She would have been 32 this year, but you can't quite imagine
Aaliyah Haughton at that age. Her death in a plane crash, 10 years ago this week, was cruelly premature – but she'd already been in the entertainment business for seven years by that point, and it is her youth, frozen in time, that defines her legacy.
Signature look ... Aaliyah on 9 May 2001, three and a half months before her death.
Aaliyah's signature look was the swoop of hair that hid one eye while the other fixed the camera with a steely gaze: a combination of unnerving emotional honesty with a sense of mystique – or caution, the knowledge not to give too much of yourself away – that carried over to her music.
Even in her earliest material, she casually mixed insouciance with a gravitas unusual for a teenage pop star: on 1994's
Age Ain't Nothing But a Number, she sounded like she was expressing a deep love – and gently imparting some wisdom, too – rather than a giddy crush; the song easily transcended the
icky gossip about the relationship between Aaliyah and its writer, R Kelly.
She sounded so sure of herself from the start, singing about her "jazz personality, G mentality" on her
debut single – and this sense of self, as untouchable or relatable as you needed her to be, is the reason she continues to be revered by
R&B fans.
Tracing Aaliyah's influence since her death offers few clues as to what might have been.
Though various elements of her aesthetic have cropped up – the dreamy timbre of
Ciara's voice, the lush clarity of
Teedra Moses's "
champagne soul" – direct comparisons would do a disservice to the individuality of each artist.
By her last album, she had deliberately begun to use fewer Timbaland productions, as well as diversifying into a nascent acting career; few of the R&B trends that dominated the last decade seem like a natural fit for her, though perhaps, had she lived, those trends would have ended up following her rather than vice versa.
But it is not the pompous concept of "importance" for which Aaliyah's fans remember her: it is for how she could so effortlessly tap into the human condition when she sang. On her 1994 cover of the Isley Brothers'
At Your Best (You Are Love), she pleaded in a clear, unguarded voice, "Stay at your best, baby." She ended up doing just that.
Aaliyah’s music was surely what she was known for, but her trendsetting style was hard to ignore.
 |
but we can’t forget those few trademark looks
she wore so well (and that we tried to emulate). |
No singer was able to strike a balance between two opposites quite like she could.
She was all-woman while dressed fully in men’s attire.
She was cute with a clean-cut image,
but sexy and always sophisticated.
Today we honor her effortless style:
Check out Aaliyah’s fashion transformation over the years:
 |
| Fans copied the beloved style as best they could. |
1. Side-swept bangs. Aaliyah’s hair, long and layered, was one of her most prominent features, and rarely was she seen without her bangs in place. Swept across the side of her face, she gave us
just a peak of her eyes.
 |
The accessory only contributed
to her being the epitome of cool |
2. Sunglasses. As she got older, her shyness faltered, and the shades came off, but for years – from the era of “Back N Forth” to the days of “One in a Million,” Aaliyah kept a pair of sunglasses on standby.
 |
Aaliyah proved that she
could run with the boys,
but still be a lady. |
3. Baggy Jeans. Aaliyah proved that boxers and baggy jeans were not just for rappers and thugs. She donned her denim just like the rest of the them, if not better. Low and slung below her waist,
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| we couldn’t blame her, and we didn’t mind. |
4. Midriff-Baring. Seeing the singer with a full-length shirt on was a rarity. Bikini-style tops, and those that hit just above the belly-button were her preference from red carpets to music videos. With a flat stomach and trim waist,
 |
As casually and comfortably
as us non-celebrities would. |
5. Bandana. No amount of cloth, bejeweled or not, could distract us from Aaliyah’s cascading locks, but she rocked a bandana,
Aaliyah's true legacy is her rare, charismatic, gift for Music & Style
