The Woman I Wanted to Be (16 page)

O
n the way back from Belgium, we landed in Gander, Canada, to refuel. It had been raining and the plane sat between two complete rainbows. Tatiana told me to make a wish. I wished to be cured. There were another dozen daily treatments left to go, a dryer throat, and more burns. Deepak kept on calling, my mother, Barry, and the children were nearby, and I was counting the days. It was the year of the World Cup. Brazil won, and I did, too.

I went back to Deepak’s center in California after the treatments to recuperate. That was the worst week of all. As my doctor had predicted, the discomfort increased. I was burned inside and out from the radiation and exhausted. The adrenaline that had sustained me during treatment was gone because I knew the treatments were over. I locked myself in my room and moaned. The only thing I forced myself to do was fifty laps in the pool, repeating my sutras.

At the end of the week, a call came in the middle of the night, morning in Brussels. My father had passed away. My brother and my mother were on the phone, crying. My eyes stayed dry; my father was gone forever and there was nothing I could do to change that. On the plane from La Jolla, I picked up Alexandre in Las Vegas and we flew to New York and then on to Belgium. Tatiana met us at the Brussels airport—she had come from Portugal. We went straight to my father’s
apartment, the apartment I grew up in. His room seemed smaller than I remembered; the coffin seemed small, too. I sat by it. On the side table there was a lit candle and photos of my father’s parents and brother. I felt helpless but peaceful, thankful for the love my father had given me. We buried him in a lovely cemetery, surrounded by trees and stillness. The children left that afternoon. I needed a break. I decided to go to Berlin for a long weekend and meet Mark, who was there editing his movie
Victory
. My brother thought I was too weak to travel, but I wanted to feel life and love, so I went. I rested in my hotel room during the day while Mark was working, but at night we walked around the streets of the newly united Berlin and loved it.

A few days later, I went back to Brussels to tidy up my father’s home. Like me, he had kept everything: diaries, letters, photographs . . . memory lane in all its splendor. I missed his presence, his smell, but in the mirror I could see him—our features are so similar. Before leaving, I took his favorite watch, a gold Omega, his crocodile wallet, and his two Russian glasses with silver holders in which he drank his tea every day.

C
onfronting my cancer was challenging, but enriching. I became more compassionate to the sufferings of others, appreciated the value of health, became more spiritual and understood both my fragility and my strength. I have been thankful ever since to God, the doctors, my family, my friends, and my own power. My little French song worked and I have been cancer-free ever since.

I became much more health conscious after my bout with cancer. I eat lightly and in moderation—fresh, organic vegetables and fruits, grains and beans, little meat—and I resist sugar as much as I’m able to,
but I still love dark chocolate and an occasional glass of great red wine. I drink lots of water—lots—and cups of hot, fresh ginger tea with lemon and honey.

My legs are stronger than they were when I was thirty because of all the hikes I love to do. Uphill, the steeper the better. The Appalachian Trail winds through the hills near Cloudwalk on its way from Maine to Georgia, and Barry, Shannon, and I hike on sections of it every day we are there. In LA we meet the children between our homes, at the bottom of Franklin Canyon, and hike to the peak together. When we’re on the boat, we hike on whatever island or coast we pull into. I lead the way because I am faster. We are silent going up. Hiking is a meditation of sorts to me and I use it as a time to go within myself and enjoy the effort of climbing and the beauty of nature. We linger at the top, enjoying our accomplishment, and Barry leads the way down. That’s when we talk, often our best talks, because of the long silence of the climb and the space that nature has given our minds to get clearer. I love those moments.

When I’m in New York, I climb up and down the five flights of stairs at the DVF headquarters, sometimes taking the steps two at a time, even in high heels. I swim just as strenuously, whether in the sea, the pool at Cloudwalk, or any hotel I stay at around the world. It is also a meditation. Exercising and counting the lengths crowd all thoughts out of the brain and I’m alone with myself.

