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In all her long, loved, Oscar-bedecked career, Sophia Loren only ever had one incident you could remotely describe as a fashion faux pas. It was in 1957, at a London premiere of her movie The Key, attended by Queen Elizabeth. With one eyebrow arched, Loren recounts the story: “I was young, and I had wanted to see the effect of wearing a tiara. Unfortunately they told me too late that if the Queen is there, you cannot wear a tiara: She is the only one who can wear a crown. It had no effect on the Queen, of course, because she is very smart. But it made publicity, which is what the producer of the film wanted. It was a game.”
Sophia Loren, 83, is no slouch. On Wednesday she was in the U.S. finishing a small tour of An Evening With Sophia Loren Q&A events and visiting her family in Los Angeles. Yesterday she was in Mexico City to catch up with Carlos Slim—“We are great friends; we first met in Switzerland”—and attend the Dolce Gabbana Alta Moda show at Slim’s Museo Soumaya. And today she is booked on a flight back to Italy.
During a brief conversation with Vogue, Loren says of the show ahead: “I’m looking forward to seeing it. Every time it is something new and beautiful: bello, bello, bello.” Loren retains a detached interest in fashion, but as her autobiography Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life recounts, it was once especially important to her: She was forever asking herself “E mo’cosa mi metto?”
She says: “I think that these are the kind of things you ask yourself at the beginning of your career—what am I going to wear?—because you want to appear. But after a while you know more or less how you want to look. So I don’t think about it anymore: I am what I am, so whether you accept me or not, it is too late to change.” What is most important to her, she says: “are my children and my family—human beings that I adore.” Cooking, she adds, remains therapeutic. “For Neapolitan people, it is. Between the pasta and the tears, we reach the emotion we want to reach.”
Showtime approaches: It’s time to go. Loren adds one more observation: “When I go over the things that I have done, I never expected that I would go so far. But I feel sure of what I’ve done and I think that I deserve it.”