Right Now, We Only Wanna Hear From Legends
We all exist online, where talk is cheap and yap is plentiful. With true wisdom in short supply, weighty words are worth gold.
Hence why we're all looking to legends to lead us.
Andre 3000, Pamela Anderson, and Dries Van Noten covered Highsnobiety Magazine's Spring 2024 issue; household names anchor every other contemporary fashion shoot; a short clip of Alexander McQueen circulated in response to his eponymous brand's most recent collection.
I'd even say that this phenomenon is at least partially why the word "iconic" is so cheaply tossed around: in today's attention economy, nothing's more powerful than a true legend.
And when I say true legend, I don't mean influencers. I don't mean TikTok upstarts. I don't mean one-off casting gimmicks. I don't mean 15-minute-havers firing off a viral tweet.
At the risk of going full Abe Simpson, I'd even suggest that there simply aren't any new legends in the same way that there are no more "event" TV shows or new movie stars. They just don't make 'em like they used to. And thus only the household names, the big dogs, can trly cut through the noise.
But it's also more than that. It's that culture is so heavily stratified across instantaneous, internationally connected platforms, with too much news, too many songs, movies, TV shows, books, articles, and opinions for anything to truly make an impact.
Anything, that is, except for some time-tested honest-to-god profundity. Legends, people, legends!
It's why, when Pam Anderson talks about going makeup-free, the story instantly explodes across the internet.
It's why Marc Jacobs so cannily casts true icons in campaigns for his eponymous mainline brand and Heaven, his youthful sub-label. that one Heaven collection only went viral because, well: scroll, scroll, scoll — "Oh shit! That's Michael Imperioli!"
It's why Donna Karan was relaunched not on the strength of Karan's good name but that of over a half-dozen hugely famous supermodels, including Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Karlie Kloss. It's why Fear of God's collections are preluded with co-signs from ultra-famous men like Oscar Isaac, Pusha T, and Jared Leto.
It's why people sincerely want to hear what Miuccia Prada has to say.
In response to Mrs. Prada's February 2024 cover story, writer Amy Odell asked: "How often are you curious enough about cover stars to want to read the stories about them?"
The omnipresence of legends also comes down to young people being starved for credibility and answers in an era where authenticity is scarce. They want to hear from the Jean Paul Gaultiers and the Donatella Versaces because they've actually been there and done that.
And, yes, neophytes have sought counsel from elders since time immemorial.
But this has become especially salient today because, for one, these people made an indelible, unmimicable, mark on pre-internet culture.
That's a high-water mark no one else can now achieve — these people notched fame in a time when the world wasn't in the palm of everyone's hand. They achieved the rarest kind of success: organic.
Now, everyone's a celebrity and no one's a celebrity. Except the legends.
