Tales from the Back Row (11 page)

“Tuxedos,” Rachel said, still flipping. “Look at Mandana. Stand up,” Rachel ordered the thin, dark-haired young woman perched yonder on a couch. She rose and kicked her feet around a bit so that I got the full effect of her flared pants.

“Very flattering,” I reassured her.

After some more riveting conversation about fabric samples and how to choose just the right sequins, Rachel had to be received by her people. I tagged along. Because a person of importance never walks a hallway alone, a group of several of us, including Rachel and her publicist and others who were apparently involved in this operation, were led down more secret passageways until we got to what I can only assume was a very elite fitting room.

Doors were open like some sort of advent calendar to reveal ladies dressed in Rachel's line, one after the other. Rachel's job was to go from room to room advising them on how to wear her stuff. This is
styling
.

Rachel educated one strawberry blond seventeen-year-old
shopping with her mom on where the seams of the sleeves on her sequin blazer should hit for the best slouch. “I like to wear it a little bigger so you can wear a zero or a two or a four,” she said, flying in the face of every woman's logic that one should buy the smallest size possible at all times, which is why my father always said he wanted to open a clothing store and call it Size Two, where everything inside would be a size two, which is really all every woman wants. She also assured a hedge fund manager in the next room that the camel cape she was trying on was “insta-chic,” should she have had any fears about looking like an Upper East Side superman in it.

You would think that these women—bankers, high schoolers with their moms—would freak out about getting styled by the world's most famous stylist (I had become comfortable talking to Rachel but would have been mortified for her to judge my clothes). But I guess because this is New York and nothing is less cool than freaking out over celebrities here, they acted as though having Rachel Zoe style them was as normal as ordering a skim extra foam latte at the local Starbucks. Shopping at Saks a lot had awarded them this tutelage, and they would not grovel in the face of it. Then again, E! and celebrity lifestyle websites tell every woman that she deserves to feel like Gwyneth Paltrow for at least a day out of every year—and if you have a Saks frequent-flyer card, that standard probably goes up to at least a day out of every month.

After our visit in Saks, I spoke to Rachel once again on the phone while she was getting chauffeured home from another store event. She was lovely again even though I felt like I was being a huge pest. This is the job of a reporter: to nag and stalk and nag until you get what you need. It's like dealing with the cable company: you can bother them as much as you want, but no matter
how many fireworks you set off to get them to look twice at you, you're still at the mercy of their automated answering system.

I ended up writing a story that was quite positive about Rachel and her clothing line. Ultimately, I had no evidence to support any of the weirdo internet rumors about her injecting celebrities and faux fur vests with horse drugs. Also, no one said she was a hack and that her line was a hack job and that the faux fur felt like a broom. Everyone loved her and her line and thought she was brilliant. I did not forget the call I received from Carrie in the beginning that served as a warning against me doing a snarky hack job on Rachel. But after you hang out with someone and she's nice to you, it's quite hard to write something mean about her anyway. Things would have been different, of course, if she
had
thrown Saks Fifth Avenue's tuna salad at my hair.

After the story went up and Fashion Week was about to start, I received warning that a “tree” had manifested itself on my desk.

Given that I've killed a cactus, this was as concerning as it was exciting.

When I got to work, I saw that it was an orchid about half my height. Somewhere within the reams of cellophane and massive white flowers dangling off the thing, there was a card.

“Thanks for your kind words!—Rachel” it read.

I still have the card. Rachel is likely to be the most influential stylist/celebrity/designer to exist in my lifetime, so having a note from her is major. The orchid is long gone unfortunately, but the card is something I can show my kids one day when Rachel is the new Karl Lagerfeld, trotting around the globe in a powdered wig plugging erotic coffee-table ebooks about her husband's chest hair. By the time they're old enough to read, handwriting will be as out of style as cave paintings.

4

Celebrities

going bra-less into the celebrity wild

H
ow is that?” Richard Gere asked, gesturing to my scallops.

“Not amazing,” I replied, wondering immediately if I should have lied.

“Try one of these,” he said, sliding one of his ravioli onto my bread plate. Either he was generous, really thought the ravioli was that good, just fucking with me because he could see how nervous I was, or on a low-carb diet. (Hollywood people.)

I cut it in half and took a bite.

“I like it,” he assured me. It tasted like pumpkin pie.

“Me too,” I said. (
This
was the time to lie.)

Seated to my other side at the round table was a film journalist who was really excited to get to talk about Bob Dylan, the subject of the movie Richard Gere was eating ravioli to promote. I am about as capable of discussing Bob Dylan with enthusiasm and expertise as I am Jell-O, scientifically proven to be some of the most repulsive edible material on earth. I was covering the dinner as a
party reporter and freelancer for
New
York
mag—one of the many such assignments I took hoping it would turn into full-time work—and the youngest and unquestionably most uncomfortable person at this table (also, the sole woman). I felt too nervous and out of my comfort zone to engage in conversation. I felt like I was eating dinner with a bunch of other people's dads. Dads who like to talk about football and listen to classic rock and eat wings. Whereas I'm much more of a watch
Sex and the City
, listen to Britney Spears, eat hummus and baby carrots sort of person. I felt enough out of my element at fashion events, which I covered more than any other kind, so being faced with Richard Gere's ravioli was especially scary.

