French street style photographer Garance Doré is in Cannes covering the film festival. When Doré goes to fashion shows, she typically gets some of the best access of anyone there. But apparently Cannes is a bit of an equalizer. She writes on her blog in an impactful post titled "Cannes... La Star" that covering the stars there is so intense and challenging, it's annoying:
Marion Cotillard is the biggest celebrity that I’ve seen in Cannes.
And I’m telling you. I saw a crazy number of celebrities. Bruce, Ewan, Alec, Robert, Sean… I saw them all. Even Jackie Chan ! Seriously, you can’t get more famous than Jackie Chan.
I am saying she’s the biggest celebrity, but it’s not exactly that. What I mean is, she was the star.
She walks around with twenty people at the minimum. It creates a sort of cloud around Marion, like an invincible cloud of PRs, of assistants and of bodyguards that cut through the crowds and protect Marion.
Then she decides to go grace a party with her presence for 20 minutes, not much longer. She has to leave real fast to change outfits and go grace another party. Photographers go hysterical, crowd yells her name, she dashes to her mini-van (20 people, it takes a lot of room!) and she disappears.
Her timing is extra planned. Media from all over the world are in Cannes. Cinema reviews, fashion magazines, newspapers. Everybody wants an exclusive moment with Marion. Everything is extra organized, sponsored and planned months ahead. So very few will have that exclusive moment with Marion, but everybody still tries. Oh the tension. Those who succeed find themselves having to face things like:
“Ok, you have two minutes with Marion!”
Well truthfully anyone in the trenches of entertainment reporting has to deal with a star who moves around by minivan at one point or other. Here's my Garance-inspired tale of... Beyoncé... La Star.
Beyoncé is the biggest celebrity that I have seen at Fashion Week.
And I saw an insane number of celebrities. Lindsay Lohan. Taylor Swift. Dakota Fanning. Miss Teen USA. Ashley Greene. I mean, who is more famous than Ashley Greene? She's in TWILIGHT, for goodness sake.
Beyoncé. Beyoncé is the biggest celebrity. But there's more. So much more. It's not just that she's famous. She's... a star. The Star. Glitter in the embodiment of a human being. A sequin when she's not wearing sequins. The sun when it's midnight.
She walks around with someone on each arm at all times. You wonder, sometimes, if it's that she can't walk because she has a foot injury. But no — it's the only way she can navigate the sea of people moving around her, trying to talk to her, trying to bask in her Light. It looks from afar as though she has a walker, but no, that's not it — she's just the most-loved human being in the room. And with that much love from a crowd that large, comes locomotive slowness.
Once she makes it to her van, which is really a bus-minivan hybrid so grand and present is it, she must change clothes before going to the next fashion show.
Always moving.
Always changing dresses (but not always changing shoes).
And I want to talk to her, but I can't! People are asking her about the baby, and she is smiling and nodding and avoiding answering any questions, yet the best I can do is stand kind of next to her and compare my height to her height — for what is the point in asking a question she will not answer? I am taller physically, but that is not what matters here.
I hate that I love her, that I am so interested in permeating her sphere, that I can't even have two minutes with her.
Into her busvan she goes. Off into society, normalcy, I will try to transport myself.
