard Hawkin's work with their imagery).  They show human beauty abstracted from being overtly male or female.  The sense of ambiguity in their facial expressions is fascinating.

CK One

An iconic contemporary expression of unisex.