Last January, while I was searing steak, I heard an instagram ping. It was from @thefilmzone, linking to Gaspar Noé’s 8-minute video for the YSL Summer 2021 collection. I met Gaspar, the son of my art mentor Luis Felipe Noé, when he was 9 years old, critiquing his father’s choice of colors with precocious audacity in their apartment at the House of 70 Balconies in Buenos Aires. He has lived in Paris since 1977 when the whole family had to flee Argentina’s military dictatorship and has become an enfant terrible of French cinema, venerated by many including John Waters.
This fashion featurette stars the actress Charlotte Rampling, 75, as a couture priestess in an empty theater. A bit like Ursula Andress in the sumptuous Cremaster 5 film by Matthew Barney. All is bathed in red, the red of velvet orchestra seats, the red of meaty rosebuds. The models, all skinny in their classically black outfits, promenade in an empty opera theater.
What do models really eat? (That is, if they eat at all.) Testimonies are contradictory. Supermodel Bella Hadid told WWD: “My diet is pizza . . .” but then “[…] protein, veggies, and green juice” when interviewed by Harper’s Bazaar. Christie Brinkley, 67, with 724,000 followers in instagram, starts the day with warm water and lemon, then a cappuccino. She not only drinks it but draws on the foam. Yes, it’s “latte art.” It could be a heart, or a letter, the face of Jesus- or a latter day saint—even a model walking down the runway.
—Yom Kippur, New York City, 9/16/2021