FRIENDS FOREVER
Carmen Dell’Orefice & Peter Cohen
Some people have a special magic and light that just makes you feel good in their presence. Enter Carmen Dell’Orefice 90 years old and known to be the world's oldest working supermodel. From her first Vogue cover at 15 she has made many friends in the fashion industry. Peter Cohen an LA based fashion designer who has been around since 1983 and has dressed everyone from Oprah to Sharon Stone, is one of her best friends. They sit down with me for the first NOWHH issue and chat about their friendship, their view on dating today and about empathy for yourself and others. They are humble despite their year long careers and make you feel like you are the most important person in the room as they are able to be there for others and teach you by example.
Katharina Baron:
I'm wondering if you could say something about your friendship over the years?
Carmen:
Everything worthwhile in life takes time like a seed in the earth, when nourished with the right environment and the sunshine and the rain, it grows like a beautiful tree.
Peter Cohen:
It's a very special friendship to me. One great wisdom is that you should learn from all mistakes. You make mistakes, but you won't try and do them a second time.
Carmen:
I wake up and live each day as the last and the best day of my life. I don't want to look like everybody else. I was fortunate enough to discover Peter Cohen’s collection decades ago. I want to look like myself, his designers suited me. And this is what a good designer does, enhancing the woman, so she is noticed and not just what she is wearing.
Peter Cohen:
Yes. Not to overpower her.
Carmen:
Peter, you adore women. You are so true to what you feel, in your sense and function and beauty. I particularly appreciate what you design, you are an architect.
Peter Cohen:
A thing you said many years ago, Carmen, which I completely agree with is that clothes are tools, you have to know how to use them. And you are particularly gifted. I think giving people clothes that allow them to express themselves in their way is what it's about.
Katharina Baron:
What advice do you have for women when it comes to dating?
Carmen:
Less is more. Take your time. Don't be desperate. People treat you the way they intuitively see you treating yourself. With respect, with reserve, with thought. Don’t just rush our and reach for anything you can get. That’s what young people seem to be doing. People don’t know how to be close anymore.
I'm glad I'm not a parent today because when the whole world has fallen apart that way with such lack of self respect and for each other, it’s lonely for a lot of people and they will settle for anything. I wouldn't dream of making a date on the internet. I am an antique from the past, where there was time to anticipate, we had time to be with people and being together with no rush. Everything is so fast today because everyone is in this immense hurry getting no place. It changed their focus and interest. They did not learn real empathy, humanity and understanding for each person. There is no truth any more on the internet. Everybody lies trying to get what they want, they don’t want to work for it. They don’t learn how to flirt and postpone, they don’t even have dinner just sex. This makes me sad.
Peter Cohen:
I think it touches on such an important topic regarding age and sexual energy in a refined way it's not acted on. I think it's a driving force. It's the most creative force.
Carmen:
One of the reasons I love Peter’s pieces and designs is because it makes me feel sexy inside. You see? I can be myself. I know I'm feeling sexy inside. And people on the outside just say, oh, you look so wonderful. That dress is so wonderful on you.
Peter Cohen:
I mean, the sexual energy is an inextinguishable desire and I think people deny they even have it. They won't even talk about. It's totally taboo.
Carmen:
It’s confused or misdirected.
Katharina Baron:
I love what you're saying, Carmen. And I wanted to ask you, also both of you, what you think it means to age gracefully and what the generation now can learn from your experience?
Peter Cohen:
Show must go on, on the runway and in life. I think one of Carmen's wisdom’s is that she knows who she is. There are many beautiful women, they were magnificent at 20, 30, and the rest of their life, they try to stop time. Carmen does not compare herself to her younger herself. She doesn't look the same now as she did then, she looks more beautiful now than she ever did.
Carmen:
I'm immune by what everybody else is doing. I respect their choices, but I am on my particular path, myself every day. I know how to treat people and care. I change. I always see tomorrow and I know I can do it better. I thrive every day to make it the best day of the rest of my life.
Peter Cohen:
I mean, you recreate yourself, I'd say every day.
Katharina Baron:
You need to tell us a little bit about your secret, Carmen, how do you keep this vibrant, graceful, beautiful energy alive?
Carmen:
I never smoked. I never did drugs as a lifestyle. I don't know why. Except my father once blew a cigarette exhaled through a white handkerchief to show what would go into my body and how bad it was for me. After that, every time my father put a cigarette in his mouth, I would start to cry.
I was lucky the way I processed everything. I was physical. I was a dancer.
Peter Cohen:
I think your movement it's one of your gifts and your knowledge that there's beauty in gestures and in movements and the way you carry your body.
Carmen:
I was a sickly child. I won't go into the whole thing, but I was in bed a year. I had a ballet scholarship and I had rheumatic fever. However, everything that was wrong with me was fixable. Because you have to have endurance, the will, you have a choice, you have to have a goal.
Peter Cohen:
Yes, the ballet discipline.
Carmen:
I also trained as a swimmer. I was the second fastest in the United States and headed to the Olympics, but I broke my leg skiing two weeks before the tryouts. So my experience taught me everything that I am in touch with physically to this day.
