Within the mix of outré personalities that Vogue’s resident street style photographer Phil Oh captures during Paris Couture Week, one of the figures it’s impossible to ignore is the novelist Danielle Steel. Just yesterday, she popped up once again while en route to the Chanel show. Illuminated by that quintessential City of Love sunlight, Steel was spotted beaming and wearing fist-size angular sunglasses (and knuckle-size earrings!) along with a Balenciaga Fall 2019 coat in a bold shade of politician red that featured exaggerated rounded sleeves and an exquisite, languid dip along the waist. Another power detail here? The oversized collar that branched out along Steel’s shoulders like a pair of majestic pelican wings.
The author has been heading to couture shows for years now. For the uninitiated, Steel is the fourth-best-selling fiction author of all time, having sold over 800 million copies. Fun fact: Steel has also been known to write for up to 24 hours a day (yes, a full day!) on a desk that is a gargantuan version of her three novels Star, Heartbeat, and Daddy. Her couture looks have that same boundless energy, too. Some of her standout ensembles include a black-and-white tweed coat paired with a red scarf that she wore to the Chanel spring 2013 couture show, and a royal blue fringe suede coat accessorized with a gold geometric necklace and round tortoiseshell glasses to the Dior’s fall 2015 couture offering. Typically, Steel doesn’t attend the shows alone, either. She’s regularly spotted sitting between her daughters Victoria and Vanessa Traina, the latter being a stylist and brand consultant who regularly works with labels like Khaite and Altuzarra. (Clearly, fashion is something of a family affair.)
While plenty has been written about Steel’s love for couture in the past, the greatest gems exist on her website, where she regularly professes her admiration for the art. As just one example, in 2012, she penned a blog post on Daniellesteel.net that chronicled her experience during Paris Couture Week. (The author notes that she only goes to one couture show per season.) The post is a stellar time capsule of fashion at the beginning of the 2010s; at the time, Raf Simons had just taken over at Dior. In Steel’s words: “At last, two months ago, this spring, a match was made between the house of Dior and their new designer, a man named Raf Simons, who was the designer for Jil Sander. And Mr. Simons, who is a very, very talented designer, given to simple, clean cut designs and sometimes uses great colors, has undertaken a very interesting task,” before adding that “everyone in the fashion world has been anxious to see what Raf Simons would do, starting with his first Haute Couture collection at Dior, which I saw today.” Steel later goes on to describe her experience at the show, which was held on the Avenue d’Iéna in the 16th arrondissement and memorably featured floor-to-ceiling walls of fresh flowers, as well as the guest list, which included several other designers such as Riccardo Tisci, Azzedine Alaïa, and Alber Elbaz. Overall, Steel was an enthusiastic fan of Simons’s debut. “Bravo for Raf Simons, and best of luck for his exciting new adventure designing for the greatly respected house of Christian Dior. It was a hit!!! And a treat just being there!!!” Steel’s candid description of her dreamy day out pays testament to her ability to transport her fans right into the thick of the action—in a way, it feels like the reader is really there too.
