Nevertheless, as Tom moved mountains at Gucci and made it into the piping-hot sexy Italian brand, it was obvious that his perfectionist ways were working. “All could be improved” appeared to be his attitude. And the models on his runway summed up über-stunning and über-slick. Evolving into the Gucci experience, it was relied upon in every Milan season and repeated in an endless flow of advertisements. The clothes also flew off the shelves.
At first, the old guard did not get Tom. He was a stylist, and that was relatively new to them. Indeed, a conversation between Patrick and William Middleton, a new Fairchild editor, remains etched in my mind. “You know, William, that friend of yours Tom Ford is really not very good,” began dear old PM. They were in the back room of the Fairchild offices at rue d’Aguesseau. William tried to politely disagree. However, Patrick was convinced. Tom did not just last—his perfectionism was to affect the entire industry, globally, and not necessarily in a good way.
28 Andy’s Flower Paintings Leading to Louboutin’s Red Soles
During the haute couture season, there was always the party to attend. In January 1994, the main event or sizzling soirée was Karl Lagerfeld’s party for Donatella Versace. It was Karl, it was Donatella, and it was also Rupert Everett. Indeed, that night under the candlelight at Karl’s eighteenth-century hôtel particulier, Rupert was the unequaled star because he had a key role in Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter, a big Hollywood movie that aimed to capture the fashion world.
The buzz factor around Prêt-à-Porter was huge. In many ways, it confirmed the Parisians’ rather naive, 1950s vision of Hollywood. There was also the fact that Prêt-à-Porter came well packaged. Thanks to Short Cuts, Altman was an Oscar-nominated director and had gathered a list of actors that included Danny Aiello, Anouk Aimée, Lauren Bacall, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Richard E. Grant, Stephen Rea, Julia Roberts, and Rupert.
Privately, I had my doubts. Altman had screwed up The Room. It was one of my stepfather’s plays that he had directed for television; it had starred John Travolta and Tom Conti. True to character, Altman was his laid-back, cowboy self. Without consulting Harold or his agent, he had changed half of the play and then later claimed it was “just the room number.” It was an irreverent attitude that suited the director of M*A*S*H, The Player, and Short Cuts, but not necessarily the works of Harold Pinter or indeed Harold himself, who had a prevention clause in his contract about tampering with his words.
Still, I said nothing. To have been negative about Altman was going against everyone’s enthusiasm. And again, the project’s potential was tremendous. Or rather, it was tremendous with everyone apart from Mr. Fairchild. He mistrusted Altman immediately. It affirmed the expression “It takes one to know one.” Being mischievous and a troublemaker, Mr. Fairchild sensed the same with Altman. Making matters worse was that he was “a Hollywood type”—which suggested more power and more danger—and Mr. Fairchild had also heard that, gasp, Altman was “a pothead.”
Mr. Fairchild was in fairly frisky form, it has to be said. He’d just recovered from life-threatening food poisoning and was obsessed with le retour of Pamela Harriman. Because of her good works for the Democratic Party (PamPAC and so forth), President Bill Clinton had made her U.S. ambassador to France. And the British blue blood was captivating the political community just as she had captivated Prince Aly Khan and other highfliers during her youth.
When Fairchild had been living in Paris, the flame-haired, blue-eyed temptress had fled the city, marked as Élie de Rothschild’s mistress. But now she had returned in unfathomed respect and splendor as a diplomat. “She’s slept with everybody, everybody,” Mr. Fairchild declared when he first heard the news. (Hardly everybody, just the super-duper rich.) Since he was slightly high on the news, he then asked who I had slept with. “Nobody, nobody,” I had replied, making the mistake of imitating his voice. Fortunately, it was both forgiven and forgotten.
At her embassy’s Independence Day party, I had gone up and introduced myself to Mrs. Harriman. “Hello, I’m the daughter of Hugh Fraser,” I said. My father had, after all, known her since childhood and been called upon when she thought of becoming a Catholic. Looking at me, she said, “Oh, I loved Hugh so much,” and that was it for all her years in Paris! Meanwhile, Robin Hurlstone had witnessed the entire episode and had lip-read my words. He teased me about it afterward. Being, tall, blond, and male, he got further with her.
Smart Pamela also invited Mr. Fairchild to lunch at the embassy’s very grand nineteenth-century residence. Considering that W magazine had published an article about her with an entire page covered with snapshots of her lovers, it was surprising that she didn’t poison the food. No doubt, she sensed that it was wiser to have the Ayatollah of Fashion in her camp.
