NEW YORK, NY.- What does ambition look like at 90? How do you explain the drive that makes people like Giorgio Armani, fully in command of his global design empire as he approaches his 10th decade, tick? When artist Betye Saar wakes every day, she sets to work on creating the assemblages that are widely exhibited and avidly sought by collectors and major museums artworks with origins she traces to her girlhood in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Why bother? Wasnt retirement supposed to be the goal of a contented old age? Didnt the plan call for taking up needlepoint or golf? The old, as it happens, represent a rapidly growing global population: The proportion of those 65 and above is increasing at a faster rate than those below that age, according to World Population Prospects, a United Nations study. Between 2022, when the report was issued, and 2050, the global population of those over 65 is expected to rise to 16% from 10%. People are already working longer, and, as they do, it would appear that a road map is needed, a means of understanding what keeps people like Martha Stewart not only undiminished by age but actively in the game.
Over the past months, we asked what makes people like Stewart so seemingly unstoppable. Is there an explanation for why, besides prosperity and good health, some people are driven to chase their dreams long past the age when recent history suggests we were meant to be kicking back in our rocking chairs?
The Unstoppables is a series about people whose ambition is undimmed by time. All interviews have been edited and condensed.
Martha Stewart, 82, Has Never-Ending Curiosity (And a Few Regrets).
This year I made time to grow the best vegetables, monster vegetables, that Ive ever grown in my life. My houses are never done. And Im writing my autobiography. Thats the scariest project for me because I dont really like everything about myself where Ive been, what Ive done.
I get up at 6:30 every morning. My housekeeper comes at 7, and I cant be in bed when she arrives. That would be very embarrassing. Im a bad sleeper, in any case. At times Id rather watch a documentary. Other times, I might be anxious, not for me but for my grandchildren. If I wake in the night, I read the headlines to make sure were not being bombed.
Maybe a little uncertainty can help fuel ambition. When I left my job on Wall Street, I knew I had to create a career for myself. I became a caterer, catering parties every night. Still I thought, Will there come a time when my granddaughter shes 12 is asked, What did grandma do? And all she can say is Oh, she made parties for people. I thought, I have to do something more than this. That was in the 1980s, when I wrote my first book, the one on entertaining.
At that time I wasnt keeping my eye on the home, even though I was known as a homemaker. It wasnt enough for a marriage. Maybe I regret not having had more children. Maybe I regret that my marriage ended abruptly. Wed been together 27 years. That used to be considered a long time, so when a long marriage ended, it was like somebody died. Maybe I would have liked getting married again. I didnt, but I dont mind. Still, Im curious about what could have been.
My never-ending curiosity drives me. Will it stop? Thats never even occurred to me.
Current and upcoming projects: Autobiography in progress; an untitled Martha Stewart documentary from R.J. Cutler, who directed The September Issue, to stream on Netflix in 2024; a PBS documentary series, Hope In the Water, set for broadcast in 2024; a partnership with Samsung for a 2023-24 advertising campaign; a line of gardening clothes and accessories in collaboration with French Dressing Jeans and Marquee Brands.
RUTH LA FERLA
Betye Saar, 97, Is Making Some of the Best Work of Her Life.
Being raised during the Depression, we all learned to be creative with what we had on hand. At Christmas or on my birthday, I always got art supplies, and I was jealous that my siblings got bikes and stuff. I realize now that my parents were fostering my creativity.
An early influence on my becoming an artist was Simon Rodia. My grandmother lived in Watts, and we would walk by the Watts Towers when they were being built. I was fascinated by how he used bottle caps and corn cobs and broken plates trash, essentially to make art, to make something beautiful. Then, much later, in the 1960s, I saw the work of Joseph Cornell. He refined the use of found objects and materials and boxes, and I thought, Wow, Ive kind of been doing that, too. I didnt know it was called assemblage, but it made sense to me and set me in that direction as an artist.
