The bane of Anna’s life is The Devil Wears Prada. Even ex-President Sarkozy mentioned it semi-jokingly in his speech at the official Élysée Palace ceremony in Paris before awarding her the Légion d’Honneur in 2011. But it’s not a joke. After seeing a few clips, I never looked at the movie again. I thought it made our business look laughable. Even more so than Prêt-à-Porter, one of the worst movies Robert Altman ever made, which caused chaos one summer at the Paris collections when people like Sophia Loren and Julia Roberts were filmed playing characters from the fashion world attending the shows.
When I first heard that a former assistant of Anna’s had written the book, I thought, “How disgracefully disloyal” and “What a horrible thing to do.” Basically, she was making money out of making fun of Anna’s character.
I don’t remember the girl at all. Anna has quite a large turnover of assistants who sit in the office outside hers. They don’t mingle and are usually just a voice on the phone saying, “Can you come and see Anna?” or “Scheduling meeting,” so you don’t really have a conversation with them. However, when it came to the movie, as usual, Anna had the last word. She went off to the premier with her daughter, Bee. Both dressed head to toe in Prada, of course.
XV
ON
PUSHING AHEAD
In which
Grace embraces
new faces,
falls down
a rabbit hole,
and runs into
Madonna.
Is fashion art? I think it’s sometimes very creative, but I’m not sure I would call it art; that’s pushing it a bit. I certainly don’t think fashion photography is art, because if it is art, it’s probably not doing its job. Obviously, there is photography that sets out to be art, but that’s another story altogether. In fashion photography, rule number one is to make the picture beautiful and lyrical or provocative and intellectual—but you still have to see the dress. Of course, I like to push the boundaries; I think that’s the most interesting element much of the time, when you walk the line. But you can’t forget to show the clothes and, in the end, not alter them beyond recognition; to pretend a dress is something it is not is unfair to the reader, too.
I am, however, happy to put certain fashion photography, framed, on my wall. The 2003 shoot I worked on with Annie Leibovitz based on Alice in Wonderland was conceived to bear a close resemblance to the book’s original drawings. After Anna suggested putting the designers in the shoot as some of the book’s famous characters, she didn’t involve herself much further, and my discussions became about the fashion and the look of the pictures. But even if we weren’t making art, there was an art to the casting.
“Okay Marc, what’s that you’re smoking?”
Annie and I agreed that the designer Christian Lacroix should be the March Hare and the milliner Stephen Jones was a natural to play the Mad Hatter. Jean Paul Gaultier sitting in a tree wearing his signature matelot jersey was a perfect choice for the Cheshire Cat. And the Russian model Natalia Vodianova, with her wide-eyed innocence, couldn’t be a better fit for Alice. Having the designers Viktor and Rolf as Tweedledum and Tweedledee was my idea because I remembered how they always came out wearing identical suits at the end of their shows. They also acted in a slightly prissy way, not letting anyone apart from them arrange the ruffles on the dress they made for the shoot. Ruffles became an issue, too, for Nicolas Ghesquière, at that time fairly new to the fashion world, who was cast as himself to represent the future while Alice pushes herself through the looking glass. The only problem was, the dress Nicolas had so exquisitely made for the story had asymmetrical rows of ruffles all concentrated on the wrong side of the body for Annie’s composition. Outrageously, and to my horror, Annie suggested we either put it on backwards, or he remake it. Without a murmur, Nicolas and his seamstress politely obliged, reconstructing the dress to be a mirror image of its former self.
The final cast list also included Donatella Versace and her close friend Rupert Everett as the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle; the designer Olivier Theyskens as Lewis Carroll; and John Galliano in drag as the Red Queen, accompanied by his boyfriend, Alexis, as the King, illustrating the part where the characters play croquet using flamingos as mallets. These were stuffed, although Annie seriously considered using live ones, which you couldn’t get and, in any case, wouldn’t be allowed to play croquet with.
This mammoth shoot was spread over four days and took place both in Paris and an hour and a half outside the city, in the fairy-tale woods surrounding the Château de Corbeil-Cerf. The first problem for Annie was Marc Jacobs’s hair; he had been drafted in to play the Caterpillar. He looked rough, and although Annie usually likes a certain roughness, in this case he clearly looked too rough for her as he sat there on his mushroom puffing on a hookah. So she rounded on Julien d’Ys, the hairdresser, who was staunchly defended by Marc. A three-way dispute erupted.
Once the air settled, there was the situation of the White Rabbit. I had wanted this character to be played by Karl Lagerfeld because I had seen a picture of him wearing a white suit and thought him ideal. Annie, however, was not thrilled by the thought of Karl, as she had been the recent butt of his withering sarcasm. Instead she saw him as the Duchess, who in the book has a face so grim that it could sink a battleship, and famously holds a baby that turns into a pig.
Karl, who had naturally read the book, wanted to play himself—wearing dark glasses—rather than any fictitious character. Because he didn’t really want to participate, he set the time for his photo at the impossibly early hour of five a.m. in the little wood outside Paris, which meant the entire crew had to get up at two. Meanwhile, a tiny pig was ordered and hidden in the woods on standby, squealing away, with the idea of digitally inserting it into the picture after Karl had left.
At the appointed time, Karl was chauffeured to the set, got out, and stood with Natalia. After five minutes of shooting, Annie asked him to remove his sunglasses. He refused, said, “That’s it,” returned to his car, and headed straight back to Paris. The pig, which had been loudly squeaking nonstop, was placed in Natalia’s arms as she stood close to where Karl would later appear thanks to the wonders of Photoshop. And for the first time it magically stopped making a din. “You have to press it to your heart so it hears the beat,” Natalia explained sweetly. “That way it thinks I am its mother.”
Tom Ford was the one to step up to the plate as the White Rabbit—a role he had wanted to play from the start, as he considered it really sexy. And he was immaculate. Not one button, cuff link, or pocket handkerchief was out of place as he arrived on set, only to be informed he was to be photographed falling down the rabbit hole. A piece of black velvet had been rigged up on a slope. And so, without more ado, Annie’s prop man, Ricky, picked Tom up, swiveled him around, and plopped him on the background upside down. Too startled to say anything, Tom regained enough composure while Annie was snapping away to ask if I could arrange his tie, which was flapping in front of his face, and to check that he wasn’t showing too much sock. And then it was all over.
Not long after he departed, we discovered that Tom had been in difficult talks all week regarding his future at Gucci Group. The result was that he resigned the day after doing our shoot.
Sooner or later it was bound to happen: I would find myself once again working with a challenging subject from my past. And of course this would have to be Madonna. It was 2005. She was now married to the English filmmaker Guy Ritchie and enjoying a very English life between homes in London and the countryside. The usually toxic British tabloids had embraced her to the point of fondly calling her “Madge,” as her current husband did, and expending miles of newsprint commenting favorably on how she wore tweeds, had taken up riding, and had been seen several times at the local pub. All the dismissive sneering concerning her involvement with Jewish kabbalah had been replaced by approving articles on how its influence had turned her into a much more agreeable person with a plausible English accent.
Our
photographs were to take place at her country house, Ashcombe, once upon a time the estate of the multifaceted English artist/photographer/writer Cecil Beaton, whom I had worked with toward the end of his life. Our photographer was to be Tim Walker, a nostalgia-loving character whose body of work looked like he had conjured all his images from children’s fairy tales.
Tim had traveled down early to Wiltshire to discuss all the ideas, which he usually puts into drawings. He and Madonna met in the pub, and when I and the rest of the crew arrived a day later, he ecstatically reported that she had embraced every detail he had suggested. All of which surprised me, as some of his ideas were pretty extreme.
Our first shot of her was in the drawing room wearing a pair of jodhpurs, and that went well enough, although she was a little bit wary when Tim started pinning roses all over her and the chair she was sitting on. Then came a picture in which she was supposed to wear a dress with a very full skirt. She balked at it, saying, “This makes me look like a fifties debutante,” which, of course, was pretty much the effect we were after.
Things went comparatively smoothly with our next two setups. We took a picture of her in bed reading the newspapers with her children; Tim’s brilliant prop girl, Shauna, had entirely redecorated the bedroom by wrapping it in pages of newsprint. Next we took a shot of Madonna out riding with Guy. Galloping back to the stable, she couldn’t have failed to notice that we had started to turn all her sheep pretty shades of pastel in readiness for a picture later on. Then she started to grow testy.
“I’m going to do the picture of her in the martini glass next,” Tim told me enthusiastically while Madonna was upstairs changing. I do remember asking if he was absolutely certain she had agreed to this, because we were now walking on eggshells. “Oh yes,” he said as she came down, looked out the window, and saw, on her lawn, an enormous martini glass with a giant cherry in it and a ladder propped at its side waiting to carry her up.
“I’m not doing that. No way,” said Madonna grimly. Tim began acting like a dog with a bone. He became obstinate and absolutely would not let go of the idea—but she, being Madonna, was totally adamant and ultimately the one calling the shots. She firmly vetoed the image, and when he suggested another that involved her wearing a hat that looked like a cream cake, she angrily refused that, too.
Finally, she calmed down a little when we set up a photograph reminiscent of a Bruce Weber portrait of Debo, Duchess of Devonshire, feeding the chickens on her country estate at Chatsworth. But after that, even though there was another day to go, the mood was far too negative and the session was, for all intents and purposes, over. Sadly, the extraordinary dress—a huge crinoline—that John Galliano had made specially for the shoot was caught in the cross fire. She looked so gloomy in it that the photograph was never used. Despite all the problems, however, we ended up with a really charming evocation of Madonna’s English interlude.
For me, the thrill of what I do comes from realizing a look I had imagined in my head. For which you need the right photographer. In the last ten years, the tight circle I work with has expanded to include edgier people like Steven Klein, the Englishmen David Sims and Craig McDean, and the Turkish/Welsh duo Mert and Marcus, as well as old friends like Bruce Weber, Steven Meisel, Arthur Elgort, Peter Lindbergh, Mario Testino, and Tim Walker, all of whom bring their own individual strength and charm to the images.
Mert and Marcus are very funny. They often take the pictures in turn, overexcitedly snatching the camera away from each other. On set I imagine it to be a bit like it would have been working with Laurel and Hardy. M and M, as they are referred to, used to be situated on the Balearic island of Ibiza, from which they refused to move, which made a photo session a bit of a stretch, but they are now more prepared to travel. And although I am usually skeptical about the merits and modernity of digital photography, there’s no doubt they are brilliant at it, manipulating forms and saturating colors to produce pictures of ravishing glamour. Their approach is totally different from that of other photographers: Using their technique almost like an art form, they create their own image through the digital process as it is happening, rather than perfect it afterward, as others do. In so doing they are redefining what fashion photography is in the digital age. If cameras ever replace cosmetic surgery, their practice will be the most popular in the world.
The equally idiosyncratic David Sims lives in Cornwall, is surfing crazy, and prefers working close to home—even if he attends a sophisticated dinner in Paris, or the Met ball in New York, you can still sense the straw in his hair. David really knows how to light a picture. He’s meticulous about everything, a complete perfectionist; with him, it’s not at all about the happy accident. He can talk for three hours straight about the precise tone of gray background he wants to use.
Craig McDean, meanwhile, is always directing the girl in an oddball fashion. He wants everything to look wacky or off-balance. He’s constantly searching for a movement you haven’t seen a hundred times before. “Do it like this,” he’ll say, acting like a praying mantis or jumping in a crooked manner. He thrives on creating fantasy and keeping himself amused.
I can’t put my finger on what makes Craig’s and David’s photographs so modern, but I think it’s because they are so experimental. David plays around a lot with the color, sometimes almost completely leaching it from the picture. Annie Leibovitz also does this, but for her it is part of a process she goes through in order to make her pictures much darker and richer.
Steven Klein is very intense. You can often find yourself still working with him at midnight, having been there since seven in the morning. If you’re lucky, that is. These days, like Annie Leibovitz, he needs to have a prelight day with a stand-in. It’s all part of dealing with the pressure we put on the photographers, since tight budgets and even tighter schedules—often due to celebrity subjects—have condensed the time they have to get it right. His pictures are close to art photography, and his collaborations with Phyllis Posnick produce the most amazing single images that are required to illustrate certain beauty or health features.
For editors like my colleague Tonne Goodman, it’s fine. She much prefers to completely assemble her shoots in advance, to the point where she has it all accessorized down to the last hairpin. Every outfit is admirably worked out in the office and then bagged up, ready for the studio. She is the one who also has to work with the many celebrities we’ve negotiated to feature on the cover and in the magazine, so her shoots tend to demand considerable preparation, and the clothes usually have to be fitted beforehand. She has endless meetings with photographers like Steven to talk about what they are doing. She even goes herself on the prelight day.
When she worked in her previous job at Harper’s Bazaar, there was apparently a dummy kept in the closet that she and her fellow fashion director, Paul Cavaco, liked to dress up and accessorize before a shoot. I prefer to leave things a little more to chance. However, Tonne is truly brilliant at bringing to life a coat or dress that may not in itself be prepossessing. By tweaking it here and belting it there and adding a little this and that, she puts it into a whole different class. And her shoots can be truly visionary, like the brilliant, futuristic story she shot with Steven Klein for our bumper September 2012 issue at Virgin Galactic’s spaceship company.
Recently, I worked hard to bring the photographer Peter Lindbergh, whom I’d worked with at British Vogue and in the early days at American Vogue, back into the fold. Then he had been lured to Harper’s Bazaar by Liz Tilberis, and he remained there for a long stretch. A couple of years ago I finally succeeded. Peter’s storytelling style had been sorely missed. It works perfectly for the cinematic narratives I have been doing lately in place of the children’s tales, like Little Red Riding Hood and The Wizard of Oz, that I had so much fun with—a little too much fun, perhaps, which made it time for a change.
Peter makes a woman, however young she may be, look grown up and mature in a great, sophisticated way, so that the stories we construct with
a model and, say, an older movie star are believable. He’s very good with male actors, like Aaron Eckhart, for example, whom we paired with the model Lara Stone; and Ewan McGregor, whom we cast in a story with Natalia Vodianova. In this scenario, he was the husband she left for a waiter, played by a wispy male model, whom I personally never would have left Ewan McGregor for in a million years! In both situations, the girl had children and was cheating on her husband, a narrative that Peter seems to repeat endlessly, despite my misgivings. This causes some consternation among Vogue readers, who feel we shouldn’t be representing such an immoral situation.
But without a little drama, how can it look like real life?
Working with Didier in the English countryside before we were dating, while he still probably didn’t like me. Photo: Barry Lategan, 1981
Me flanked by a couple of clamdigger models and Barbara Dente, with (front row from left) Howard Fugler, Dave Hutchings, Rowdy (Bruce’s dog), and Tristan, at Bruce’s house, Shelter Island. Photo: Bruce Weber, 1980
With Didier on a bicycle definitely not built for two. Photo: Bruce Weber, 2007
In Jamaica with the photographer’s daughter, Rebecca Forteau. Photo: Ellen von Unwerth, 1994
Front row at a Chanel show. Photo: Ben Coster, 1993, Camera Press London
XVI
ON
Grace Page 20