The Vogue Factor: The Inside Story of Fashion's Most Illustrious Magazine (17 page)

One of
Vogue
’s greatest assets was editorial and production coordinator Kimberley Walsh. Kimberley had the tenacity and determination of a pitbull, all delivered with a level of professionalism and sweetness that is completely disarming. Kimberley, Leigh Ann Pow and I began working together in 1999 and they were both there until the end, thirteen years later. I cannot imagine having done my
job without them. Kimberley had one of those driver personalities that are calculated in a Myers-Briggs test, but I think there should have been a different category for her because she never, ever gave up. She was always fiercely protective of me, given that she also triple-billed as my PA, but she was very protective of the brand too.

We could sense this Karl edition was going to be a logistical challenge, both in planning and in execution—but what an exciting ride. We had to make deadline. And stay on budget. No stress.

Kimberley, Leigh Ann and I began to work on backup contingency plans, and the team devised “turn pages” (the editorial that appears at the front of the magazine, before you get to the fashion spreads) that were Karl- or Chanel-related so that we could at least have something completed if concepts fell through. As we brainstormed each turn, whether it was Karl-inspired white shirts, or Chanel jewelry pages, we duly sent them to Karl for his personal sign-off.

Michael McHugh was thoroughly on board with the project and just as eager as I was to make it all happen. Lunches were immediately organized in Sydney and Melbourne to let our advertising clients know about the upcoming issue. At one lunch, I delivered a short speech about how amazed and honored I was to have someone like Karl Lagerfeld guest editing
Vogue Australia
, and what a unique collaboration it would be.

After I sat down at the table, a junior media buyer from an advertising agency who was seated opposite, and looked to be about twenty years old, picked up his vintage Moët & Chandon and eyeballed me, clearly unimpressed. “What are you going to do for the
Vogue
readers who don’t know who Karl Lagerfeld is? For example, I don’t,” he smirked, as if he was slapping down a trump card. I had no answer. He was simply following the ignorant and ungenerous Australian tradition
of refusing to be impressed by anyone or anything, even one of the world’s greatest living fashion designers. It’s moments like these when you appreciate what your ad team has to contend with on a daily basis. It took all my self-control not to snatch the champagne out of his hand. Or at least start serving him domestic.

Karl and I were on the same wavelength about which Australian celebrities we would have contribute, starting with the exceptional Cate Blanchett. His concept was to photograph Cate portraying Mme. Coco Chanel, so the shoot was set in the Rue Cambon boutique, Chanel’s private apartment, and in the surrounding cafés and streets of Paris. Cate was working in London at the time, and had jumped at the idea. Charla was also well acquainted with Cate, as they had worked together on previous occasions, including on a cover for
Vogue Australia
, so the logistics were relatively smooth.

In the first part of the series, Cate poses as the designer; in the second part, she is presented as a young, modern woman, wearing and being fitted with Chanel couture. Cate was completely transformed. It remains perhaps my very favorite Australian
Vogue
shoot, not only for the famous talent that was involved but for the timelessness and sheer drama of the photographs.

Cate Blanchett and
Vogue Australia
have had a long and close relationship over the years, beginning with her first appearance in the magazine as “One to Watch” when she graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992. During the Marion Hume period at
Vogue
in 1997, I was sent to style Cate for a feature story. At the time, she was in the midst of filming her breakthrough film
Elizabeth
, which would garner her the Golden Globe for Best Actress and also an Academy Award nomination. I had Valentino dresses that had been sent from Italy, and we were laughing because she was in character and thus had very visible leg and underarm hair. Richard Bailey thought it
was fantastic, so in one of the pictures Cate deliberately raised her arm to juxtapose her unshaven armpits against the couture sheath.

Over the years, we worked together for
Vogue
on numerous occasions and she was always incredibly professional, calm and focused on getting the best results. Cate loves the grandeur of costume and corsets, and would bring a sense of drama and gravitas to the photoshoots. But only for the shot. In person, she is a lovely, low-maintenance person. She clicked with Richard Bailey, and at the wrap of a long day she would sometimes have her children drop by the studio so they could have a family portrait taken together. We considered her part of the
Vogue
family; however, she always maintained a sense of polite distance. She’s there to get the job done, simple as that.

