The Vogue Factor: The Inside Story of Fashion's Most Illustrious Magazine (20 page)

“I still don’t like the photograph. It doesn’t look like me,” she said. I disagreed, politely of course. “I’m fixated on it, aren’t I?” she laughed. “Just tell me to be quiet and get over it.” So I told the Crown Princess of Denmark that she needed to trust me and get over it. And she relented.

The December 2004 issue, featuring Mary on the cover in the purple satin dress, wearing the royal crown jewels, was a spectacular success and a complete sell-out, even with its increased print run of around 80,000. Copies were selling on eBay for around $100 before the magazine was even off the newsstands. Princess Mary requested copies of the photographs to give as Christmas gifts. We continued to post the magazine to her every month, and when the couple’s first son,
Christian, was born in 2005, I went shopping for a gift. Envisaging a ballroom filled to the brim with presents, I nevertheless chose an exquisite hand-stitched baby blanket, edged with rabbits wearing full red satin skirts—red being the royal color of Denmark. “I had this blanket made with Princess Mary’s baby in mind,” said the woman at the sales desk, without me saying a word.

Several weeks later I received a handwritten note from the princess, thanking me. “Little Christian loves pulling at the rabbits’ skirts,” she wrote. The blanket had actually made it to the infant prince. The fairy tale was complete.

S
itting front row at the international fashion shows is most certainly a glamorous aspect of an editor’s job, but one that I always considered a privilege. For my first ten years at
Vogue
, ready-to-wear shows were not on the agenda for me, as they were reserved for the editor-in-chief and the fashion director only.

In the eighties and early nineties, for a country as small as Australia there were also very few invitations to go around, even for a
Vogue
title. Nancy Pilcher and Judith Cook had spent many seasons with a great deal of standing only tickets, and on occasions would even sneak into shows. That’s what the fashion-obsessed did, and still do. Standing tickets were almost impossible to get for the really big shows, and the security at the door may decide at the last minute not to let you in at all. Most of the “standing” was done outside, pleading with the
cravat rouge
(the doormen wearing red ties) to let you in. It’s a kind of rite of passage when finally you get a ticket and there is a seat attached. If a label doesn’t sell in your country, it’s more than likely that you will only receive one ticket, or not be invited to the show at all.

The RTW shows are a business. If the house advertises in your magazine, you’ll definitely have a seat. It may not be front row, but if you shoot enough editorial for them that season your seating allocation will gradually improve. The system of who, how many and where you will sit is forensically ruthless.

The RTW shows are held twice yearly: Spring/Summer in September and Autumn/Winter in March, and to attend all four—New York, London, Milan and Paris—means you are on the road for almost one month. For economic reasons we would attend Milan and Paris only, as coming from Australia it wasn’t feasible for us to pop home for the weekend in between cities to see our families. It’s a very expensive exercise, because a car and driver are required to negotiate the grueling timetable—you may be seeing up to ten shows a day with showroom visits in between, in far-flung, traffic-choked locations all over each city. It’s 9 a.m. starts, 11 p.m. dinners, for three weeks straight.

The Haute Couture season is much more civilized, and elegant: three to four days in January and July, but unfortunately we did not have the budgets to send anyone from Australia. Only a small number of fashion houses, such as Chanel and Dior, produce couture—exquisite handworked and custom-fitted collections for a smattering of wealthy private clients.

It wasn’t until I lived in Paris that I was able to register with the Chambre Syndicale, on behalf of
Vogue Australia
and
Vogue Singapore
, for both couture and ready-to-wear. The Chambre Syndicale, or
Fédération Française de la Couture
, is the regulating body of the French fashion industry. It decides on the dates the shows are held, which designers are invited to show on the official calendar, and whether your publication is considered valid enough to be listed for invitations. But being registered does not automatically mean you will receive a seat—that is up to the house itself, and the PR department.

Singapore was a larger commercial market than Australia, thus I received more tickets and better seating at shows such as Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior, but back in the early nineties Asia wasn’t especially front-of-mind for the French or Italian PRs. More than a few of them thought Asia was one big place, until you explained that China, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and so on were significantly different countries.

The Australian market hardly rated in the minds of the French either. Jean Paul Gaultier was one of the hottest tickets at the time, and his PR was one of the most difficult. Difficult is a relative term, but in his case it meant that you could never, ever get put through to him on the phone. If a fashion house does not intend to give you a seat, it’s not going to happen, no matter how much you plead. It is impossible to change their minds. An intern will say “The capacity of the show is very small this season,” and hang up on you.

One afternoon, I asked Mourad to call the Gaultier office as I was desperate for an invitation to the upcoming show. When I was feeling fragile and Australian, I had poor Mourad do all the pleading. By some miracle he got through to the PR, presumably because he was French. He went through the motions of asking for a ticket on my behalf and received a swift “Non” in return.

“But it’s
Vogue
,” Mourad protested, rather naively. “
Vogue Australia
is important, isn’t it?”

“No. Not at all,” came the brutally honest reply.

In the twenty-two months I spent at
Harper’s Bazaar
as associate editor I attended the RTW shows on my own and received so few invitations I once called editor Karin Upton Baker from Paris and asked if I could come home. There is nothing more frustrating, lonely and wasteful than being on the circuit, acutely aware that you are missing out on important shows or private parties.

When I went to
Vogue Australia
as editor, one of our biggest challenges was to make sure we improved the standing of the magazine in terms of status and show access. The more insider information and experiences you are privy to, the better you are at your job. Take away the shows, the travel, the one-on-one opportunities to see things up close, then you can hardly call yourself an expert.

