New Modern Classic...The Overinfluencers

Ian Schrager

After helping to pioneer the velvet rope and the sleek boutique hotel, the man behind Studio 54 and the Mondrian, left, has moved on to that rare American third act, creating distinctive properties like the Gramercy Park Hotel and 40 Bond. His legion of imitators, meanwhile, continue to churn out hotels whose bland, dime-store minimalism almost makes you happy the economy's headed south. (Almost, we said.)

Photo: Chris Weeks/WireImage

Thom Browne

With his meticulously constructed (if occasionally three-legged) menswear, Thom Browne has inspired countless other designers to put their own spin on the classic white-collar uniform. Well, he inspired a few, anyway. The rest seem content to take Browne's truncated silhouette and simply duplicate it. Could it really be time to start asking who's the next Thom Browne?

Photo: Getty Images

J.D. Salinger

There's one in every high school class: That kid toting a dog-eared copy of Franny & Zooey like a security blanket, certain that he's every bit as exceptionally odd and oddly exceptional as the Glass clan. And then he grows up and subjects the rest of us to watered-down versions of that wishful vision. From the canon of Wes Anderson to the cutesy self-love of the Mumblecores, Salinger's acolytes just can't stop trying to raise preciousness to high art. Maybe there's a lesson in what that other Salinger character said about phonies.

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The year 1992

To those of us who remember seeing Bill Clinton play sax on Arsenio Hall, 1992 wasn't that long ago. But a generation of club kids, rappers, scenesters, and designers is just discovering that magical year for the first time. New York's weekly "1992" party (thrown by hosts Vashtie, left, and Oscar, right) pays tribute with neon jumpsuits, door-knocker earrings, and vintage Polo, while further upmarket drop-crotch Hammer pants showed up on Spring '09 catwalks. "Where were you in '92?" bellowed M.I.A. on a recent track. Let's just hope the kids of 2024 are smart enough not to do the same to 2008.

Photo: Kreg Holt