Other collaborations in the issue included Kylie Minogue, whom Karl photographed wearing Chanel and cavorting on his piano at his home in Paris. Kylie was also more than happy to participate. It doesn’t matter how big a star you are, everybody wants to be in Karl’s orbit.

I was also in negotiations with Nicole Kidman, who was high on Karl’s wish list. This was not uncommon: oftentimes during my career, I was in negotiations regarding Nicole Kidman, most of them fruitless. I started to sense that Nicole’s management had a strategy in place which meant she would be available to shoot for
Harper’s Bazaar Australia
but only allow
Vogue Australia
to lift other material that had been produced for international
Vogue
editions. I can see that this plan certainly saved Nicole’s time and energy, but it didn’t save mine, because for years I had conversations with her agent about the possibility of us shooting her that would drag on for months and never eventuate.

On this particular occasion it began on a vaguely positive note, but then became more and more convoluted. Nicole would be in New York; no, she would be in London; yes, maybe Paris; no, no, in an
unspecified location. At one point I thought I almost had her on a jet, or in a helicopter, or a spaceship, or something, going to Karl’s home in Biarritz for a half-day shoot, and then no, it all fell through again. Added to this was the difficulty of making a date work in Karl’s diary, who was not idle or unimportant himself.

Baz Luhrmann had been commissioned to fly to Biarritz to conduct a one-on-one interview with Karl for the issue. This article would give a wonderful and piercingly honest insight into Karl, his career, and his complicated relationship with his mother. Shortly afterwards I became aware that Karl and Baz were also talking about a future collaboration on a short promotional film for Chanel No. 5, starring—who would have predicted—Nicole Kidman. And yet, Karl’s people were asking me every day how far I’d got with pinning a date down with her.

The agent was now suggesting that we fly Karl and his entire photographic retinue to New York for a day with Nicole. Given that Karl travels by private jet and with a major domo, for starters, I feigned breathless excitement over the phone while mentally calculating the preposterous cost of sending God knows how many people to NYC for a possible one-day shoot. No more faxes. I needed to speak to Karl.

After days and days of wrangling we eventually settled on a time for him to call. I was at a Diesel dinner in Sydney when finally my mobile sounded. I rushed outside and stood on the wharf in the moonlight looking at the Opera House when Karl came on the line. Friendly and enthusiastic, he talked about how much he was enjoying working on the issue, and how he hoped to come to Sydney for the launch. I politely suggested that he should take over the Nicole Kidman negotiations because I was certain he had more pull, and he told me—not unlike a kindly uncle—to leave it with him. We agreed to meet during the Paris RTW collections in the coming weeks to finalize details and conduct
the cover shoot. Karl Lagerfeld had basically just given me a “Don’t worry, Kirstie, everything’s going to be fine” pep talk. It was another one of my pinch-me moments.

The cover was always going to be problematic, though. I absolutely could not have two stars as big as Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman in one issue and choose one over the other to be on the cover. Their agents had made that perfectly plain from the outset, and if we were to go back on our word we would have hell to pay. I made the bird-in-the-hand decision of completing the Cate Blanchett shoot first. I would worry about Nicole afterwards.

Leigh Ann always spent a large percentage of her working life being tortured by Hollywood agents, often being called in Sydney at 3 a.m. for some insane request to be addressed, such as who was going to meet the “star” at the curb at Heathrow airport when the Town Car pulled up and then walk them to the first-class check in. When you are dealing with celebrities you have to toughen up and play the game. The Karl issue was no walk in the park, but we’d had worse on other occasions. There was one unspeakably obnoxious LA agent we used to call the “raw nerve.” Anytime we had to deal with her, we would be compelled to have a cup of tea and take ten deep breaths in my office afterwards, before we went home to hug our children.

Karl’s timetable was too crowded for him to make a visit to Australia while he was making the issue, so it was decided that he would instead dispatch his friend Hedi Slimane, the designer of Dior Homme (now the creative director of Saint Laurent), to contribute. We were all huge fans of Hedi Slimane, and his brief was to explore Sydney and produce his own personal photographic essay.

