When Back to Black – the latest cultural product to revisit the tragedies surrounding Amy Winehouse’s final album, a period in which addiction, abusive relationships and relentless tabloid surveillance converged into a harrowing spectacle of public suffering – was released into cinemas in April 2024, it divided critics. The British press, however, proved far less forgiving, perhaps more acutely attuned to the ways in which Winehouse’s pain had long been turned into a form of public entertainment. So distinctive was Winehouse’s self-authorship that Karl Lagerfeld recreated her within his pre-fall 2008 collection, giving models back-combed bouffants and cat eyes as an explicit endorsement of her fashion capital. “She’s a style icon,” the late designer said at the time. “It was a bit of a pastiche,” wrote Viola Levy in a piece for British Vogue, commemorating the musician’s “uniquely Jewish beauty” 10 years on, “but it bequeathed Winehouse’s style the iconic status that many artists aspire to, but few achieve.”