Agatha Blois - New York City Custom Leather

Dubbed the "First Lady of Leather," Agatha Blois has custom-fit her garb to every punk, rock, and pop god under the sun, from Slash to Billy Idol to the Shakira and J. Lo set. And this designer got her start early. "I've always said I started designing when I was 19, but recently I remembered that when I was 9, I used to make my grandma trace me on the floor, like I was a pattern," Blois says. "I never wore clothes I bought, except for this one pair of Levi's, which I wore until my grandma made me throw them away. So I guess I've been at it since then."

Lately, she's feeling a bit more introspective about her career. "Every day I'm thinking, ‘Aren't I really an artist? Can't I just make art? But when I think of art I don't think of just paintings … I dream of doing interiors and furniture as well as clothing."

She's already branched out with a fragrance called Carnival Wax, whose mascot, "Ol' Rudy," is a skeleton man donning a top hat. The packaging is gothic French Quarter. And the smell itself? When asked to describe it, rather than rattling off top notes, she reads a poem written by her dear friend Blackie Pagano: "Ol' Rudy drove the carriage ... the smell of greasepaint, wild beasts, sugary treats, western saddles, and burning gypsy witch candles, old damp canvas, through Spanish moss and Southern groves of orange and peach, on dirt, on asphalt, on an African priestess in Brooklyn in 1965, her black leather panties in his liquored hand … If I could only bottle these bright beauties and blinding evils." Sounds intoxicating.