Here at Untapped, we’re thrilled to introduce the new bi-weekly column “The Art of Style” by Kat Mills. Kat is a graphic designer and a recent transplant to New York from some unspeakably boring place in the Midwest. Holds a BFA in illustration from Syracuse University (2011). Likes cooking, long solitary walks, Tom Waits, well-dressed humans, dirty martinis, cartography, and properly-kerned typography. For “The Art of Style,” Kat will scour the streets of Manhattan (and sometimes Brooklyn) with an eye for quirky and captivating street style and draw the people who catch their eye in a highly stylized series of illustrations.

 

I spotted this impossibly prissy-looking couple perched across from me on the F-train when I hopped on at Broadway & Lafayette. They would have been eye-catching enough by virtue of the outfits alone–that waistcoat had obviously been tailored–but what really captured my interest was their manner. They were perfect subjects for my first column, dressed head-to-toe in black and white and elitism. Neither of them spoke a word.

(media: pen & ink, ink washes on hot-press watercolor paper.)

Follow The Art of Style by Kat Mills. For more of Kat’s work, check out her website.