Tales from the Back Row (10 page)

“He's not coming,” Chris said.

“Don't talk like that,” Jonah countered. “He'll come. Keep the faith.” Even though Jonah was not of the world of fashion, he somehow understood a few basic rules: that Karl is God, God is worth waiting for, and that God arrives on God's own schedule.

“Well if he
doesn't
show up, we can't feel too bad about getting stood up by Karl Lagerfeld,” I pointed out. Just think of the countless rock-hard abs that went unseen by Karl for the entire five years that he only had eyes for Brad's. Besides, “It's not like we found him on JDate.”

Just as I decided the invitation's promise—
Karl Lagerfeld will be present
—was a lie and resigned myself to heading home drunk with no story to show for it, the elevator doors parted, and out strode the man, the myth, the Karl. You know how you feel when you've been at a concert forever, waiting for the artist to come on, and
your feet hurt, and you're blaming the person you paid too much to see and vowing to hate her forever, when all of a sudden the lights go down and smoke fills the stage, and suddenly Britney Spears or J. Lo emerges from an oversized floor tile, and everything is worth it? That's pretty much exactly how Karl entered the room. Except his version of backup dancers are middle-aged men in suits.

This was our moment. The camera light turned on and we moved toward Karl. Because this was fate, Karl moved right toward us, like we were all Brad Kroenig.

“
Karl!!!
Karl. Karl, why Brad?” I shoved the mic in his face.

“I thought he had the ease with the camera very, very few people have,” Karl said. He leaned in close when he talked to me. He smelled like soap. “I thought, he can transform himself.”

When interviewing God at a cocktail party, you have to remember that everyone around you is going to want a little piece of God. Whether it's a selfie with God, an acknowledgment from God, or a photo of God—he's going to be an in-demand member of the party. So, if you need a little piece of God—witty banter about an election, for instance—you'll have to get the obligatory small talk out of the way quickly before God is understandably distracted by a man with abs that look like a freshly baked challah loaf.

“Do you prefer Barack or Hillary?”

Karl reminded me—and what would probably be our five viewers—that he's foreign. “There's nothing worse than strangers having an opinion of something that does not concern them,” he said.

“But what do you think of Hillary's pantsuits,” I sputtered as he began to pull away.
Was Brad tugging on his ponytail? Fuck off, Brad!

“Women in politics have a big problem,” he said. “If they are too chic they don't look serious so it's very, very difficult. I think her pants are poorly cut.”

And then he moved away to get his photo taken and gaze at the walls.

I remember feeling somewhat delirious after the interview. It was like seeing a really good concert from the front row where the artist leans over to high-five you. Also I wasn't drunk or high and there was no crowd that caused exiting the venue to make you feel like swearing off concerts till the end of time.

• • •

If I could have such a positive experience with Karl, I could surely have one with Rachel a couple years later, when I had more experience and knew I could get through celebrity encounters without being weird. But I was afraid of what she'd think of me after so many years of blogging about her reality show, her QVC line, and her husband's affinity for leather jewelry. For all I knew, she could have a voodoo doll that she stuck with an extra pin every time I wrote “Rachel's husband, who wears more necklaces at once than I own.”

I arranged to meet Rachel at Saks, where she was doing a launch event for her clothing line. It was part party and part “Rachel tells people who spend a lot of money at Saks what to buy from her clothing line.” I was excited but extremely nervous that I'd be berated for being a snarky bitch.

When I arrived at Saks, I rode the escalators to the corner of a floor manned by a secretary at a dark wood desk. That's how you know you're in a really fancy store—they have secretaries at desks
to keep the riffraff out of the secret “backstage” areas that regular people aren't supposed to know exist. Going to a special area to interview a famous person like this is always a little nervous-­making, because it heightens the differences between that person's life and your own. But it's also hardly unexpected. A famous stylist as recognizable as Zoe isn't going to stand next to the sale rack to talk to me when she could be in a nice enclosed room with comfortable furniture and silver trays of tea sandwiches.

