In a short interview for WSJ. Magazine’s series The One, Angelina Jolie answers quick questions about confidence, strength, her children and the fashion business she has launched. The video starts at 2:23.
Going through the fire
Her advice for someone going through a hard time: go right through it. Feel it, do not avoid it, and come out the other side; in many cases, she says, there is no choice but to walk through the fire. When she needs strength, she spends time with her children: “They’re the best of me.”
Styling by her children
Her daughter tells her she wears too many trench coats. Jolie has noticed that her children are happiest when she dresses up or does something creative, because they see their mother being herself. She does not work regularly with a stylist and does not want her children styled by someone else: clothing is identity, and she prefers to put options in front of them and let them question, break the box or say no. The day her children wore her old red-carpet dresses was simply an experiment: here are old clothes, cut them up, try things.
A punk in fashion
She was a punk, she says, so expensive corporate clothes made to look punk are “the opposite of what punk is”. Her new fashion business, Atelier Jolie, grew from watching how young people choose clothes without being able to express enough individuality. It is built as a collective. Her advice to anyone starting a business: make something you truly believe in, and be clear whether you are doing it for money or out of conviction. In collaborators, she looks for boldness and “a little bit of madness”. To her younger self, she would say: trust your madness. Today, she says, she is trying to find that girl again.