“I used to have great adventures in my head.” Photograph by Chris Stein.

Heart of Glass

Peroxide hair is only part of what Blondie’s Debbie Harry calls her “costume.” She breaks down the components of—and the thinking behind—her signature look

By Debbie Harry

Ever since she took a bottle of peroxide to her hair and rhymed “dancing very close” with “almost comatose,” Debbie Harry has been a punk goddess. Known for her cool, ironic style and her cool, ironic music, Harry has inspired artists and designers (one, an upstairs neighbor in her derelict building, gave her fashion advice; his name was Stephen Sprouse). The writer Wayne Koestenbaum described her in a paean as “gorgeousness.... I mean not only her face—its echo of every blonde siren the cinema has ever known—but her singing voice’s matter-of-factness, combining fatigue and rancor and nervous energy.” Harry, 79, currently plays muse in ads photographed by Nan Goldin for Gucci, holding a handbag called the Blondie. Her first Gucci bag was a gift from a Hollywood sophisticate named Jerry in 1967. “I could actually go upstairs and get it for you,” she tells me. “It was a little envelope with a jockey’s cap on the clasp.” When she adds, “It was totally out of my world,” I’m not sure whether she’s referring to Jerry or the bag—or both. —Linda Wells

I’m sort of at a crossroads right now between being a punk goddess and being a woman of the world. I don’t know if I’m making myself look foolish if I wear some of the clothes that I feel comfortable wearing. And so that’s my predicament.