Get the Look: Dame Marjorie 'Maude' Chardin From 'Harold and Maude'
/by Eve Vawter
Image via Paramount/YouTube
1971's Hal Ashby movie Harold and Maude had a profound effect on me when I saw it as a child. I think I was about seven or so when my mother had me sit down with her and watch it one afternoon. I remember being super freaked out by the faux-suicide scenes and pretty disturbed by the sexual relationship between the 22-year-old Bud Court and the 75-year-old Ruth Gordon, but that was just in my prepubescent reptilian brain and before I realized that a senior citizen dating a twenty-year-old is totally normal.
I mean, just ask Ron Wood. Now that I'm a decrepit old shrew myself I can remember how much I adored this damn movie, and its cloyingly sweet soundtrack by Cat Stevens.
Image via IMDB/Paramount
79-year-old Maude Chardin was the original manic pixie dream girl. Here's how you can get her look.
What could be better for funeral crashing and car stealing than a pre-owned vintage Valentino tweed coat from the 1970s? I choose vintage Chanel sunflower earrings for Maude because she explains in the film that she would like to be a sunflower, because they are so simple and strong. Harold replies that he would like to be a daisy, because they are all alike. Maude has to school Harold on this, because he is younger and dumber than she is, by saying: "Some are smaller, some are fatter, some grow to the left, some to the right, some even have lost some petals - all kinds of observable differences."
Duh. That's what you get for dating a millennial, Maude.
Read more: Get The Look: Lady Elaine Fairchilde From Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
Image via Paramount/YouTube
Was wearing a kimono and a traditional hair ornament while smoking a hookah and drinking tea cultural appropriation from Maude? I think not, because she was partaking in these activities inside of her own home with a deep appreciation of the cultures, not while parachuting molly at Coachella. Get this look:
Images: Kimono via 1StDibs, Spring Bloom Pearl Comb via RentTheRunway, Turkish waster Pipe via Yurdan, Midcentury tea set via Chairish
I love everything about Maude. Her enthusiasm for life, her enthusiasm for death, her badass anarchic attitude, and her fashion sense. I say every woman should adapt her habits when she reaches a certain age. Steal cars! Steal trees! Eat Twizzlers at a funeral! Play a banjo! Date a dude 60 years younger than you! But above all, remember to live:
"A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They're just backing away from life. *Reach* out. Take a *chance*. Get *hurt* even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room."
Thank you Maude, for being not only a style icon, but a total "live your best life" icon as well.