The Vogue Factor: The Inside Story of Fashion's Most Illustrious Magazine (24 page)

I
n 2007, my publisher Grant Pearce came to me to discuss the opportunity for
Vogue
to get involved with the television series
Australia’s Next Top Model
Season 3. The show, while it hadn’t exactly produced a legitimate next top model, was by all accounts gaining popularity with viewers. To have a high fashion title such as
Vogue
involved would raise the stakes and credibility for both parties.

I had not seen the first two series, although my friend Napoleon Perdis had been involved and was a fan. Grant and I agreed that it would be good marketing for
Vogue
, as it would extend our reach into a new and different audience. Our part of the deal was that the winner would receive an eight-page fashion shoot in the magazine. Apart from a few appearances on various current affairs programs I had little television experience, so I was slightly nervous, if only for reasons of vanity. I loathe being photographed; I’m almost phobic about it. Being thin and photogenic certainly would have made my public life easier.

The first
Vogue
segment was filmed at our offices, where I had a rack full of international designer labels to present to the contestants
and quiz them on afterwards. The producers had prepared the questions beforehand, which were as basic as: “Now who did I say was the designer of this dress, girls?” Of course any exercise on the show is completely irrelevant to the real world of modeling. Models don’t need to know anything about anything. They don’t even need to speak. They just need to be beautiful and show up on time.

In a different segment I had to rate them on their own personal style, which felt slightly nasty, but that was the spin the show wanted. I was to appraise what they were wearing, and criticize them to their faces. My role in the show was to be terrifying, in that superior, Miranda Priestly from
The Devil Wears Prada
way. When you edit
Vogue
, the general assumption is that you are going to be frightening and superior, so you have to work very hard to prove that you’re not. It’s exhausting. I would at times have my own management tell me that so-and-so was frightened of me, and when I would reply, “Why, what did I do?” they’d say: “Nothing, they’re just scared of you.” I was accused of being terrifying by people I hadn’t actually met. It’s a tedious and somewhat ludicrous consequence of the job. But that was the persona they wanted me to play.

As it turned out, I didn’t need to play it up much: the poor ANTM girls were absolutely scared stiff when they arrived, so I just went with it and did my
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
routine. When the twelve finalists filed into my office, one girl, Alice Burdeu, stood out immediately. She was five-foot eleven, skinny and pale, with large, slightly melancholy eyes and long, thick red hair. She already looked like an off-duty model. I could just see her backstage in Paris, reading a book, wearing motorcycle boots and being made up for a runway show. She was the real deal, I could see it. She looked international; there was something cool about her.

I joined the ANTM panel for two more segments after that, which was tons of fun. Gorgeous Jodhi Meares was hosting, and the atmosphere on set was very warm and good-spirited. I was not involved in the filming of most of the stunts and shoots, but was called in on the panel to judge how they appeared in photographs. I swiftly realized the show was also raising my profile, because I kept getting stopped by eager young girls when I went shopping.

There was some negative coverage regarding Alice being underweight, but I knew that—rightly or wrongly—even if she was, her protruding clavicles were just the ticket for the world of high fashion. Alice won easily, purely because of her beauty. She didn’t have a great deal of energy, and was not the best model in the world when it came to striking a pose, but when the moment is captured she looks great. Full stop. All the judges were in total agreement, as were the viewers. We immediately set up her shoot, based around long, flowing evening-wear, with photographer Troyt Coburn.

The resultant images were very beautiful and we quickly saw that one of the shots was cover material. She was seated, staring down the barrel of the camera, and she looked serene and self-assured. Although we were not contractually obliged to run a cover, it made sense to me to do so. Sales on that issue lifted 13 percent. As I had hoped, our involvement in the show had helped us to reach a new readership.

Alice went on to work internationally, hitting the runways for all the big designers in New York, Milan and Paris, such as Marc Jacobs, Jil Sander, Lanvin and Dolce & Gabbana. She was the most credible winner the ANTM franchise had ever had—globally. I always felt a tinge of pride when she swept past me at subsequent shows. The whole association had been win/win, and Alice was a legitimate star who still models regularly six years later.

The experience of the next series, number four, however, was very different. When I was first introduced to the contestants, I struggled to find a girl who I thought had true potential. They were all pretty, but there wasn’t a standout. One girl, Sam, had the best legs I’ve ever seen, but apart from that there wasn’t one girl I would have considered booking for
Vogue
. It struck home that discovering someone like Alice was a miracle.

The first segment I filmed involved the girls being given five minutes to rush into a room full of clothes, put together an outfit, and then place themselves in front of a panel while I and designer Fernando Frisoni appraised and/or criticized them. Perhaps I was taking it a bit too seriously, because I was stressed and irritable and really needed to get back to the office, but it struck me that the whole exercise wasn’t fair. The clothes provided were frankly horrible, and the girls weren’t given enough time to think, let alone style themselves. It was an impossible task, and it felt like we were belittling them. Charlotte Dawson was brilliant in the series at playing the cranky mentor with the heart of gold, but I was struggling with the stupidity of the exercises.

The second part of the episode, filmed on the same day, involved magazine covers where the girls had to pick a card with the name of a supermodel on it and “Match the Supermodel to the Cover.” It was imbecilic.

I felt a similar sense of injustice when a bad photograph was taken of a girl and she was then criticized for “not bringing it to the camera,” when in fact the photographer should have been blamed for their crappy shot. Every element on a shoot counts: the photographer, hair, makeup, styling. The model is one component and certainly can’t be singled out for the amateurism of others. Also, as a mother and as a professional, I wasn’t comfortable telling a young, hopeful girl that
she had a huge, huge future as a successful model ahead of her when I knew full well she didn’t.

