TEENVOGUE FEBRUARY / MARCH 2003
"You'll always find me in jeans: Paper Denims at home, Sevens for school, and dark, stiff Von Dutch jeans for night out"
To the rest of the world, Nastassja Kinski is the stunning actress from classic eighties movies like Tess and Cat People. To sixteen-years-old Sonja Kinski, She's mom - the mom who drives her all her track meets; the mom who won't let her wear a short skirt out of the housel and the mom whose Bottega Veneta trench and Tse sweaters end up on Sonja's back on a regular basis.
"My mother isn't all that interested in having a sexy image," Sonja says. "She likes proper, ladylike things." The high school junior has an equally clear sense of her own taste, though "proper" and "ladylike" probably wouldn't be the first words she'd choose to descrive it: A typical day might find Sonja in a vintage David Bowie T-shirt and one of her umpteen pairs of jeans. "I have a pair for every occasion," she says. "I wear Paper Denim & Cloths at home, Sevens when I'm at school, and dark, stiff Von Dutch jeans - my new favorites - for nights out." It's an obsession that was borne out of necessity. "I'm five ten!" she says. "I'm always on the hunt for jeans that are long enough to fit me."
Sonja's affinity for casual chic does not mean she's antiglamour - far from it, in fact. "If I ever had a black-tie event to go to I would love to go all out and get really dressed up," she says. "I'd borrow my mother's diamond earrings and her floor-length Dolce & Gabbana gown. It's a beautiful deep red - like something Audrey Hepburn would have worn."
Having grown up in Los Angeles, Sonja has always been heavily influenced by music, She used to love hip-hop, but now she's into classic rock, and it shows in her collection of retro rocker tees. "What I'm listening to - Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, the Scorpions, The Stones, and Pink Floyd - has a lot to do with what I wear," she says. Though her boyfriend is a fan of new band such as the Strokes and the Vines Sonja sticks to the source: "Music now isn't even comparable with the rock of the seventies," she says.
Her pronouncements may sound confident, but Sonja wasn't always immune to fashion peer pressure. "I used to worry so much about fitting in," she says. "But I'm over it I wear what I like, and I don't care what people at school think about it."
Still, there are limits. "There are definitely things I would never wear. I wouldn't be caught dead in my mom's ankle-length skirts or collared shirts," she says. "They're cute on her, but I am so not into that preppy Love Story look." And what would Mom never wear that Sonja loves? "My ACDC T-shirt. Somethings never change. - Rashida Jones