Joan Didion Is Céline's Newest Model

DO NOT KNOW WHERE TO PUT MY HANDS. In the most perfect model casting choice in the history of fashion, Céline has tapped Joan Didion for its latest advertising campaign. But is it too on the nose? It’s somewhat conflicting while being totally invigorating, at the very least because Didion’s famously ice-cold stare is at Naomi Campbell levels of “nah, son.”

Céline is, of course, the definition of sophisticated French dressing in 2015, the fashion house that allows Phoebe Philo’s refined brain to run free and popularize unlikely, hypothetically grody items like pool slides covered in fur as the definition of chic. Joan Didion, of course, is the essayist, novelist, screenwriter and icon whose writing everyone emulates while they’re in college, grad school, and often well into their elite writing careers at well appointed magazines. Vogue posits that Philo was inspired by Didion’s wardrobe in her most definitive ’70s years, and that’s certainly true in the case of her oft-imitated Julian Wasser portraits, the ones with the Corvette Stingray (as Vogue notes).

But it’s most certainly not limited to the parallels between 2015 Céline and 1970s Didion. The French fashion house has leaned towards the sharp, seasoned glare of Daria Werbowy in its campaign of late, alluding to the seriousness and pared back nature of its garments. Didion’s economy of words—the way she extricates the most important points by a strict usage of diamond-sharp insights and cold, hard information—echoes the way Philo designs in general, with a lack of nonsense that is almost pained—almost sterile, actually, in its perfection and total commitment to intellectualism. How did this collaboration come about? Will anyone ever be able to follow this advert? Can you imagine them hugging? And if they did, would you just die.