why joan didion remains fashion’s favorite literary it girl

and the evolution of her signature hairstyle through 20 photos.

Ah, Joan Didion.

*cracks knuckles*

Where to even begin? Just invoking her name feels like waving catnip in every feline alleyway of the literary internet. Honestly, if you’re the audience of lit girlies I imagine you to be, I am a bit intimidated by you. You’ve probably read far more of her works than me. You know passages from The White Album by heart, I do not. But for anyone who sits at the cultural intersection of fashion and writing, she is the blueprint. The patron saint. The anti-celebrity celebrity. The face of California cool. Sacramento’s most prized cultural export. Godmother to this genre of sad white woman culture:

(1) I’ve always wondered if Amy Dunne’s name in Gone Girl was an intentional reference to Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne. (2) Lana Del Rey and Joan Didion’s personas are centered around California, Summertime Sadness, Los Angeles, Saying Yes to Heaven.

I am going to admit something extremely uncool, something you are not supposed to confess—

Which is that I have spent more time poring over Joan Didion’s aesthetic (and our cultural treatment of it) than her written works. Sure, I’ve read a few essays. I picked up a copy of Let Me Tell You What I Mean from a used bookstore in the DeVargas Center in Sante Fe. I know that she believes writing to be a hostile act, that she always gravitated towards the specific over the abstract, that she wrote fashion copy before she became the revered, steely-gazed novelist we remember her as. I know the broad strokes.

But. What consumes my thoughts instead, is the way Joan Didion was (and still is) the object of the fashion industry’s utter worship.

She is the epitome of the “intellectual it-girl” brands want to sell clothes to. There is the Celine campaign. You have seen it. Denim brands love to feature her as a #muse on their blogs: if you buy these jeans, you too can write something that changes the culture! Nothing groundbreaking like Blue Nights, but perhaps an essay about choice feminism that get 400 likes on Substack (including one from a Rayne Fisher-Quann)…

In a recent email promoting "70s inspired clothing (a generous description for a denim bustier…), the purveyor of date night dresses for millennials throws in a hand-wavey quote, the one about telling ourselves stories in order to live. Every fashion brand wants to bask in the rays of Didion’s immeasurable cultural capital.

Gillian Orr

’s Substack piece “How to have a Joan Didion Easter party” addresses our obsession with her aesthetic and her stuff. Gillian explains that “Didion, self-consciously or not, repeatedly played up that side of herself; it was and is an important part of her myth and legacy.” While we may roll our eyes at the term, I do think that Joan Didion was very aware of her personal brand. She knew the influence she knew the impact, etc. She indulged her own self-mythologization.

In Gillian’s piece, there is a photo of Joan Didion cooking in the kitchen, wearing pigtails. I zoomed in. I had never seen this photo of her. None of her paperbacks EVER show her with pigtails. I found it amusing. This sent me down a rabbit hole of her hair evolution. Through the task of compiling her photos, I excavated pieces of niche Didion lore—vignettes that gave me a better understanding of who she really was. I read about her Berkeley years, her fashion writing years, her disdain of academic towns (Boston) and pseudo avant-garde men in beards and sandals (same).

It’s not easy to find detailed accounts of this period in her life. But I came across this 80something page paper that fills in those gaps for us—The Education of Joan Didion: The Berkeley and Vogue Years by Elizabeth Rainey. It’s dense but if you’re a superfan, you’ll like it. Here’s the TLDR version:

“Didion’s college years and time in fashion writing—always on the edges of women’s lifestyle and yet inescapably feminine in her writing technique—produced this carefully crafted persona.”

Ok now let’s look at her hairstyles.

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Pigtails + Hair Ribbons

The kitchen photo was truly a jump scare for me because it feels so unrecognizably girlish and expressive than the stern author-ly portraits from later in her life. I am used to seeing her in black and white—unsmiling, piercing gaze. These photos feel domestic.

On the left side she looks at us almost deviously, in a sheer cotton blouse and two pigtails, adorned with baby blue floral print ribbons. The copper pan behind her head forming a Byzantine halo. On the right, we see not just a rare smile but one with teeth. She never shows her teeth. She holds a yellow #2 pencil with a blue rubber easer on the end. It’s playful. I’m taken aback by her red top and floral patterned shawl, the pigtails and matching floral ribbons—it’s so ornamental and vibrant. I guess I always picture her in shades of black and white, but now I am convinced she loved red.

I don’t know why Joan Didion liked pigtails. Was it the 1960s Brigitte Bardot effect?

Another pigtail cameo, with sheer yellow ribbons this time. Joan is wearing matching outfits with her daughter at the beach. A black long sleeve leotard (we know she loved leotards from her famous packing list) and a colorful folksy patchwork skirt. This is very easy to recreate…just wear a Gil Rodriguez bodysuit and thrift the skirt.

Long Bob

Ok, now she looks more like the Joan Didion on the paperbacks.

I am going to assume she was growing out a bob, because that’s what I associate this hair length with. When it sort of bunches around the nape of the neck and does that flippy thing. Compared to the pigtails and ribbons, her look here is very understated. Between the oversize sunglasses and drapey boatneck t-shirt, her tastes were precise and minimal—like her style of writing. Also interesting that she didn’t really wear makeup.

Long Middle-Parted Hair

More Book Cover Looks.

Is it just me, or does the long dress and shawl look exactly like what she was wearing in the pigtail photo with the pencil eraser?? Her hair is relaxed and tousled just-so, with Marcia Brady-esque coloring. Here we can see how she has honed her poses and gaze for the camera. Face gently resting on one hand, elbow to the knee, forlorn and knowing. Hands clasped in prayer with a cigarette, elbows propped up, the slight head tilt. These are all intentional stylistic choices in how she chose to present herself: the detached modernist.

Her Pet Pose: I noticed several photos where she does this pose. A slight variation each time, but always with both hands around her face. I feel like she is often described as frail, and her body language sort of reinforces that perception. This is how I would touch my cheeks if I were checking myself for fever, you know?

Wispy Bob + Bangs

Ok, which do you think came first—Joan’s bob or Anna Wintour’s?? As she got older and her hair more silvery, this was her signature hairstyle. She is smiling more in photos again. Actually, it’s more a smirk. Her clothing choices are tipping towards the Eileen Fisher territory.

The Brown Clip

I saved the best for last. Idk why but this really makes me laugh because she wore it SO MUCH in old age. Why is her love of this brown clip so funny? Maybe because it seems obviously stylistic, rather than practical?? (It’s clipped on one side, doesn’t seem to doing THAT much work to keep hair out of her face). Maybe it’s endearing in the way that we find the harmless habits of the elderly endearing. Maybe because it looks like a small antenna, and combined with her love of giant glasses, makes her resemble an insect.

What aspect of Joan Didion’s aesthetic have you obsessed over?

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xoxo

viv