I stay supple by doing yoga a couple of times a week in the yoga studio I built in a room next to my office. The stretching and the twists make me aware of every part of my body and keep me very flexible. Deep breathing is an integral part of yoga and I practice the long inhale and slow exhale to ease stressful moments. I also have a facial once a week from an Englishwoman named Tracie Martyn who
attaches something, I don’t know what, to her fingertips, which channels low-voltage electricity to my face and helps fight gravity. (So does smiling, I learned from fashion photographer Mario Testino.) I’ve been going to Tracie for fifteen years now, and my office knows it’s the only appointment that can’t be canceled.

Most important, I have a massage at least once a week, especially when I’m traveling. I used to think massages were vain and indulgent, but I’ve learned that isn’t true. Massage bolsters the body’s defense system, aids circulation, and rids your body of toxins.

While I was undergoing the cancer treatments, I started a weekly Shiatsu session. (I also have deep-tissue massages from Andrey, an excellent Ukrainian masseur.) My wonderful Shiatsu practitioner, who unexpectedly died of a stroke last year, was a talented Japanese man named Eizo who also healed the radiation blisters in my mouth by giving me a powder from a rare mushroom. He worked on me for nineteen years, every Tuesday morning before Tracie Martyn, giving me a deep-tissue massage to correct disharmonies and walking up and down my back to crack me. I miss him dearly.

Another result of my encounter with cancer is Dr. Durrafourd, a homeopathic doctor in Paris that my friend actress Marisa Berenson introduced me to. I see him once a year. He does full blood work, calculates the results, and prescribes me all kinds of antioxidants—all plant-based and natural. I have a dozen little bottles of pills and some liquids, which I keep together in a bag that I carry with me around the world. Have they had a positive effect? I like to think so. I went through menopause easily, for example. One day I stopped having my period and that was it.

Marisa also introduced me to Bianca, a healer who was able to ease the discomfort of my burns. I still call her in moments of crisis. I am the godmother of her son, Julien.

What I have learned is that when you are sick, much of healing is in the hands of doctors and science, but part of it is finding and using your own power.

A
ging is out of your control. How you handle it, though, is in your hands.

When I was a girl, I always wanted to be older than I was. Instead of sitting, I knelt next to my father in the car so that people would think I was a grown-up. I pretended I had wrinkles and scratched my face with my nails because I wanted to have a lived-in face like the French movie star Jeanne Moreau. When I turned twenty and my mother asked me, “How does it feel being twenty?” I said, “Well, I’ve been telling people I’ve been twenty for so long that it doesn’t make a difference.” I always looked older than my actual years, so much so that when
Newsweek
put me on the cover on March 22, 1976, the editors didn’t believe I was twenty-nine and sent a reporter to the Brussels town hall to check my birth certificate.

I had started my adult life at twenty-two, had two children by the time I was twenty-four, and a successful financial life by thirty. Looking back, I realize I was pretty in my late twenties, but I didn’t really think so. I knew how to enhance what I had, highlighting my eyes and cheekbones, playing with my hair and my legs and acting with confidence. I knew I was seductive, but I never thought I was beautiful.

My thirties were my best years. I was still young but felt grown up, lived an adventurous life, raised my two children, and ran a business. I was independent and felt very free. I had total complicity with myself and my looks and I felt in charge. I had become the woman I wanted to be.

The forties were harder. My children went off to boarding school
and college, and I sold my business. I was not sure who I was or who I wanted to be anymore. I went in and out of looks and started to question my own style. When I lost my fashion business, I lost the way of expressing myself creatively. I also had my battle with cancer.

Things got better when I hit fifty. I went back to work, creating a new studio environment and repositioning my brand. I surrounded myself with a new generation of girls. I was again the woman I wanted to be . . . engaged and engaging. I married Barry and became a grandmother. I embraced my age and my life. It was the beginning of the age of fulfillment, which continues. Now, in my sixties, I know I have less time ahead and want to enjoy, enjoy as much as possible.

I
’m grateful I never thought of myself as beautiful when I was young. We all fade somewhat as time goes on. Women who relied only on their beauty can feel invisible later in life. It’s a pity, for I feel in the latter part of your life you should feel fulfilled, not defeated. My advice is that as a woman gets deep into her forties, she should start becoming a myth. To become a myth for whatever she does, even if it’s making the best chocolate mousse or being the best flower arranger. She has to stand for something and she’s got to stay relevant, to be active, to participate. That’s why I think it’s so important for women to have an identity outside the home.

