Usually on Fridays I post something about life here on the farm in England, but the next post I want to write on that subject requires a bit more time, and I am just back from London. SO – I will do that post on Monday, and today I will leave you with three photos of Charlotte Rampling that demonstrate that she is quite possibly the most beautiful woman that ever lived. ..
So far the thing I love most about England is how easy it is to clear my head when I need a break. Sure I get caught up in my emailing, or distracted by my kids, or overwhelmed by the prospect of starting from scratch on a new book just like I would in my life in New York. But here it is so easy to clear the decks and start again by walking the dog, going out on a ride, or collecting the chicken eggs. My favorite way, however, is to arrange flowers from our garden. I always get a twinge of anxiety when I start because its never obvious which flowers I am going to pick or how I am going to arrange them. Often one variety is in bloom, but there is not enough to make a whole bouquet with. So I have to figure something else that will look pretty with it. This is a challenge for me. For many years I have been a flower minimalist – I like a handful of all the same flower tightly and tidily arranged in a neat little uptight city-girl bouquet. But the country has made me relax. A little. My arrangements are looser and I have learned to mix and match when necessary. I have also come to like the uneasiness I feel as I figure out what I am going to do. I realize that subtle tension is a natural by-product of creativity. It makes the process more engaging and ultimately more satisfying.
I rarely look back much beyond the 60’s for style icons. On the whole, the clothes just get too costume-y for my taste and the lifestyle they exude is just too antiquated to relate to. Of course there are exceptions, the biggest one being heiress and muse Diana Cunard whose heyday was in the 20’s. When I first saw these pictures I just couldn’t believe how completely relevant she would look today.
Does she remind you of anyone?..
I absolutely love the Hollywood sign. It’s so iconic, it’s like a celebrity unto itself. It satisfies all the yearning for glamour and excitement you expect to feel when you go to Hollywood. Years ago, I took my son Zach to LA. For weeks he told all his friend’s he was “Going to Hollywood!!!!!!!” like they say in American Idol. The trouble was, when we got there, there weren’t celebrities lining the streets, no one was offering us a recording contract, and there weren’t any movies being shot within public view. So I decided on a dime that the best way to feel like we were in Hollywood was to go to the Hollywood sign. On our drive there, we ignored many posts saying “public traffic is forbidden beyond this point,” illegally parked our car, and scrambled up over a hill until we arrived at a clear unobstructed view. It was so spectacular that I couldn’t figure out why we had so few fellow trespassers. We took our requisite photos and went on home, thoroughly satisfied. The next time I came to LA, I returned to the Hollywood sign with my daughter Coco. Within the first few minutes of scrambling up the same path, again accessed from our illegal parking spot, multiple police lights started flashing from the top of the hill, with a stern voice booming over a loudspeaker “YOU ARE NOW TRESPASSING. THIS IS ILLEGAL AND PUNISHABLE BY JAIL. YOU MUST LEAVE AT ONCE!” We froze, wide eyed, looked at each other and ran down the hill. Coco cried when we got in the car. I couldn’t stop laughing, which made her furious at me. I guess we won’t be going to the Hollywood sign again anytime soon, but it certainly made for a memorable visit.
This summer as I was traveling around Europe I noticed the abundance of crests – royal crests, family crests, decorative crests – nearly everywhere I went. It started in a medieval village in the Dordogne region of France called Monpazier. I brought my kids there because the town is famous for making beautiful wooden toys. But what caught my eye were the giant crest-shape flags decorated with charming animal figures in rich colors that were hanging around the village...
Chances are you’ve all seen these photos many times, as have I. But in the context of looking at Diana’s style over her lifetime, they are a very important conclusion. The way I see it, these photos, taken just 5 months before she passed away, were a hint of what we would have seen next in Diana’s life: a happier, independent and grown up woman who was finally free from the life that so rigidly defined her. It’s as if in the photos from the decade before she was playing a role, and in these pictures she is finally able to just be herself...
So the third significant phase of Diana’s fashion legacy is definitely questionable to some. But this is how I see it: Everyone has a very personal relationship to personal style. We all have our own tastes, experiences, physical features, ambitions and life circumstances that heavily impact the way we present ourselves to the world. Would I ever want to dress the way Princess Diana did in the 80’s. NO WAY!! Do I think she created a signature look that worked for her life as a princess and entertained the rest of us all at once...
I most personally relate to Princess Diana when she was newly married. Her style was still classic English but she was just starting to elevate her look a bit with a puffed sleeve shoulder, oversized sunglasses, a rather large hat, or bolder patterns. There is also a bohemian feeling in her clothes at this moment (inevitably left over from the 70’s) that fades out later on in her life. But it’s the softness of her look during this time – her shaggier hair, her relaxed body language, her shy but sincere smile that moves me the most...
Princess Diana has been a style icon of mine since she married Prince Charles in 1981 and remained so until her very sad and premature death. She started off as a young natural beauty, typically English in every way. I think my attraction to her began because she actually looked very much like my mother – in coloring, in bone structure and in hairstyle. There was also the fact that she was a princess, and what 7 year old girl can resist a princess?..
