Harper's Bazaar
By: Alexandra Jacobs.
Photography by: Patrick Demarchelier.
May 2003

From her signature staples to the looks she covels for spring, the star invites Bazaar into the Hollywood Hills home that she shares with husband Brad Pitt to reveal her style secrets.

Driving steeply upward to Jennifer Aniston’s Hollywood Hills hideaway, high in the clouds, you get the uneasy sensation of trespassing in heaven. But the actress brings you back to earth in about five minutes. She’s perched on an overstuffed chair in her living room, leafing through designers’ look books. She gingerly regards a picture of a Gazelle-like model in a black cut-out halter minidress from the Prada spring 2003 collection. “Where is her boob?” she asks. “Seriously, where does her boob go?” Husband Brad Pitt is at an undisclosed location off-site, and their rueful-faced corgi terrier mix, Norman, has paid his respects and disappeared.

The mistress of the house is swathed in army-green cargo pants (“which I live in,” she says) tucked into tan, fleece-trimmed Ugg boots and a long-sleeved, tomato-red pullover from C&C California by Cheyann and Claire (“The cotton is amazing”) layered under a blue Mickey Mouse T-shirt from a vintage store on Melrose Avenue. “I never knew I could pay $170 for an old, old T-shirt that somebody else wore,” she says with her customary air of brisk wonderment. “And I paid for it, willingly!”

Call it befuddled luxe: Jennifer purports to be utterly clueless about personal appearances yet somehow all her decisions-from her perennially most-wanted hairstyle to that most important of accessories (her spouse) to her graceful hopscotch of a career-seem the most rich and right. In the twilight of a lucrative near-decade as Rachel Green on Friends, she emerged as a serious actress in last year’s acclaimed independent film The Good Girl. This month Jennifer plays straight woman to Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty, a film about a man granted divine powers for a week. It’s comic, but not without gravitas. “It’s about God, for Chris sakes!” she says.

A band of small, delicate diamonds is twinkling on her finger, just above her wedding ring. “A birthday present from my husband,” says Jennifer, who turned 34 in February. There are three small medallions dangling from her neck. “St. Christopher for travel, because I am terrified of flying,” she says. “Then this one is for success and marriage. And the third one is for fertility.”

Indeed, an entire calendar of saints seems to be standing guard over Jennifer’s aerie, a two-bedroom bungalow she’s owned for eight years and has shared with Brad practically since they started dating. “It’s just too small,” she says. But sunshine bounce off a turquoise pool on the north side of the house, bunnies cavort in the garden, a candle burns on the coffee table and yellow calla lilies in a vase match the gold chunks in Jennifer’s hair, which is cascading loose past her shoulders. “It’s a mess,” she says, of both coiffure and room. After many months of waiting, she and Brad are very close t moving into their freshly renovated $13.5 million mansion in Beverly Hills, and she’s looking forward to feathering the nest. “Brad has opened me up to a whole new world of auctions and antiques,” she says. “I love deco, but I am eclectic. When I see a strictly modern home, I find it very cold and uninviting. (When decorating) I go first with what feels good, and that isn’t always right. Sometimes, I’ll put clothes together and they will feel really good, and then I end up on a worst-dressed list.”

Actually, one has to plumb many layers of fashion archaeology to unearth a true gaffle by Jennifer. She has been resplendent on recent red carpets, scooping up an Emmy and a Golden Globe in chiffon-y pink and sleek black Christian Dior, respectively, with Brad, and his matching leonine mane, by her side. But she plays down these triumphs. “We are such homebodies,” she says. “We don’t really go out. If a premiere comes up, we’ll put on our fancy clothes and go, but those events are generally avoided at all costs.” (Apparently the couple would rather be watching TV than be the subject of the cameras: “Our guilty pleasure is reality shows. We can’t not watch.”) And she’s still licking the wounds that followed past sartorial miscalculations. “Mr. Blackwell ripped me apart. A couple of outfits I’ve worn were pointed out,” she says. “One was just black pants paired with a black shirt. How do you screw that up? Somehow I did. Then I received some criticism for a dress I wore to the Emmys one year. It was beautiful, but slightly reminiscent of Dynasty. And once I was told that a jacket I’d worn looked like a lab coat, which it did. I had to get educated.”

