Elon Musk’s Fabulous Mother Maye, 70, Has Some Life Advice For Us, And, Arguably, Also For Him

This Would Be The Kind of Film They Might Like: Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and mother Maye Musk… [+]

MILAN, ITALY – SEPTEMBER 23: Maye Musk walks the runway at the Dolce & Gabbana show during Milan… [+]

Model Maye Musk attends the 2018 Women In The World Summit at Lincoln Center on April 12, 2018 in… [+]

Maye Musk gets fitted for the Concept Korea show during New York Fashion Week on September 7, 2017… [+]

That was a decade ago, just as author Anne Kreamer’s clarion anthem to an embrace of the changes of age, Going Gray, was being published. In other words, Maye Musk took the decision before ᵴtriƥping back the layers of female armor and artifice became an established ‘good’ thing to do. For a figure of considerable standing in the business of fashion who traded and still trades on her looks, such as Ms. Musk, the move required admirable steel. In effect, her decision to go gray was a challenge to her industry and the rampant age-ism within it, not unlike some of the past technological challenges engineered in his own fields of automobiles and aerospace by her son, limning the message:  I’m doing this now. You figure out whether or not you can take it, but in the meantime, do please get out of the way.

When Not Walking, Certainly In The Front Row: Maye Musk (L) and Olivia Palermo attend the Jonathan… [+]

Maye Musk walks the runway for the Concept Korea show during New York Fashion Week on September 8,… [+]

Fifty-year modeling career or no, the recent Cover Girl anointment is definitely a career high not often seen among the grandmother set (at last count, Maye Musk had a reported eleven grand𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren, with Elon contributing six). She is definitely firing on all thrusters, to employ a space travel metaphor, and key to that, in addition to her twin precepts of good nutrition and good manners, seems to be a kind of relentless optimism. Asked by fashion Bible Harpers Bazaar how she felt about meeting the “milestone” of 70, she replied with dry understatement, and with a sharp little dollop of vinegar directed at her interlocutor for broaching the clearly somewhat shopworn question.