A new documentary about Diane von Furstenberg makes us think differently about aging.
Valerie Monroe’s newsletter is How Not to F*ck Up Your Face, which you can subscribe to on Substack.
Hulu’s new documentary Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge follows DVF’s story as a fashion icon, hugely successful and hugely failed businesswoman, princess-wife, socialite, mogul companion, and, most importantly to her, daughter of a Holocaust survivor. In it, she says that because she was afraid of the dark as a child, her mother locked her in a closet to teach her how to tough it out. “She was right,” says DVF, shining a light into the source of her character’s strengths — which include her attitudes about the manifestations of age on her face.
“If you take all your wrinkles away, the map of your life is different,” says von Furstenberg. Don’t try parsing that sentence. What she means is obvious: An aging face can be a reflection of a life well lived. “I don’t want to erase anything of my life,” she says.
Not only wise, she’s as sharp and ambitious as any 30-year-old, speaks several languages fluently, and seems to enjoy a remarkably circumspect attitude toward death. (“I think about it all the time. I am not afraid,” she says with conviction.) But she seems far from final surrender. In the first few minutes of the documentary, her physical flexibility is astonishing as she effortlessly hoists herself onto her bathroom sink like a frisky 5-year-old and sits on it, cross-legged, to attend to her morning ablutions.
(I’m four years younger than DVF and in reasonably good shape, but if I tried that trick, you’d be sweeping my bones into a dustpan.)
It doesn’t hurt that she has the kind of facial bone structure that rivals the magnificence of the Matterhorn, all angles and planes that still flatteringly catch the light in spite of the softening and sagging of age. Or that her enormous wealth allows her a lifestyle that reduces or obviates entirely the kind of stresses that might affect one’s outlook, never mind complexion. But DVF has discovered and practiced one of the most valuable tricks available for those of us who aim to feel comfortable with our face as we mature. It’s a trick, completely free, that is unrelated to wealth or social status. She mentions it in the New York Times “Confirm or Deny” story:
NYT: You have always been fascinated by mirrors.
DVF: It’s true. Mirror is very important. I need to have the contact with me. I hope it’s not vanity and I hope it’s not narcissism but I get strength from my own eye contact.
What DVF seems to be describing here is something I constantly exhort readers of HNTFUYF to do: learn how to see themselves as people without objectification. It is not vanity, or narcissism; it’s simply recognizing and acknowledging yourself as a human being rather than as an object to be manipulated to satisfy the unrealistic ideals of a hypersexualized and ageist culture. It’s that self-recognition that feeds and sustains DVF’s powerful beauty. In that regard, she’s a role model for us all.
But in the documentary, when DVF says, “No one has ever made me uncomfortable. I would never give anyone that much credit,” I wondered how much of this attitude is a bit of bravado, hinting at a softness under the shell of her somewhat steely public image. I’d had a different experience of her.
Meandering inside the DVF shop in Tribeca one afternoon, a friend and I suddenly felt a presence behind us: Diane von Furstenberg herself. “And how are you two ladies today?” she said with the casual affect of an old acquaintance. My slightly out-of-touch friend had a moment earlier wondered if DVF was still alive, and for some reason I felt it necessary to share that amusing question with the Great Lady who’d just joined us. My friend, being a politician and no stranger to discretion (or the lack of it), made some kind of redeeming remark and engaged DVF in a warm conversation that no longer included me. Though I tried to re-enter the exchange with pathetically flattering comments and even a reminder of a successful magazine interview I had once conducted with her, I had evidently ceased to exist. After a few minutes, she bid my friend good-bye and walked away without acknowledging me.
“Whew,” I said, “that was rough.”
“Well,” said my friend, “you were an idiot.”
Either way, it doesn’t matter: Von Furstenberg is a force of fabulousness, a beacon of badassery, and, at 77, a template (albeit a massively wealthy one) for how to maintain and nourish presence and authority as the years accrue. “I’ve learned a lot, you know, and the way I’ve lived, I should be 300,” she says. “Instead of asking how old you are, you should ask how many years have you lived. Then you take age as a sense of pride, which is what it should be.”
Who would argue with that kind of wisdom? DVF: a beauty Yoda for our time.
