LOOKS THAT ROCK

Inara GEORGE, the singer for the Los Angeles indie-pop duo the Bird and the Bee, is a clotheshorse who refuses to set foot inside a clothing store.

“It’s the whole dressing room, trying-on-clothes thing,” says George, a pixie-pretty 33-year-old, whose halcyon voice helped make the Bird and the Bee’s debut album one of the biggest success stories in alternative music this year. A follow-up EP, “Please Clap Your Hands,” comes out Tuesday.

Despite her shopping aversion, George has one of the most distinctive styles in the music world, whether she’s wearing a neat, empire-waist minidress and go-go boots or a ruffle-neck column gown with Mary Janes. Her kitschy signature style, onstage and off, riffs on iconic looks from the ‘60s, be it Twiggy mod, Courrèges futurist or rich hippie. The look is in perfect harmony with the band’s ‘60s-derived sound.

“The music is already really heightened” stylistically, she says, “so I knew we could get away with really fun fashion.”

George is the most accomplished in a growing coterie of female musicians in Los Angeles who are forging distinct, offbeat fashion personas -- in an era when mainstream artists often look as prepackaged as they sound. Collectively, their do-it-yourself aesthetics recall the fierce individualism of rockers Janis Joplin, Grace Jones, Patti Smith and, more recently, Karen O.

But their self-styling is also part of a general resurgence in DIY fashion that bubbles up from the street, as opposed to trickling down from the runways -- a phenomenon last seen on a significant scale in 1990s New York, when the notorious club kids spent their days sewing together oddball costumes to wear each night.

Dance club culture has resurfaced in the last few years too, with Boombox in London, Check Yo’ Ponytail in Los Angeles and, until recently, the Misshapes in New York. And with it has come the return of highly personalized fashion, which is globally broadcast on websites by night-crawler photographers including the Cobrasnake and Shadowscene.

The musicians in L.A.’s new guard are more interested in making music than in the local club scene, but all have fashioned a personal aesthetic that’s both intrinsically linked to their music and defiant of runway trends. The majority live in Echo Park, because of its comparatively affordable rents, low-key vibe and easy access to the city’s most interesting music venues, including Spaceland, the Silverlake Lounge and The Echo.

Rebecca Stark, lead singer and co-songwriter for indie-folk band Lavender Diamond, which also released its debut full-length album early this year, is almost always dressed in ladylike vintage dresses, in the vein of country legends Loretta Lynn, June Carter Cash and Patsy Cline. The nostalgic (but slightly out-there) looks jibe perfectly with Lavender Diamond’s romantic, country-flecked music, which harks back to the Carpenters and Linda Ronstadt.

“I use the idea of glamour in my life and on stage because I feel fashion can really change your energy,” said Stark, who collaborates with George and fellow local songstress Eleni Mandell on an acoustic side project called the Living Sisters.

George, who grew up in Topanga Canyon and is the daughter of the late Little Feat member Lowell George, says she does most of her shopping on EBay. “My favorite trick is finding something really good, then hitting the ‘search similar items’ key,” she says. “It brings you to all these great things.”

She also works with local costumer and designer Valerj Pobega, who reworks vintage pieces and creates custom dresses for onstage looks. “I got so tired trying to outfit the whole band,” including three female backup singers, George says. “And I was spending so much money.”

Pobega, who also designs for her own Los Angles-based label, Kg 363, approached George after a show, having been inspired by the band’s music and what George was aiming for stylistically. “At the time, I was designing this really Edie Sedgwick-looking collection,” Pobega says, “and I knew it would be great for Inara.”

Unlike George, Stark enjoys the process of assembling her Laura Ingalls-meets-Alice in Wonderland ensembles. “Dressing up is a way to celebrate where you are and who you’re with,” she says. Her apparel is, on principle, exclusively vintage.

“I don’t buy new clothes because I think the manufacturing industry is so bad for the world,” says Stark, 30, who studied literature at Brown University. “Fashion is an energetic art,” she adds. “It’s a very basic kind of practical magic. When you dress, it’s like you’re drawing yourself.”

