There’s never a bad time to appreciate the celebrities who (against all odds) seem to be having a little fun in their lives. So in our new column, Love That for Her, we’ll be celebrating the women absolutely nailing life right now—may their joie de vivre inspire us all.
Cher, Cher, Cher. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. In your first flush of fame, as the singer and style icon who swanned through the 1960s and ’70s with your swishy waist-length tresses and glitzy Bob Mackie gowns? Cher-mazing. As the star of stage and screen who has won best actress awards at the Oscars and Cannes? Some serious Cher-chievements. As a committed political voice who has thrown her weight behind causes from fighting the AIDS crisis to LGBTQ+ rights? Cher-ing is caring. And as a latter-day Twitter oracle, pontificating on the status of her career or urging her followers to “sit on their own damn face?” The Cher-nanigans!
Okay, enough with the horrible puns. For while everyone knows that Cher is the master of reinvention—there’s that famous quote that after a nuclear holocaust, all that will survive is Cher and cockroaches—in recent months, she’s been something having a fashion renaissance. (When she outed herself as a fan of the up-and-coming London shoe designer Ancuta Sarca in 2020, perhaps we should have taken closer notice.)
First, she partnered with Donatella Versace on a pride campaign for the Italian label—in what may be the campest collaboration in fashion history—debuting a line of tees and baseball caps studded with rainbow-colored crystals in the form of the brand’s famous Medusa logo, emblazoned with (what else?) “Chersace.” Then, she took Paris Fashion Week by storm, closing the show at Balmain arm-in-arm with Olivier Rousteing, before starring in the campaign for the house’s Blaze bag earlier this week. So too did she make an appearance at the Rick Owens show rocking one of the season’s biggest trends by wearing a plaid skirt over matching trousers; and, somewhat inexplicably, a Royal Ascot–ready embellished fedora.
Some of Cher’s fans were checking in on her via Twitter over the weekend, just to make sure that she wasn’t taken advantage of by her younger paramour—even if the idea of Cher being taken advantage of seems, well, a little absurd. This is the woman who has dated Hollywood icons from Warren Beatty to Tom Cruise to Val Kilmer; the woman who once described men as luxuries, not necessities. When probed on the latter by the interviewer Jane Pauley, she replied: “I love men. I think men are the coolest. But you don’t really need them to live. My mom said to me, ‘You know sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.’ And I said, ‘Mom—I am a rich man.’”
To those expressing their concern, Cher’s response was simple. “As we all know…I WASN’T BORN YESTERDAY,” she wrote. “What I know for sure, there are no guarantees. Anytime you make a choice, you take a chance. I’ve always taken chances…it’s who I am.” Acknowledging the fact that “haters are gonna hate,” she also made it clear that Edwards had met her family, and that the relationship had their blessing. Who are we to argue with that? Or, as Cher herself best put it: “Love doesn’t know math, it sees,” accompanied by two heart emojis. Cher if you agree.