Oh the gamine, she’s the type that so many men dream of. The type of girl who stops traffic with the bat of an eyelash (but not with the wave of her hair, obviously). When cultivated correctly, there is no woman with more charm than the gamine. However, there is the other side of the gamine coin: The annoying, overly quirky kind. Following is a list of the best and worst of this genre in aesthetic and personality.
BEST GAMINES
Audrey Hepburn: Slim-faced, poised and endlessly elegant, Audrey Hepburn will always be the quintessential gamine. Her famed role as Holly Golightly solidified her stature as the classic archetype of this type of woman.
Mia Farrow: Woody Allen loved her for a reason.
Leslie Caron: French women have the art of the gamine down pat, and Leslie Caron was one of the original to show other French actresses how it’s done.
Michelle Williams: A dead ringer for Leslie Caron, Williams has come a long way from her slightly more zaftig Dawson’s Creek phase.
Audrey Tautou: Tautou, every bit the gamine, is at her best as her most famed character, Amélie, who gives us just the right amount of quirk without verging on irritating.
Winona Ryder: One of the most iconic actresses of the late twentieth century, Winona brought gamine to grunge culture. And the style hasn’t been the same since.
WORST GAMINES
Zooey Deschanel: No one wants to hear you burst into song at random intervals or make awkward sounds at random.
Emma Watson: Okay, you’re British–that doesn’t make you automatically chic.
Gwyneth Paltrow: One word–Goop.
Halle Berry: There is something decidedly irksome about Halle Berry’s gamine phase–maybe it was Swordfish that made her seem so offputting.
Anne Hathaway: Big eyes, big lips, big ego. The gamine persona is all about demureness.