We booked him into the penthouse suite at hotel Blue, in Woolloomooloo, and I went to meet him for a cup of tea on the wharf one dazzlingly sunny morning. Slimane had never been to Australia,
and admitted to a large degree of trepidation over traveling such a long way from Paris. He was a quiet, gentle person who seemed either shy, or perhaps not interested in talking just for the sake of it. As we were discussing what he intended to do during his stay, an enormous flock of cockatoos flew in, landed on the wharf near our table and began screeching at each other raucously. Slimane, who couldn’t have looked more out of place in his David Bowie,
Man Who Fell to Earth
–way, whippet-thin with a black Dior Homme jacket, perfect white shirt and bowl haircut, looked at me in utter amazement and said: “Does this always happen?”

Slimane was very easy to entertain for his week-long stay, requesting only a car and driver, and a camera. He had his own contacts, and mainly wanted to hang out with skaters and musicians, so we sent him off to headquarters at the über-trendy fashion label Ksubi to meet the cool kids and told him to call us if he needed anything. He didn’t. He called one morning and said he would like to meet with Paul Meany, the magazine’s art director, so I gave him the address of the office and didn’t tell the staff he was coming. It was fun walking into the fashion office and saying, “Hi girls, have you met Hedi Slimane, by the way?” Everybody was beside themselves, but he was so natural and unassuming. His photographic essay was a very personal take on Sydney, a series of black-and-white portraits of youth subculture, displaying his signature sense of grungy realism.

My next step was to organize for Paul Meany, Charla and myself to meet with Karl in Paris, so we could discuss the rest of the issue. The meeting was held at 7L in the Rue de Lille, which is the address of Karl’s photographic studio and which also has a large bookstore facing the streetfront. He was late, but we were installed in the studio and enjoying ourselves immensely, delving into the piles and piles of art and photography books that were stacked around the room. There
was a shoot being set up for another magazine, and streams of people were dashing in and out, one being the English aristocrat and Chanel muse Lady Amanda Harlech, who was absolutely charming and self-deprecating. Karl’s personal chef was in the kitchen off to the side and kept sending out the most delicious appetizers for us to nibble on while we waited.

Finally, in the late afternoon, Karl appeared with his goblet of Pepsi Max on a silver tray. Paul and I were understandably nervous but he could not have been more welcoming and understated. He was fast and funny, and we spent the first few minutes talking about his iPod, which was oh-so-new in 2003. Just as impressive was the case he had that contained 36 iPods, each of which he claimed was at capacity. Obviously there was a full-time employee to do the syncing.

Karl has immense charisma. The air crackles when he arrives. He is the opposite of aloof, and can switch from German to English to French in mid-sentence, while being witty and erudite in all of them. If I had a wish where I could invite any ten people in the world to a dinner party, I’d simply just invite him.

We flicked though a number of books on his table and Karl indicated that he admired the work of the moody Australian photographer Bill Henson, so it was decided that we would ask him to contribute a portfolio to the issue, which he ultimately did. That was a first for any fashion publication in Australia.

Karl then very generously invited us all to join him for a private lunch at his home on the Rue de l’Universite later that week. As I picked myself up off the floor and hurriedly accepted, Charla said, “Oh, damn, I can’t. I have a freelance job.” Karl just laughed and said, “No, no, I get it. We all have to make a living.”

Paul and I were so excited on the day of the proposed lunch I think we arrived about half an hour early and had to circle the block a number
of times. At the appointed hour we were ushered through the main dining room of his beautiful 18,000 square foot
hôtel particulier
, which was adorned with the most spectacular floral centerpiece. Karl emerged and explained that there was to be a formal dinner that evening, and a TV show taping that afternoon, so he was being a very grand “Karl.” Eric Pfrunder joined us and we moved into a smaller “breakfast” room, adjacent to the dining room and overlooking the garden, furnished with eccentric German and Viennese ceramics, lamps and furniture from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.