Peter Cohen:
I mean, there's a lot of discipline involved with Carmen. You didn't achieve it by just sitting on the couch.
Carmen:
In a way you're unconscious, my unconscious took it in, in the right way and programmed me to implement my life the right way. And to have endurance and to be smart enough to pull back when it's necessary and not to be afraid to start over and do it again and to get it right.
Peter Cohen:
It's funny you use the word endurance. I was in South Africa, people said, "Oh, these things are going well at work." They said, "What do you put in?" I say, "Endurance." And it's true. You speak on things, you get somewhere. And endurance has definitely, it pays off in the long run. It's fun to be a flash in the pan and a toast of the town, but success comes by having done it continuously.
Carmen:
Yeah, happiness is an inside job. Nobody can make me happy. They are part of my knowledge about people and they help me help myself to be happy. And I don't depend on anyone on the outside for where I really live.
Katharina Baron:
That's beautiful.
Carmen:
And then there is the camera that lies in both directions. So what is the truth? The truth is how you feel from inside out. And people are going to have to deal with what they're looking at. And I hope that makes them feel as happy as I feel inside.
Peter Cohen:
It does. I mean, having known Carmen these years, these decades, it's the positive spark energy that she emits to people. The energy that she's talking about, people just respond to and are activated by it. It's unbelievable. It's an extraordinary gift she puts out there, because it's showing people a way and it's also sharing her joy. And it's infectious. And she gives it to people freely. I don't know anybody that has that same level of positive energy that you can put out.
Katharina Baron:
Can you share with us a little bit of your life philosophy - this beautiful energy, how can people get there?
Carmen:
It’s just to be there for people and listen. By being honest with themselves. Courageous. Encourage, it takes a desire, to have a goal and then work toward it intelligently, be able to see at any given second that change is indicated, and just to do it. People don't do what you say, they do what you do. They tend to.
I mean, people have to be willing to do, to be active on their own behalf. You have to be your own best friend and lead by example.
Peter Cohen:
It's beautiful.
Carmen:
And everybody has a different DNA, a different gene, physiologically, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. It's a lot we have to put together. Most people are like sheep. They do it in groups because they feel more comfortable. They're afraid of failing. They're afraid of this. They're afraid of that. And I'm less afraid than a lot of people. I just don't know why. An inner voice, an inner intelligence guiding me. Of course, I'm a Gemini so I really, I have this other person I live with who's always giving me instructions.
Peter Cohen:
I think that regarding the Gemini, the multiplicity of it, is Carmen is a serious artist. She's a consummate professional but she also recognizes that it's all a lot of fun and games as well. She has that wisdom. You're in it for the fun of it as well.
Carmen:
Yes. I don’t suffer change. I don’t live in guilt. I am not afraid to be wrong.
Katharina Baron:
So what is the best part of life for you?
Carmen:
Well, the best part of life for me are my friends over time, tried and true, were kind enough and generous enough to stay alive so that we continue our dialogue. And I'm so furious at the ones who died on me. I told them, you know what? I'm never going to talk to you again. The sadness is there, but I don't live it, in that I acknowledge it so that I don't get drawn into a whirlpool and pulled down, which I could easily be. I work at my happiness.
Katharina Baron:
What is your practice maybe to work on the happiness? And what advice would you give someone that would love to have just a tiny bit of your confidence? And you, Peter, because you're very confident as well. And you're very aware of who you are and you stay true to yourself. And I think that is something that you both have in common in your work and in your life. But it's so hard for people to cultivate and to develop that uniqueness.
Carmen:
I don’t expect things to stay the same but other people feel just insecure or not successful or feel whatever negative feelings run through them. You have to acknowledge the enemy and keep it close so you know how to handle it and keep it away. You have to be successful daily with little accomplishments not with fear or indecision.
Peter Cohen:
I let go of concerning myself with first impressions, my own or someone else's, because I've met people who I see the first time I meet them and I think they're absolute jerks. And the next time I think they're the nicest people I know. So if I make a bad impression, and I certainly do and can, I never worry about it because I also know I can recover from it another time. I'm not stamped by it. But there will come a time I can change. I do have that confidence in myself. It's funny, a woman I knew, a woman I dated a hundred years ago, her mother once pointed out, she said, "Peter walks like he is important." And I was like 25 at the time and I didn't know. I'd never observed it. And when she said it, I took it as a gift. I thought, okay, well maybe, that's very nice.
Katharina Baron:
I love that. That is really good.
Carmen:
Words are powerful. I know that I've helped certain people away from negative thinking in my life. I understood early how important it was to be strong. I didn’t feel I was. I though I was ugly. The boy I had a crush on, he never looked at me because I was flat chested till I was 16. At Vogue, they didn't mind the way I looked. And I was tall. I was a perfect coat hanger. All these incredible photographers and art directors who helped me feel better.
Katharina Baron:
Yeah, this was so great, Carmen, Peter. Thank you for the time and this beautiful conversation.