Years ago, I celebrated my fiftieth birthday in Paris, a city I love beyond reason. It’s where I met and married my darling Gary, came to know his loving family, and shared more than two decades of beautiful experiences together.
I wanted to celebrate the life I’d lived and the life I was living. To be in and of the moment.
At the top of my birthday wish list was an exhibition of Yves Saint Laurent’s work at the Petit Palais. I’d admired him since my teenage years working in fashion retail, and even more as I pursued my own career in fashion design. But what struck Gary and me most wasn’t simply the beauty of his creations. It was how completely Saint Laurent participated in the times he lived in.
In and of the Moment
Saint Laurent recognized the changes unfolding in women’s lives and gave them expression. In 1966, he introduced Le Smoking, his groundbreaking tuxedo for women. At a time when women were challenging conventions and claiming new freedoms, he was listening, responding, creating. He wasn’t simply dressing women for the moment. He was helping shape it.
Through decades of cultural change, his work evolved while remaining unmistakably his. His designs reflected what was happening in the world and contributed to what was becoming possible.
Standing beside Gary, celebrating my own life while admiring Saint Laurent’s, I was moved by the power of a life fully engaged with its times.
Still in the Conversation
I think of Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones, whose music has accompanied generations, including mine. I play Child of the Moon, a song from nearly sixty years ago, like a nightly chant. And their newer music? I play it on repeat, too. Can’t sit still. Can’t stand still.
They’re not simply performing their history. They’re continuing to contribute to the musical conversation. Mick, Keith, and Ronnie, each unmistakably himself, still creating together, bringing decades of shared history into something new.
There’s a difference between honoring our history and becoming a museum of ourselves.
We can remain recognizable without becoming repetitive.
Shaping the Moment
As we age, we become clearer about who and how we are, our preferences and our passions. Our accumulated experiences give us perspective, understanding, and discernment. But are we allowing this moment to influence us?
Being in the moment means showing up for the life we’re living. Being of the moment means engaging with the world around us, allowing it to inform, challenge, and inspire us. And shaping the moment means contributing our own ideas, expressions, and actions to the world we’re creating together.
We don’t have to be iconic designers or legendary rock stars. We each participate through our conversations, choices, relationships, work, and creations. Every exchange offers an opportunity to influence the world we share, and every new idea invites us to participate in what comes next.
Our history informs us. It needn’t confine us.
The moment influences us. We influence the moment.
What might this moment become because we’re in it?