The secretary ushered me through a door. Behind that door was another desk manned by another secretary. That secretary had a woman wearing all black guide me through a maze of heavy doors and secret passageways lined with plush carpeting. Very often when you are going to meet a celebrity you will have to navigate the intestines of a very large building. They like to hide in rooms deep within these places that no one aside from other famous people ever knew existed. My gallery encounter with Karl was so unusual because he usually pulls this very trickery—once I tried to interview him at Macy's and couldn't because I was told I was “not on the list,” but in reality I had no idea if he was even physically
there
, since the only indication of his presence was a bunch of suits guarding a dark hallway.

Eventually my escort established me in a room with a lovely display of tiny sandwiches and refreshments. Those wildly popular ten-dollar bottles of green juice were chilling in a silver ice bucket. Because the new hotness at press junkets now is to treat overpriced green juice like fine champagne. To be fair, eight of them probably cost as much as a bottle of Dom. Everyone takes one, but no one drinks it because they like it—they just take it because they know it retails for ten dollars. It's the Birkin bag of beverages.

Then I waited. Interviewing designers and celebrities always
involves waiting because there are always eight million other people who want something from them and fame is a constant act of figuring out who deserves to be fit in and when. I probably fit in somewhere below “have assistant replace old socks” on these people's to-do lists.

As I sat there with the ice bucket of overpriced juice waiting for Rachel, I thought about all the arguably negative things the Cut had posted about her. It all started with a freelancer reporting that Rachel missed Marc Jacobs's show (because he had the gall to start on time instead of thirty minutes late like everyone else) and was upset by it. As one would be if they missed Marc Jacobs's show for the reason that he started on time! Because this is a fact of every woman's life:
no one is on time
. The blog post was even splashed on the screen in the middle of an episode of her Bravo reality show. Which shall stand forever in my mind as the closest I've ever been to appearing on Bravo. But as joyous as I was about the Cut's airtime, it came at the cost of even more airtime of Rachel in her signature outfit—the white hotel bathrobe—looking quite upset over the whole thing.
Did she still hate me?
If she did, she might force me to explain why we published that she missed Marc Jacobs's show and ask why I was so mean and don't I know that she's a real person just like everyone else?
If she threw green juice on me, would it stain?
I was about to find out.

Carrie came into the room before Rachel. She was tiny and stylish and perfectly lovely in person. But there was an edge to her voice that said she could turn off her niceness as soon as she wanted. Before Rachel Zoe came into the room, we exchanged polite conversation about how amazing she is. This is a ritual that seems to happen prior to interviewing nearly any major celeb. Maybe celebrities send their publicists in first to make sure the reporter will say
she thinks the celebrity is the best thing that ever happened to the world. This must be the LA equivalent of a burning sage air cleanse.

Then Rachel breezed into the room, as if carried by the skirt of her long, flowing printed blue dress that was basically a daytime gown. Despite this being August, she wore the frock's pussy bow knotted high around her neck and a glossy black leather jacket over a top. Not that she looked the least bit uncomfortable or out of place, especially next to her assistant, who was wearing a full black tuxedo pantsuit from the line and quite possibly might have had all the oil glands in her face removed. Rachel always wears what Rachel wants, not what's practical. This is the beauty of being famous, and this is especially the beauty of working in fashion: no one expects the things you do, and certainly not the things you wear, to make sense. In fact, people
prefer
that you make very little sense. Hence, we have pop stars who wear '80s workout leotards to go shopping in New York in December. Hence, we have Karl Lagerfeld making $2,400 purses out of hula hoops.

Rachel was
lovely
. Perfectly welcoming and didn't say anything about how the Cut previously hurt her feelings. I definitely wouldn't have taken as kindly to anyone who made me upset on Bravo.

