Christian Dior- Christian Dior by Morrissey
You wasted your life
Sensually stroking the weave of a sleeve.
You could have run wild
On the backstreets of Lyon or Marseille
Reckless and legless and stoned
Impregnating women
Or kissing mad street boys from Napoli
Who couldn't even spell their own name
"I'm not fucking Christian Dior love!!!"- Alma Really Matters
Little did Alma (one of my nearest and dearest friends) know when she made this statement to me in an email, that she had unwittingly summed up my world over the past couple of years. I have had a kind of epiphany... and it has yet to have its full impact on my life, which I suspect is about to change forever.
Good friends will confirm that I have always been very 'disciplined'. Good old Anais, always 'in control', never flaky or unreliable, never late, never drunk, never scruffy... all up together like a tightened bow. I have spent the last 30 years doing what was right, what was expected, all to the best of my ability regardless of how I have felt or what I really wanted to do. And the amusing thing is that it hasn't got me anywhere at all. Well no further than anyone else. And it certainly hasn't made me happy. See the thing is, I never knew what I wanted to be...
I'm not at all meaning to compare myself in any way to the mighty Christian Dior. Merely to say that his life really demonstrates how too much self-discipline can leave you wasting your life. He was a maverick designer, whose work in the post war years changed womens fashion irreversibly. After the years of wartime austerity, his 'New Look' with its tiny corseted jackets and skirts springing outwards using yards and yards of fabric seemed outrageously decadent. He is a 20th Century fashion icon, a glittering example of discipline and design. And yet as Morrissey so wonderfully points out there was so much living Dior denied himself with his relentless work ethic and imposing self-discipline.
Since I had my children my whole life has changed. Most people get more uptight when they have babies. I seemed to get much less. A few people noticed. "Gosh having children has really relaxed you" they'd say. They weren't quite aware of how much. I stand alone in the pre-school hallway, dark glasses, i-pod, and dressed like a slightly off kilter Brigitte Bardot. All the other mummies eye me suspiciously, but I want no part of their world. To me they are just Stepford wives in 'Crocs'.
I want to go off on a mad one; take an apartment in Paris, to drink wine until I fall over, wearing beautiful shoes. I want to fall asleep on a dance floor under a huge mirror ball, and then come over all bohemian and paint canvases on the seashore of Big Sur like Elizabeth Taylor in The Sandpiper. To teach my children how to really live, to be really free, about truth and beauty and love and laughter...
So excuse me while I become a Libertine... well, I'm not fucking Christian Dior!!