Why Oscar de la Renta was an F***ing genius

This morning the world woke up to the sad news that 82-year-old Oscar de la Renta had passed away. Now many people may or may not register his passing, some may throw out an RIP or two on social media. Life goes on. 

I cried when I found out.
The world has lost a genius.

Oscar (and no, I did not know him personally but I have admired and loved his designs most of my life so I feel I can call him by his first name) was a marketing genius as well as an awesome fashion designer.

He understood women and that was his genius.

He made women look and feel beautiful and that also was his genius.

For decades, he [always] gave women what they needed to be beautiful – he designed fairy tale princess gowns that swept the floor in vivid red or gold and crafted in lace, silk, velvet, satin and chiffon, feathers and sequins. And his little black cocktail dresses!  All those ruffles and silk, and always so feminine and floaty.

He dressed Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Reagan, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Audrey Hepburn, Cameron Diaz, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz and Sandra Bullock, to name just a few of his massive fan base.

Oscar was immortalised during Miranda Priestley’s (Devil Wears Prada) speech on the cerulean blue jumper and also when Carrie (Sex In the City) wears an Oscar de la Renta dress to the Metropolitan Opening. Of course, Sarah Jessica Parker is one of Oscar’s biggest fans both on and off screen and the black and white gown with his name splashed across the back is a testament of her love for the designer.

Just last month, Amal Alamuddin, Clooney’s bride wore an amazingly beautiful Oscar de la Renta wedding gown. It was one of his best ever wedding gowns, although sadly his last.

Oscar got women. Genius!

3 Things I Discovered About Myself In 2013

1. I can love another child 

I thought and believed that I did not have the capacity to love another child like I love my boys – that unconditional, overwhelming love that can never be broken – that is, until Zak came along.

Zak was born on April 16th, 2013 and his birth automatically elevated my status to that of grandmother. I am still, 8 months later, slightly uncomfortable with the term and I know that I will have to deal with it as soon as he starts talking.

I watched Zak being born and then I held him a few minutes after he was born and in that short space of time, my heart expanded and made room for him; he now owns a huge part of my heart, just like my boys.

Being a grandmother is not what I expected at all, it is so much more ....mainly because neither Zak nor I have any expectations of each other; as grandmother and grandson our mission is to simply love each other; this makes our relationship relaxed and calm, with lots of cuddles, kisses and tickles.
My first 8 months as a grandmother have been an amazing and delightful experience. I am looking froward to lots more.

2. Losing the man that I loved all my life did not make me a stronger person  

but it did make me more appreciative of the now and being in the present. My father passed away on the 25th October, 2013 after a short battle with kidney cancer.

During the 3 months before his death, we spoke on the phone daily. When he was diagnosed in June, 2013 we talked about the options he had, either to have his kidney removed and accept the complications that were likely to follow or forgo the surgery and take pain killers.

My father, who was 80 years old, belonged to the generation that believed in suffering in silence and did not make a fuss about pain. He also did not believe in taking medicine, the strongest meds he was likely to take were aspirin.

Hope… Our Reset Button!

Hope, the word and the emotion, is such an inherent part of our way of thinking and being that we rarely notice how much of our behaviour and actions are based on it. Just for fun, record how many times in one day, you have hoped, were hopeful, lived in hope, and used the word hope in your thoughts and in conversation.

On opening our eyes in the morning, our first lucid thought is about hope: ‘hope it’s going to be a great day’; hope it won’t rain’; hope there is not too much traffic on the way to work’; and hope continues to show up throughout the day: It permeates and transcends all aspects of our life…..from hoping for a better life, to getting better, to hoping for the one, more money, better job, new car, and on and on.

This is because hope is intrinsic to our basic survival instinct and is fundamental to surviving anything. We don’t have to learn to have hope or to be hopeful; we just know how to hope, instinctively. When all else fails, there is always hope.

As humans we do hope very well.

Hope fulfils our need for instant gratification. When we feel down, some small incident, random thought or word, gives us hope that things may turn around, and in a split second our mood lifts and we are able to look forward with hope and make plans that hopefully things will work out.

In business, hope is a natural sales and marketing tool. Let’s face it, when we are pitching our products and services to potential clients, we are for all intents and purposes selling hope. People want and will buy hope. They may not necessarily want solutions – but rather they buy into the hope that something can be done to solve their problems/issues/pain. Consider the first time Obama was elected US president; the campaign that won him the US presidency, was based on “Hope and Change “.

Yes, hope sells.

Why do we jump head first into business deals relationships, partnerships, friendships that we know are illogical or improbable?

Well, when someone sells us hope or gives us hope, no matter how illogical or improbable the end result is or that we may end up getting hurt or losing lots of money, most of us will jump, eyes wide open, on to that band wagon.

We don’t question hope, we just do.

Hope also relives us of accountability, while giving us the illusion that we are in control of a situation. It provides us a way out when things don’t work out as we hoped that they would.  More often than not, we place the onus, on the person or thing, we have pinned our hopes on.

The thing about hope is that it gives birth to other emotions like trust and faith, two very close cousins of hope. For example, we put our trust in someone or something, hoping for the best, and we have faith that things will hopefully work out.

Hope is a fundamental and necessary gateway to our other emotions:

Trust: the sum of Hope + Desire/Need. We trust in something or someone when we are hoping they/it will give us what we desire/need.

Certainty: hope on steroids;                                                  

Prayer: a litany of hope;

Inspiration: Hope + Creativity compel us to change our circumstances and ourselves;

Hope is a pure and a very powerful emotion, one that we create effortlessly; yet paradoxically it can also be toxic when hope is false or unrealistic. Devoid of hope, we open the floodgates to despair, helplessness and anguish.

As a mechanism that allows us to replace fear and anguish with courage and determination. Hope also allows us to reset our expectations and face our tomorrows with a degree of optimism, regardless of how grim and terrible our circumstances are today.

Luciana Cousin- July 2013