Physical beauty is passing – a transitory possession”…..
– Tennessee Williams
Are we all in agreement with “Tenn”?
Je suis feminist.
Je suis fashionista.
And never the twain shall meet!
Are we all in agreement with the “twain”?
I have been one curious feminist/fashionista these last couple of weeks, I have always been aware of all kinds of beauty: the classic beauty vs. the unconventional beauty argument…..ingénue vs. the seasoned beauty argument , I have embraced them all………..vive la difference……long live the difference: I have trumpeted throughout the years!!
But in the past few weeks, I have felt the “suits” at the top who run the luxury line Céline and the haute couture house of Yves St. Laurent have really wanted to pull the cashmere over our eyes with the new faces they have chosen to represent their labels.
These faces aren’t exactly new, they are the faces of two old friends: Joan Didion 80, and Joni Mitchell, 71.
I am a diehard fan of both of these women and their work.Joni Mitchell’s songs are known to just about everyone on this planet over 40 and if you are under that threshold age, most likely you are a bit of a music snob. Mitchell is a musician’s musician whose career has never reaped the benefits of being as mainstream as some of her peers like Carole King, for example.
Joan Didion is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century and yet I know of not one woman in my inner circles who can chat endlessly about her writings.
The BEAUTY and CHARM of BOTH WOMEN is in THEIR WORK, not especially in their faces and definitely, not in their fashion choices.
So I’ve been having the time of my life reading the numerous articles in the media written by female journalists who have been valiantly trying to justify why these two women have been chosen to be the “new faces” of the fashion industry.
None have succeeded.
These journalists have resonated more like PR people for the fashion industry than they have as newspaper writers, most notably when they address the obvious logic that seems to be missing from this equation.
Apparently, Ms. Didion’s NY apartment is just a few blocks away from Céline’s Madison Avenue store and she does own a few Céline pieces and she is fast to tell us she is no stranger to being a spokeswoman for fashion……..citing her 1989 GAP ad.
This photo shows us a much younger Didion with her adopted daughter: Quintana Roo. One of Joan’s memoir’s: “Blue Nights” deals with the painful death of this beautiful young girl and what is even more haunting is this book was proceeded by “The Year of Magical Thinking”: a meditation on dealing with the sudden death of her long time husband and writing partner John Gregory Dunne.
Thankfully, life has been much kinder to the equally reclusive and publicity-shy Joni Mitchell.
Now I am a firm believer in the old adage: : “Everything in life is all about MONEY.”
So before I began writing this article, I looked up Joni Mitchell’s net worth. Shock: a paltry six million dollars, after my heart came out of cardiac arrest, I randomly chose a fellow Canadian singer/songwriter who hasn’t had Mitchell’s artistic and staying power in the music business only to find out Nelly Furtado is worth a cool 35 million dollars.
Last year, Didion’s nephew wanted to film a documentary about his aunt, as he should. He didn’t have a backer and came to Didion’s fans asking us for contributions. I was genuinely stunned when I read about his troubles trying to raise funds for a project about one of the most influential women of our time. Let’s face it, in an ideal world contributors should have been coming out of the woodwork for a project like this one.
I could not find an estimate concerning Didion’s net worth but just for the hell of it, I decided to look up “Shades of Grey” author: E. L. James’ net worth: 95 million dollars made its way to her bank account in only the last year.
“Art Isn’t Easy.”How tragic to see such icons of artistry and talent be the economic victims of hopefully a long gone patriarchal society but even sadder is to see the fashion industry delight in what they so desperately want us to believe: they are all grown up now.
By hiring these two giants, it is as if they are telling us: it is now fashionable to be old, wrinkly, weary looking and even downright dowdy.
Believe me, when I say: the fashion world will always be the playground for only the restylane rich and the botoxed beautiful.
There is no way they are going to fix what they think ain’t broken and what makes them a gazillion dollars…….
….. but by putting a momentary veneer on it?
They are hoping us suckers will buy that old snake oil just this one more time around.
I hope Mitchell and Didion received big Kardashian kind of bucks for their respective campaigns but that would be magical thinking and most of us are old enough to know better, and just that like that old Joni Mitchell song she wrote some 45 years ago:
“I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all.”
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