No one, ever, ever, has regretted a dip in a pool.
Maybe William Holden's poor devil in
Twilight of the Gods
, which we already know how it ended.
There are exceptions: in the film Gloria Swanson does not bathe in her swimming pool at her mansion, which, like her, had a better past than present.
We do see her on the edge dressed and dressed in a feline print, protecting herself from the sun with a large hat.
A diva doesn't get her hair wet.
Just as there are diva-people, there are diva-pools.
They are vain places that cross time and space without losing symbolic force.
These pools are more photogenic than beautiful and have their own light.
They are distant, they ask to be looked at and admired, and they justify several hours on the plane.
It is not necessary to bathe in them.
It's the pool that Faye Dunaway posed by the morning after receiving an Oscar.
It is the Torres Blancas pool, so elusive that it sounds like an urban legend.
It is the Amangiri, which looks like a mirage in the middle of the desert;
or that of the Roosevelt, in Hollywood, signed by Hockney and where Helmut Newton
clicked
,
clicked
.
A swimming pool at the Villa d'Este hotel, photographed in April 2017.Pier Marco Tacca / Getty Images
How to know if a pool belongs to this category.
It's easy, you have to answer one of these questions: was she photographed by Slim Aarons or Terry O'Neill?
Does it appear in any film by Sofia Coppola, chronicler of the laziest Hollywood?
Have you been photographed with a telephoto lens by paparazzi?
Have kings swam in it with or without a crown?
Did Marilyn ever bathe in it?
And Agnelli, wet her white hair?
Did Julia Morgan build it?
Has the
New Yorker
or
Tatler
dedicated articles to you
?
If the answer to any of them is yes, then this is a diva-pool.
Swimming pool at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, on the French Riviera.
Slim Aarons / Getty Images
These pools are spread all over the world. Some are crouching like Greta Garbo and others are flaunting themselves as TikTok stars. Just an hour by plane, in Marrakech, we find one of the greatest divas. To be in the outdoor swimming pool of La Mamounia is to immerse yourself in the pages of a magazine or in a red carpet of bikinis and kaftans; Around its perimeter you have breakfast, lunch and sunbathe. There you can see Chinese presidents-vases, red-haired stars and princesses of tiny countries. It is short baths, although some swim without stopping. A
Latina
socialite
did dozens of lengths one day that she counted with pebbles that she placed on the curb. That pool, which has been there for decades, go and shut up: what happens in it stays in it.
France, such a diva, is dotted with diva-pools. There, on the edge of the sea and close to each other, are the swimming pool of the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, which Slim Aarons got fed up with taking pictures when it was rectangular, and that of the Club Dauphine, in the Grand-Hôtel du Cap- Ferrat. The latter, which has been standing (or sunk) since 1929, comes with a built-in character: it is Pierre Gruneberg, his swimming teacher and someone to whom HBO, Netflix or any platform owes a documentary. This man, active since 1950, prides himself on having taught Ralph Lauren or Tina Turner to swim. The Parisian hotel Le Bristol has another. This rarity simulates the bow of a ship and was designed by the architect of Onassis Yachts. She looks at the rooftops of the city, she is out of fashion and like every pool-diva she is obsessed with herself. As it should be.
The swimming pool of the hotel Le Bristol, in Paris, simulates the bow of a ship.BORGESE MAURIZIO / Hemis via AFP
The diva-pool lacks the lightness of a hotel pool in August, the joy of a municipal pool, or the discipline of the Tokyo Aquatic Center. It is, like all of them, an architecture designed to make others happy, but, above all, to make itself happy. To confirm this, you just have to surrender to Google Images. Try some Italian swimming pools. Type: "Villa D´Este Piscina" and you will see. This hotel has one of the most divas in all of Italy; and that is to say. It is embedded in Lake Como, like a Russian doll and is, of course, finite: infinities are somewhat self-conscious and a diva never is. Let's repeat the same with these words: "Il Pellicano pool". There is another of the most charismatic divas in Italy. It's not comfortable or big, and there are prettier ones, but it doesn't have to be: Gloria Swanson wasn't.However, this place is all divism. She was also photographed by Slim Aarons, a documentary maker on sexy bleach. How these pools are not going to be delighted to meet.
Several women at the Canellopoulos Pool in Athens, Greece, in July 1961, portrayed by Slim Aarons.Slim Aarons / Getty Images
No need to swim in a diva-pool.
It does not demand it.
It can be observed from afar to confirm that it exists and would already be fulfilling its function.
This is, nothing more and nothing less, than to illuminate us with its reflection and remind us that life, some summer afternoons, can be unforgettable.