Monday, Apr. 02, 2012

James Dean

Before his untimely demise at age 24, James Byron Dean reinvented what it meant to be a Hollywood antihero, most notably in the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause. Dean was typically clad in little more than jeans, a snug white T-shirt and a well-worn leather jacket, and his antiprep "Live as if you'll die today" philosophy made him the poster child for effortless American cool. With a cigarette never far from his lips, Dean may have lived life in the fast lane, but his oft imitated style — he provided the inspiration for Robert Pattinson's brooding look in Twilight — endures as something timeless.