A red carpet? No. Gala outfits? Neither. On October 14, it was with all simplicity, and without the slightest fuss, that Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix, two star actors, a couple in the city, presented the documentary The Smell at the Laemmle Monica Film Center in Los Angeles. of Money. The work in question, produced by Rooney’s sister Mara, reveals the unsavory underbelly of the pork industry in North Carolina.
For the occasion, the two actors had not pulled out all the stops, showing up in clothes which had obviously not given rise to any stylistic intervention, to any profitable product placement or even, obviously, to any trip to the dry cleaners. . At a time when the outfits of celebrities are all the subject of great care, and very often haggling between brands and agents, let’s measure the scope of the gesture: certain stars are not, totally, all the time, at sell.
How can we not note the pair of shoes worn by Joaquin Phoenix? On his feet, low black Converse All Stars so faded by time and the sun that they appear gray. Which is reminiscent of one of the most famous pairs of sneakers in history. For a time, Kurt Cobain actually wore low black and gray All Star shoes, famously decorated with the word “endorsement” (“approval”) on the front of the shoe. The Nirvana singer thus denounced the marketing technique of the same name, consisting of making a celebrity wear clothing to promote it… Well, well.
That evening, both actors were dressed entirely in black, but sported white socks. Serious lack of taste? It’s more complicated. If the wearing of white sports socks is the subject of a powerful and lasting stigmatization here, elsewhere it is part of a real tradition. This garment has in fact crossed many subcultures (punk, mods, teddys, etc.) since Gene Kelly decided one day, in the 1950s, to make it his favorite accessory. A clever trap to attract the spectators’ attention to his footwork…
On Rooney Mara’s back, an MA-1 bomber, a nylon jacket introduced by the American army in the 1950s and regularly worn by pilots since. In this case, Rooney’s is not midnight blue like the original model, but black. It is also lined, without a shadow of a doubt, with its iconic orange quilted fabric. Why orange? Because at the time it was determined that it was the most effective color to facilitate the location of the victim of a plane crash.