Tales from the Back Row (14 page)

“Clothes for me are a religion,” she continued. “I know how to pack, how to make it look good. So many times I see people . . . pack in a horrible way, and they need more volume, their dress is flat or something. One time I'll show you.”

Oh,
will you now?
I was dying to take her up on her offer. Anything to interact with ADR in person and play with clothes.

At my next ideas meeting at work—where the fashion staff at the magazine spit out story ideas for yay/nay by the editors—I pitched shooting a video of Anna Dello Russo teaching the world how to pack designer clothes properly, which seemed like just the everyday conundrum
New
Y
ork
should decode. Naturally, it was approved, so I emailed ADR posthaste to ask her if she'd let us shoot
the video with her at her hotel when she was in town. She replied right away that she'd be happy to. One of the things I love about ADR is that she loves being famous and isn't shy about admitting it. Many celebrities who actively sought out fame act like they hate all the attention and we can all go fuck ourselves for caring, which is just ungrateful and obviously a lie. These are the celebs who roll their eyes at you and act like you should hang yourself when you try to interview them
at their own film premieres
. If I were super-famous I would enjoy every minute of it. Deep down inside, most people working in media enjoy attention to some degree, since the work means your name will be made public in some capacity—whether as a byline on a story or at the top of a masthead or as a famous person on the internet. And the second I couldn't stand it anymore, I would make myself seem as scary as Anna Wintour so that reporters would be too afraid to talk to me. Then I could enjoy my notoriety and the enigma of my being in peace and quiet.

• • •

One frigid morning during Fashion Week in February, the season after I first interviewed ADR, my videographer and I headed over to her posh Tribeca Hotel for our packing lesson.

As I contemplated how to dress to meet one of the most fabulous women in the entire world, my closet devolved before me into a pile of garbage. It was as though Hermione came along with a wand, waved it in front of all my clothes, and turned them to a mess of dishrags and tattoo prints. Had I been going to meet a friend from my Austin, Texas, high school, I would have looked at my closet and seen stylish things from places like Zara that look more expensive than they were, but that's because the niceness and
coolness of clothes is all relative, depending on who they're worn around. But now, looking at my apparel, everything looked like shit. The American Apparel sweaters, the Uniqlo jeans, even the black blazer I saved up to buy from Saks looked like a one-way ticket to embarrassment.

Here's a dressing tip for everyone with normal clothes who randomly finds themselves in an impossibly fabulous fashion-­related situation: just wear all black. Unless you're meeting Anna Wintour, that is, in which case you're probably just fucked all around unless you can borrow something designer. But ­generally, if Anna Wintour won't be around, wear head-to-toe black. It's a uniform for some fashion people. I think it works because not that many people wear all black unless they're working at Sephora or an airport Chili's, and then it only looks unchic because they have to pair the all black with name tags and aprons. If you wear all black with
out
a name tag and
with
uncomfortable shoes, you will look so fashion, trust. Generally, the more uncomfortable the shoe, the chicer, cooler, and more fashion-y an outfit is.

So out from the depths of the compost pile that was, sadly, my clothes, I fished a bunch of black things: a black blazer, a black tank, tight black pants made of scuba material (a long-lost trend—I'm not doing pants DIY projects with wetsuits here), and stiletto black ankle booties with silver zippers up the front. I wore a black coat on top and carried a big black patent leather shoulder bag with gold hardware that looked like it was molting shiny black bits. I was embarrassed about this bag for about 90 percent of the time that I carried it, including this time. But it was my best option then, so
hopefully she wouldn't notice?

Suited up in my fashion black, I went to the Tribeca Grand
Hotel, where videographer Jonah said he'd meet me in the lobby. I got there and didn't see him, so I sat on a chair looking much more important than usual, as one does when wearing all black, and waited. At 9:05, there was no sign of him, and we were officially running late. I called him and informed him I was there and ready!

“I'm here, too,” he said. “Where are you?”

