Why Joan Didion is still fashion's favourite icon aged 82
“Two skirts. Two jerseys or leotards. One pullover sweater. Two pair shoes. Stockings, bra, nightgown, robe, slippers, cigarettes, bourbon”- so begins the packing list that Joan Didion kept taped onto the back of her wardrobe door through the 1970s.
That the list was Didion’s shortcut to readiness to cover any of the decade’s major news events doesn’t make it any less a style manual for certain women. Because Didion- the author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, The Year of Magical Thinking and dozens of other books that more than qualify her for the honorific of world’s greatest living writer - is also a candidate for most stylish/generally coolest woman alive, and I know I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Warren Beattyhad a crush on her. Janis Joplin attended one of her parties. Harrison Ford was her contractor for renovations on the Malibu home she shared with husband John Gregory Dunne. Phoebe Philo put her front and centre in a Céline campaign. President Barack Obama, when presenting her with the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal, couldn’t help but add, “I’m surprised she hasn’t already gotten this award.”
Cheering right along with him were the legions of women who, as university students, clutched Didion’s volumes of essays close and dreamed of writing with such precision, force and moral clarity. Obviously I was one of them, if with less fervour than the uni friend who still sends Didion an orchid every year on her birthday (Joan loves orchids).
Part of it has to do with the way her lines follow you like perfectly observed captions for everyday life. (This sentence from Slouching Towards Bethlehem has a way of bubbling to the top of my mind when women talk about outward markers of femininity as if they constitute feminism: ‘Whenever I hear about the woman’s trip, which is often, I think a lot about nothin’-says-lovin’-like-something-from-the-oven and the Feminine Mystique and how it is possible for people to be the unconscious instruments of values they would strenuously reject on a conscious level,’ she writes, ‘but I do not mention this to Barbara.’)
Another part, though, has to do with the Joan Didion look. While the term ‘style icon’ is one Didion herself might strenuously reject on a conscious level, she’s been inextricable from her appearance and fashion choices since she arrived in New York, aged 20, to start a job at Vogue. Her everyday look can be reduced, Halloween costume-style, to: enormous sunglasses (no matter the time of day or light conditions), a neat t-shirt or jumper, an a-line miniskirt or high-waisted cropped jeans, sandals. Jackie O with a West Coast accent.
She mixed it up a little- to this day, the aspirational image of a writer in many women’s heads still looks like the black-and-white portrait of Didion, leaning against or hanging out the window of her Corvette Stingray (all the cooler for being her Stingray, not some borrowed car) in a long-sleeved knit dress and more of those enormous sunglasses- but these building blocks have constituted her uniform since the beginning of the photographic record. Right on up to the spring 2015 Céline campaign, when she faced Juergen Teller’s camera (this time in colour) wearing a black jumper, an amber pendant and yet another pair of those saucer-like sunnies.
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Two pairs of sunglasses from Didion’s personal collection were among the enticements offered to high-level contributors to The Center Will Not Hold, the Kickstarter-funded documentary. Director Griffin Dunne, Didion’s nephew and the film’s director, hoped to raise $80,000. It says everything about fans’ hunger for more Didion that the campaign raised $221,135.
The film has just made its Netflix debut and is already the Instagram culture-brag du jour. It’s all JD-approved and makes for perfect wintry-night viewing, so watch it tonight with your dog-eared copy of Slouching in hand. Sunglasses optional.
