Woman | Helena Christensen & Camilla Staerk | Cate Blanchett | Linda Evangelista
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Mutual Muses
The model Helena Christensen has a long collaboration with designer Camilla Staerk, launched when Christensen, co-founder of Nylon magazine, scheduled a photo shoot of Camilla’s designs at her oceanside cottage in Denmark, writes The Cut.
Their friendship would touch on photography, fashion, and now, a jewelry line with Danish design house Skagen. The collection consists of a ring, a bracelet, and a convertible brooch/pendant.
All three designs are in the shape of abstract swallows, modeled on the ones they remember flying along the Danish coastline. Still, they’re far from the “put a bird on it” cliché. These are more like nature drawings as seen through the eyes of Tamara de Lempicka and cast in gold — they have an attenuated, hyper-Modernist look. (Thus the title Svale, which meansswallowin Danish.)
Cate in ‘Carol’
Actor Cate Blanchettcovers the new issue of Variety, lensed by Steven Chee and talking about her role in ‘Carol’, a movie centered around ‘a charismatic New Yorker (Blanchett) who embarks on a passionate younger department store clerk, Therese, played by Rooney Mara.
The two-time Oscar winner reveals in her interview her thoughts on women in filmmaking, making love stories in general, and her own past relationships with women.
When asked if this is her first turn as a lesbian, Blanchett curls her lips into a smile. ‘On film — or in real life?’ she asks coyly. Pressed for details about whether she’s had past relationships with women, she responds: ‘Yes. Many times,’ but doesn’t elaborate. Like Carol, who never ‘comes out’ as a lesbian, Blanchett doesn’t necessarily rely on labels for sexual orientation. ‘I never thought about it,’ she says of how she envisioned the character. ‘I don’t think Carol thought about it.’ The actress studied the era by picking up banned erotic novels. ‘I read a lot of girl-on-girl books from the period,’ she says.
Blanchett, who is moring to New York with her husband and kids, rarely watches her films, but she watched ‘Carol’ last August.
‘The visuals surprised even me,’ Blanchett says. ‘I somehow was expecting something more familiar.’ If Carol lived today, she couldn’t see her marching in a gay pride parade. ‘Her sexuality isn’t politicized,’ Blanchett says. ‘I think there are a lot of people that exist like that who don’t feel the need to shout things from the rafters.’ She says the movie captures the spirit of Highsmith’s prose. ‘Her stories, her characters, the texture that she writes are so slippery,’ Blanchett says. ‘It was no surprise to me that it was a tricky thing to get made.’
Happy Birthday Linda
Linda Evangelista welcomed her 50th birthday at Manhattan’s Harlow in Saturday night.
Guests included Marc Jacobs, stylists Lori Goldstein and Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, makeup artist Pat McGrath and photographer Steven Meisel. Evangelista, part of the original supermodels who included fellow glamazons Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and Tatjana Patiz — ruled the runways in the ’90s. It was Evangelista who famously told Vogue in October 1990 that ‘We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day’.
‘It was almost the female equivalent of Sinatra’s Rat Pack,’ says Paul Wilmot, former head of PR at Calvin Klein. In 1992, Suzy Menkes decreed Evangelista to be ‘the world’s star model’. Just to reinforce the power the supers had in the ’90s — before their big takedown — Evangelista declared herself the model who put superstar photographer Mario Testino on the map. ‘I gave Mario his break. I used him for a Vogue cover in Germany.’
