actual accent is shit, but she says the
words perfectly: ‘Tr-ay bee-ehn.’” We
talk about L.A.’s vortex-y vibe and how
“people are drawn to it and then disap-
pointed by it.” We pass her first girl-
friend’s house and as we’re climbing up
the street, Stewart shudders.
Stewart is not afraid to crash or explode,
as Yuknavitch puts it. “If something blew
up in the process, she’d find the most
interesting shards that were left, and
she’d pick them up and keep going. She
is a person who is able to reinvent herself,
every single day. I kind of strive for that in
my own life. When I met her, I was like,
Oh my god, there it is in motion. There
it is in a person.”
I know what Yuknavitch is talking
about. While hanging out with Stewart
at the reservoir, if lulls would waylay our
conversation, I almost felt—not that I was
disappointing her, but that I had forgot-
ten to add money to the meter. That I
had been negligent. A general ineffec-
tualness would settle and I would look
around, hoping a dog might soon pass
by and visit our bench. “In working with
her and talking to her,” says Yuknavitch,
“there’ll be these moments of fire and
energy, and pulse, and when that’s not
happening, well then what’s the point?”
S
tewart is burning purpose,
presented casually. Even the
way she dresses, synthesizing
her California roots with a gift
for slacker handsomeness, is both deter-
mined and unconcerned. Stewart avoids
corny suiting; she has mastered the tux-
edo without a shirt. She wears shades and
cropped T-shirts to LAX, stilettos with
Mugler for a Tonight Show appearance,
loafers and black latex pants on the red
carpet at Cannes. When we meet, she’s
wearing blue ripped Levi’s, black Chuck
Taylors, a holey HUF T-shirt, and a silver
chain-link necklace. Her baseball cap is
white; she wears it backward.
All of which illustrates how Stewart
has the sartorial potential of someone
who could show up to a premiere, ditch
her heels, and go barefoot (which she
has). As an ambassador for Chanel, her
catalog of looks adds an unlikely com-
petence to its luxury. She makes silver
lamé look low-pressure and recasts
Chanel’s restraint by pairing a pale
pink gown with a shaved head. Stew-
art arrived to this year’s Met Gala in
white sequined Chanel trousers, a black
top, and orange ombré hair, bringing
to mind Katharine Hepburn had she
collided in some faraway star system
with David Bowie.
“With Chanel, I’ve never been made
to feel like I was telling a story that wasn’t
being pulled out of me in a really hon-
est way.” Of her relationship with Karl
Lagerfeld, who passed away last Febru-
ary, Stewart speaks tenderly. “It’s funny
how he presents—so austere and so scary.
He wasn’t though,” she says. “He was
incredibly inviting—insanely, shock-
ingly unpretentious. He liked what he
liked because he liked it. He was a fancy
motherfucker, but it was true to him. It’s
almost like he sensed he was intimidat-
ing, so he was like, ‘No. To have a creative
heart is daunting, but let’s get it beating
faster and harder.’ He was always touch-
ing you while speaking to you. He never
talked at you—if he was talking to you, he
was usually holding your hand,” she says.
“Luckily he knew how to leave a trace.
There’s just a feeling that he gave me, an
encouraging attaboy thing that shapes
you in really profound ways.”
Stewart isn’t a strong swimmer. “I
don’t want to enter the water, ever,” she
says. “If everyone’s going in the ocean,
I’m like, No.” She pulls her hands up to her
chest and folds them like paws. “When
I’m in the water, I doggy-paddle.” I’d
asked Yuknavitch, whose life as a swim-
mer is fundamental to her memoir and its
metaphors, if she and Stewart ever plan
to swim together. “We came very close,”
Yuknavitch told me. “It’s a little scary for
Kristen, but when she talks to me about
it, she gets that great
look in her eyes. So
we sort of have this
lingering date with
destiny. It’s no big
deal, you get in a pool
with someone and flap around a little, but
because of this feeling I have, that the cos-
mos sent this creature hurtling toward me
that was going to change my life, it seems
like a kind of secular baptism.”
There’s something vulnerable and
altogether tender about Stewart’s dis-
quieted relationship to the water. She is,
in the end, so prototypically California—
inclined, one imagines, to catch a wave.
And yet, the doggy paddle. It’s the sim-
plest stroke, quiet and plain-delivered.
It’s the one we learn first and, strangely,
suits Stewart. A clean flutter kick, eyes
above the water, and go.
“I am in
no way
rebellious.
I am in no way
contrarian.
I just want
people
to l ike me.”
Watch
Kristen Stewart on
the roles that
made her career
on VF.com.
68 VANITY FAIR SEPTEMBER 2019
