Fun & Famous

May-Britt’s struggle

What do you do when you run into Isabel Marant in the flesh?

A year or two ago I was in Paris with our lifestyle editor and we had two hours to kill before we would head back to Amsterdam. Obviously we didn’t spend those two hours at McDonalds (my god, the idea alone) but at Le Meurice, one of the prettiest hotels in Paris at which you have the possibility of running into the likes of Kanye West, Alber Elbaz or Grace Coddington. Be warned though, spend one night here and you’ll be ruined for the rest of your life. 

“It’s just the two of us, May-Britt, so if we see someone we think is cool, we’ll just walk up to them.” No sooner said than not done. Because as soon as she went to the bathroom, I turned my head to the left and I spotted Catherine Deneuve. Catherine Deneuve, you know, Yves Saint Laurent’s muse, Marcello Mastroianni’s ex love, the most beautiful woman on the planet as well as stylish. I remembered what we had said to each other two minutes prior but I just couldn’t do it. She was conversing with a younger man, perhaps her son, perhaps discussing a family issue, and who was I to go and interrupt?

Last week I was walking around Santa Gertrudis when a man and woman walked passed me. I turned around because that man, I recognized him. From what though? My brain was having a frenzy. I had met him before, he was French, something with fashion. Bingo. It was Jerôme Dreyfuss. I spent an hour once talking to the dear man so in a normal situation I could have easily let a ‘Bonjour Jerôme’ slip out of my mouth. I could have done it but at the same time I realized that if that was Jerôme Dreyfuss, than the woman beside him was Isabel Marant. And that’s when I needed some CPR.

“Walk on over. Take a photo!” Is what my love said to me. “I’m too afraid to do it”, I sissed back over his way. “Why not?” “I don’t want to come off as a groupie. Too starstruck.” But in the car ride back I couldn’t help but feel bummed out. I mean, how often do you run into Jerôme and Isabel in a deserted little town?

Was I supposed to regret this? I thought about this for a while and realized that the answer was no. A lesson I had learned from a famous face from Dutch TV. He said that usually when he’s walking around the Netherlands, people will leave him alone. But as soon as someone spots him when he’s abroad, they say: “Well this is very coincidental, now I really do have to come up and say something!” Uhh, why exactly? He’s on a holiday. Leave the man alone. This is precisely the moment you should not come up to him. Same story for Jerôme and Isabel. I might be excited to see them, but they might not be. And then? What story does a photo tell if it doesn’t have any value? All you did was put your heads close to one another and someone pressed a button and then seconds later we would all part ways.

Isn’t a photo supposed to be a memory of a nice evening, or a special encounter? Doesn’t the value only come with a story? All a photo would have said was that I had seen them. Nothing more. Or do I need it as proof that I actually did see them? Incase you ever spot a celebrity in the wild on their holiday; leave them alone. Unless their names are Justin or Orlando and they’re walking around in the nude…