From folksy romance to beatnik beauty, fashion pays homage to the ultimate hippie chick, Canada's own Joni Mitchell. And it couldn't be more timely, as earlier this year the folk-rock icon received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys. Here, megafan and photographer Chris Chapman makes her his muse for words and pictures

WHY DO I LOVE JONI?

Ask any true Joni Mitchell fan that question and you are bound to get a long pause as a warm smile slowly emerges over their faces as they search for just the right words--something Joni herself has been doing for almost 40 years. And that's why I love her: the words. Joni doesn't write songs. She writes poetry and sets it to music. Complex metaphors and atmospheric portraits with cinematic attention to detail form lyrics that seem as visual to me as any great work of art. This makes sense. Joni has always seen herself as much a painter as a singer and that's the difference: she paints with words.

I grew up listening to Joni, and her music became a kind of sound track to my life. I remember playing a scratchy 45 of Carey endlessly on my first record player; listening to my mom hum along to Chelsea Morning as it serenaded us from her station wagon's 8-track; playing backgammon with my brother in his late-'70s boho-style bedroom while Joni seductively hissed about life in Beverly Hills as sandalwood incense burned; and the hours staring at Norman Seeff's beautiful album-cover photography (when album-cover art still mesmerized us while we listened). His images, from a svelte bikinied Joni floating upside down in a liquid sky to the beret-wearing, fur-flogging, cigarette-puffing Faye Dunaway-like beauty on the cover of Hejira, seem almost iconic to me now.

I have revisited Joni's lyrics from different life perspectives--from childhood innocence to teenage angst, my optimistic 20s to my more cynical 30s--and Joni's songs have continued to inspire and tantalize me. There are life lessons in her lyrics as well as melancholy love letters. In fact, one could argue that it is that bittersweet perspective that makes her messages all the more real. Love is usually celebrated in one breath and questioned in the next. Fame and wealth are praised and ridiculed all in the same verse. Joni lays her insecurities bare, with her harshest criticisms usually directed at herself-insecurities, for the most part, that we all can relate to. It's her grand search for love though that seems to fascinate most. A reluctant lover/confessional poet--a woman of heart and mind. Who else could describe love as the strongest poison and medicine of all?

I never thought I'd see Joni play live. After all, I was seven when Joni was touring, chart-topping and gracing the cover of Time, but thanks to MuchMusic for organizing the Intimate & Interactive concert of her Turbulent Indigo album in 1994, I was able to see her perform live. I eventually even met her, backstage at the now-defunct Dini Petty Show (during the interview, Dini seemed more interested in Joni's manicure than her songs).

Not many people get to meet their heroes, let alone physically embrace them, but I did. Joni was everything I could have hoped: gracious, humble, intelligent and affectionate. Since then I have traveled from Manhattan to Saskatoon to join with others to celebrate Joni's life, words and art at various events held in her honour, much to most of my friends' confusion and mockery. But I'm in good company. Musical royalty as diverse as Prince, Annie Lennox and Janet Jackson, to name a few, cite Joni as a major influence on their lives and creative process. And, let's face it, without Joni there never would have been a Lilith Fair. So I continue to appreciate this musical genius, always amazed at how a familiar lyric will suddenly resonate in my life in a new way, teaching me something new about myself and the world I live in. Thanks, Joni.