“In an armchair in front wearing shades indoors. At the Tribeca Grand?” I replied.

“The Tribeca Grand? No—it's the Greenwich Hotel,” he said.

Fuck.

“WHERE IS THAT I'VE NEVER BEEN THERE.” I began panicking.

“It's not far from where you are,” he said, sanely. “Greenwich and North Moore.”

Now completely panicking, I ran out of the Tribeca Grand and several blocks over to the Greenwich Hotel. It was the kind of cold outside where the air feels like needles on any exposed skin. Texans were made for these elements about as much as cats were for showers.

Just as I lost all feeling in my face, I arrived at the correct hotel and found Jonah in the lobby. He was acting like this was just another day at work.

“OH MY GOD, IS IT OKAY WE'RE LATE?” I continued, panicking and red-faced, yet also noticing that this hotel was noticeably nicer than the previous one.
But of course
.

“It's fine, it's fine,” he said, sanely. “Let's go up to her room.”

We took the cavernous rustic-chic elevator up to her floor and walked down the hallway to her room. The door was open, and therein sat fashion goddess/icon/angel Anna Dello Russo at the
edge of her perfectly made bed. On her head were Louis Vuitton bunny ears.

Shit
, I thought.
She was ready on time, and this is really happening. BUNNY EARS HAPPENING.

“Hiiii!” I said. “I'm Amy Odell, it's such a pleasure to meet you. I'm SO, so sorry we're a little late.” I noticed she had a beautiful black-and-white tutu dress hanging just so on the outside of her armoire.

“It's okay, it's okay!” she said in her seductive Italian-y English, ushering us inside and introducing us to her edgy Japanese assistant. Jonah and I took our coats off and set them with our bags on the floor of her room, which made Pottery Barn's best in-store displays look like a regular barn.

“I brought you the magazine with your interview!” I told her, trying to make up for our ten-minute tardiness.

“Yes, I pick it up,” she said. “Several copies.”

This, everyone, is the difference between the world's best fashion editors and the riffraff living among them: utter, immaculate, almost maddening but mostly enviable preparedness.
One day maybe I will be this with it,
I thought, in awe of ADR's organization. First, I'd master the art of carrying a smaller purse that wasn't always lined with a layer of garbage and lint.

“Oh great! I'm so glad,” I said, going into my standard journalistic “I am so nice and charming, you will thoroughly enjoy being interviewed by me” mode.

We briefly discussed the concept and flow of the shoot before we started filming. ADR showed us the items in her closet—an iconic hot pink monkey hair knee-length Dolce & Gabbana coat, something else outrageously amazing by Marc Jacobs, the couture tutu by a designer no one can pronounce, etc. We decided
that she would show us what she brought, with me asking her questions, and then we'd film her demonstrating how to pack these items so that they'd deliver maximum chic-ness upon unpacking.

As Jonah began turning on his equipment, ADR interfered. “No, you go outside,” she said.

What?

“Go outside then open the door,” she continued.

Okay. She is Anna Dello Russo
—best to obey.

“Wait,” she said. “This—no.” She picked up Jonah's camera case and my embarrassing purse and both of our coats, and walked over to her bathroom, where she flung them onto the floor by the toilet before closing the door. “Now, outside.”

Note to self: get new purse, start saving for new coat.

Anna Dello Russo was, through and through, a fashion editor. She had planned
exactly
how this shoot would look, right down to her bunny ears, the dress hanging beautifully from the door of her wardrobe, and, God forbid, the shoot would be messed up by bags and coats that are
not hers.
I couldn't blame her, considering how much my purse offended even me. I wouldn't want anyone to think I owned it either.

We went outside as ordered. I would never be Anna Dello Russo, but I would be her bitch for twenty minutes.

After the door had been shut for a long enough amount of time for Jonah to turn on his camera and position me by the doorway, ADR opened the door.

“Hiiii!” she said, bunny ears perky above her head. And the shoot began.

