Arriving late at a fashion show is not a good idea, at least if your name is not Anna Wintour!
So when at the latest Thom Browne défilé some ladies arrived at the beginning of the show searching in a loud voice for their seats someone in the audience seemed quite upset.
What some of the guests understood only a bit later was that, in reality, that was the beginning of everything, because the ladies were key figures of the fashion and entertainment business and were playing a character in accord with Mr Browne, and above all the first one was somebody to be admired.
I know for sure that to the ears of young fashion-addicted the name Marisa Berenson will not sound so familiar. But they should worship that name!
Marisa was already fashion royalty, being the grand-daughter of Elsa Schiaparelli, when Diana Vreeland transformed her in a supermodel in the late Sixties, posing also naked for a famous editorial shot by Irving Penn for Vogue US (and we know for sure that Elsa was quite disappointed!).
Then Marisa became an actress and before appearing in a couple of episodes of “Murder She wrote/La Signora in giallo” or even in movies like *Via Montenapoleone” by the Vanzina brothers, she was in three of the most important films of the Seventies. She was the best friend of Liza Minnelli in “Cabaret”, the mother of Tadzio in “Death in Venice” and the wife of Ryan O’Neal in “Barry Lyndon” and if somebody was directed by Luchino Visconti and Stanley Kubrick, don’t you think we are talking of an icon? And now she’s having a fashion come-back thanks to Mr Browne and to Steven Meisel who shot her for the latest Zara campaign, art directed by Fabien Baron.
And if you have missed some of these names or you haven’t understood the importance of these people: you definitely need some of my lessons!