So This Is What Our Roaring ’20s Will Look Like
There’s been a lot of talk of the roaring 2020s—an idea of reemerging into a bacchanalian post-COVID world a century after debutantes danced the Charleston. But nobody could quite put a finger on what an updated version of flappers and Deco and all that jazz would look like, how the opulence would work on a TikTok scale, until those images emerged this week of Beyoncé and Jay-Z. In the latest Tiffany & Co. campaign, the couple are a picture of modern decadence, positioned in front of an extremely rare Basquiat while tickling a grand piano (as you do). Jay wears a tux; Ms. Knowles wears the diamond from Cal’s coat pocket on the Titanic. It isn’t accessible, it isn’t relatable, it verges on gauche—and with it we officially have a solid reference point for the new roaring ’20s. It smells like something you can’t afford; it reeks, frankly, of cash.
I know what you’re thinking: This might not be the time for pure extravagance. We’re still at war with COVID, the climate has irrecoverably changed—we should not be spending, we should be cautious. But caution, be damned. We don’t need savings and investments; we don’t need value for money; we certainly don’t need a bloody pyramid of milk crates. After being so careful, I’m making the case for nights of transient, gaudy, strobing fun. A life measured in lockdown hours has felt incredibly long, and I’m lusting for a life’s-too-short energy.
I want a dress I need help getting zipped into, with a neckline to the navel and a slit up to the crotch, as I nurse a drink I cannot easily mix myself. I want fiddly cuff links. I want basques (are basques cool?) and heels and wrist cuffs like a warrior princess. I want shoulder pads and a power lunch. I want an absolute ban on low-key minimalism. (Phoebe Philo can do away with our vulgar party pieces in the fall.) I want maximal. I want Belle’s dress when she dances with the Beast in the enchanted castle.
It goes without saying that I simply do not want cheap eats. I’ve had 18 months of cheap eats. I think about the hours I’ve clocked softening onions and I could scream. I want to outsource all meal prep; for another party to manage the sauté, the flambé, the brûlée. I want lobster and Champagne and that Instagram potato with the caviar in Paris. I’m happy with a vegan option, but for God’s sake, truffle my hummus. I want the threat of gout or I’m staying home.
Above all, I’m not interested in interior lives: Give me real celebrity. Hollywood starlet celebrity. Absurdly rich and eccentric and buying up vineyards in the South of France while they smoke cigars celebrity. Private jet to private yacht to private island celebrity. I want (more) billionaires blasting phallic rockets into space. I want Daddy Warbucks.
Take all my expendable cash and half my rent and the money I’ve saved to put my kids through college; I want a night out to end all nights out. Let me wince as I put my card down; let me wince in the Uber because my shoes are agony. Some nights are poetry, carefully layered calibrations of onomatopoeia; but this week, at least, I want the guttural scream of the roaring ’20s.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