• • •

I can't say that any of ADR's packing tips stuck with me, but her reaction to my coat and purse made a more lasting impression—I still think about it years later. And if Anna Dello Russo was this averse to my purse during a twenty-minute video shoot, how would Anna Wintour react to everything I own a year later in an even shorter job interview? Allergically, I was certain. But what on earth do you wear to the office of the people who control the fashion industry? These people know the provenance of everything on your person as long as it didn't come from Walmart or HSN.

Given that I now knew only fools wear black to meet Anna Wintour, and that I had no passably chic nonblack things to wear, I realized I had only one option: attempt to borrow something designer. As it happened,
New
York
was shooting the spring collections at the time, so the fashion assistant, Eve, who I was close with, had a lot of stuff I could feasibly borrow. She also had a great eye, so she could tell me what to wear and how to wear it. Despite having knowledge of the fashion business, I was still total crap at dressing myself, which is why the idea of me working at
Vogue
was so laughable. But that's the difference between the ADRs of the world and the average people who just end up in fashion. At that time, I had only a vague idea of how to look fashionable, and it pretty much just amounted to wearing all black.

“You need something ladylike,” she told me, when I informed her of my epic
Vogue
opportunity. “Come with me.”

I probably should have been more concerned than I was about other editors at the magazine finding out that I was illegally borrowing clothes for a job interview at another magazine. But I had been styled in the closet by my friends in the fashion department so many times that I don't think anyone thought anything of us sneaking in there for extended periods of time. It was really just
our worktime equivalent of a bunch of girls going into the bathroom at a restaurant to talk about the other people at the table and reapply lip gloss.

She ushered me into the closet, where, in the appallingly expansive mirrors all around us I was ordered to strip down to my underwear.

“Anna's going to know who everything is by,” she said. “You have to wear the right label and the right season.”

BCBG was afoot, but was it appropriate?

“BCBG does advertise in
Vogue
,” Eve said. “But you can probably do better.” From within the racks she unearthed a cream Michael Kors shift dress with elbow-length sleeves. It was almost insultingly simple but also phenomenally gorgeous. Seeing as I knew little about what made clothes look good, I didn't quite know if this was The Dress. Though I did suspect that I wouldn't get to wear something as fine until my wedding.

Fortunately, Eve was there to set me straight.

“Yes,” she said, looking me up and down. “Let's add a necklace.”

She rummaged through a shelf filled with plastic bags full of jewelry and dug out a few Philip Crangi pieces. She doubled a long brass strand around my neck, and once I saw it against the ivory pureness of the Kors shift dress, I knew that this was it—this was
Vogue
.

“What about shoes?” I said, nervously eyeing myself in the mirror.
Also, what if I spill something on myself?

Fist to chin, Eve pondered my ensemble: “Nude. Nude pumps.” I didn't own those, and Eve didn't have any in the closet, so I had to go to Bloomingdale's and buy some after work, hoping the contents of the eight issues of
Vogue
I had stacked in my apartment waiting to be read would magically migrate into my memory as I did so.

Eve-less, I called in backup: my dear friend Tara, who graciously subjected herself to the tedious boredom of watching me trying on unexciting fashion office shoes for forty-five minutes. I was leaning toward a pair of peep-toe nude Cole Haans—another
Vogue
brand, I reasoned. But I was afraid of the price: $250. Tara, like a good, sane, reliable friend, saw beyond tomorrow. “You can wear those again,” she said. “You'll get a lot of use out of them.”

“You're right,” I said. “They're a great basic.” Years later, I can report she was right: I have since worn these nude peep-toe pumps to many a wedding in my late twenties. I didn't know at the time that all my vacation time at this stage in my life would be devoted to going to other people's weddings, but I didn't need to because Tara is my seer. It was also a valuable lesson in investment pieces: stylists always talk about “cost per wear.” If you buy something you wear only once that costs $200, that's $200 you spend every time you wear it. But if you wear something that costs $200 at least forty times, that's only $5 each time you wear it. (Math!)