I was reporting on a dinner and screening for a movie Gere appeared in about Bob Dylan called
I'm Not There
. The more of these events I could cover, well, the more likely I was to be seen as a strong candidate for a job like the one I landed later at the Cut. When my editor told me to go to the dinner preceding the screening I had no idea that I would be seated right next to Richard Gere and the director of the film, Todd Haynes. Here's the thing: I actually don't get that into movies most of the time unless they're ninety minutes or less, a rom-com (again, ninety minutes or less), or involve space exploration in a non-sci-fi fashion. Talking about movies and '60s music comes about as naturally to me as watching any sport that doesn't involve a leotard. When I see a football game on TV, my brain registers nothing beyond the glass of the television set, and I involuntarily enter a state of extreme boredom.

Am I supposed to interview these people?
I wondered.
Isn't it weird to interview people who are maybe extending the hand of friendship by giving you their ravioli? Yes, it's totally weird. Act natural. Eat the ravioli.

As I chewed, I noticed the conversation had turned to some
thing I actually had things to say about: iPods! At the time, these were a new invention.

“Do you have an iPod?” I asked Gere.

Yes, he said, but only for research purposes. “I don't like those things in my ears,” he said. “I don't like headphones, I think music sounds better without headphones.” He would later pull a flip phone out of his pocket. Such a dad move to be four cell phone models behind everyone else.

Maybe I can just switch the recorder on and set it on the table.

I knew I had to come back with something. My editor would wonder how I could eat an entire meal with Richard Gere and not come back with anything but a story about how Gere gave me some of his pasta.

I switched on my recorder and set it next to the plate where Gere's ravioli gift formerly lay.

As a party reporter, I was used to interviewing celebrities in the safety of a cocktail party, where you could scoot away to a bar and cajole with other party reporters as soon as you finished asking your awkward questions. I was not used to having entire meals with celebrities and geeky film buffs who actually want to have serious conversations about someone's art or craft. In my mind, people want to know things about celebrities that make them human—like if they wear underwear with holes or floss regularly.

After the meal ended, with me functioning at no higher a human level than the centerpiece, I panicked.

I just lost a whole hour that I could have been interviewing Richard Gere about something hilarious, like his favorite celebrity cat or if he'd ever given up dairy products and did that make him feel like kind of a woman?

Fuckity fuck fuck!

There would be an opportunity to get some quotes on the red carpet before the screening began. I ran to it and took my spot behind the rope that separates the famous from those who make them so. The divide between Them and Me bolstered my confidence a little bit.

“I just wanted to ask you some questions I didn't think of during dinner!” I spewed at Todd Haynes when he came by.

“Did you ever talk to Dylan?” I asked.

“I didn't talk to Dylan at all. I could've, but I chose not to,” he said. “I didn't really need the real guy sitting there and me asking the kind of questions that people ask him, and kind of putting him back in that box like, ‘Is it true that you said this or are you really into rock 'n' roll and not folk anymore?' You know what I mean?” (No.) “The film plays so much with the mask, the myth making rather than the real thing that he might say on that day at that moment. And I didn't want to put him in that position, you know?” (No.)

Shit. Have nothing Really Real to say about Dylan. Change conversation topic. I know: animals.

“Richard said at dinner you never asked him if he rode a horse. You never did?”

“I didn't tell Richard—well, it was in the script, but I never asked him, ‘Do you know how to ride a horse really good?' And then it was like a week into it, and he was riding the horse everywhere and he turned to me and he was like, ‘Pretty good I ride a horse, huh?' ”

“HAHAHA thanksomuchforyourtime!” I said, scared-like. And then he moved down the line to the next person.

After I sat through the film, I dashed home to review my recordings. The dinner conversation was completely inaudible.

I filed something about my experience sitting next to Richard
Gere at dinner, like a total creeper. Fortunately, my editors liked it enough to run it online.

• • •

Considering I had covered maybe a couple dozen or so parties for
New
York
magazine up to that point, I really had ample experience speaking coherently to famous people not to botch that assignment. The great thing about party reporting, if you're shy like me, is that it extinguishes the natural human instinct to avoid extremely embarrassing and awkward situations. I am a quiet, introverted person, and when I first started, I would feel terrified with nerves. Shy introverts will understand when I say that nothing feels worse than being at a cocktail party alone, especially trying to talk to strangers at a cocktail party you've attended alone. I had to resist every impulse to run out the door or do things on my cell phone to look like I wasn't a terrified, introverted loser. I'm about as type A as they come, so succeeding at the assignments was good enough motivation for me to suck it up and go through with every terrifying encounter. The job is simple: you go up to famous people at swanky parties, introduce yourself, and ask them all kinds of questions you wouldn't ask unless you were conducting an interview. When I started, I was terrified of talking to these people. But I built up a tolerance to the awkwardness, and it eventually became relatively not-scary.

