No one has had a trajectory like Martha Stewart’s. Over a six-decade career, the 83-year-old has been a Chanel model, a Wall Street suit, an American sweetheart, a lifestyle guru, a media tycoon, a convicted felon and a friend to Snoop Dogg. Now she begins her next chapter: a speaker at Vivid Sydney.
Vivid – a light festival designed to be hated by anyone who enjoys activities like “walking through a city without being assailed by foot traffic” – has embarked on a booking spree of late. When she arrives in Sydney this May, Stewart will be the latest addition to the festival’s “Global Storytellers” program which began in 2022 and seems intent on hiring exclusively gay and gay-adjacent speakers: Troye Sivan, Mike White and Jeanette Winterson (all queer); Jennifer Coolidge (gay icon); Baz Luhrmann (made Moulin Rouge); and Aaron Sorkin (talks fast).
