LENNY: MY LIFE & TIMES
LENNY Kravitz pauses to brush traces of rainwater from his brow, then he dabs his chest (he hasn’t buttoned his shirt), and he smiles.
The music icon is just back from an hour-long bike ride in a rainstorm, he explains over Zoom call from his Airstream trailer on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas, which is where he lives when he’s not in his mansion in Paris.
If his rain-drenched look is a calculated attempt to reinforce all pre-existing ideas of him as the ultimate rock/sex god, then bingo. Job done. It works.
But I don’t think it’s intentional. Somehow it seems he just can’t help it – he’s just a cool guy.
Since his youthful breakthrough in the early ’90s his career as a musician has been consistent and accomplished but three decades on, at age 56, he’s still largely known for his looks as well as the extravagant fashion statements for which he’s either celebrated or derided – for example, an oversized scarf that became a meme, a recurring punchline on an internet-perpetuated joke; the shirts, which, like today’s, are perpetually worn open; the silver zip-up suits; the tinted shades; the hats.
And then there are the women. From actress Lisa Bonet – who, when they married, was far more famous than he was in her role as Denise Huxtable, fictional daughter to Bill Cosby in the ’80s sitcom The Cosby Show – to Vanessa Paradis (whom he dated after his split from Bonet,