Typically, Mr. Fairchild was won over by her intelligence and knowledge, as well as the chance to nurse his usual schoolboy crush with regard to the well-born Brits. He also enjoyed the sprinkling of Winston Churchill quotes, a reminder that the great man had been her father-in-law. “As Winston used to say, all you need is a bed and a cigar,” she said. A little rich coming from a merry widow who had fleeced the Harriman art collection! But Mr. Fairchild fell, or rather, made the decision to fall for it hook, line, and sinker. He was further thrilled when he heard that her arduous gentleman caller was Gianni Agnelli, the dashing Italian car magnate, who’d been the ambassadress’s fiancé. “Thrilled” because it proved to Mr. Fairchild that the passion behind great love affairs never quite dwindled.
Yet soppy and teenage as Mr. Fairchild could be about l’amour, l’amour, he was his hard-nosed self about Altman taking on his world. The Hollywood director was notorious for his cynical approach, and the idea that he would come in and misjudge a world that was easy to lampoon worried Mr. Fairchild. On the quiet, he called up everyone he knew and advised them not to cooperate, warning that they would regret it if they did. To a certain extent, Prêt-à-Porter became Mr. Fairchild’s last public stand.
In the office, it was understood that the big boss was anti-Altman. But when the cat was away . . . certain Fairchild mice ran after everything connected to Prêt-à-Porter because such events offered Hollywood glamour and that so rarely happened in Paris. Of course, this was hidden from Mr. Fairchild. In my case, it was equivalent to smoking grass in my bedroom and not being caught by my fashion dad, because I went to all and everything that was tagged with Prêt-à-Porter.
I wasn’t alone. And when Rupert appeared in the Fairchild office, there was a frisson. Albeit casually dressed, he had a prima ballerina’s presence in his sweats. There was the tremendous height, the dramatic face, and the voice. For a minute, my stock rather shot up among my colleagues—helped by the fact that Mick Jagger had just called at the office. (He adopted an Irish accent for the task, and Ruth Benoit, an Irish-born editorial assistant who heard his voice, said, “Natasha, someone with a crap Irish accent wants to speak to you.”)
Having Rupert in Paris meant raucous dinners and late nights. He was always picking up the bills and mixing his friends ad infinitum. Naturally, he regaled us with stories from the set. Chivalrous as Rupert can be—he’ll run after purse snatchers at the risk of falling and breaking his glasses—he initially took against Lauren “Call Me Betty” Bacall. Certain stories implied that she was a homophobe. I wondered, since Leonard Bernstein was one of her best friends.
Anyway, Rupert took to Betty-baiting, describing her as being treated like a huge star in Paris but “run over by taxi drivers in New York.” Having interviewed the feisty blond, I knew she could more than give it back. Still, Rupert went a little far, as British charmers do. He told her “what a nightmare” it must be for her son Sam Robards to be on the same film set.
Nevertheless, his fight with Danny Aiello beat all his Betty-baiting. The American actor got Rupert’s goat for several reasons. Aiello’s negative reactions to his ideas had annoyed Rupert, as did Aiello’s sucking up to Sophia Loren and Marce
llo Mastroianni. Prêt-à-Porter required improvising from all the actors. During the scene where Sophia Loren faints dramatically, Aiello suddenly decided that his character was a doctor. Using this excuse, he pushed all the other actors out of the frame and insisted that he give La Loren mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, to which Rupert quipped, “You want to kill her?” Aiello went berserk and pushed his face up to Rupert’s. It might have become violent had Miss Bacall, of all people, not intervened. The incident caused shock waves in the Actors Studio and the community. Taking the role of peacemaker, Robert De Niro offered to fly into Paris to calm everyone down. And naturally, I kept the entire office enthralled with the latest installments of Rupert’s filming even if no one was allowed to tell anyone in the New York office.
Mr. Fairchild, on the other hand, continued to be on the warpath about Prêt-à-Porter. This was demonstrated when the house of Sonia Rykiel sent out a letter informing journalists that Altman would be filming during the Rykiel show. The house warned that attending meant giving permission to be included in the movie. Red rag to a bull, Mr. Fairchild went nuts. He got on the telephone and blasted the house for such a suggestion, his outraged attitude being: “How dare they! We’re not actors! We’re here to do our jobs, not for some Hollywood lark.” A daring act, considering Mr. Fairchild never even went to Miss Rykiel’s collections. Nevertheless, the point was made and the pot was starting to stir.
