My bellybutton is not the center of my world

August 15, 2016 6:06 PM

In the ’70s, she motorcycled around the world. Today, she’s fashion’s unlikely new muse. Meet Chloé’s freewheeling inspiration, Anne-France Dautheville. [NYT]

Dautheville’s position as the first of anything is still one she finds humor in. In many of the countries she traveled, “They didn’t see too many girls alone on a motorcycle. I was color TV for them.” Her stories flow freely: her engine breaking down 350 kilometers from Bombay after a faulty fix-up in Japan, slowing her round-the-world trip by three weeks; being given 40/60 odds of surviving a snowfall in Turkey. A freelance journalist, Dautheville both documented and paid for her travels by writing articles, which were subsequently spun into books. Many revolved around the novelty of her gender, such as “Girl on a Motorcycle” (1973) and “And I Followed the Wind” (1975). Still traveling at the time, she was unaware that her memoirs were causing a sensation back in Paris.

Additional photos/info from Vogue.

posted by hilaryjade (3 comments total)

Even in an industry constantly ­searching for untapped sources of inspiration, the now-72-year-old Dautheville is an unlikely muse for a fashion collection. Today she lives in a tiny village, La Ferté­-sous-Jouarre, one hour ­east of Paris, where she was raised in the aftermath of World War II. She writes on gardening. Her hair is steel gray and her clothes are simple: Fashion isn’t, she says, in a richly­ accented French, part of her world: “I live in the countryside. Luxury is not my way of life. Even if I were rich I don’t think I would live in luxury.”

I like her. Chloe I can live without.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:59 PM on August 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

I know that fashion is always consuming and re-purposing for elite consumption without much regard to the original referent.

But it just feels so hollow.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:00 PM on August 15, 2016 [5 favorites]

I think I'd like to read her books.... but there was a quote in the article that I found off-putting:

That some may interpret Dautheville’s freewheeling wanderlust as feminist is limiting in her eyes. “I’m not an ism,” she says.

It makes me sad to think someone would find the label of "feminist" limiting, or that it would diminish the scope of what she did.
posted by hilaryjade at 5:28 PM on August 16, 2016