Nostalgia

When my New York Magazine arrived today with Christie Brinkley on the cover, it could have been the 1980s if I squinted hard enough.

Christie’s golden lion’s mane? Check.

Wind machine? There too.

High-gloss California girl smile? You bet.

The only hint that we were some 20 years into the future was the delicate sprinkling of lines around Brinkley’s eyes, a gentle reminder that this supermodel is indeed in her 50s (even if those lines pictured are more appropriate to a thirtysomething).

Just the other day I was commenting on Thumbelina Fashionista’s blog about the time I saw Christie in New York.

I was checking in to Frederic Fekkai’s salon (still in the Chanel building), when the elevator doors opened behind me. Immediately all eyes behind the counter came to attention and looked conspicuously over my head.

I turned around just in time to see a blonde apparition dressed in a man’s pink Oxford shirt, rocking a megawatt smile and flashing blue eyes. She waved to the desk as she swept off to her private room.

And then everything returned to normal: the assistants in black skulked; the women behind the counter resumed their bored affectation.

I loved how she literally lit up the salon, and even though the New York cover is in black and white this week, all that color still manages to burst through.