Cruel, Cruel Summer

Jay-Z and Beyoncé at Louis Vuitton
Image: Getty

Paris’s oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, was the place to be on Tuesday night. There, pop culture potentates like Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Zendaya, Naomi Campbell, and Megan Thee Stallion rallied around the musician-turned-creative director Pharrell Williams as he revealed his first menswear collection for the haute French luxury brand Louis Vuitton. It was a fashion show that by all accounts sparked joy. 

Even for those who do not give a lick about fashion and realize that the styles debuted on the Pont Neuf will be passé in six months, there is something reassuring about the spectacle of le tout-Paris coming out on the smoldering eve of summer to celebrate ephemeral beauty. The French can be relied upon to fight for early retirement, to take two-hour lunches, and to proffer style.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the planet, people were learning a ghastly new word -- submersible -- to describe the type of mini-submarine used to dangerously explore The Titanic’s wreckage off the coast of Newfoundland. As I write this, the world is still holding its collective breath, hoping against hope that the passengers aboard the submersible have not yet succumbed to an avoidable tragedy.

Somber and silly is how we are going into summer this year. There has been no shortage of heavy news this past few weeks -- brinksmanship over the debt ceiling, China and the US edging toward conflict, indictments, and catastrophic weather, to name a few. We could use a vacation from the news; summer offers a tentative respite.

We like to think of the season as sequestered from all cares and concerns even as reality intrudes. We prioritize fun during June, July, and August, but life's harsher lessons persist.

Twenty-four years ago, in the summer of 1999, we Americans were juggling silliness and solemnity. The second season of Sex and the City was taking us by storm even while we watched horrified as John F Kennedy Jr’s plane disappeared into the Atlantic off Martha’s Vineyard. Today we have a S&TC reboot starring the original cast and -- I’m afraid -- another tragedy involving a submarine rather than aircraft. John John's father's favorite show, Camelot, is even back on Broadway for a spell, once again a chimeric dream set against the global unrest just outside the theater's walls.

As a kid in the 1960s, my summer preoccupations ranged from day camp to collecting Duncan yo-yos and yellow smiley-face stickers. I dunked rubber-banded t-shirts into buckets of Rit dye and begged my father to take us to play miniature golf. I was mostly sheltered from the life-altering events that can take place in the summertime -- as when the decade climaxed in the seismic summer of '69 that included Stonewall (June 28), men walking on the Moon (July 20), Chappaquiddick (July 25), the Manson murders (August 9-10), and Woodstock (August 15-18). I was too busy playing with my yo-yo to notice any of this. 

At this summer’s start, as adults, we reluctantly vow not to shut off our minds as we once tried to when school was out for the season. Go to the beach we shall --  even as we stand sentinel for important developments brewing just beneath the surface. Carefree though we try to be in summer, we cannot always bury the portentous beneath the soothing stuff of the season.