Over the years, I have had many young women approach me, sending photos to the office, wanting to become models. I would always refer them to reputable model agencies, as it requires a professional to deal with the often unrealistic expectations of young girls and their families. Only very few girls, around the world, have what it takes to appear in
Vogue
. A genetic one in a million.

The voting process on ANTM is indeed democratic, and the audience cast the deciding vote at the season finale. The eventual winner, Demelza, had been accused of bullying one of the other girls during the series, but she won the car anyway. I did not agree with the decision. I went backstage after the finale to find the girl she had purportedly bullied in hysterics and had to try to console her.

For weeks afterwards I was bombarded with emails from furious readers, threatening to cancel their subscriptions. Even though I had voted for the other finalist, it appeared that the viewers were incensed that
Vogue
was even on the panel. Our online chat room, the
Vogue
Forum, went into meltdown. The whole situation had, all of a sudden, become quite problematic, and very “off-brand” for us.

A side effect of being the editor of
Vogue
is that the public expect you to also set a moral benchmark, which is slightly bizarre when you think about it. I mean, it’s a fashion magazine full of shoes and bags. But the brand values of
Vogue
represent manners, respect and integrity, and so the backlash was fierce. The public consensus was that
Vogue
had made the decision, which was entirely erroneous. I realized after that experience that the power of the
Vogue
masthead meant that we had to be in total control of the outcome, or we risked losing credibility. ANTM and
Vogue
agreed to part company thereafter.

Demelza was duly given her eight pages as pledged, but no cover, which the media whipped up and interpreted as a snub by me, but in fact we were under no obligation to run one. ANTM aligned with
Harper’s Bazaar
after that and they did unearth some credible models such as Montana Cox and Amanda Ware. We continued to shoot Alice for
Vogue
over the next few years. She was, as it turned out, that one in a million.

V
ogue Australia
was due to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2009, and it struck me that I was the last one left in the building who had long-standing experience and knowledge of the history of
Vogue
. I was the only person there with more than two decades of corporate or cultural memory. I recruited my dear friend, author Lee Tulloch, to coedit a book with me to record this important milestone, as she had an astute understanding and appreciation for the brand. HarperCollins were engaged as publishers and we set to work, with the help of erstwhile editorial coordinator Kimberley Walsh.

One would expect there to be a gleaming archive of painstakingly sorted
Vogue
material, but in fact all that exists are some leather-bound copies of the magazines that have to be taken out of the stacks and photocopied. No photographic library of all the shoots was ever kept, and any film that did remain was thrown willy-nilly into boxes and stored in a shed on the FPC premises. Poor Kimberley spent days cautiously picking through water-damaged and possibly rat-infested piles of unidentified film to salvage any original material whatsoever. The whole endeavor was a grueling exercise, but Lee, Kimberley and I all
shared a passion for having the history of the magazine recorded, both for ourselves and for posterity. I felt that
Vogue
was changing, especially with the departure of many of the Condé Nast stalwarts. It became terribly important for Lee and me to capture what it had been.

We worked laboriously to finish on deadline, with Lee completing an enormous amount of research and stellar writing within a miraculous timeframe. It was a six-month slog, and probably the most exacting editing job I ever had. We had to turn five decades of, quite frankly, patchy material into something glossy, concise and impactful. When the first advance copy of the book
In Vogue: 50 Years of Australian Style
arrived on my desk, fresh from the printers, Kimberley and I burst into tears, overcome with a sense of achievement and relief. Lee and I packed all the photocopies of the magazines into a box, and I left it in the stockroom as a time capsule for the next editor of
Vogue Australia
.

Once the book was finished, we had to get cracking on the anniversary issue of the magazine itself. During a brainstorming meeting with all the
Vogue
editorial staff, the then art director Ella Munro put forward a brilliant cover idea.

I had already suggested the idea of featuring Cate Blanchett. I have always thought her beauty, talent and intelligence combined to make her the quintessential
Vogue
covergirl. The big debate would be how we approached it: which photographer, how she would be dressed, and the feeling we wanted to portray for such an important milestone issue.

Ella had gathered together a series of portraits by renowned English fashion illustrator David Downton. “I thought it would be lovely to have an illustrated cover,” she proposed. “It would show a beautiful sense of continuity, pulling the history of fashion illustration through to the present day by featuring a contemporary celebrity, in contemporary fashion.” I got goosebumps. I loved the idea. It was redolent of the past,
yet modern in its use of a current actress. As the discussion progressed we decided we would create four different covers, including one deluxe version with a hand-illustrated
Vogue
masthead, which would be sold in its own gold box at a slightly higher price.

The concept was there. Now we had to make it happen.

Cate was in London, filming the movie
Robin Hood
, co-starring my favorite Russell Crowe. David Downton also lived outside of London and, once contacted, eagerly agreed to the commission. I telephoned Cate’s agent in LA, Lisa Kasteler of WKT, to pitch the idea. In the tradition of all celebrity agents, Lisa is tough. If she’s not on board it’s not going to happen, full stop. I went into my spiel about what we envisaged, and how Cate was my one and only choice for the cover, which was true. I explained the idea of the illustrations and how Cate could nominate the designers she would like to wear, and we would do an old-fashioned portrait sitting with David, with full hair and makeup. Lisa was quiet on the other end of the line for what seemed like an eternity, when finally she replied: “I think that’s a wonderful idea.” Coming from Lisa Kasteler, I knew we had a winner.