Martha Stewart: After Prison, Confessions

“I have two mottos. One is to learn something new every day. And the other is that, when we think about a change, we are already there. Change this garden if you don’t like it. Rip it out and start again. » In a documentary simply bearing her first name that RJ Cutler has just dedicated to her and broadcast on Netflix, Martha Stewart, great friend of Snoop Dogg with whom she put together a cooking show, thus defines her philosophy of being. These multiple facets which have made her an iconic house fairy having taken charge of its every nook and cranny for decades with infinite taste and boundless creativity. Sowing widely through the small screen and her own magazine a refined art of living that she embodies with mastery, she has reaped a colossal fortune and a reputation by magnifying these little everyday things: how to be a chic and stylish hostess. effortless, a savvy cook, a glamorous gardener and an artful decorator, all while remaining a modern woman and an Instagram selfie queen, with millions of followers.

Une self-made woman

His story, punctuated with successes, and his person had a lot to offer to the cameras of filmmakers, and the mega-distributor Netflix saw this clearly by devoting a documentary to him. This choice is explained on the official website: “For more than 50 years, Stewart has shaped our culture on a small and large scale, teaching his millions of aficionados how to properly fold a cover and challenging long-held ideas about domestic work. This documentary – simply titled Martha – covers the breadth of her extraordinary life through intimate interviews with her. She opened her personal archives to share previously unpublished photos, letters and extracts from her diary. »

RJ Cutler, the director of this approximately two-hour documentary, saw in her a personification of her time and a great American success. He says: “It wasn’t hard to imagine that there was material here for a film that would explore why Martha is such an important culture and story. A key figure in the business world for so many decades and in many ways. » His camera therefore retraced the rise of this woman who is an incarnation of a lifestyle generating the original influencer that she has become. A true self-made woman of 81 years old, still in full control of her ups and downs (quickly recovered). Last year, she even made a splash by becoming the oldest woman to grace the cover of the magazine Sports Illustrated Swimsuit in a swimsuit, this hymn to youthful glamour. She hasn’t said her last word yet.

From a simple model to a billion-dollar stock market listing

Born Kostyra to Polish parents, Martha Stewart spent her youth in the state of New Jersey. As a teenager, she took her first steps in modeling alongside her high school classes, before attending Barnard College in New York. She graduated with a degree in history and architectural history and at the age of 19 married a student at Yale University, Andrew Stewart. In the 1970s, the couple moved to the state of Connecticut and purchased a farmhouse which Martha restored and decorated. At the same time, she launched into gastronomy by starting a catering business and wrote her first lifestyle book entitled Entertainingwith the help of her publisher husband, who will experience great success in bookstores. “Martha wanted to show the American woman that she could bring beauty into her home,” describes a journalist in the Netflix documentary. The couple divorced in 1990 after 25 years of marriage and after sharing a daughter.

At the end of the 1990s, she created her multimedia company and began building what became a media empire, the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO), listed on the stock exchange in 1999, bringing her into the club of the very rich with a fortune estimated at a billion dollars.

Everything you need to know about Martha Stewart, on Netflix. Netflix photo

Multifunctional

His business, which is based on a magazine and a weekly television program with high ratings, the Martha Stewart Livingimmediately placed itself at the top of sales. From then on, its name became a label synonymous with beauty and elegance. To his credit in particular, a creation called Stewart Everyday Line, including a new collection of ready-made home furniture and his line of consumer interior paint, available in the largest supermarkets. In September 2007, she designed a series of high-end household items for the famous department store Macy’s. An initiative that saw the largest brand launch in the history of this company. Appearing in advertisements for the line, Martha Stewart had said she had designed more than 2,000 items exclusively for Macy’s. All this without counting his publication of multiple works.

Rebound after five months in prison

But this empire built during years of tireless work will not prevent the fall. Entangled in an insider trading case then in a trial for obstruction of justice, Martha Stewart was sentenced in 2004, at the age of 63, to a five-month prison term. In the documentary, Netflix shares the memories she recorded in her diary at the time, the feelings, the worry she felt then. Some, including the main person concerned, see this accusation as a “witch hunt” and an unhealthy pleasure in seeing a “perfect personality” fall, or even an attempt to discredit the country’s first female billionaire. Leaving prison in top form, in a little poncho knitted by a fellow inmate, a highly publicized moment as was her trial, she leaves again with a vengeance. Known to be a great perfectionist, she admits to not being completely satisfied with the version of her existence treated by Netflix and particularly by the director. His criticisms published everywhere relate, among other things, to “certain bad filming angles”, “the insistence on his trial”, and above all this reproach: “These last scenes where I look like a lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden? Boy ! I told him to get rid of it. And he refused. » However, while filming her, director RJ Cutler saw in her a visionary whom he defined in these terms: “She democratized fashion, taste and style. She saw the future before others saw it and she always had to overcome huge obstacles that stood in her way. Most of the people who posed these obstacles for her were men who refused to see what she was capable of seeing and who made it harder for others, because she was a woman. And she overcame these obstacles with extraordinary success. »

Still, on social networks, her documentary remains as popular as it is, “fascinating”, “perfect”, “inspiring” and other laudatory adjectives…