Lauryn Hill has a style one watches from afar, admires, throws a party for the eyes that want to see, yet could never imitate. It comes from inside of her and style is just as personal the inside is.

Style is not only about super original combinations, more than three colours mixes or a thrive to be seen. Think of Emmanuelle Alt. It can be Hill, it can be Alt, it can be both, it can be whatever as long as it’s yours.

Browsing through pictures of Lauryn Hill online – only! – feels like observing a piece of art; a movie, a song, a video, a picture, a painting, a poem, anything that inspires the heart to be creative about. She’s inspiring. She inspires without making a purpose out of it.

I remember being a kid in the nineties and my brother always turning on the volume when The Fugees were on. I was staring at the fabulously dressed trio, in Fu-Gee-La, running around the town that looked like in the movies, or in Killing Me Softly, throwing popcorn at each other at the cinema. It was the year of 1996.

You grow your style just as you grow yourself. You grow yourself just as you grow your style. That is if you want to grow and, subconsciously, have been doing it anyway.

Lauryn, baby, use your head, but instead I chose to use my heart, Jay-Z quotes Lauryn Hill in Zion.

In 1998, when Everything Is Everything, first, aired, I remember feeling content for already having known Lauryn Hill from her Fugees years. I remember being in awe of her. She was wearing bright pink and blue jeans. To the day, 20 years later, whenever I see the bright pink and blue jeans combo, I think of the video.

Of her attitude in Doo-Wop (That Thing), while dancing and rapping in a pale yellow mini dress and jeans shirt. As opposed to the 60s’ look I, obviously, dug, too. It’s the clothes, accessories and hair that mesmerise at all times, but it’s the presence that comes from within that makes her eyes shine. First. Just as it is with Emmanuelle.

Inside, presence, style, shine.

Lauryn’s rhythm and silhouette in gracefully flowing whites, deep blues and (those!) brown leather super-flared trousers in Ex-Factor come up in looks that are timeless. Style is timeless.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is her first solo album and when I saw, in 2001, the MTV Unplugged 2.0, I felt, yet again, the impact art can have on us and the beauty of us and the artists we love growing at once. Of experiencing life. Of, fantasising, as children, to live the Ex-Factor, and the Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You, as adults, hallelujah.

In 2017, I wrote about her ? here ?. Life, it gets you places.

One can see how Lauryn enjoys clothes and you can see how Emmanuelle does, too. Personally and professionally. It’s the elegance that comes with style, it’s the style that comes with elegance. It’s the inside that makes the outside shine.