Gen X Women Wearing the Shit Out of Coats + 'Old Lady Energy' 🤔
Hey WNVM-ers,
Our thoughts are still with Los Angeles, and with all our friends and collaborators who continue to live through this nightmare. If you’d like to help, here is a list of organizations that need monetary donations, and an ongoing spreadsheet of displaced Black families, with links to Latine and Filipino families, and disabled folks in need.
For a distraction, and lighter news, Fawnia again explores how wardrobe — more specifically elegant, high-end statement coats — help convey Gen X characters and stories in awards season contenders. Demi Moore’s now-iconic yellow coat from The Substance even inspired “Shrinking” and “Grace and Frankie” costume designer Allyson Fanger to interpret the look and vibe for her family Halloween costume. Love the support amongst colleagues!
And in news You Oughta Know, is it possible to reclaim the term “old lady”? A heated online drama exploded last week debating the issue. Plus, Rob Lowe continues to be ridiculous, and some great news for ‘90s industrial music fans.
PS: You may need to view the entire newsletter in your browser. Happy reading!
No Jacket Required
In The Substance, Babygirl, and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, plush designer coats on Demi Moore, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Tilda Swinton play pivotal supporting roles.
By Fawnia
“It was a shocking experience,” says Gen X costume designer Allyson Fanger, who went to see The Substance with her Zoomer daughter last October.
In Coralie Fargeat’s body horror-slash-dark satirical comedy, Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a faded ‘80s starlet and just-fired TV aerobics instructor, decides to undergo a dangerous and illicit treatment promising to bestow “a younger, better version” of herself. Thus, wide-eyed, perky, and ambitious Sue (Margaret Qualley) emerges from her spine every other week and chaos ensues. (My eyes were closed through like two-thirds of the movie, which, btw, is back in select theaters on Friday, January 17.)
Fanger felt not just moved by Fargeat’s furious rebuke and blood-spewing study of society’s unrealistic pressures on women over 40, but also Emmanuelle Youchnovski’s costumes — especially Elizabeth’s sunshine yellow coat.
“I'm at about the same age of where I'm thinking about all those aging components, and I'm watching myself develop skin I don't love all the time,” says Fanger. “So I’m watching this film with my daughter — I have three, but this particular one looks like a younger version of me — and the parallels are there. It just popped in my head, ‘Well, that's what we should be for Halloween.”
Next to her daughter Tallulah, embodying a sparkly, Barbie pink-clad Sue, Fanger perfected Elizabeth Sparkle’s defiance in oversize sunglasses, a fancy bag, and a shriveled-up faux hand (#iykyk) accessorizing a long yellow coat she copped online. Granted, the five-time Emmy-nominated costume designer has an advantage when it comes to creating top-notch cosplay. But, she clearly understands how wardrobe — and specifically coats — make a statement beyond fashion.
“It gives presence. It gives confidence,” says Fanger. “You just walk in a room and you've got the shoulders. It’s like wearing something that is armor, really, and it makes you feel in control — and in power.”
In The Substance, Elizabeth faces the world in her military-inspired Italian virgin wool coat, which Youchnovski custom-made in a bold egg yolk hue representing fertility. Elizabeth wears the coat throughout her odyssey — from discovering the drug to succumbing to her fervent quest for societally-driven youth and beauty standards.
“She needs to have control, so her coat is very important — it's like her armor,” Youchnovski told the New York Times. The oversized, militaristic silhouette, exaggerated lapels, and formidable epaulets also telegraph how Elizabeth continually stands up to a roomful of male executives, lead by skeevy shrimp-slurping network executive Harvey (Dennis Quaid) — and inspo for Fanger’s husband’s costume. (What a team player!)
“It was important that, because [Elizabeth is] in a world of men, she has a masculine side, that she wears beautiful suits à la Tom Ford,” Youchnovski told The Wrap. “And the coat, until the very end, was her armor. She hides in it.”
It's not just in The Substance — statement coats play notable supporting roles in Gen X-focused stories throughout awards season. The storytelling outerwear has inspired countless shopping round-ups and helps represent universal experiences and feelings at this point in our lives: confidence in time-proven personal style, financial and career success (or crisis), confrontation with deep-seated, longtime fears, and, yes, health issues.
