TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER 2019 53
I
t seems like many celebrity deaths ago.
Yet the fumes still linger from the social
media conflagration that followed the
demise in one bad week in February of Karl
Lagerfeld, Lee Radziwill, and Marella Agnelli.
Those who knew them, and those who didn’t,
grabbed their phones to broadcast conspicu-
ous displays of grief. The model Helena Chris-
tensen’s lengthy Lagerfeld screed of sorrow on
Instagram included references to fun shoots
at his mansion in the south of France and a
UFO she thought might have taken him away
to a better world.
“Of course I posted,” she told me at a din-
ner months later. “We were close.”
Of course.In a more discreet era, mourning was
observed with close ones in private. In the
age of oversharing, even grieving has gone
viral, and social media has turned everyone
into a hot-winded eulogist. Death be not
proud, but there’s definitely pride in it—for
the living, anyway. How else to explain all
the posts about Gloria Vanderbilt jeans on
the day the style icon died? These days we
will use the news of any celebrity’s passing
as kindling to throw onto the bonfires of
vanity, to borrow a phrase from Tom Wolfe.
His death last year, of course, ignited its own
conflagration, including one influencer pos-
ing with a copy of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid
Test. As the late Doris Day would haveDeath Be Not Posted
Celebrity deaths have
turned Instagram into
the Wailing Wall.
How to mourn socially,
with dignity.
BY BOB MORRIS
ILLUSTRATION BY JOE DARROWPIPPA’S TENT / VENICE ECCENTRICS / LONDON’S NEW YORK