Stark’s favorite vintage haunts are in or around her neighborhood, Echo Park, and include BBC Vintage, Flounce, Bird of Paradise and the pioneering boutique, Show Pony, which sells under-the-radar designer garb and reworked, secondhand pieces.

When Stark visited Paris two years ago, she rented an apartment from Kelly de Martino, a petite Echo Park-based singer-songwriter whose style exists in the space between Nico and Tank Girl. De Martino, 35, splits her time between Paris and Los Angeles, and her debut album was released by the Parisian label Village Vert earlier this year. De Martino formerly played keyboards in the indie-pop band Marjorie Fair.

Her close relationship to fashion spans decades. She started hand-sewing fabric into makeshift clothing when she was little. “My mom would buy me a Laura Ashley dress, and I would rip it up, redo it and turn it into a minidress,” she says. De Martino took her hobby professional in 2003 when she launched a deconstructed T-shirt line, Minnow, which caught on with celebrities, including Britney Spears, and was sold in Ron Herman stores, among others, until it folded a year later.

While recording her debut album, De Martino picked up extra money by ripping and reconstructing cashmere sweaters for Raw 7, a boutique knitwear line. The ripped and resewn look is one she’s made her own too.

“Everything I wear is Franken-stitched,” she says. “Deconstructing is like giving your clothes scars.” Her “beat-up glamour” includes black ballet shoes that have been hand-aged to a Dickensian-looking patina and yards of fabric artfully safety-pinned into various gown silhouettes. Her music is as charmingly imperfect -- loose and sparse, with vulnerable edges.

De Martino is a friend and neighbor of Jenni Tarma, bass player for on-the-verge atmospheric rock band Eskimo Hunter. Like Stark, she mines the local secondhand shops for cool garb (“There’s definitely a little Echo Park fashion coven among us,” Stark says.)

Tarma, 26, who was born in Finland and studied at the Berklee College of Music, mixes old school glamour with punkier elements, pairing layered, fraying slips with ‘50s-style pearl-and-gems bracelets and vibrant MAC Russian Red lipstick. “The main thing for me is dressing for my body because I have a lot of curves,” says Tarma, who favors waist-nipping dresses passed down from her grandmother. “Back then, women were expected to be girl-shaped.”

Sarah Negahdari is lead singer for experimental rock band the Happy Hollows, which recently self-released its first full-length album. She has adopted a more aerobic style out of necessity. The singer-songwriter-guitarist is a whirlwind on stage, and has been compared to Karen O in her performance intensity. Her trademark look -- part “Chorus Line,” part Jazzercise -- is punctuated by short-shorts, knee-high socks and character shoes, which “are made for dancers, so they’re comfortable to move around in.”

It’s a perfect reflection of the Happy Hollows sound, which alternates between childlike experimentation and ferocious firestorm. “I love to make music that is raw and fast and that makes me feel like I am destroying something,” says Negahdari, 26, who lives in Westwood. “My guitar is like my sword and I dress to embrace the part of me that’s a warrior woman.”

Negahdari, whose interest in fashion ends just outside of her closet door, added that her style hasn’t changed much since she was 12. “I feel like everything I’ve always worn has recently come back into fashion,” she says. “I’ve really been in the same outfit my whole life. I’m like Pee-wee Herman.”

For the Lady Tigra, mixing it up is what fashion is all about. The rapper-singer, who was half of the influential 1980s R&B; duo L’Trimm, will release her debut album in November. The dance-party/electro amalgamation is “all about the bass,” she says. And like her music, Tigra’s style is steeped in the churning cocktail of Miami and New York club culture, two scenes she’s played a part in since her teen years in Dade County, Fla.

Tigra, 36, lives in Echo Park and shops for vintage looks at the Tabloid boutique in West Hollywood. But when she wants to go glam, she dons flirty, short dresses from Miami designer Fernando Garcia and New York’s Heatherette.

Converse All Stars are her onstage staple, but she’s been known to occasionally work a pair of stilettos (“But then I can’t jump around because I’m too busy posing,” she says). Still, she’s careful not to let fashion upstage the bass lines. “I always like my clothes to be comfortable and my music to be provocative, rather than the other way around.”

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emili.vesilind@latimes.com