In Pedro Almodóvar’s first English language film, The Room Next Door, autofiction author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) reconnects with former war correspondent Martha (Tilda Swinton) during the latter’s grueling treatment for late-stage cervical cancer. (The movie is playing in select cities to open nationwide on Friday, January 17.) In a quick expository aside, Martha mentions the two met while working at Paper magazine in the ‘80s — which immediately conjured mash-up images of Bright Lights Big City and Less Than Zero. (Gen X fun fact: Ewan’s daughter Esther McGregor plays a 20-something Martha in flashbacks, and if Almodóvar made an ‘80s-set prequel, I’d 100% watch.) Martha and Ingrid’s chic apartments — uptown and downtown — further convey their cool factor and media industry success.
“They both like fashion,” says the movie’s costume designer Bina Daigeler, who interpreted Almodóvar’s color-saturated vision of usually all-black-clad New York City media types by taking inspiration from Louise Bourgeois’ painting of a New Yorker in bold red and blue. Ingrid — leaving her fan-filled book signing at Rizzoli in a vintage scarlet wool coat by The Row and with an aqua Bottega Veneta tote — perfectly fits the painting reference, and establishes her penchant for power coats.
“That feels very New York — you just put the coat on and you go,” says Madrid-based Daigeler. “Ingrid also had this wonderful walnut-hued custom Bottega Veneta leather coat and a trench by Studio Nicholson. Whenever she walks around, there is [always] a very impressive and precise coat moment, because they give so much strength.”
In a vulnerable moment confiding in Ingrid while sitting on a park bench, Martha finds support by comforting herself in a moody, inky-hued cocoon jacket. “As if she would take her [duvet] or her blanket, so it's really like she's wrapped in this beautiful dark blue coat that protects her,” says Daigeler, who received an Oscar nod for Mulan, and dressed Cate Blanchett in power suits in Tàr.
With the renewed friendship, Martha asks for an immense favor that also compels Ingrid to face her own acute fear. Later during a discussion upstate, a resolute Martha stands tall in a sculptural, power-shouldered Phoebe Philo coat — which is actually Swinton’s.
“She was wearing it when they rehearsed that scene,” says Daigeler. After “a lot of discussions” between herself, Swinton, and the director, they decided that Swinton’s voluminous olive-brown coat visually communicated Martha taking control of her own narrative and staying true to herself.
“It's so strong. It has broad shoulders. It has this nearly-military structure,” says Daigeler, also referencing Martha’s dedication to her war correspondent career. It's protective,” says Daigeler. “It was her style her whole life [and in her profession as a war correspondent], so why wouldn't she wear it now?”
In Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, high-powered tech CEO Romy (Nicole Kidman) also shields and expresses herself in a consistent uniform: puff-sleeve blouses, pencil skirts, and plush designer coats. But, in a reverse strategy, Romy exerts and maintains power with an intentional neutral palette that telegraphs a “hyper-feminine” vibe, Bart, of Kurt and Bart, told me for Refinery29.
Romy’s silvery gray and camel coats, by Max Mara, visually soften her rigid work ethic and persona. But, to me, a New Yorker, who takes the train everywhere, and regularly dribbles coffee and Côte du Rhone all over myself, a super pale wardrobe like Romy’s also serves as a massive flex. Like, she’ll never risk sullying her ‘fits on the R train because she’s chauffeured to-and-from work — and to Brooklyn raves to meet her young paramour Samuel (Harris Dickinson) — and has an unlimited dry cleaning budget.
“Most of her clothes were made from very expensive fabrics — and they were expensive clothes,” Bart says. In her c-suite position, Romy embarks on a wild affair with enigmatic new intern Samuel. Throughout their sexually-charged, and often awkward and endearing, power-play back and forth, Samuel’s casual army parka — inspired by Kurt’s Google search for “interns on the subway” — exemplifies the mismatched power dynamic at the office. “It was more like the study and contrast,” adds Bart.
How Romy wears her coats sends a message, too. Her pristinely-tied belts represent maintaining control over all aspects of her seemingly-picture-perfect personal life and professional status, while concealing significant parts of herself.