And never, ever lie about your age. Who can lie with the Internet anyway? To embrace your age is to embrace your life. Lying about your age, or about anything for that matter, is the beginning of trouble; it is the beginning of lying about who you are. What is important is to live fully every single day of every period of every age so that no time gets wasted. Because the time goes by, faster and faster.

So much of physical beauty is youth, pure and simple. The skin is
fresh and tight, the eyes clear and wide, the waist slimmer, the hair full and lush, even the teeth, white and unworn. I never understood that as a girl. When somebody told me that I looked fresh, I hated it and found it unappealing. It’s only when you stop being fresh that you appreciate it.

Youth is wonderful; it’s exciting because it is the beginning of life. Everything is ahead and there is nothing more thrilling than beginnings when everything is possible and you can dream big dreams. But every day is a beginning. Living and enjoying the present moment to its fullest is the best way, the only way, to approach life. It is essential to learn from the past and look into the future without resentment. Resentments are toxic and can only pollute the future.

The best thing about aging, I have come to understand, is that you have a past. No one can take that away, so you’d better like it. That is why it is so important to waste no time. By living fully every day, you create your life and that becomes your past, a rich past.

When I was very young, I was arrogant and used to boast that I’d retire at thirty. As I got older, I continued to be arrogant about my age, but in a different way. I defied it. I would be dismissive and say, “Oh, age means nothing.”

Today my energy has yet to let me down and I am more engaged than ever. But I am not as dismissive about it as I realize that aging can make you feel vulnerable. Perhaps it was a ski accident I had at the start of 2011 that made me more humble. One minute I’d been skiing happily with Barry in Aspen, Colorado; the next minute I was flat on my back in the snow with my face bleeding.

It had been a spectacular, sunny day on the mountain and I was skiing well and carefully between my ski instructor and Barry, and avoiding all of the aggressive snowboarders. My friend the actress Natasha Richardson had died the year before in a freak ski accident and she was very much on my mind when suddenly, out of nowhere,
came an out-of-control first-time skier. I was standing still, waiting for Barry, when he hit me! He barreled into me with such force that he left my face bloody and numb.

After an X-ray in Aspen showed my ribs were fractured and my nose was broken, we flew to LA to have an MRI of my face to make sure the eye orbit bones were not broken as well, which would have required immediate surgery. In the plane I kept touching my cheekbones, terrified they were broken; they are my face’s best asset. Luckily there were only hairline fractures around my eyes that would heal and the cheekbones were fine, but my mangled face set off alarms when we got to the hospital. I felt that everyone I saw in the corridors thought I was a victim of domestic abuse. It is amazing how quickly you can feel like a victim and I felt that I had to justify my bruised face to everyone who passed by. “Ski accident,” I kept repeating. “Ski accident.”

The timing of the accident couldn’t have been worse. I had a couple of big months coming up—a photo shoot that week, the acceptance of a huge award at a gala benefit for amFAR (Foundation for AIDS Research) in New York, my Fall runway show during fashion week, and a high-profile trip to China in the spring where an extensive retrospective of my life and work was being installed in Beijing’s prestigious Pace Gallery. It was because of that very busy schedule ahead of me that Barry had rented a house in Aspen for just the two of us for a few days.

Immediately after the MRI, the doctor mentioned surgery. I was not quite sure what he had in mind, but I said no. I wanted my face to heal completely first and then see what needed to be done. From that moment on, it was all about ice and arnica, arnica and ice. Very slowly the swelling went down to reveal dark blue bruises that spread downward, creating a devastating expression. Arnica and more arnica slowly
lightened the color from dark purple to a lighter shade of purple, lavender, and eventually, weeks later, yellow. I recorded the progress daily on my iPhone; I had taken the first photo immediately after the fall and sent it to all of my friends. I continued to document the map of my face every day for the next two months. “This is what I look like,” I would say to myself, “and it is not pretty.”