On any given night in New York, at least half a dozen celebrity red-carpet events take place. Many of these are fashion events, because fashion people love to have parties for everything, especially store openings and perfume launches. Each fashion show that has celebrities at it is covered as its own little one-hour party. Once
my editor learned how much I loved
Project Runway
, she sent me mostly to fashion events and shows when Fashion Week rolled around. But designers, models, and other fashion people often show up to other stuff happening around town, like film premieres, so fashion knowledge always came in handy.

Interviews can be about as comfortable as rectal exams, which is to say: neither party really
wants
to go through with it, but since the livelihood of each is at stake, the discomfort becomes a necessary evil. Overall, parties are seldom the place for serious discussions—people are drinking, it's noisy, and you usually have only three or so minutes to get a famous person to say something worth printing before their hovering publicist lightly taps you on the back, which is party speak for, “Thanks, dear, please fuck off now.” For
New
York
magazine, standard sound bites like “I love pink lip gloss! I wear it every day” weren't printable. You had to come back with something much funnier or weirder or newsier.

At parties, it's best to open the interview by asking something relating to the event at hand. For instance, if you're at Roberto Cavalli's Halloween party, you would ask questions about Halloween, the merits of wearing leopard versus giraffe print, and things that happen on yachts, because all these things relate to Cavalli and the odious day you're “celebrating.” (Yes, I have Halloween Hate, which is a natural reaction to October 31 when three years in a row the night has ended with you drunk-crying on your floor, and you live in one of three cities in the country where grown adults get more excited over wearing costumes than four-year-olds who go trick or treating do.)

After I was assigned to a party, my editors would give me some suggested questions to ask the celebrity guests. For example, for P. Diddy's launch party for his Sean John fragrance Unforgivable
Woman, my editor suggested I ask people, “What do you smell like?”

“It's a good question for a fragrance party,” she said. “I always ask that.” Dutifully, I went for it.

This Unforgivable Woman launch party was held in a town house on the Upper East Side with hardly any lights on inside. At this Chateau de Diddy, the air was filled with the unfortunate stench of both the Unforgivable Woman fragrance and a fog machine that, judging by the putrid nature of its excretions, had to have been a health hazard.

I figured that my best chance for interviewing celebs at this thing was staking out the staircase leading to a purportedly glamorous attic-type enclosure where Diddy had sequestered himself with fellow celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and some other Chosen Hot Women. Collectively, these people are known Manhattan-wide as VIPs, which loosely translates to “Various Inflated Personalities.” These VIPs moved toward this fateful staircase, past a velvet rope guarded by linebackers wearing elegant black suits. I caught Jay Z about to ascend the stairs to Diddy's lair with Beyoncé. As he walked by and got rushed by reporters just like me, I thrust my tape recorder in front of his chest and shouted, “WHAT DO YOU SMELL LIKE????” The absurdity of the question and, surely, the aggression and desperation with which I asked it, prompted him to pause before me and deliver a truly spectacular answer.

“Oh, I smell incredibly beautiful,” he said, waving his arms about with passion. “I smell like you just got out of the shower, you have on the towel, and you just got your sheets on your bed, and you're laying, and you wrap yourself up. I smell like that.”

I'd smell like that, too, if I hadn't spent an hour sweating in Casa de Unforgivable.

Later, when Jay and Bey finished their partying in Diddy's private lair and descended the stairs, I managed to catch Beyoncé herself, dressed in a black satin dress that was very “high school semiformal.” (Maybe it was from Diddy's Sean John clothing line.) I asked her the same question. She only said she felt “hot”—before fleeing the premises. So I guess Diddy's VIP suite didn't feature the one thing everyone in the building longed for more than a paper bag to breathe into, which was air conditioning.

I spent two hours desperately seeking celebrities and perspiring at the bottom of those stairs. A reporter whom I had befriended over the course of this tedious display of Diddy's Unforgivable Ego spotted film mogul Harvey Weinstein in the darkness, within the haze of Unforgivable perfume and even more Unforgivable steam.

“My editor wouldn't be interested in him. But you can definitely talk to him—he's so
New
York
mag,” she said. I had no idea who Harvey Weinstein was at the time (this was long before I turned myself into street-style bait and bumped into him at the Plaza), but I was growing desperate for some material I could file. So I parted the sea of models that surrounded him, approached, and asked him the same question Jay Z had liked so much. I would prove myself fearless in the face of such awkwardness yet again. What could possibly go wrong?