Adjust your eyeballs and drink in the glory. Ask yourself this. Is there anyone more fabulous at 50 than Brazilian bombshell Luciana Gimenez Morad?
‘What?’ she shrieks. ‘Stop it! I don’t talk about my age. It is only a number, it has no meaning. Did I celebrate my 50th birthday? No, I did not.’
Yet, whether in a bikini on a beach or in white jeans on a yacht, Luciana uniquely defies the ravages of time, holding back the years with aplomb and a set of curling tongs.
Adjust your eyeballs and drink in the glory. Ask yourself this. Is there anyone more fabulous at 50 than Brazilian bombshell Luciana Gimenez Morad?
This ageless mirage is not via the usual midlife routes of Zumba classes and endless dreary porridge, but because she goes to rock festivals in spangled swimsuits and never jogs. Anything else?
‘I think young, Jan. My advice is never limit yourself because of age — that is sad. Age is just a number, an attitude of mind,’ she says, but even she cannot deny that numbers count.
For example, it is 22 years since she fell in love with Mick Jagger when they met at a party in Rio di Janeiro.
‘I had to rescue him. He was surrounded by all these women who could not speak English, can you imagine?’ says Luciana, who is fluent in four languages and can’t say demure in any of them.
‘I am actually very shy,’ she insists, although she strikes me as a woman who is about as shy as an exploding firework. She is exuberant and fun and she buys her own diamonds.
‘I love diamonds, they are a good investment,’ she says. ‘I buy a little one, then I upgrade.’
Her relationship with Jagger and the birth of their son Lucas the following year was the last straw for Jerry Hall, who ended her 22-year relationship with the father of her four children because of this latest infidelity.
It is 14 years since Luciana went on to marry Marcelo de Carvalho, the former gameshow host who owns the Brazilian television station which now broadcasts her weekly show, Superpop.
The couple originally hosted a gameshow together, and were the Brucie and Anthea of the southern hemisphere. It is nine years since the birth of their son, Lorenzo, and two years since the marriage ended.
And now it has been six months since Luciana has found love again. ‘It is so exciting,’ she says.
Rolling Stone, media mogul, Bond villain, plasterer? Exactly who has captured the heart of the 6ft beauty this time?
For example, it is 22 years since she fell in love with Mick Jagger when they met at a party in Rio di Janeiro
Step forward Eduardo Buffara, who is rich, eligible, handsome — and at 28, only eight years older than her eldest son.
‘Toyboy? I don’t like that word. But having a young lover is like having a drip put in my arm,’ she says.
Certainly, it is quite a change from the usual men in her life — Carvalho was eight years older, while Jagger is more than a quarter of a century her senior.
‘Yes, it is very different having a younger lover. Very different!’ she says. ‘But I am very much like Eduardo in many ways. I don’t feel an age gap with him, that has never been an issue.
‘I am a very young person, you know. I go to Coachella and Burning Man, and when I am there I wash myself with baby wipes and wear boots with my bikini.
‘That is my kind of thing. Eduardo and I are in the same vibe. We like the same kind of music.’
One wonders if Eduardo had heard of the Rolling Stones, who had released more than 20 albums and got rid of Bill Wyman before he was even born. Did he know who they were?
‘Of course! Who hasn’t heard of the Rolling Stones?’ cries Luciana. She goes on: ‘Do you know, I am head over heels about Eduardo. I think he’s hot. And very handsome.
‘So handsome I don’t like putting pictures of him on my Instagram. I don’t want other women to see him! I am excited. He is cute and sexy, different and fun.’
We are talking over the long distance telephone under difficult circumstances — Luciana and her sons are just moving into a new apartment in her home town of Sao Paulo.
Despite splitting with her husband two years ago, the couple carried on living together in the same seven-bedroom home, complete with marble floors and a 16-seat cinema. Even now she is only moving next door in the same upmarket compound.
Jagger has been to stay, both here and in the family’s New York home, which seems to be the height of civility among the modern blended classes.
Luciana seems to have a cheerful knack of creating happy families out of complicated relationship situations. ‘It is easy because I am Brazilian, not English,’ she says.
It is 14 years since Luciana went on to marry Marcelo de Carvalho, the former gameshow host who owns the Brazilian television station which now broadcasts her weekly show, Superpop
Indeed, despite the fact that Jagger insisted upon a paternity test when Lucas was born, she has always remained on good terms with the man she calls ‘an excellent father’ to their child.
Jagger paid all of Lucas’s school fees and seems to have been generous and kind with his time, too — regularly spending holidays with the 21-year-old. For her part, Luciana is even friends with Jagger’s current love, Melanie Hamrick, the 32-year-old American ballerina whom he started dating in 2014.
While Luciana is the mother of Jagger’s seventh child, Melanie is the mother of his eighth; three-year-old Deveraux. It is a bond that has cemented an unlikely friendship.
Does she give Melanie sisterly or motherly advice? Don’t talk to Mick when the cricket is on, and so forth? ‘I don’t give her any advice at all. I don’t think Mel needs it. She has been with Mick for a long time. So we just talk like normal friends. They are all very cute together and she is nice to my son. I think Mick is happy with the baby and with her, and I am happy for them.’
