At first glance Natalie Portman’s new Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet campaign seems straightforward enough. The floral scent features notes of bergamot essence, Damascus rose, and peony with the tagline: “Love is a bouquet.”

Portman’s elegant wildflowers scarf is wrapped around her wrist as a symbol of prestige but also strength. We interpret the campaign one way without the video.

Perhaps Anne is too mired down in Gucci’s use of Jefferson Airplane’s ‘Go Ask Alice’ music in their ‘Year of the Rabbit’ campaign to be open-minded about what’s going on.

Gucci Lunar Year of the Rabbit 2023 Campaign by Max Siedentopf with Emma Pei, Ruiqi Jiang AOC Fashion

But the impact of ‘Go Ask Alice’ on me has been noted by people connected to the campaign, with suggestions of other clues I might want to pursue.

Enter Janis Joplin

The music to Natalie Portman’s new Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet campaign is Janis Joplin for heaven’s sake. I thought I was going to lose my mind.

What does Portman do? She turns to US and says WAKE UP! Yes, the video is a lovely romp in the wildflowers in the name of love.

But Natalie Portman is not only a Palestinian rights activist who loves Israel but she turned down the $1 million Genesis prize in 2018, refusing to stand next to the ‘he’s back’ then and now prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Earth Day on Friday, April 21, 2023, Portman will use her voice for elephants in James Cameron’s four-part series for National Georgraphic ‘Secrets of the Elephants’.

When Natalie Portman looks straight at me in a Janis Joplin music commercial and says WAKE UP, she has my undivided attention.

Enter Catherine, the French Resistance, Mitzah Bricard to Create the Miss Dior Fragrance

Just last week, writing about Dior Beauty’s Mitzah Collection [inspired by leopard prints], AOC shared the story of the naming of the Miss Dior fragrance.

Dior Beauty's Mitzah Collection, with Anya Taylor-Joy Taps Leopard Prints in Women's History AOC Fashion

To summarize, we wrote:

Christian Dior’s original muse Mitzah Bricard inspired him to recognize the leopard print as a reputable trend. . . Mitzah Bricard, not only wore animal prints lavishly, but frequently in scarves wrapped around her wrists.

At least one wrist was visibly scarred after a suicide attempt based on my reading.

We contrast Madame Bricard with Christian Dior’s own sister Catherine, who in 1941 joined the French resistance; was arrested in 1944, repeatedly tortured by the Gestapo [never betraying her comrades]; sent to the women’s concentration camp, Ravensbrück, only to be transferred to further abysmal camps: Torgau, Abteroda, and finally, in 1945, to Markkleeberg.

The story ended well; Catherine survived and returned to France. Back in Paris Christian Dior was working on a fragrance with Mizza Bricard, and Catherine walked into the room, interrupting their brainstorming search to name the fragrance that “smells of love.”

Design lore has it that “Ah, here!” Bricard exclaimed, “Miss Dior!” An iconic fragrance was born.

AOC wrote in 2019 about Natalie Portman’s human connection and deep respect for Catherine Dior. In the interview for Harpers Bazaar UK, the Hollywood star had sober words for progressive optimists:

“I think it’s a mistake to think of humanity as evolving,” the intellectually-accomplished Portman explains. You want to believe it, for sure, but it’s more like cycles of violence. Yet we’ve had an extraordinary lifetime of peace, too, so it’s allowed us to live in this belief that progress is being made.”

Anne Is Taking Us On A Trip

AOC is taking a deep plunge into the world of psychedelics and all matters mushroom and funghi-related. I cannot do this by myself and a talented group of London writers is working with me.

The first article will be posted in a day or two, but last night I recalled a Steven Meisel editorial for Vogue Italia 2007 that was never posted on AOC.

Anne can’t read the mind of the great Steven Meisel, and I only know how impacted I have always been by this fashion story. It is ‘Make Love Not War’ and we posted it in our very successful pre-2020 renew project going on in the old fashion channel.

'Make Love Not War' by Steven Meisel for Vogue Italia September 2007 AOC Fashion & Style Pre 2020

There are moments when I feel whacked on the side of the head about just how much our fashion photography has changed in the last decade. It’s so sanitized today. We very rarely tell stories any more, and so much of the artistry is gone.

I went looking for this 2007 Steven Meisel story ‘Make Love, Not War’, because AOC is launching an ongoing, really deep dive into psychedelics and all matters related to fungi or mushrooms.

Much research is going on today on the positive effects of medically-administered psilocybin in treating war-related trauma, depression, fear of assault weapons on America’s streets. America shut the door hard on any research into psychelics as part of President Nixon’s war on drugs.

Fifty years later, that door is finally opening and AOC can’t help but thinking that we would be a more advanced world, had we not shut down all the research.

Correctly or not I’ve always associated the story ‘Make Love, Not War’ published in Vogue Italia [link]September 2007 with the Vietnam War. The visual themes involved here are very rooted in that particular time in our American history.

Steven Meisel is so absurdly talented in translating these kinds of stories without romanticizing them. I agree that he comes close, at times. But I’ve spoken at length over the years with many Vietnam War veterans and also activists.

Let’s just say that I walked on water for them, because of what they went through, and I was in a professional position to help them.

Intuitively Meisel taps into an undercurrent of those days that mixed devastating suffering and death in a foreign land with widespread drug use — just to get through the horrors. And yes, an undercurrent of sensuality that often permeated the horror and touches the souls of young Americans in Vietnam and on American streets, trying to process what was happening as our friends and people we knew returned to America in body bags.

As an ardent feminist I’ve always carried an amount of guilt that in those days, only young men were drafted to die — 58, 220 of them — although women nurses were in Vietnam.

Blame This Literary Excursion on Miss Dior

It was not my intention at all to tell a story this way when I saw the Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet. But I can’t see Natalie Portman’s name and not wonder what ‘good trouble’ she is causing now.

Then Portman hit me with Janis Joplin and the message to WAKE UP! So blame Portman for the diversion.

Okay, people, the stars are aligning and I don’t know where we are going, but it’s going to be a challenging journey. Anne is bringing George Floyd along for a far better ride than the one he enjoyed in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. He is with me often mentally and emotionally — at least once a week.

I will also be picking up my muse Dan Eldon, the young British-Kenyan photographer stoned to death in Mogadishu on July 12, 1993. We have a relationship that transcends life and death as we know it, and even his mother Kathy agrees. ~ Anne