You know what I bizarrely enjoyed in the past year? I’ve loved all of the news segments on the history of the Spanish Flu. I’ll always enjoy learning about historical events, but I really didn’t know much about the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1920. Seeing all of those old photos and stories about how the world was going through the once-in-a-century deadly pandemic was really fascinating and grotesque – mostly because of how little actually changed 100 years later. And then thinking about how the Roaring Twenties might have been a direct result of not just the end of World War I, but the end of the pandemic. And so… considering how little has actually changed, I am one of those people who thinks that the next decade, after we get mass vaccinations, will be a wild one. We’re going to have so much fun! Olivia Palermo thinks so too. She chatted with fashion editors recently about her pandemic life (it involves cashmere and diamonds) and her plans for the New Roaring Twenties.
Leave it to Olivia Palermo to keep her fashion standards high during a global pandemic. The fashion star, 34, revealed that she hasn’t been slacking style-wise while staying home, sporting “a lot of cashmere and diamonds” over the past few months.
“I have not let coronavirus stop me from getting dressed; I feel that it’s important,” she told editors while promoting a new cocktail she created with Patrón and Muddling Memories based on fashion trends for the new year. “I’m convinced it’s going to be the roaring ’20s with that extra sparkle when we get out [of quarantine]. All of us have probably been looking at our festive wardrobes for a year, waiting to wear things.”
As for what Palermo will be wearing to her virtual holiday parties this year? The former “The City” star says there’s no reason not to “go for it 100 percent. I’m really into skirt overlays that are kind of ’60s, and modernizing it with a fabulous statement necklace,” she said. “[It’s all about] making your most fabulous statements in your wardrobe and emphasizing that, then leaving everything else basic or adding a great accessory.”
After the holidays, Palermo said she plans to return to the ballroom dance lessons she and husband Johannes Huebl started and then abandoned. But generally speaking, the fashionista doesn’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. “I feel that you should work on yourself all year round and not just in January,” she said. “Doing meditation, working out, taking time for yourself, going to the spa, focusing on things that you wouldn’t necessarily have the time [to]. It’s a year of change for everyone, so things that you haven’t done, [you should] take the time for.”
I can’t imagine sitting around all year at home, wearing cashmere and diamonds. But that’s not my brand. I do love cashmere, but as I get older, I’m just wary of the cashmere upkeep! But yeah, as I said, I’m also convinced that the Roaring Twenties are coming and I hope they’ll be fun. I’m hoping for fun fashion, fun gossip, fun celebrity hookups, fun drama. Who will be this decade’s Jay Gatsby? Who will be this decade’s F. Scott Fitzgerald?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
always have loved her style. she is creative and wears it all well.
Love both of those outfits when she’s wearing a mask (the main pic not so much.)
I think she’s right – I am someone who is closing in on 40, and I thought I was long past the days of getting dressed up – pre pandemic, if I went out for happy hour or to dinner to celebrate a friend’s bday or something – I would wear jeans and a sweater or button down with a pretty pair of earrings and call it a day (or night.) Now I want fun shoes and sparkly sweaters and pretty handbags that are completely frivolous lol. I want statement jewelry and to wear fun makeup etc. I’m not taking those happy hours for granted again so lets do this baby!!!!!!
I’m starting to go a little stir-crazy, I admit.
If you want to know more about the Spanish Flu I highly recommend Pale Rider by Laura Spinney. It came out a few years back and it’s a wild ride. I found it incredibly well written/easy to read and the parallels to how we’ve seen covid play out are fascinating and horrifying at the same time. I’ve recommended it to a few people and starting to get good reviews back from them too so I can recommend with confidence!
No we will not cancel out Thanksgiving parade thank you very much. What do you mean we’ve had a massive spike in cases and people dying… You get the idea.
I do hope we come out of this for a greater appreciation of some things – art, creativity, live performances, community experiences, etc. But to be honest my faith in humanity took a real nose dive the past few years, and especially the last year, so who knows.
I also hope there is a greater appreciation for more meaningful things in life. With that being said, I do not think fun celebrity adoration and fashion will bounce back I think people are seeing on a deeper level how shallow and useless celebrities are during the pandemic. And the divide with how they live in their little bubble is not to be celebrated.
Agreed. I too think–hope–that the blind adoration for celebrities will ebb. We have seen so many of them, during this pandemic make it clear that they do not share our reality, nor do they have the consideration or empathy to recognize just how entitled they are, flaunting their homes, vast wealth, luxury vacations, and ostentatious privilege (especially during the pandemic) in our faces. All the celebrities who held huge parties during the pandemic, then posted about them, or complained about how awful staying at home was—in multi million dollar houses and mansions—made me all the more repelled at just how vapid so many of these people’s lives actually are.
It will be interesting for sure. I think extroverts are going to go buck wild. I’m an introvert and I’m only looking forward to being in the same room as friends and family without fear. And I miss getting my hair and nails done, facials, massages, shopping in public etc. Basically, I just want to return to a normal day to day existence, I’m not itching to party or get hedonistic.
