An Ignoble Experiment: What if aging were the best thing ever?

By Miriam Elder

Welcome to Big Style, a portal to a world where clothing meets culture. This week, we are joined by Miriam Elder, executive editor of Features at CNN.

Have thoughts, questions or feedback? Reach us here: bigstyle@newsletters.cnn.com 

Mentioned in this issue: Rachel Comey, actual geniuses, leopard print, Barbra Streisand, (the original) “Bewitched,” radical aging, Janet Malcolm, Billie Eilish’s Sylvia Plath era, New York’s best borough.

OLDER IS BETTER, ACTUALLY

If cleanliness is next to godliness, organizing your closets is next to BLISS. (Miriam Elder/CNN)

It’s a hot August afternoon in the Hudson Valley and Justin Vivian Bond — New York legend, cabaret star, style muse — is puttering about their bedroom playing an intense game of “F*ck, Marry, Kill.” Their longtime friend and new-ish stylist, Christopher Rao, is perched beside the closet, pulling out box after box of untold treasures — fascinators and hats, gloves that stretch a full four feet, pristine bags designed by Jonathan Anderson and dresses from Rachel Comey, both friends. “F*ck” means the item returns to Bond’s studio apartment in New York, where the living really gets done. “Marry” means it stays here in Hudson, the second home Bond has kept for a decade. “Kill” — that’ll be sold or donated.

Bond and Rao have been wanting to do this forever — is there anything more satisfying than organizing and purging one’s closets? Now the time is here. After four months in Paris, Bond has just finished a sold-out run at New York’s Little Island and is about to kick off their latest cabaret residency at Joe’s Pub, while also preparing for the Toronto Film Festival premiere of the new movie “Neverman,” where they play the starring role. For now, they have a moment to breathe.

Someone recently asked Bond, who was awarded a MacArthur genius grant in 2024, if now is the busiest they’ve ever been. “I don’t think it is,” says Bond, who uses she/they pronouns. “But I don’t think of the past all that much.”

And now the past is laid before her, to be deemed worthy or not of being carried into the future.

Some decisions are easy — the frayed leopard print jacket that was “fun to go to Walmart in” is destined for death, as are several ill-fitting black blazers. The JW Anderson bubble-hem dress with a high collar is a keeper — they’ve never worn it, but what a discovery. A pair of custom-made silver gloves, which Bond wore in costume as Kiki, the boozy lounge singer she embodied on stage for decades as part of the Tony-nominated duo Kiki and Herb, will head to the top floor of the house, where it will live as part of her archive.

A sequined Rachel Comey dress lies atop the giveaway pile, gazed upon by one of the many pieces of art in Bond's bedroom: the framed visage of Joan Didion. (Miriam Elder/CNN)

Some decisions are more difficult. Rao pulls out a busy red jacket and assumes it’s a kill, but Bond jumps in to save it: “Oh no, you can’t kill that.” The piece is by Frank Masandrea, a designer who died of AIDS in 1988. Bond had worn a dress of his for a run of performances at the New Museum and afterwards searched the internet for more work by the designer. “I’d just like to keep that because that was his,” she says.

Bond and Rao tussle over a few other pieces, including a silk Jean-Charles de Castelbajac shift dress with a sequined tiger roaring up from the hem. Rao is suspicious, Bond still loves it. “You know why I have so many black sequins?” Bond asks. “Because you can’t find brown sequins,” she jokes. “But also because I read this queer theorist and she said black sequins are trans — because they both absorb and reflect.” In the end, it’s a keeper.

More often than not, Bond and Rao are in sync. Working together for the past two years, they have grown Bond’s performances into showcases of her evolving style. This fall, Rao will open R.T. Stewart, an appointment-only shop that he co-founded in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood specializing in vintage and antique clothing.

At Little Island, Bond wore a different brightly colored gown each night, all designed by Julian Klausner for Dries Van Noten, that flowed in the evening wind off the Hudson River. The inspiration came from two iconic Central Park performances by Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross.

Justin-Vivian-Bond's-Summer's-Eve.-Photo-by-Andy-Henderson-(3).jpg

Bond channeling Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross at Little Island. (Photo by Andy Henderson)

As she sang covers of everyone from Cat Power to Lana Del Rey to the 1950s performer Annie Ross, Bond’s band lay on fainting couches around her. It was a dream the band had had for a decade and now, with Bond reaching the heights of her stardom at the age of 63, she can request pretty much anything.

It’s been a long road. Trying on an old pair of Issey Miyake trousers that fit like a glove, Bond takes a little trip down memory lane. “When I first started living as Vivian, I had a lot of show clothes, but I didn’t have everyday clothes,” they recall. “My sort of role model/imaginary mother was Elizabeth Montgomery on ‘Bewitched’ and so I have a sort of proclivity for clam diggers and shift dresses.” They pick up a jacket. “I went to the Gap and I just wasn’t sure what colors looked good on me, so I bought all these jeans of all these different colors with matching cashmere tops and this jacket, which will now find a new home.” On the bed pile it goes.

What a difference the years make. These days, in addition to their endless performances, Bond can often be seen front row at many of the year’s fashion shows, none more loyally than those of Jonathan Anderson. The two first met more than 20 years ago while Bond was getting a master’s at St Martin’s. She was still doing cabaret, performing at London’s Too2Much club (now known as The Box), and one night Anderson, studying at the London College of Fashion, stopped by. “He was like, ‘Can I make some things for you to wear in your show?’” And so he did. Bond returned the favor by performing at his degree show. They’ve been inspiring each other since.

Bond's Hudson Valley home is a collection of wonders — including a leopard print pillbox hat once owned by Edie Sedgwick. (Miriam Elder/CNN)

What is it like to hit your peak at 63? And is this even Bond’s peak? Watching her grow — ever more into her style, into her strengthening voice, into her singular stage presence — can entirely upend one’s feelings about aging. Not once in the hours Bond spent trying on clothes collected over years of living did they ask, Is this too young for me? It felt revolutionary. What if age weren’t a constraint, but just a chance to get better? To live more?

I had wanted to know how Bond came to trust her style, but she insists that she just always did. I wonder if for some people it’s that easy. It has to go hand in hand with knowing who you really are. At one of their Little Island performances this year, Bond told the crowd, “I always felt that I was born to be an old woman.” At first, they created a character to do that. Now, they’re just doing it — and changing what it means for the rest of us.

IN DEFENSE OF SUMMER READING

Summer is for ignoring children and reading books. (Photo by Marisa Rastellini/Mondadori via Getty Images)

Not to freak anyone out, but summer is actually almost over now. What have you read??

This summer, as I do every year, I locked myself away in a house and spoke to no one for a full five days and did nothing but read. I never think of a theme, and I try not to read things that are too new (I like my books a little time-tested and am generally filled with enough contemporary anxieties, thank you). Here’s what this year’s binge looked like: