Finding Myself in Fashion

by Jeanne Beker

  The next evening, my dear friend Carol Leggett accompanied me to the Marc Jacobs show, which was held in a big warehouse and tent down on Pier 54 on the Hudson River, about five kilometres north of the World Trade Center. Marc’s shows always attracted a huge celebrity crowd, and this night was no exception, with luminaries like Sarah Jessica Parker, Chris Noth, Debbie Harry, Sophie Dahl, Sofia Coppola, Zoe Cassavetes, and Rosanna Arquette there to cheer Marc on and celebrate his upbeat 1960s-inspired collection, as well as the launch of his first eponymous fragrance.

  It was a warm, clear, gorgeous night. Just a few blocks away, the Statue of Liberty was in full view. Carol and I marvelled at the opulence and perfection of the evening, which was also a fundraiser to benefit a dozen New York charities. Marc had proved to be a great success at the creative helm of Louis Vuitton, and his savoir faire as one of the world’s most influential designers was in evidence in an entire wall lined with exquisite white gardenias—the scent of his new perfume. Post-show, hundreds of people feasted at long tables laden with sumptuous food. Wall Street and the Twin Towers loomed in the distance. In an ironic twist, a small fire-fighting tugboat shot mammoth sprays of water into the air, pumping up the inspiration for the scent: gardenias in water. The decadent spectacle was nothing short of exhilarating. “This reminds me of what led to the fall of the Roman Empire!” I joked to Carol. We never guessed it was the calm before the storm.

  The next morning, I was up early for the Oscar de la Renta show, which was taking place in the tents at Bryant Park at Thirty-ninth Street and Sixth Avenue, just a few blocks from where I was staying. It was close to 9:00 a.m. when I turned on the TV to NBC’s Today Show. A Toronto colleague, Serena French, who was reporting on fashion for the National Post, called and we started chatting about the designer shows we’d seen to date. Serena had her TV on as well, coincidentally also tuned to The Today Show. During the course of our conversation, we both became aware that Katie Couric was saying something about a small plane having flown into one of the World Trade Center’s towers. The report seemed to indicate that it was a private plane, and Serena and I remarked how freaky that was. Suddenly, we both witnessed an incredible image: What looked like another small plane was flying directly into the second tower! We stopped talking. And for about another fifteen minutes, we both kept silent—my jaw had literally dropped—as we watched the riveting, colossal tragedy unfold.

  Serena finally broke the silence. “My God,” she said, “I’ve got to go and call my paper,” and we hung up. I continued watching the TV screen in horror, dumbfounded as the enormity of the disaster began to sink in. Another plane had gone down in a field in Pennsylvania. A fourth one had hit the Pentagon. The phone rang. It was the news director at Citytv.

  “Your cellphone’s not working. Are you aware of what’s happening?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve just been watching it on TV,” I said.

  “Well, can you get Arthur”—he was referring to my cameraman, Arthur Pressick—“and go down there to try to talk to some people?”

  “Are you serious?” I asked. After all, my beat was fashion, not news. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea right now. But let me call Arthur and get right back to you.”

  Arthur had just woken up, but he already knew what had happened.

  “They want us to go down there,” I told him.

  “Are they crazy?” he retorted. “I’m not risking my life.”

  I totally concurred. Besides, the authorities had issued strong warnings for people to stay indoors and not go anywhere near the towers. The Oscar de la Renta show was obviously cancelled. I wondered if they would cancel Fashion Week altogether. The phone lines hadn’t gone dead yet, so I called my mother to let her know I was okay. Then I contacted my sister in L.A., waking her up and telling her to turn on the TV. Finally, I called my boyfriend at the time, Jack, who was in a board meeting and was oblivious to what was happening. Carol called me from her downtown apartment, hysterical. “Can you believe this!?” she asked. And before I could answer, she started screaming, “Oh, my God! That entire building just collapsed! I have to go …” And she was gone. Everything had become a blur. I rang Arthur’s room again. “Do you think maybe we should just go down as far as Bryant Park, to try to get some reactions from people?” Arthur reluctantly agreed, and so we warily made our way out of the hotel and across Forty-fourth Street.

  Hilary Alexander, the fashion editor of The Daily Telegraph, was the first person we ran into. She seemed a little frantic and was definitely wide-eyed. “Did you hear that there were supposed to be eight hijacked planes but only four have been accounted for?” she asked. The implication was that the others could strike anywhere, at any time. I couldn’t begin to imagine what that meant, but we were determined to carry on. Sixth Avenue and the streets around it were utterly free of traffic, save for the odd police car or ambulance screeching downtown. Arthur and I bravely walked south as scores of people streamed towards us heading north. They were moving faster than usual, eager to get as far away from Ground Zero as possible—eager to get home. The subway system had been shut down, and the odd bus that passed us was crammed with passengers. Small groups were huddled around boom box radios, hungry for the latest information. Every conversation I could tune in to revolved around the horror of the terrorist attack. Some people were sobbing, and others stared straight ahead, like zombies. Sirens could be heard everywhere, but there were no vehicles, just a sea of pedestrians, packs of frightened people trying to make sense of the insanity. I heard jets overhead. Could any of these be the “unaccounted for” planes that Hilary had mentioned? Maybe they were planning to strike the fashion tents at Bryant Park? As crazy as that sounds now, it seemed like a plausible notion at the time. After all, if these were terrorists, why wouldn’t they want to make their voices heard at a place where they knew the international press had gathered? My imagination was running rampant, and with one eye on the sky above, I felt my heart starting to beat faster and faster.

  Finally, we arrived at the Bryant Park tents, their sides decorated with the gritty graffiti of the New York artist and designer Stephen Sprouse, who would die just a few short years later. A row of security guards stood at the entrance. The day’s shows had been cancelled, and no, I couldn’t get a comment from anyone from the Council of Fashion Designers of America—everyone was tied up in an emergency meeting. I told Arthur that I wanted to interview people about what they were feeling. I saw the friendly face of the runway photographer Randy Brooke. I had known Randy for years—he was a laid-back, cheerful guy. But now, the fear in his eyes was palpable. He started telling me about a buddy who had been near the World Trade Center at the moment of the first crash. “Are you rolling?” I asked Arthur. Randy proceeded to give us a graphic description of what his friend had seen. We were entranced.

  All of a sudden, like a tidal wave of terror, everybody started running and pushing and yelling. I looked up at the sky, certain that a fiery jet was coming right for us in Bryant Park. Cops were running in all directions, and the throngs of people on the street in front of the big tent scattered, everyone dashing every which way. I saw Arthur out of the corner of my eye. Amazingly enough, he was straddling the curb, still rolling in an attempt to capture the insanity. I huddled up against a wall with some young guy I recognized as another fashion reporter. I was shaking. Chaos reigned. It might have been a few seconds. It felt like a hundred years.

  Gradually, things calmed down. “It’s all right, everybody,” a cop called out. “It’s okay. Somebody said they were blowing up the Chrysler Building. Evidently, it was a false alarm. Just try to get inside now.” The young guy hugged me and told me that he was scared too, but it was going to be all right. All I could think about were my girls and how I had to call them immediately. I raced to a phone booth and tried to call home, but the line was dead. I had never felt so scared and alone. I flashed on my parents and the war stories they had told me growing up—the desolation, the panic, the fear, the
random way they would run into certain people and totally lose track of others. This is what war must feel like, I thought. Maybe the Third World War was breaking out. My safe, cozy, charmed life was over.

  I searched the sea of faces for a familiar one, and there was Barbara Atkin, the fashion director of Holt Renfrew.

  “Jeanne, where’s your hotel?” she asked.

  “Just a few blocks away,” I told her. “Let’s go!”

  A couple of others who were on their own joined us. No one wanted to be alone. When we got back to the hotel, the lobby was filled with people and television sets. Everybody was glued to the screens, trying to figure out how the world had changed, and how they would get home. There was a conscious, deep awareness that home was the only place that really mattered now, and the sudden desperation to see loved ones had everyone on tenterhooks. But getting home would be a challenge.

  All the airports had been closed, along with all the tunnels and bridges and borders. People were saying that there was still limited train service, and some scrambled to make reservations. Another good friend, the retail dynamo Bonnie Brooks, who was in from Hong Kong, got hold of me at the hotel and asked how I was getting back to Toronto. She wanted to come back with me so she could see her mother. Barb’s boss, Andrew Jennings, the president of Holt Renfrew, had come in that morning, on a flight that landed shortly before the disaster. As he drove into the city and realized what was going on, he decided to turn around and have his driver take him all the way back to Toronto. Barb spoke to Andrew, and he assured us he would arrange for another car to pick us up as soon as the roads were open again.

  I went up to my room and checked my voicemail. I was overwhelmed by the number of calls that had come in—friends, relatives, even casual acquaintances who knew I’d be in New York for Fashion Week, all checking to see whether I was okay. It was moving to feel that loved. The Toronto Sun called and asked whether I could write a first-person account of what I had experienced. The Internet was down, so after I wrote my story, I called the Sun’s newsroom and dictated the article to them word by word. I then did another live phone report for CityPulse news. My voice was breaking as I recounted the morning terror. I kept saying that all this had jarred me into remembering what was really important in life. And all I yearned to do was get home so I could hug my kids.

  The next morning, a driver named Errol in a black sedan collected Barb, Bonnie, and me for the long drive back home. Traffic was horrendous, and many roads were still closed. Errol warned us that he would take us only as far as the Peace Bridge—it would just take too long to get through. We could walk across the bridge, he said, and arrange for another car to take us home from the other side.

  As we hit the highway, I looked back at what we were leaving behind. The huge smokestacks receded in the distance, and I thought about all the hype and glamour and dazzle that were synonymous with New York. And I wondered whether things would, or could, ever be the same.

  A couple of hours after we got on the New York State Thruway, we made a pit stop for gas and decided to stock up on munchies for the ride. We were poking through the convenience store when Bonnie told me she thought she saw Tommy Hilfiger one aisle over. “You’re nuts!” I said, figuring that the events of the day had made her giddy. But as I turned the corner, I heard a voice calling my name. I looked up, and there was Tommy with his wife and daughter! It felt like another one of those war stories my parents had told me, where you randomly bump into all kinds of unexpected people because things have been so shaken up. Tommy was going to Upstate New York to visit his ailing brother. I kept thinking that the episode was like a bizarre dream: “And then we had to flee New York because the whole city was going up in smoke. So we piled in a limo to drive back home and made a pit stop, and there, between the pretzels and potato chips, was Tommy Hilfiger …” Sometimes life really is stranger than fiction.

  I honestly believed at that point that fashion might be over forever. I mean, who could ever be moved by a beautiful dress again? Who could seriously fret over what to wear in light of what had happened? How could I continue in this business, scrambling around the world to trend-spot and pick designers’ brains? Overnight, fashion had seemed to turn into something horribly shallow and unspeakably insipid. I couldn’t imagine anyone ever really caring about it again.

  When we finally got to the Peace Bridge, there had been a bomb threat, so Errol drove us to an alternate border crossing at Niagara Falls, where a new driver picked us up. When I arrived home, my girls were waiting at the door. “We were so scared,” said Joey. “I wish you didn’t have to travel ever, ever again.” I hugged them, held them, and told them it would all be okay.

  But I had a slight problem: Just a few days later, I was slated to fly across Canada to launch my new Jeanne Beker clothing line for Eaton’s. And if that wasn’t enough, the collection was inspired by my hectic, jet-set lifestyle and had been designed with the travelling woman in mind. How ironic! Most of us never wanted to get on a plane again. But travelling was such a vital part of my life. How would I cover the international scene if I was balking at the thought of boarding an airplane? Was it time to reassess what I did for a living? Or would the fear eventually subside?

  By the weekend, emotional exhaustion had set in. The morning papers carried headlines about a possible impending war, with page after page of doom-and-gloom stories. Suddenly, in the front section of the paper, I spotted a huge ad: “Meet Jeanne Beker … Monday … as she launches her new clothing line.” My heart sank. There I was, looking smug and cool and glamorous, a coat slung over my shoulder, confidently standing inside an airport terminal—the modern woman on the go—as assorted pieces from my collection went round the luggage carousel. The concept had seemed so clever at the time. Now, the notion of a clothing line geared to travelling seemed laughable. I should have been thrilled—a new project had come to fruition, a dream had come true. But I was overwhelmed by sadness and wept at the helplessness, and hopelessness, of fashion. Nevertheless, friends and colleagues turned out at the downtown Toronto Eaton’s store on Monday morning to attend the launch and cheer me on. We weren’t in a celebratory mood, but it felt good to be together again, especially after the aborted Fashion Week. It was apparent that we needed this arena as an escape—a friendly diversion in a world that was growing increasingly dark.

  You could have heard a pin drop at the airport when I boarded the plane for Vancouver a couple of days later. It was less than a week after 9/11, and hardly anyone was flying. Having eagerly boarded planes my whole life, I was now frightened, but I fought to put the paranoia to rest. After about an hour in the air, acceptance set in. I came to the conclusion that life does go on. Despite the devastation, the fear, the uncertainty, it’s our duty to forge ahead. This is what makes us human. When I addressed the crowd gathered at the Vancouver Eaton’s store—a big, friendly sea of faces eager to escape for a few minutes and watch beautiful women glide down a runway—I remembered what’s at the very heart of fashion: the need to dream, to imagine, to see ourselves in a perfect world, where the right clothes can actually transform us, lead us in new directions, and help us live carefree lives. Great style will never save the world, but sometimes, it can make things a little more tolerable.

  By spring, the beast that is fashion had indeed marched on. Fashion is just too big a business to stop for long. The collections that came down the runways for spring ’02 had been conceived prior to “the day the world changed,” and fashion that season tenaciously held to themes of innocence and romance. The heavy doses of femininity and escapism, and the new Boho Chic trend, offered a welcome bit of relief and a much-needed sense of optimism in a dark world.

  By fall ’02, one short year after fashion had been the last thing on anybody’s mind, designers were more determined than ever to embrace all that was positive in the business. “This is about fashion,” Calvin Klein told me. “And fashion is always supposed to make a woman or a man feel good, regardless of the economy, politics
, whatever is going on in the world. Fashion should never make you feel depressed. Otherwise, what’s the point?” We were backstage at the Milk Studios, just after he had presented his sensual spring ’03 collection. “It’s time to feel happy again,” agreed Anna Sui as she sent out an ultra-upbeat, sport-themed collection, which included a sparkling football jersey reminiscent of the one Geoffrey Beene gave us back in 1968—a piece that heralded a “loosening up” of glamour. Anna Sui’s vision was all about slowing down and smelling the flowers. It was just the kind of feel-good statement we had been longing for.

  The celebrity quotient at the shows that season was stronger than ever too, with a bevy of stars coming out to support their friends. Oprah Winfrey and Holly Hunter were at Vera Wang; Hilary Swank and Sandra Bullock sat in the front row at Marc Jacobs; Julianne Moore and Ellen Barkin turned up at Rick Owens; Gwyneth Paltrow was at Calvin Klein; Britney Spears caused a stir at Pat Field; Sarah Jessica Parker came out for Narciso Rodriguez; Bette Midler added to the fun at Cynthia Rowley; Elizabeth Hurley cheered on Ralph Lauren. These celebs were all chatting up the importance of style, and telling us it was time to go shopping again.

  The events of 9/11 had robbed us of our innocence and changed the world in some basic way. But by that next September, optimism had unquestionably returned to New York. I remember taking in a street fair on Sixth Avenue one Saturday morning during that Fashion Week. I had an hour between shows, and I wanted to soak up some sunshine. Vendors were out selling balloons and toys and kebabs and crepes and lemonade and CDs and jewellery and T-shirts and spices and handbags—and just about everything else imaginable. The road was teeming with families and couples and bargain hunters and cops and kids and dogs. Everyone was smiling and helpful and kind and friendly. It was pure joy seeing that remarkable city so wholeheartedly back in motion. I was awed by the human resiliency and took pride in our limitless potential.