Goodness, I say, eight different children by five different women — isn’t it about time the old boy stopped having all these kids? Or at least take better precautions?
‘Well no,’ says Luciana. Why not?
‘Being a child of Mick Jagger is such a lucky start for any child because he is such a great dad. He is always strong, he is very much a family man.’
She has been in communication with him nearly every week, even during lockdown, when Jagger has been sequestered at his home in Italy with Melanie and the baby.
Last year, the Rolling Stone frontman underwent heart surgery to replace a faulty valve and Luciana reveals that she last spoke to him a few days ago.
‘He is very well but I am worried about him,’ she says. ‘We all worry about him during this pandemic. He is very vulnerable.
‘At 76 he is right in the danger zone. I mean, he looks like he is about 20 years old…’
He does?
‘Yeah! But biologically, he is a little bit older. And we all tend to forget that because he is like an eternal youth.’
He is?
‘Yes. So we have to take special care of him.’
Luciana has always been cast, perhaps rather unfairly, as the homewrecker who broke up Jagger’s relationship with Jerry Hall — and she remains the only girlfriend and lover that the famously magnanimous, long-suffering Hall still cannot pardon for her youthful sins.
Today, Luciana is older and certainly wiser than the bold young woman of 29 who fell in love with a rock legend. Now a divorced mother of two herself, she has a better understanding of the pain her relationship caused.
‘I never intended to hurt anyone and if I did, I feel sorry about that,’ she once told me. She has always felt ‘bad’ about Jerry. ‘I never meant to hurt her,’ she says.
She once wrote a letter to Miss Hall asking for forgiveness, but did not receive a reply. ‘She didn’t write back. I didn’t really expect her to, but I wanted her to know that I was sorry.
‘People forget that you can fall in love with someone, whether they are rich and famous or not,’ she muses.
‘Rich people love. Famous people love. It is all the same. It doesn’t matter. We are all going to die in exactly the same way, anyway.’
Step forward Eduardo Buffara, who is rich, eligible, handsome — and at 28, only eight years older than her eldest son
Yes, Luciana, but isn’t it interesting that the three most important men in your life — the fathers of your sons and now your new boyfriend — are all fabulously rich? ‘Yes, and thank goodness for THAT!’ she says.
Luciana and Eduardo — Dado to his friends — met at a New Year’s Eve party in Rio, where she danced on the beach and hoped that 2020 would be ‘a year of new beginnings’. What was she wearing? ‘A white transparent dress with a bikini underneath,’ she says, and really, I should have guessed.
They began dating after attending the 2020 carnival in Rio together at the end of February, where they were photographed kissing.
Bad weather had forced Luciana into a more modest carnival outfit than usual — a sequinned bikini top and low-slung jeans.
‘Eduardo said to me, “it’s going to rain, leave your feathers at home”,’ she says, and he sounds like exactly the kind of practical guy a samba-dancing party girl needs.
On that night, photographs of the event track love blooming between the two. Especially with Eduardo, who looks at Luciana the way Tramp looks at Lady in the famous Disney cartoon; with saucer-eyed adoration, mixed with a tiny bit of fear.
He works for his father, a prominent Brazilian construction magnate called Gilberto Buffara. They are a well-known family in Rio, where Eduardo lives alone in a suburb of the city.
Newspapers describe him as a ‘millionaire businessman’ and he is also a duathlon athlete, serious about his running and cycling.
I know someone who won’t be joining him. ‘He does all these Iron Man challenges, but I won’t jog with him. Running is not my thing,’ says Luciana.
Dado has a reputation as a bit of a playboy, but Luciana is undeterred. ‘I am the first girlfriend he has had, the first real girlfriend,’ she says.
‘Sure, he is a heterosexual guy, but he has never been in a serious relationship before. He was at uni, then he was just dating girls, you know. I am the first girl he has taken home to meet his parents.’
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At the beginning of quarantine, she thought it might be a good idea if he joined her social bubble. ‘I want to get locked up with you,’ she told him.
‘I said: “Let’s lockdown together,” but he refused. He was afraid I might kill him. He said he would have to run away from me,’ she says, and laughs.
In addition, the fact that the loved-up couple live in different cities, and have had to carry on working, has made dreams of a deeper quarantine romance impossible.
Luciana is still making her television programmes, but without a live audience. ‘A bummer, but I am committed to my public,’ she says. ‘We spend weekends on his yacht instead. It has still been very intense.’
Yet what in her life has not been? When we met in Manhattan a few years ago, she was her usual exuberant self. ‘Kiss me,’ she commanded. ‘It is what we do in Brazil.’
She is a very engaging woman, one who has accepted that she will forever be linked to Mick Jagger through their son and their enduring friendship. ‘I still love Mick, but not in a sexual way,’ she says. ‘He is a great friend.’
Lucas, she says, is ‘steady and quiet, like his Dad’ — which perhaps is not quite how the world sees Jagger.
Then and now she remains vague on how the romantic aspect of her relationship with him ended. ‘We were dating and then we became parents, there was never a break. My love just shipped to Lucas,’ she says.
But whatever happens, she will defend the freewheeling Rolling Stone and his many loves until the bitter end.
‘How many men who have been married for 20 years never had sex with another woman? And does it really matter if he has?’ is what she thinks.
Look out, Eduardo!