The Vogue Factor: The Inside Story of Fashion's Most Illustrious Magazine (14 page)

Makeup was of course crucial to our sense of theatrics. The punk era required us to be porcelain pale, so that was the end of sunlight for me. I retreated indoors at the age of sixteen and never tanned again. My friend Gabriel Wilder and I used to save up to buy Shiseido foundation No. 1, the lightest and most matte base on the market. We wore thick brush strokes of black liquid eyeliner, false lashes, bright-red lipstick and hot-pink blush. The general effect was probably
something near Kabuki makeup, and five shades off the right color for our natural complexions, but it’s a look I love and have never quite gotten over. I’ve toned it down a bit now as is appropriate for my age, but I fully intend taking it back up again when I’m seventy, along with blood-red nails and men’s silk lounging pajamas.

Our fashion sense was also strongly influenced by many of the international bands that were touring; the scene was so small and we normally met them somehow. Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Cure, Simple Minds, The Pretenders, The Stranglers, Lou Reed, Nico and Elvis Costello all came into our social orbit and so we seesawed between Goth (all black), New Romantic (pirate shirts and high-waisted black pants) and Buffalo Girl (brown leather distressed men’s jackets with long full cotton skirts). At Paddington Markets one Saturday morning in 1982, Gabriel and I spotted the real Paul Simonon, bass player of The Clash, buying a fifties lamp. We bowled up and nervously introduced ourselves to him, and he very generously put our names on the door list for every one of The Clash’s Sydney concerts at the Capitol.

Music informed everything I chose to wear as did, increasingly, cinema. If we weren’t seeing bands, we were at the movies, getting an education in seminal film. It was around about this period I decided: if ever in doubt, dress like Anouk Aimee in
La Dolce Vita
. Or Grace Kelly in
Rear Window
.

I made two extended trips to Europe in the early eighties and my fashion recollections are reflective of the trends at the time—black jeans, a black overcoat, Cuban-heeled boots and a keffiyeh scarf was something of a uniform in London. Another extended stay in Greece involved cheesecloth goddess dresses, gold chain belts and—I shudder to admit—I may have even tied one of those gold leather
plaits around my forehead, but that was a momentary aberration. On a trip to Italy in 1984 I finally cemented what is pretty much my style up until today.

I was traveling through Rome with my friends Bernard and Michael. Bernard was a huge fan of Italian culture. We had been to all the Italian film festivals together back in Sydney. One afternoon, we walked into the Fiorucci store and I spotted a cream overcoat. It was a perfect fifties duster coat, with printed lining. Add black cropped cigarette pants, ballet flats and cat-eye glasses and that was it. I don’t stray far from this style right up until today. Fiorucci was quite trendy then, and not inexpensive. Considering I had shopped vintage all my life, this was the first real “label” I had ever bought. I had that coat for years; it never dated. Bernard bought one very similar. He wore it with loafers and no socks, with his black hair in a quiff, and in doing so managed to look like Marcello Mastroianni.

It was liberating to spend the early part of my youth playing with clothes and finding my own style, without the tyranny of being influenced by expensive labels. I feel sad when I hear young girls today—especially teenagers—saying, “I love Givenchy and Balenciaga,” and you know it’s unlikely they have ever read a book about the original designer. I think an eighteen-year-old with a luxury designer bag has missed out on a lot, not the least the excitement of it taking fifteen years to save up and buy one for yourself.

It was this fifties-Fellini vibe I was channelling when I started at
Vogue
. Judith Cook appreciated what I was trying to achieve on my very limited budget (my salary on the reception desk was $87 per week). She still reminds me that I used to wear ballet slippers and headbands and red lipstick. All the editors at
Vogue
understood that style is not a slavish devotion to labels. When you work
in fashion, it stands to reason that you are going to follow trends, but where it goes wrong is if the trend doesn’t suit you personally.

When I moved to Paris in 1994, I moved into what I now think of as my post-war Paris period. I had it all: the red lips, my hair up in combs in a Victory Roll. I wore silk crepe, forties floral-print dresses by Cacharel, with Robert Clergerie forties-style black suede sandals and black fishnet stockings. My perfume was Shalimar by Guerlain or Chanel No. 5, as they were redolent of the period. One afternoon, I noticed a good-looking young man had been following me for blocks. He finally approached me at the traffic lights and said timidly: “I’ve been walking behind you for a long time. You are like a woman from another era, the smell of your fragrance, the way you are dressed, your stockings, the sound that your heels make on the cobblestones.” I was thrilled he understood my intention. He then asked if I would have a glass of champagne with him. I did, of course. It’s heartening when someone appreciates that you put some thought into how you look.

I
began at
Vogue
as the receptionist just as the September 1985 issue was on stand. Now here I was starting as editor, with the September 1999 issue just about to launch.

September issues are traditionally the biggest during the calendar year because they contain the most advertising and editorial pages. This one also happened to be
Vogue Australia
’s fortieth anniversary issue, and two parties and exhibitions had been planned for both Sydney and Melbourne. I literally walked into events I had made no contribution to whatsoever, which felt terribly awkward. All I wanted to do was get to my desk and fix the magazine. The way it looked, there was nothing to celebrate. Circulation had taken a massive drop and there were no forward ad bookings. There was one page for the October issue, but it was FOC (free of charge) to compensate for a mistake made with the client in the previous edition. At least Robyn Holt had a sense of humor about the state of affairs. We spent a few minutes in her office grimly amusing ourselves by moving the single ad around the empty magazine grid, seeing where it looked best.