“She's not capable of being completely authentic with her husband [Jacob played by Antonio Banderas] or herself because she's so frightened of revealing her innermost thoughts and desires and feelings and secrets, and what she considers shameful,” Kidman explains in the production notes. “To confront and verbalize what she wants would be to shatter her idea of the image she wants to project, in a world where female sexual desire is considered taboo, even perverse.”
With Samuel, Romy allows herself to experience and feel what she’s long suppressed — and the way she wears her power coats reflects the change. “Harris' character, obviously, lets her open up and explore another side of herself,” said Kurt. “And that's when [her clothes] get looser and more open.”
Via her coats and layers, Romy bolsters own decisions — like leaving the belts loose and untied with abandon, or swaddling herself in a waffle-knit cardigan robe while coming to terms with her actions. She’s also grasping control of her narrative.
“Coats give strength, you know?” says Fanger. “Once you're a certain age, you do come with strength. You do come with all kinds of experience and knowledge, and a component of power therefore exists that comes along with all the years of a life well-lived.”
We are two Gen X journalists who celebrate people of our generation doing cool things, as well as analyze all the '80s and '90s nostalgia in current pop culture, fashion, and beauty. Read more stories like this one here!
You Oughta Know
At the Golden Globes a few weeks ago, Demi Moore and many women over the age of 50 received recognition for their work. Val Monroe, a 74-year-old former beauty editor who writes the popular newsletter, How Not to F*ck Up Your Face, wrote an article for Allure titled, “Old Lady Energy Flexed Its Well-Toned Muscles at the Golden Globes.” It prompted an immediate backlash on the beauty magazine’s Instagram page, with over 600 commenters weighing in, many questioning the use of the term. I have to admit, I also bristled, though I understood it better when I realized Monroe had written it. It caused such a backlash, in fact, that she published an op-ed to respond a few days later. She wrote: “I doubt any of the people who wrote that I’d been insulting had considered that they might be insulting me…What’s ageist is believing the word ‘old’ [is] the worst kind of insult.” We have a long way to go before that’s going to change, but I appreciate the reminder to work on my own internalized ageism. Consider my 53-year-old ass handed to me.-CW [Allure]
On his podcast, Rob Lowe revealed that when he was at a point in his career when he couldn’t get a role, he cut a demo with the yacht rock musicians (Have you watched the documentary yet??) from Toto. He may or may not have been coked up at the time. Someone please leak this asap so we can make fun of it. -CW [Entertainment Weekly]
The 24-year-old Tik Tok phenom Alix Earle apparently discovered a bottle of drugstore shampoo stalwart Pantene at her parents’ house over the holidays, and she — gasp!— used it and liked it. The issue is that the brand has gotten a bad rap over the years, with the assumption that the silicone in the product coats hair in a way that gunks it up. This is probably just marketing/fear-mongering and Big Haircare trying to lead the consumer to more expensive products, but the whole thing makes me laugh. In the ‘80s, the “Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful” era of the brand, Pantene was considered the fancy shampoo in my neighborhood. We were an Agree family, and occasionally I could get my mom to buy Salon Selectives (I can still smell it!). But Pantene? That was for rich people. -CW [The Cut]
Kea-news! Real-life angel Keanu Reeves is going to play an angel in a movie, dropping in October, called Good Fortune. The premise? He pulls a Trading Places on Seth Rogan and Aziz Ansari’s characters, then loses his wings. Or something. Fawnia and I will definitely be there opening day.-CW [All the Fanfare]
This interview with Ben Stiller is good. There’s a nice meaty section about Reality Bites, which he both directed and acted in. He acknowledges it’s a “timepiece,” but also argues it has some evergreen themes. The fear of selling out is not one of them. -CW [New York Times]
In important nostalgia concert news, Nine Inch Nails confirmed they are embarking on a world tour, but are postponing releasing the details until the situation in LA stabilizes a bit. -CW [Instagram]
In case you were wondering what to get us for our birthdays this month (Capricorn+Aquarius energy here), this first-ever Bon Jovi anthology seems perfect. -CW [Instagram]
Coats forever! I have close to 40! (Not a typo).💕
In for the Keanu movie!
Loved the Ben Stiller interview (though I thought the interviewer was kind of a jerk). So here for the NIN tour!