English Version | Lili? Oui, c'est moi!

Who else? To speak to Lili Caneças is to imagine this Maria Alice in Wonderland, as the stories she has to tell are so many one could wonder if she wasn’t the one going down the rabbit hole. 

Photography: Branislav Simoncik. Styling:

"If my life were a movie, it would be The not so Dolce Vita of Lili Caneças, based on the film La Dolce Vita (1960) by Fellini, because everyone thinks my life was fantastic, but it wasn’t. It wouldn't be a comedy, it would be a drama.” Sitting down for five minutes with Maria Alice de Carvalho Monteiro Custódio is knowing that you should clear your schedule for the next five hours, because conversation is something she rules and doesn’t shy away from. I mean: Lili Caneças. Or rather, Lili. “Nobody calls me Maria Alice”, she assures us, the public figure who accumulated life stories by getting along with the top of the aristocracy and nobility in her youth and by moving gracefully between the most select parties and the most restricted events, balancing the eloquence of someone who has always loved reading along with the boldness of the pretty girl who always stole the spotlight. Sitting down for five minutes with Maria Alice, sorry, Lili, is knowing that names like Jack Nicholson, Paul McCartney, this prince and that king and even the you-know-who duchess are name-dropped effortlessly. “There’s no more Jacqueline Kennedys or Grace Kellys, nowadays”, she sighs with her known frankness. “[These days] They go everywhere without make-up and disheveled… I never go anywhere without being coiffed, nor have I ever seen my mother not wearing high heels. I'm from a time when people put themselves together to come to Chiado, wearing a hat, gloves, all that. And as I lived in Cascais, where all the kings were in exile – King Humberto, King Carol of Romania, King Simeon of Bulgaria, the Queen of Albania, very beautiful people came to visit the family. (…) I grew up going to Tamariz beach, because it was the only beach where you could wear a bikini, on other beaches you had to wear a full bathing suit, otherwise you would pay a fine. As all the princesses, the daughters of kings, the royal families were there, you could wear a bikini. And I went there because you could wear a bikini,” she admits. Privileged relationships forever linked her to the social sphere – after all, she had a first-name-basis relationship with all social magazines, being the usual protagonist she was – but it was an cosmetic intervention that, in a way, catapulted her into a countless number of headlines, that peeling “that was the headlinen of all the news”, she recalls. If anyone ever thought before that Maria Alice was just a socialite, they now knew the given name of a mogul from the society pages. It is impossible, therefore, not to ask: what is not so Dolce in this Vita by Lili?

When she divorced her husband, Álvaro Caneças, she was left without personal property and in charge of her daughter, Rita. The invitation to participate in a reality show would, from the outset, be something she would never accept, but the survivor in her saw it as an opportunity to start over. And, from an unlikely possibility, it became a happening: “[I went to reality shows] because I needed to earn money, when I got divorced I had to work.” Sitting down for five minutes with Lili Caneças is knowing that her unfiltered honesty is for free and unavoidable. Perhaps because of the age framework or simply as a personality trait, it is obvious that Lili does not have, nor does she want to have, anything to hide, making openness her best policy. “Well, I didn't know how to do anything, it was only on television that you made money. What was I going to do? I joined Quinta das Celebridades [TVI] because José Eduardo Moniz told me: 'Lili, from how much can we talk to you?' And I thought: 'Well, he won't give me a million euros, I'll put an absurdity like that', and he said: 'Okay, when can we talk?', 'Oh, how embarrassing!', I thought, but then I thought: 'I'll turn it around'. I had already been a contributor, commenting, at Bar da TV, that's when I debuted on SIC, in 2000.” But she did it because she was already known, she recalls, safeguarding that “I didn’t go to television to be famous, I was already very famous because of the peeling.” She did it because necessity spoke louder; and came back from it with a renewed social role: “I didn't feel I was looked at sideways at events, quite the contrary, I became popular. Which I wasn't. (…) I realized that it helped me [in all social classes], because when people like you, nobody takes you down.” Making assumptions about Lili is, from the outset, creating an image based on preconceptions: because this role of socialite suits her perfectly, but the septuagenarian is much more than the stereotype – she studied Germanic languages, interior decoration, sociology and cultural anthropology, she loves art, reading, cinema, and being aware of the world around her – she just doesn't hide that she also enjoys the social side. Sitting for five minutes with Lili Caneças is knowing that glamour rules over the conversation, but that the references she has go beyond this role and are not entirely empty. “When I was young I only hung out with older people, because they taught me, because they had more wisdom, because I learned incredible things and stories from them, now I only hang out with younger people. They like me and now they are the ones who listen to me, because I tell stories... I met everyone, Paul McCartney, Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson, I went to the Cannes Film Festival for 17 years, Omar Sharif told me about all of his life… (…) When you're with an interesting person, you grow up, because you learn things you don't know, you live in worlds you've never lived, and I've always had the privilege of just enjoying talking to [interesting] people, I choose them carefully.”