However, the eschews the services of the professional wardrobe mongers who lately threaten to iron out any idiosyncrasy in Tinseltown. “I get too overwhelmed with a stylist, and the whole deal can feel contrived,” she says. “Half of the time I’ll pair a piece from my own closet, like an old T-shirt, with something like a fabulous pair of Gucci pants.”

Today, though, as she continues so sift through spring look books, the only Tom Ford creation that’s tempting Jennifer is a sexy black YSL Rive Gauche dress with bell sleeves and a large flower at the bottom of the low-cut V-neck. Prada’s Empire-waisted white, wool-satin frock also intrigues her. “That’s cute, without the tribal necklace,” she says. “Great shoe”-indicating a Prada sandal. “I am a shoe fanatic. I love Marc Jacobs’ current ones. I love Marc Jacobs as a designer because he’s comfortable.”

And comfortable, along with “bohemian-if I dare use that word,” are the terms she feels best sum up her signature style. “I wish I was a hippie,” she says. “I wish I’d been raised as a teenager in the ‘70s.” Which may be why Oscar de la Renta’s look book offerings of Upper East Side brocade and bullion present a mixed bag for the star, who spent her New York City teenagerdom shopping at Fiorucci and Capezio. She wrinkles her nose at a structured lavender gown with a bolero jacket, But just when it appears Oscar is getting the brush-off, a gold organza strapless gown with Kundan embroidery receives the thumbs-up. “This is gorgeous,” she says. “I love the beading.”

Fluttery, knotted and beaded long frocks from Armani also win Jennifer’s approval, but she reserves her most covetous sighs for the madwoman-running-through-a-garden-party looks from Ralph Lauren. “Ooh, pretty.” She says. “Very ethereal. I love Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. I love that in their clothes, the body is what stands out, the person.” When it comes to Jennifer’s dislikes, she’s also vocal. “Lace, I hate. And the color pink.”

Asked which of her peers she admires for their style, she graciously gives props to her husband’s former fiancée. “Obviously Gwyneth Paltrow is fashion-perfect.” She says, with genuine humility. “And Kate Hudson. And Cameron Diaz. They really do have a knack for putting thing together and looking great. I admire women who can do that.”

Unlike so many in showbiz, Jennifer doesn’t park herself in the front rows before the catwalks of New York or Paris or Milan (tellingly, her most memorable splurge was not on a piece of couture, but a vintage Mercedes-Benz). “I went to one show and that was enough for me,” she says. “I always leave those things feeling bad, somehow. I feel like a bit of an outsider. Everyone is looking you up and down. I’m always so intimidated by the fashion world. It reminds me of high school, when I was always the girl who wore the big black skirts because I was a little chunkier and that’s all I could wear.”

A compactly curvy five-foot-five, Jennifer seems to have vanquished residual body-images issues. “I still somewhat live by the Zone,” she says. “It’s the only thing that works for me. Before, I had been starving myself and in a dieting vortex I couldn’t get out of. Now, I pretty much eat whatever I want.” She has pureed soup in the fridge, makes great quesadillas and looks forward to taking cooking lessons-gift from Brad. “I love people in the kitchens,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

Not for her is the “peace”-inducing yoga that is contorting so many celebrities lately. “If I’m going to spend an hour being spiritual, I’ll sit at an altar,” she says. “And if I’m going to work out, I’ll do something really physical, like run.” She’s recently been using a Precor elliptical cross-trainer machine three times a week and squeezing in Pilates sessions.

But her main source of tranquility seems to be her husband and a group of girlfriends-“they keep me sane,” she says. Jennifer’s living room is filled with framed pictures that bring her a more sustained joy than any look book. “Me and my goofy husband, skiing,” she intones. “That’s my niece. That’s my mother-in-law …”(Jennifer’s estranged mother is conspicuously absent from the tableau.) “That’s all the Pitt kids.” Which raises the inevitable question.

“When are we having them?” she asks reflexively. “When Friends is finished. We had a window there when Rachel was pregnant on the show; it would have been great, but we were doing other things.”

She is loath to imagine her life 10 years from now. “I so don’t think that way. I don’t map out my life,” but she can readily conjure up a fantasy future away from Los Angeles, in the mountains-even closer to heaven than her current dwelling.

“I take hikes,” she says. “That really does sort of save me.” She pauses and corrects herself. “What saves me,” she says, “is coming home.”