Joan Collins and Isabella Rossellini look amazing.
Collins is fresh from the Cannes red carpet, where the night before she had outshone starlets a third — a quarter — her age. At 92, the actress brought a blast of old Hollywood glamour to a festival that, this year especially, has often felt strangely drained of it.
Her sculpted white orchid gown, a custom Stéphane Rolland Haute Couture number with a sweeping train, paired with dramatic black opera gloves, diamond jewelry and similarly encrusted needle-toe pumps, gave off unmistakable Alexis Carrington energy — a reminder of the 1980s, when Collins, as the scheming queen of Dynasty, practically dictated the decade’s fashion vocabulary.
“It was very exciting. I had my glam squad do me up, the hair, the makeup,” she says. “I looked — well, I won’t say how I looked, but you can read what they wrote.”
Sitting opposite me now on the Carlton Beach, Dame Joan is only slightly more casual, wearing a thigh-length patterned summer dress and oversized hexagonal sunglasses the size of tea saucers. Her famous mane is perfectly buffed into place.