The last two years have restricted that privilege, but even though this pandemic has taken her away from the physical spotlight, Lili tried to find another one: “I became active [on social media] because as I had time, I started using Instagram more. And my grandson taught me the basics. I just knew how to put the picture on… Then I started to discover that I could put on music, that I had stories, that I had the posts and every day I went a little further. And since people have never insulted me, they don't call me names… For example, that book Cristina [Ferreiar] wrote, I experienced nothing like that. Because it's always, 'Oh darling, your ring is so cute, where did you buy it?' And I reply to all my followers." Her young spirit and always eager for new experiences has also contributed to the popularity amongst a target audience that is not limited by (her) age: with the cameo, in 2018, in the music video for the song Calhambeque, by Dois Brancos & Um Preto, claiming that she became a rapper during the confinement will hardly be taken as breaking news: “My confinement, for a person my age, was given as an example. I made some rap, hip-hop songs, because my grandson Pedro is a rapper. I had to do anything to distract myself, I went to try things I had never done in my life.” Maybe that's why talking about getting old doesn't seem to have any place in these “five minutes” now multiplied by hours of conversation: “I had the peeling 21 years ago. My skin, for a 77-year-old, isn't bad, right? Now, there are non-invasive methods, in case you need to fix any wrinkles, to keep up. Because I think I can prove to people that old age is not a vision of hell, old age can be an asset. (…) Because they are all young, beautiful and fantastic, at the age of 20, everyone is beautiful. (…) I realized that I was a beautiful old woman. Also, because we have incredible lifelong wisdom, we can help the younger ones, like I did with Piruka in 5 para a Meia-noite. Because Piruka is a rapper, isn't he, and I'm intimate now, because I'm a rapper too. Piruka puts up pictures of them all smoking joints and I asked, 'Do you think it's okay? You go from joints to coke and from coke to heroin, and then you die, why do you want to be famous for?', 'Oh, that's a conspiracy theory!', ‘Not a conspiracy theory, young man, it's me sharing my wisdom of life.” A wisdom that she learned the best and worst way possible, in this not-so Dolce Vita: “No, [I never thought about getting married again] because I don't make the same mistake twice. And it was a big mistake, because I always wanted to go to the United States, you have no idea what it was like to live in Portugal at the time of the dictatorship… The books I read, by Simone de Beauvoir, by Françoise Sagan – Bonjour Tristesse –, by DH Lawrence, by Kafka, they had to be brought from abroad, they were banned in Portugal, they were banned books. We didn't have freedom. I got to have two huge crushes, after the divorce, which made me wonder, but they were people who were not meant to be married, because one was an alcoholic and the other was a drug addict. (…) Here, in Portugal, it’s like this: leftist intellectuals, who are interesting people, ten minutes from the Marquês de Pombal no longer know where they are because they have never been anywhere. Playboys no longer exist, who am I going to marry, tell me?” Though, she admits, always with a positive emphasis on the words: “It's funny that, in the midst of all this, there's always something good that happens to me, you know? Therefore, I celebrate life.”

Does this passion for life mean that the topic of death is taboo? “I'm not afraid of dying, because I have faith and I believe that there is something after death, so I'm not afraid of dying, but I'm sorry to have to go. I’m sorry to go because I love life. I celebrate it every day, I live the here, I live the now, I live the present, I think positive, I'm always available for everyone who needs me, I'm content with the small things that, nowadays, are enough for me. And I recovered my naivety, which is very good, I believe in people again, there was a time when I didn't believed them very much. (…) I think life is a party, it depends on us being happy… but we have to know what happiness is.” Sitting down for five minutes with Lili Caneças is knowing that the edges of a page limit what there is to tell. And that the best way to understand Maria Alice is to hear the nuances of her voice and read her facial features. That's why the bottom of this text is just an invitation to access the video interview with the socialite.

Translated from the original on Vogue Portugal's Celebrate Yourself issue, published february 2022.Full story and credits on the print issue.