“The line looks so expensive!” I told Rachel when we shook hands near the snacks that no one would eat. A rack of the clothes she created hung yonder from the festering food. These included: a camel cape, a coat with a faux fur hem so thick that it looked like it had a fur skirt sewn on, suiting with flared pants that skimmed the ground, ruffled dresses, sequined jackets, and fur vests.

“Would you like to sit down? Have a seat in my office,” she joked, plopping down on the couch. I obliged.

“So what made you want to do the line?” I asked.

“It was something that I have thought of a million times, but
also the thing that I was petrified to do. I think being judged by my peers is something that is very scary to me. I have sat with these buyers and fashion directors of these retail stores for many, many years. And the editor in chiefs and things—the thought of being judged by them is petrifying. Petrifying.”

I knew what she meant. People with outsize personas like Karl Lagerfeld are scary because you've no way of knowing whether what they're really like matches public perception until you interact. And then there's Fashion Week, which could be called “Judge Shit Week.” We judge the clothes on the runway; we judge the designers, like Rachel and Karl, who design them; we judge the models wearing them; we judge the clothes people in attendance are wearing; we judge where everyone's sitting and what everyone is doing. And the most discomfiting part about all of it is that nothing anyone thinks is out in the open. With the exception of a few fashion critics, no one's willing to come out and say what they say to their coworkers when they're back at their offices or out of earshot. But you get alone with these people and you hear
everything
: which designer they think is terrible and should go out of business, which street-style star they think is a walking joke, which front-row celebrity they think is the most desperate, which editor they think is the most lame.

As someone who's been on the inside of the business for two decades, Rachel knows this well. She also knows that hers is a business of image making where all that matters is the first impression. Fashion isn't like pop songs that you have to hear several times before you fall in love with them. People fall in love with clothes or outright hate them immediately. Very few fashion designers get the chance to woo people over time—the ones who do manage to churn out hit after hit season after season until they
train their audiences to embrace everything they do as genius. When you are just starting out and are a known reality TV star—in the snooty eyes of the fashion industry, the polyester of fame—you have to work even harder to get people to see your cred.

I asked Rachel why she did a line that stores classify as “contemporary,” which means expensive but not horrifically expensive. Most celebs do cheapo lines for stores like Sears and Walmart. But these Rachel Zoe dresses were $400 and would be sold at Saks, a floor away from $800 to $2,000 Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney dresses. To Zoe, who is rich, the contemporary category is probably her Target.

“I was really maniacal about keeping prices down,” Zoe said. “I am such a fan of Victoria Beckham and Marc Jacobs. All these designers are—I mean, are you kidding me?”

Here's something I love about Rachel Zoe: what you see is what you get. You have an idea of her in your head, and then you get there, and she's just like you imagined her but even more so. Even though she dresses up all the time and always has her hair and makeup done professionally, even though her publicist is completely scary, even though she's important enough to warrant silver platters of tea sandwiches every time she sits in a room, there's something down to earth about her. She's not like an actress who's seemingly
really really
nice to the
New
Yorke
r
profile writer and then a total bitch to a party reporter on a red carpet.
(Claire Danes.)
You can connect with her, whereas someone like Karl Lagerfeld is so out there that you sometimes wonder if he's actually a piece of technology that winds up in the back. But what Karl and Rachel have in common is the ability to translate their personalities to iconic looks and then turn those iconic looks into mass-appeal ­design.

“I remember there were certain pieces that I loved the sample, I really loved the sample, and I would sit with my design team and it was like, this is this amount of money. And I was like, I'm not going above that price point. It's too expensive.”

This is an admirable viewpoint for a designer who can and will spend more on one handbag than many people will spend on their college educations.

Rachel took me over to the rack of clothes to show me some of the pieces. “This is the Charlie suit, although I don't see the bottom here. This has shorts, long shorts, pants, all different pieces,” she said. “It's very Saville Row.” (Saville Row is a street in London where David Beckham buys custom-made suits that cost as much as designer wedding dresses.)