The New York Times posted the sad news about Elizabeth Taylor’s passing on their front page, along with a photo of her from 1957 when she was an impossibly beautiful starlet.  But the Elizabeth Taylor I will remember is the one from the late 1970s, during her second marriage to Richard Burton, when she was overwrought, overweight, and overdressed.  In photos from this time the strength of her personality –her impulsiveness, wildness and honesty– as well as her physical beauty, shine through.

A witness at the second Taylor-Burton wedding, which took place outside under a banyan tree at a game reserve in Botswana, noted: “The bride wore green, with lace frills and guinea fowl feathers."  She spent these years wearing a lot of ridiculous things: caftans, turbans, ankle-length furs, mini-dresses, fringed pocketbooks, and a ring with a diamond the size of golf ball.  And yet she never looks like a fashion victim.  She doesn’t seem to be participating in fashion, but just going on with her life.