The Life and Times of an American Icon—take one.
High over New York City, Demi Moore leans against the rail of a penthouse pool, her eyes half-closed against the dying sun. She is wearing a meltdown gown—an hourglass halter in blood-red silk-satin—that cascades over her feet in a liquid train. It’s a very deliberately sexy dress, a vamp dress. And when she’s in pose, with head flung imperiously back and white neck and arms outstretched, she stops everyone’s breath. She looks luminous, powerful; she looks like Madame X in the Sargent painting; she looks like Rita Hayworth singing “Put the Blame on Mame.” Mario Testino growls, “Gorr-geous, Demi! Like that, like that. Gorr-geous! Like that! Gorrrr! Jess!”
Posing beside Moore is an awestruck kid with a shock of wild hair who can’t take his eyes off her. His grin splits his face in a mixture of bliss and nervous rictus, and he keeps dropping to his knees to rearrange her hem. Demi holds her pose concentratedly while he fiddles at her feet with the puddle of silk, but when she catches a sidelong glimpse of his hero-worshiping face, she loses it completely. Giggles start rippling, then shuddering, through her, until she doubles up, choking with throaty laughter, and howls aloud. “OK,” says Testino. “More film.”
The fan is Zac Posen, the wunderkind, 22 years old and Designer of the Year five minutes out of fashion college. The dress is his, designed for her, and he’s so excited he can’t get over himself. Or her: “Demi Moore? Are you kidding? She’s my idol, she’s so sensual and strong, I loved that she took on all of those empowering roles.” He sketched and resketched the dress, finally settling on “this visceral color because there’s something Romanesque about her, and I think she looks great when there’s fluid lines.” We gaze at Ms. Moore’s fluid lines, which are a sight to see. “Ghost,” says Posen dreamily. “I loved Ghost. I grew up in SoHo, and they filmed it around my neighborhood.” That movie came out in 1990. What year was Posen born, exactly? “Nineteen-eighty. I was ten years old. The pottery scene made me cry and cry.”
Here’s take two.
Demi Moore is lying on a dressmaker’s table, surrounded by scraps of fabric, scissors, yarns, sketches, and bobbins of thread, some of which are digging into her. “Like that, Demi. Gorgeous.” She is gorgeous—the lovely body tricked out in a tough/tender pencil skirt with the gleam of anthracite, and a punky rubber-sequined vest. She stretches a languorous leg and points a killer Jimmy Choo toward the table edge. Today’s hero-worshipers are the design duo Proenza Schouler (actually Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough), who made the outfit for her. Again, both are wunderkinds (aged 24), both godlike beauties, both left Parsons last summer (and immediately made the front page of Women’s Wear Daily), and both gaze adoringly at Moore as if she were a goddess. “She’s an American icon!” they tell me, speaking together. And—since both of them are boys who clearly love their mothers (Proenza and Schouler are their mothers’ maiden names)—they admire Moore unreservedly for “getting her priorities right,” for being “a wonderful mother,” for “making the choice to walk away and spend time with her family.”
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