He also had the nerve to call up Altman and warn him against the co-screenwriter Brian Leitch, who happened to be a former Fairchild employee. Put charitably, Brian was a misfit in the Paris office. So there was a sigh of relief when he left to work for Altman and William Middleton replaced him. Unlike Brian, the Kansas-born William was witty and a team player, and since he was all-American handsome, he became the fashion world’s gay heartthrob.
Meanwhile, I managed to get invited to Altman’s birthday party on February 20. It happened because at a Prêt-à-Porter-connected cocktail, I bumped into his utterly lovely wife, Kathryn, who recognized me from our dinner in New York with Harold and my mother.
The party was held in their rented apartment in the seventeenth arrondissement and was a mix of their Parisian friends. I only knew Marisa Berenson and two fashion models, Tara and Georgina, who had been cast in Prêt-à-Porter. Altman’s birthday cake arrived to the accompaniment of the sound track of Short Cuts. This struck me as a little bizarre, but Altman looked blissed out by the experience.
Afterward I sent a thank-you note, and thought nothing more about it, until Suzy’s gossip column appeared in the New York Post. It was unusually snide for Suzy (aka Aileen Mehle), and the ever-so-sensitive Mr. Altman flipped. Surprising for someone who was in the public eye. Altman thought that I was the informant, when it was actually Marisa who’d innocently spilled the beans.
Kathryn advised that I call her husband. I tried, but he wouldn’t take my calls. Then I remembered that Altman had the Iago-like Brian Leitch in his production office, who was clearly not whispering sweet nothings about moi.
In retrospect, Prêt-à-Porter would have been more accurate about the fashion world if Brian had delved into his mean-queen, occasionally deluded behavior. Rupert thought he was “absolutely ghastly,” but when I bumped into Il Leitch, he smugly informed, “Rupert and I have been writing dialogue together.” They had? It was news to Rupert, who hardly needed Il Leitch. Indeed, they had had several arguments. And then there were the mad spats that Il Leitch and I seemed to have on odd street corners. (Was the creep following Fairchild’s sneaky society editor?) Each of us was arched and puffed up with our preposterous self-importance.
Being curious (read: nosy), I did ask about the film’s story line and, with shining eyes and utter glee, Il Leitch said that he couldn’t tell me but it was “brilliant.” Brilliant? My response to this was, “I do hope that it’s not too fashiony because that will narrow down the audience.” Il Leitch rose a little in stature and grandly said that he was no longer in fashion; he was a screenwriter. A writer? Thinking back, I see it was mad how we loathed each other’s guts and felt licensed to express it.
Either stoned or revved up by Il Leitch, Monsieur Altman decided to call me at home. He began calmly and then went ballistic. However, since I was unfairly accused, I hopped on my soapbox and went ballistic too. He was such a tall, bearded bully, telling me to “leave Fairchild” and generally “get a life.” But I stood my ground—it helped that he had totally fucked up Harold’s play—and yelled back until I was hoarse. It was a totally mad scene: a famous Hollywood director screaming at a total nobody on an early Saturday morning. Then again, it illustrated the director’s growing paranoia when working in Paris. Or was it just a case of too much grass?
The drama reached Rupert, who called up and said, “N, what is going on?” I explained. He understood. Mr. Fairchild, on the other hand, was a little miffed. But before I could be accused of being a double agent or Nata Hari, Town & Country magazine saved my bacon. They published a huge article on Waddesdon, Jacob Rothschild’s stately home that the great man and lord had promised to us at W, or so we thought. When this happens in the world of glossy, it can turn nuclear. Kevin Doyle had a meltdown when he found out. Patrick was pissed but cooler. “As far as I’m concerned, Jacob Rothschild can go and fuck himself,” PM said. This was rapidly followed by the Isabelle Adjani incident, taking further attention away from my Altman birthday attendance.
All was fine until Isabelle—then considered France’s Greta Garbo, and a former Interview cover girl—began listing her dictates. Photo approval was normal. And then came the problem of her age. “You cannot ask how old she is,” stated Adjani’s assistant. I told this to Patrick, who paused and then said, “Whaaat . . . ?” Needless to say, the story was off, and focus on Prêt-à-Porter was back on.