Australia is very far away from the epicenter of fashion. Yes, digital media has changed everything, and you can watch the Burberry show live-streamed from London, but to really be an authority on a subject you have to live and breathe it. Present the fashion on a hologram by all means, but I also want to look across the runway and see the real Kate Moss in the front row. My fashion editors and I slogged away at it every season, meeting and getting to know all the PRs, visiting every showroom, shooting the merchandise in the months following, interviewing the designers, sending them magazines and “tear sheets” every month to let them know how much coverage we had given them. Gradually we increased the recognition and respect for the magazine to the point that we would always receive two tickets to every show, one of them generally being in the front row—two if we were lucky.

Most people would assume that because you’re with
Vogue
a red carpet is rolled out of your limousine and a minion will arrive to show you to your chair next to Anna Wintour. Ah, no. You have to earn your seat on the bench. Circumstances and pecking orders have changed so much now, though, there will probably be a really thin, beautiful, Russian trust-fund-blogger wearing current season Balmain and an online retail buyer from Iceland in front of you anyway.

Shortly before the Princess Mary project, Gabriele resigned and I was left with the role of fashion director to fill. Naomi Smith was working at
Marie Claire
, and was my first choice to join the
Vogue
team given
that she and I had trained together for so many years under the previous regimes of both June McCallum and Nancy Pilcher. I hired her, and Naomi and I subsequently shared a wonderful eight years of attending the shows together, twice a year, where we would be on the road for almost three weeks straight. On the odd occasion that only one of us could go, I would always nominate Naomi. Your fashion director has to see the shows. They have different antennae to an editor. While I obviously know a good show or a bad show when I see it, I probably tend to have a more “big picture” approach, looking at the scene in an overall context of how we would capture the next fashion season trends, whereas Naomi could pinpoint the micro immediately. Upon leaving a show I would say, “That was great,” and she would respond, “Yes, exit 11 was the best, and the shoe that came out on exit 4 is a must-have, and that new, young, blonde model from Belgium who looks like a boy is the one to watch,” and she would be absolutely right about all of it.

Very often, by the time we’d made our request for the samples she had selected for photography, they would already be in the US
Vogue
stockroom because they were in fact the highlight pieces, and the model of the moment would be completely booked up by the big name magazines, and thus out of the question for us. Thank goodness there was often a second press rack of samples in Asia where we could send our requests.

The model situation was not so easy. This is where you had to make sure you had the model agency bookers on your side. They could either give you a top Australian girl, a rising star, or, if you were really lucky, half a day with a big star, all with a cover demanded.

Another misconception, among the many, is that when you work at
Vogue
and want to book a model, you simply call the agency and they reply, “Of course—
Vogue
,” and give you a date that
works perfectly for everyone concerned. Not so. Model wrangling is one of the most time-consuming and exasperating components of the magazine business. All the elements of a shoot are intertwined, politically. A big name international model will only work with a particular pool of photographers who are considered by their agency to be “hot.” If you are Paris
Vogue
, no problem, but many of the “hot” photographers were not interested in working for
Vogue Australia
, or were too costly for us to afford. Or the agency would suggest some new rising star photographer (probably a good-looking guy) who all the models loved, and demand we promise a cover, despite the fact that his body of work was mainly grimy, grainy and totally uncommercial.

Fortunately, many of the Australian models came to be a dominant force in the international fashion industry, major-league girls like Abbey Lee Kershaw and Catherine McNeil, who loved being on the cover back home and were happy to shoot with our top local photographers, like Max Doyle and Nicole Bentley, whenever they were in town. It is a very complex and sometimes frustrating exercise to put the best teams together.

The negotiations we went through so we could feature a pregnant Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr on what would be her very first cover for
Vogue Australia
are a case in point. I had lunch with Miranda and her agent at the Hôtel Costes in Paris, immediately after she had modeled in the highly sought-after Balenciaga show. She breezed through the hotel lobby, trying to avoid the paparazzi, and over grilled sole and green salad we discussed potential photographers. There was one international photographer Miranda was adamant she wanted us to hire, so Naomi and I duly contacted his agent and arranged to meet at Hôtel Le Meurice. When we arrived he was one of those condescending French agents who could barely disguise his disdain, but was
secretly thinking his photographer should do the job because Miranda Kerr had become so influential.

It was about two weeks into the RTW shows and I was tired and cranky. The agent started blithering on about timings and costs and business-class flights and how famous his client was and what stylist he insisted on using, until I couldn’t be bothered to humor him anymore. I didn’t think the photographer was that talented anyway. “Look,” I said. “I’ve been doing this a long time. Don’t patronize me. I know exactly where
Vogue Australia
sits in the scheme of things. But Miranda Kerr is requesting this, so why don’t you work out whether you want it or not.” That stopped him. He then said, looking down his nose at me: “Well, I think the only possible way we can do it is if she is completely naked in the whole shoot.” The last time I looked,
Vogue
was a fashion magazine, so we parted company.

Miranda did end up completing the shoot with us, with her preferred local photographer Carlotta Moye. And she even wore clothes.

Every show season also involved attending the
Vogue
dinner in Paris, which was hosted by Condé Nast Chairman Jonathan Newhouse. Invitees included all the international
Vogue
managing directors, editors and fashion directors (excepting the United States, which is a separate company from Condé Nast International), and a smattering of top designers and photographers. It was a reasonably intimate group of around seventy-five, and always held in smallish, traditional fine dining restaurants—never anywhere overly trendy.

Those dinners were a daunting experience to say the least, especially from the sartorial angle. Could there be a tougher crowd to dress for? The first dinner I attended as editor I was placed next to Stella McCartney.

One of my favorite people to be seated alongside was the late
Vogue Italia
fashion editor Anna Piaggi, who was the sweetest person you could hope to meet and who had a great affinity for Australia, as she had
visited many times with her good friend, Melbourne-born fashion historian Vern Lambert.