I had no time to start the November issue from scratch, so I kept and cleaned up what had already been commissioned, submitted and was passable. The rest of the magazine I filled with lifts. “Lifts” are stories that have already appeared in other Condé Nast magazines that are usually available for free, or at a much less expensive rate than it would cost to produce yourself. Financial controllers are big fans of lifts, for obvious reasons. Readers hate them; a savvy reader also buys international magazines, so there can be an overlap in what they are being presented.

There was also—rightly so—an element of reader indignation about us not using enough homegrown talent, and we were sometimes accused, unfairly, of lacking our own ideas. Lifts have become almost obligatory for most licensed titles now, as editors are no longer allocated editorial budgets that can cover the costs of creating every page from scratch.
Vogue
s that are owned and operated by Condé Nast tend to produce all their own material, whereas titles that are under license to proprietors in other regions, such as Australia, are generally a mix of original material and lifts. I believe there is a place for well-chosen lifts in a luxury title, to make sure all the talent represented consistently remains first-rate. It was not always possible for us to secure the top international models or celebrities of the moment, which is why we sometimes needed to rely on republishing fashion stories and articles from our sister publications such as US, British or Paris
Vogue
. But now the cost pressure in the magazine industry to repurpose non-original material is enormous. The day is fast approaching when a magazine and its website will only be full of lifts, promotional shots handed out by clients, and staff Instagrams. And there will be a whole tier of upper management scratching their heads, wondering why circulation is tumbling and blaming the editor.

It would never occur to them that the reader had been shortchanged.

The first step in setting
Vogue
on the right course was to appoint an ace team, which in turn meant letting go of some of the incumbent staff and contributors. I will be eternally grateful to the then editorial business manager Georgette Johnson, and Nancy, who both helped me through the awful process that is terminating someone’s employment. While never pleasant, there is an added level of emotion that surrounds working for
Vogue
. It has been successfully positioned over the years as so elite, and so special, that staff can lose their own identity and become overly attached to the brand.

It is a perception that is both positive and negative. On one hand,
Vogue
attracts people who are the best in their field, and who see the opportunity to work for
Vogue
as the pinnacle of their careers. It meant that you could hire the best and, sadly for them, pay the least.

On the other hand, it is intensely alluring to poseurs, social climbers and those on a quest for personal glory. I would say one of my essential tasks as editor—right until the bitter end—was to spot the frauds.
Vogue
could open doors and offer remarkable opportunities to its staff and contributors, so it was vitally important to establish a culture that meant no one could abuse the system and take advantage. We needed to be exemplary in our behavior, and have manners and standards higher than others in the industry. In 1999 we were going to have to build the brand, and its integrity, back from scratch. If you want to represent
Vogue
, and bask in the cachet that comes with it, you better make sure you can walk the walk.

My first hiring was to poach fashion editor Tory Collison back from
Bazaar
, and she immediately got to work on the main story and cover for the December issue, shooting with Richard Bailey and featuring top Australian model Alyssa Sutherland.

I then began recruiting a new editorial team, starting with the fashion editor from
Marie Claire
, Gabriele Mihajlovksi. I have huge respect for
Marie Claire
’s long-time editor Jackie Frank, and she is clearly wonderful at training staff; I would also steal Naomi Smith back from her a few years later.

One of the best decisions I ever made was to retain the services of Leigh Ann Pow, who was already at
Vogue
as an editorial features assistant. With a background in newspapers, street magazines and the editorship of
Smash Hits
under her belt, Leigh Ann was everything you needed to be in magazines: hardworking, adaptable, honest, smart, a stickler for details and a team player. She also possessed a faultless bullshit detector. Leigh Ann went on to hold various editorial positions, eventually becoming associate editor. She was the most loyal of colleagues for my entire editorship.

The next important appointment was art director, a role that is clearly crucial to a magazine. An accomplished art director is an editor’s best ally. The creative design of a magazine is the most important, and yet most nebulous element, because it is conceptual. As an editor you can easily recognize bad writing when you read it. The same goes for fashion styling—the mistakes are immediately apparent. But with art direction the evaluation becomes more complex. You know bad design when you see it. You may know what would improve it. But it can be difficult to articulate or even imagine what would make it great. That particular artistic process is intangible and limitless. Unless you suddenly turned into Fabien Baron overnight, you have to trust the instincts and abilities of your art department. There’s nothing that will cause an art director to shut up shop faster than if you walk up behind them, stare at their computer screen and opine: “You know, I think the type would look better in blue.”

Editors can develop a God complex and believe they are the authority on everything, but it was not a position I ever assumed. I had learned certain truisms during my time in publishing, and I had an overall vision for the magazine, but I was also well aware there were people who were superior to me in other areas. The most pressing concern was to restore excellence and polish in every area, but there is no blueprint for that. There were key words we would follow that would guide our philosophy, such as
beautiful, intelligent, first-rate
. This approach stayed firm throughout my years as editor, but the execution of it would change constantly.

Some of my ideas were a quick win, such as improving the fashion pages and the covers by hiring more appropriate stylists and photographers. Other initiatives were more trial and error, in terms of type and layout. I knew I would make some mistakes. Collaboration was essential. My mantra is to surround yourself with people who are great at what they do, have an informed opinion, and are willing to push back on you when they think it’s necessary. I don’t believe in micromanaging, and I have never seen people thrive under it, especially creatives. Staff need perimeters but not edicts. We were constantly seeking to improve every area, whether it was a tweaking of the headings and introductions, a new “run of book” (the order in which the pages and sections run), a new columnist or a complete redesign. No issue is ever perfect; there is no foolproof formula. But if you think that the magazine is the best it could ever be, you should probably think about leaving.