Yé-yé style: Izzy Hayes

Izzy Hayes – self-portrait

Izzy Hayes is a seasoned veteran of a relatively new game, an early recruit to the virtual army of self-stylists who photograph and chronicle their daily dress on the ‘net. She was part of the first generation of fashion bloggers, long before collaborative sites like Lookbook.nu, Wardrobe Remix and myriad Tumblr groups made sharing street style snapshots easy.

Her blog La Vie C’est Yeye has evolved alongside the changing face of the Web. “It started out on LiveJournal, and then it migrated to Flickr,” she says, before she finally turned it into the Blogger site she still uses.

Her early LiveJournal account caught the attention of Tricia Royal, who was then starting the Wardrobe Remix Flickr group. “She told me that I should send my pictures to her Flickr, and that’s where it started. And then blogs kind of appeared, and I was in design school, so I thought it was a good idea.”

As the site’s name suggests, Hayes’s aesthetic is deeply indebted to ye-ye, the ’60s Euro-pop movement that embraced a certain modish whimsy tending toward bright blocks of colour, bold prints and strong linear cuts.

“I mostly deal with vintage, and I do my own designs. I use myself as the model and I take pictures of everything myself,” she says, citing Sylvie Vartan and Jane Birkin as her primary icons and inspiration.

“It started when I was a little girl. I’ve always liked clothing; photography came a little later. I went to fashion design school, but I didn’t want to work in the fashion industry. I don’t want to work 80 hours a week. I like to have balance. I sell vintage on Etsy.”

The childhood interest in self-styling makes sense, as fashion may well be in her blood: her quirky and stylish mother Ariane also blogs her outfits at Style Sud-Est. Vintage picking is a family affair.

While Hayes has no designs on a career in fashion (pun intended), she’s recently returned to sewing her own pieces after a lengthy hiatus. “Going to design school killed it for me,” she admits. “It turned me off.”

A few of her own creations — whimsy pieces and mini-skirts with cathead pockets — get mixed in with the vintage pieces on her blog, she says that her main passion right now is photography. Which is good news for Montreal fashion fans, because while there’s never any shortage of new fashionistas on the net, nothing beats a true classic. ■