Same. I want my young adult children out and about and doing “normal” things. I want to go to an exercise class and meet up with friends for lunch. Maybe it’s my age or my introverted personality?
I didn’t know the exact dates of the Spanish Flu, so I found that theory fascinating. It’s also interesting that women from the 20’s decade are mostly remembered for their looks and not for the changes they made in society. The first time I read the Collected Stories of Scott Fitzgerald I was shocked at how independent and forward those women were.
The only thing that the pandemic has changed in my wardrobe are the shoes: I only wear sneakers now, as I have to walk everywhere. I guess I’ll get tired sooner or later and end up buying several pair of heels for no reason. So far, I’ve been good at avoiding shopping for things I don’t need.
I very much hope we will not have a roaring twenties. We need t rethink hoe much we used to travel, how much we used to consume, how hard we used to work. I hope we will reconsider how we relate to animals. I am hoping for a new time, a time of simplicity and care for our earth. Sigh…
I’m with you.
I’m with you too!
Sure, for those with money.
No joke: one of the thing that has soothed me a lot through the hardest moments of the pandemic was looking at pictures of Olivia’s street style, face mask and all. Fashion is one of my favorite things and I’ve always found her style to be so…sensible. Actually cozy coats, comfortable shoes, great accessories…I love it. Same with Alexa Chung.
Gosh no. I hope not, roaring 20s led to the not so great 30s last time around…
Thank you, Chi Chi. I’m thinking the exact same thing.
Had not realized what a seasonal/pandemic FUNK I’m in until I read this interview. I used to love fashion, but right now, hearing her chirp there’s no reason you can’t go for 100% in your holiday attire for a virtual party, AND that “all of us have probably been looking at our festive wardrobes for a year”…umm, nah. Which sweats to wear: gray or navy? The last thing I want to do is look at my “festive wardrobe” now, because I prefer to stay in denial about the 25 pounds I’ve gained. She believes in being our best every time of the year, and she’s setting her ducks in a row to sell liqueurs in the coming roaring 20’s. I’m just trying to get through this safely and hope my loved ones get through it. No shade on her at all; she’s an energetic, focused gal. I’m just…so tired.
I mean the roaring 20s was right before the great depression so no I hope we don’t have a repeat. Frankly I hope we’ve learned to focus on the things that really matter, which isn’t consumer culture.
I’m simply not in the headspace to hear about fashion, frivolous things and partying from rich celebrities. And the roaring 20s is not what society needs, we need to return to humanity, empathy, and facing our problems head-on. Global warming and systemic injustices are not going away simply because we start wearing hard pants and going out to bars again. I don’t know, I think my outlook on a whole ton of things has changed this past year, I just don’t look at the world the same way anymore.
I agree. I don’t want a hedonistic decade, nor do I want a return to normal. I want a peaceful revolution. I want us to emerge realizing that we are actually connected to and dependent upon our neighbor, and that we should take care of them and they of us. I want kindness and justice and intelligence and solutions. And while I love scandal and frivolity as much as the next person, I do not want it to be what defines this next decade.
Yes, this woman and her values seem pretty superficial and self centered. The Roaring Twenties? Sure, it was a fun time for the wealthy, like her; it was a decade of intense materialism and of heightened consumerism as well. If you were privileged enough to be able to afford to dress fashionably and go out to fancy parties frequently (no real worries about money and work) and you could just, overall, afford to indulge in careless hedonism, I suppose it was, for some, an exciting time to be alive. It was also a relatively vapid, fallow decade; yes, at its start women finally won the vote, but there was still extraordinary, profound, widespread injustice, racism, oppression, and poverty among many in the United States. Those are ubiquitous human tragedies that fiction like the Great Gatsby gloss over, however well it depicts the upper class and the access of SOME to the American Dream. And, just on a personal level, the whole idea of paying for and dressing up in expensive, fashionable clothes, going to lots of parties, spreading gossip and rumors about the most shallow aspects of people like celebrities who I don’t know and never will –yet who are somehow supposed to be interesting—is kind of repellent to me. Sure, we can have (hopefully) a more deeply appreciated, even more celebratory sense of life once corona virus is defeated, but I hope, like many have posted here, that we are also more empathetic about other people’s lives,needs, and suffering as well, and that we finally recognize ourselves in one another—enough to unite more profoundly. I also hope we stop with the dangerous division politics that humans are so prone to, and suffer greatly from. Race, ethnicity, religion, social status, gender, sexual orientation–why can’t we start helping and not harming one another? Too many persist in making man made categories to divide themselves from other humans by making different groups into negative, monolithic stereotypes, such as The Enemy, The Outsider, The Inferior, The Destroyer, etc.) An end to THAT widespread, absurd, harmful prejudice is what I’d most like to see in the next decade–and many others to come.
edit: typed in wrong place
Chi Chi You said it. 1929 stock market crashed. Deep recession followed. Rise of Fascisim and WW II. Can we all agree to disagree and just get along. Be nice.
I so agree – there will be dancing in the streets.