We didn’t think it was possible for St. Vincent to get any more perfect but she has proved us wrong. St. Vincent, otherwise known as Annie Clark, has created a guitar designed specifically for women. Joining the likes of Albert Lee, John Petrucci and Steve Morse, Clark has teamed up with brand Ernie Music Ball Man to release a signature guitar. She was given free rein on the design, so set out to create something that would tackle her own past issues with the standard design of the instrument.
Clark told Guitar World “for me a guitar that is not too heavy is really important because I’m not a very big person, I can’t even play a Sixties Strat or Seventies Les Paul. I would need to travel with a chiropractor on tour in order to play those guitars. It’s not that those aren’t great guitars, but the render themselves impractical and unfunctional for a person like me because of their weight”. The guitar is, therefore, light in its construction with a slip tapered waist, which she said is supposed to reveal the waist, the best part of a woman’s body, according to Clark. “I was always finding when I was playing onstage and wearing various stage outfits the guitar would cut across one of the best features of the female body, which is your waist, I wanted to make something that looked good and not just on a woman, but any person”. The guitar weighs only seven pounds and is made to accommodate a smaller frame. According to the Instagram post she was going for a design that was “ergonomic, lightweight, and sleek” that had “room for a breast. Or two”.
After shifting between 10-12 different prototypes, Annie Clark came to a final design which will be available in either black of Vincent Blue, a shade hand-mixed by St. Vincent herself. When talking about the aesthetic, she said “my particular guitar is based a lot on Klause Nomi’s aesthetic, the Memphis design movement, which was an Italian design movement, those Sixties and Seventies Japanese designed guitars like the Tescos and then I went for classic car colours. I really like cars so I went for a ’67 Corvette with the colour scheme”. Very few female stars have been able to develop their own signature instruments so this is a big deal for women in the music industry. “I’m glad that another guitar exists that is sympathetic to the female form, I’m glad that that exists and I hope that people will enjoy…that men and women will enjoy the ergonomics. But smaller people and women especially”. You can buy the guitar from the Ernie Ball Music Man website.
Holly Martin
