Chiara de Blasio doesn’t dress like a typical politician’s daughter — and she doesn’t plan to — no matter who her father is.
As her dad, Mayor Bill de Blasio, rose to fame in 2013 as a Democratic mayoral candidate, 19-year-old Chiara became the style star of New York City’s political scene, forgoing the simple skirts and cardigans of administrations past for her own eclectic, vintage-inspired sensibility that she shows off in a fearless manner.
Since entering the spotlight, Chiara says she’s felt no pressure to dress a certain way. Put simply: “I go with my own style.”
So it’s no surprise that when amNewYork met the fashionista teen while she was home recently for spring break from California’s Santa Clara University, she chose one of her favorite stores, L Train Vintage in Gowanus Brooklyn, near the de Blasios’ neighborhood of Park Slope, to conduct the interview.
And on this day, style, not politics, was the topic du jour.
A bubbly Chiara breezed into the store — which was empty save for one or two customers — ready to shop, wearing an outfit that represented her personal style, which she describes as a darker take on the hippie aesthetic.
“I have lots of floral stuff, but I wear a lot of black, and I’m totally into metal [music], but I’m also into all these patterns and clothes that hippies would typically wear,” she says.
That afternoon, she paired a concert tee she bought during the Finnish Metal Tour in 2011 with a patchwork handbag her uncle gave her, BDG skinny jeans from Urban Outfitters, an old pair of Dr. Martens boots that her friend’s sister “wore for years” before passing them along to Chiara and a stone necklace that her friend’s cousin made. She also donned a bindi, which she bought on San Francisco’s famed Haight Street, on her forehead, her signature ear gauges and a brand-new septum piercing, which she got while she was home in New York last month.
One noticeably absent item: A floral headband, which became her signature fashion piece during the mayoral campaign. She even wore oversized floral headpieces on the nights her father won the primary and the election.
“I haven’t been wearing flower headbands as much,” she says. “I just kind of go through a lot of fashion phases. That’s not to say they’re retired forever, but I just like to mix it up a lot.”
Chiara also likes injecting her style know-how into her famous family’s wardrobes.
“I mean, I am the fashion coordinator for my family,” she says.
Though she describes her mother, Chirlane McCray, as “stylish,” she says father Bill and younger brother Dante, who has made a style impact of his own with his Afro hairstyle, are “not so much, but they still look great.
“I try to advise my dad on what ties to wear,” says Chiara.
In fact, it was Chiara’s idea for the family to wear red on election night, with Chiara and McCray both wearing sleeveless dresses and the de Blasio gents sporting different red ties with their suits.
“I tried to take an initiative to get some color synchronicity going on,” she says.
The only time Chiara felt hesitant about making a fashion choice was when she planned to wear rainbow-colored sequin hot pants and a tube top to last year’s Pride March.
“I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know if I could wear this. I’m walking with my dad’s staff and campaign and stuff,'” she says. “I showed him and I was like, ‘Dad, this is what I’m planning on wearing. I don’t know if you’d be cool with this.’ He’s like, ‘No, it looks great. Go for it.’ … He said it’s perfect for the occasion because it was rainbow sequin shorts and stuff.”
Though the mayor, who took office on Jan. 1, 2014, approved of her revealing Pride March outfit, there have been times when Chiara’s parents have tried to get her to “wear more clothes,” such as when, like a typical teenager, she wanted to wear short skirts to school.
“I was pretty rebellious about fashion,” says the college sophomore.
Back on the shopping trip, Chiara peruses racks upon racks of low-priced vintage items we think the elder de Blasios would approve of, style-wise and price-wise, ending up purchasing a $10 pair of used brown Dr. Martens, an $8 horse-print vest and a $10 sleeveless cream-and-black-hued dress.
She quickly whips the three seemingly different pieces into a cool ensemble that she pulls off with flair.
“Pulling something off is not about the way that you look. It’s not like, ‘Oh, I have this color hair or this body type or whatever, so I can’t pull this off,'” Chiara says. “It’s all about confidence. I never, ever think about [whether] I can pull something off, and that’s how I pull things off.”