In spite of my yelling match with “Bob,” I was invited to his wrap party. It was either a mistake or a desperate bid to fill the reception rooms at Pavillon Ledoyen, where it was being filmed. In atmosphere, the bash was not unlike one of Andy Warhol’s films from the 1960s. But then, according to Andy’s diaries, Altman copied many of his ideas.
Christian Louboutin was my date. Beforehand, we’d had dinner with Diane von Furstenberg, who said that we were “so lucky” because it was “like watching history being filmed.” Once we arrived, we both tried to outcompete the other with our film star experience. Christian kept banging on about “the tension” in Sophia Loren’s back, whereas I couldn’t resist flirting with the wildly attractive Richard E. Grant, who was sporting a vast hat. Fairly giddy, I began lifting my beaded top and flashing my black satin bra at Eve, the skinhead model. That was until Rupert stopped me and said, “Natasha, Eve likes girls and she’s getting very excited.”
A few hours later, Godfrey Deeny and I met in Ledoyen’s parking lot. View us as the fashion version of Deep Throat, even if we had to cram into his sports car, bicker about certain details, and then dictate our copy to the New York office. Naturally, Mr. Fairchild found fault. “How could they forget to mention Marc Bohan [a former Christian Dior designer]?” he said. Kevin then told us off for this.
Rubbing shoulders with all the stars had been fabulous. Still, even then, we had a sixth sense that the film would be a stinker. Altman had an idée fixe that fashion folk had endless sex between and after shows. Wrong! As a result, the film’s plot kept Julia Roberts locked in her hotel room. The film came out in December 1994 and bombed. Little mention was made of it in Women’s Wear Daily or W magazine.
Rupert would continue with his fashion experience via Yves Saint Laurent perfumes. He became the male face of the Opium fragrance opposite Linda Evangelista, who was his female equivalent in the advertising campaign.
Yet in many ways, it became Christian Louboutin’s hour in the world de la mode. Particularly after he took the radical decision to color the soles of his shoes red. Christian never knew Andy. But the American artist would have appreciated his company. L
ike Andy, he worked and networked like a demon and had that knack of putting everything back in his brand. Covering many social fronts, Christian was also starting to befriend all the famous stars of the time. On MTV, Madonna had held up a pink satin Louboutin stiletto with marabou fur and provocatively purred, “It’s like a weapon.”
Andy initially caught attention with shoes. He began his New York professional life with his blotted-line illustrations for I. Miller shoes and Fleming-Joffe, the luxury leather company. Hailed for its whimsical yet commercial quality, his work won various awards in the same way that Christian’s eventually would.
A strange coincidence, but Christian was actually working on his Pensée (pansy) shoe, inspired by Warhol’s Flower paintings, when he had the brain wave to paint his soles red. “I was thinking of all the colors Warhol used,” Christian now recalls. The shape of the shoe’s footbed worked, as did the pansy and the height of the heel. Still, something was missing. That was, until Christian caught sight of his assistant, who was doing her nails. Grabbing the red varnish, he began to paint the Pensée’s sole. The flash of color was the needed touch. The “needed touch” morphed into Louboutin’s red-sole signature and turned his little business into a hugely successful shoe empire.
Epilogue
Every erstwhile Alice needs a Cheshire cat. During my adventures in Warhol Land, it was Andy. I first heard about him in 1971, when I was eight; it concerned his film Sleep. We met when I was sixteen. He tried to tempt me with an Armani model, the son of a Warhol collector. I was a schoolgirl, called one of the “new beauties for the eighties,” by British Vogue. “The world is their oyster,” predicted the magazine. Four years later I wanted his world and out of England. “You should write a Mommie Dearest,” Andy advised. I moved to Los Angeles and had dinner with him at Mr Chow, after the Madonna–Sean Penn nuptials. It was a media event that shocked then low-key Hollywood but delighted Andy. He liked the paparazzi hanging out of the helicopters and the fact that they noticed his white wig. At our final meeting I had a handshake agreement for his Fifteen Minutes program on MTV. Five days later, I was screening calls about his death. Six weeks later, en route to Andy’s memorial lunch, I shared a taxi with the aforementioned Armani model. During my first trip to Gstaad in 1992, it was all about owning Picasso. But on my last trip there, in the spring of 2014, the chalet of the jeweler Laurence Graff was the hot subject of conversation, as were the priceless Warhols on his walls: Liz Taylor, Marilyn, and a Self-Portrait.
After Andy Page 28