The main challenge, I guess, to being an artist is how to make a living. But being a creative person means you have to find ways to do this. I studied design at UCLA, and after I graduated, I made greeting cards; I made jewelry; I got into printmaking and then sold my prints. I taught art classes in colleges all over the states. My creativity kept evolving with my needs as I got married and bought a house, had my daughters and put them through college. Through it all, I loved making art. It kept me going.
I still want to make art. Sometimes in the morning when I wake up, its hard to get out of bed, hard to get back into my body and get it to move. But I do it. Not everyone has a reason to get out of bed, something they love to do and that gives their life meaning. I am so lucky that I have that as part of my life. I dont really think about my age, unless someone mentions it, though I guess I feel middle-aged which for me is, like, 50 to 70. It would be kind of neat to live to 100, to have 100 revolutions around the sun. Im pretty close.
Current and upcoming projects: Completed Drifting Toward Twilight, an installation at the Huntington Library in New York City; Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight at the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne, Switzerland; and completed a newly commissioned artwork for Paraventi; Folding Screens from the 17th to the 21st Century at the Fondazione Prada in Milan.
GUY TREBAY
Joan Collins, 90, Refuses to Be Defined by Age
I love writing; I love acting, going onstage and doing my little one-woman show; and I refuse to be defined by a number, by an age. I think thats terribly old-fashioned and not relevant in todays world.
But you have to be resilient in this business. Rejection is a part of it. I look with dismay at so many of my fellow actors, fallen by the way because of drink and drugs. My father he was a theatrical agent instilled in me that I should develop skin like a rhinoceros and be like a marshmallow on the inside.
You also need patience. This business is a waiting game. For example, a script was written for me about the Duchess of Windsor [Wallis Simpson]. Ive been wanting to do it since the 1980s. We got a green light only a month ago. Years ago I thought it would be wonderful to do a picture about growing up with my sister, Jackie. It just hasnt come off.
It would be set when we were children, during the Blitz. At the time I didnt feel fear. I didnt know about the bombings. We would pick up shrapnel in the streets, and in the evening I would put it in my cigar box. We would draw silly pictures of Hitler. We were evacuated 10 or 12 times. We would be in the tube stations, and people would be playing their harmonicas and singing.
A question Im often asked is, Why are you still working? Its such a fatuous thing to say. I keep on working because I love being busy. Its tiring when I do my one-woman show, going to a new hotel every night. But its rewarding. The audience is so responsive. That buoys me.
Current and upcoming projects: Behind the Shoulder Pads, Tales I Tell My Friends, a memoir; Joan Collins Unscripted, a British theatrical tour.
RUTH LA FERLA
Giorgio Armani, 89, Doesnt Think Much About Age
For those of us who grew up in the shadow of war, ambition was something natural, a vital drive. It was not so much a desire for fame and notoriety but rather an urge for personal fulfillment, a way to assert oneself outside the hardship and to overcome it. My mother and father taught me the value of commitment and hard work to get things done. It is a lesson that has never left me.
It took me some time to find my way. First, I studied medicine, then came La Rinascente [an Italian department store, where Armani worked in display] and Cerruti fashion, in other words. That was the moment when I found my ambition, when I discovered the power of clothes not only to change the way you look but, more profoundly, to influence the way you are and behave.
I think the challenges or problems and the rewards of staying in the game go hand in hand if you do this work for as long as I have and if you remain present. The main pressure is staying relevant without giving in to the pressures of the moment, which often feel very urgent but are forgettable in the long run.
In truth, I dont think about age much. In my head, I am the same age I was when I started Giorgio Armani. Situations and people change, but the challenges and problems are all the same in the end. My way of tackling them hasnt changed with great determination. Audiences evolve, however, and this cannot be underestimated. Stylistic coherence, therefore, must be elastic. Otherwise one becomes rigid. The ultimate gratification is to become a classic outside of and above fashion and to be identified with a style.
Current and upcoming projects: Designed 14 mens, womens and haute couture collections in 2023.
GUY TREBAY
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.