The Vogue Factor

by Kirstie Clements

  It’s unusual that such a major trip went ahead without the model being approved, but often when an international model is booked direct to a location, how they look when they turn up is not quite how they were depicted in their portfolio. They can often carry a few extra kilos in weight that the agent chose not to divulge, and the fashion editor then faces the dilemma of having none of the clothes fit. On many occasions, Judith had to cut clothes up the back and pin them together.

  In the case of the African incident, Judith was disconsolate. ‘I liked her. I specifically chose her because she looked like a lioness!’ she exclaimed. I think I gently suggested to her that perhaps therein lay the problem. The story was cut drastically and there was a mad scramble for African artifacts and a Maasai backdrop, while a studio shoot was then set up in downtown Sydney Central with a different model. The Africa issue managed to make it to print, but we were reminded about the cost by our editorial business manager for years afterwards, even if we hadn’t personally been involved.

  The sheer unpredictability of location trips and the personalities of the chosen crew certainly provided a myriad of dramas. In Greece, fashion editor Sandra Hirsh learned the hard way when her model, a rising star who had won an international modelling competition from Germany, took a shine to the photographer’s assistant. It happened a lot. Photographers’ assistants are, generally speaking, always really hot, and they are more appealing than the photographer because they don’t get cross with you. Strangely, the photographer’s assistant is often better looking than the male model. They’re not so model-y. Apparently, after an early team dinner, while Sandra thought everyone was safely tucked up in bed, the model and the assistant went for a post-Retsina spin on a motorcycle and had an accident on gravel. The poor girl’s face was split open, and in the midst of her agent threatening to sue, the runner-up in the modelling contest was quickly dispatched.

  There were different problems on the idyllic Fijian island of Vatulele, where I joined Judith as assistant and travel writer. The photographer was Richard Bailey, a handsome, charming young surfer from the northern beaches who would continue to work exclusively for Vogue Australia for more than two decades, until his passing from cancer in 2010. Everything was postcard perfect—pale blue water, a palm-fringed beach with pristine white sands, glorious weather, the whole cliché. The model arrived from the US, a gamine beauty who resembled a young Audrey Hepburn. We had trunkloads of clothes; we were poised for a classic Vogue shoot. What could go wrong?

  After an afternoon reconnaissance we all met for dinner, and noticed the model seemed unusually quiet. Almost melancholy. We put it down to the long flights and regrouped the next morning. Richard started to shoot and she became more and more sad. She wouldn’t smile and was on the brink of tears the whole time. At one point, standing knee-deep in the azure ocean, dressed in a sarong and gigantic straw hat and looking like a divine aquatic goddess, she burst into sobs. Richard was so frustrated. We called her agency in New York to ask what the hell was going on. There’s nothing quite like being told by a supercilious model booker, when you are on a remote island in the Pacific and expected to produce an entire summer issue, that the model they sent you ‘has had a very troubled upbringing. She’s got a lot of issues. And she hates modelling.’

  None of us were without sympathy but we all had a job to do, and you never know whether the story you are getting is straight. For all we knew, the real story was that she missed her boyfriend. I worked with a model once who cried for the entire day because her cat had died. We had to keep redoing her makeup. I must admit I’m not a cat person, but by all accounts it had expired two days before. How long is one expected to put up with cat grief?

  Given that a large amount of pages were expected from the Vatulele trip, Judith creatively improvised and came up with a tenuous narrative about the model meeting someone called Captain Jack (which just so happened to be Richard’s handsome and amiable assistant Mike, again proving the theory that they are far more useful than male models), so we shot him as much as humanly possible to pad the story out. The narrative of a shoot is always discussed and decided beforehand, but a professional team has to roll with the punches. Our shoot had moved from ethereal tropic nymph emerges from the crystalline water to South Pacific: The Musical. Just our luck, heavy tropical rain arrived and the skies were leaden for days, so we all began having tequila slammers at 3 p.m. just to get through. Despite the series of challenges, the photographs turned out beautifully.

  While we loved to promote Australian models, we also needed variety. We were shooting at least four main-page stories per issue, and readers tired quickly of seeing the same models too frequently. Given that Vogue Australia was a long way off the global fashion radar back then, we could not simply pick up the phone and book the top models in the world, like Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford. If we were able to secure girls of that level it was through long and complex negotiations, usually with a third party that had a vested interest, like a fashion or beauty advertiser. Given these parameters, we were often using girls who were very young and just starting out, or in some cases, a few who were a little bit past their prime. That meant in their late twenties. The ageism is not quite so strict now.

  Tory and I once made a reasonably disastrous trip to Los Angeles to produce two shoots: the first with a very top model, who, truth be told, had probably slipped a peg or two down the ladder of fame. When she arrived at the sumptuous Beverly Hills Peninsula Hotel where we were staying, she clearly felt there were better things she could be doing. By the end of the day, I would have suggested retirement.

  Three hours late for a call time of 8 a.m., she sauntered into the suite where we had all the fashion and accessories laid out for her to try on, got into the bed, picked up the phone and dialled room service nachos. Tory and I nearly fainted. We were never, ever allowed to order room service on trips; it was a no-no, except in extreme circumstances, say, if you had lost the use of your legs. We had very rigid rules: no mini bar, no personal laundry, no personal telephone calls, no alcohol. The budgets for food were frugal to say the least. It was common at dinners for the photographers’ assistants to order three courses, given they were usually strapping young men and they’d been working hard all day. When this happened, it generally followed that Tory and I would stare at each other with barely suppressed panic and then say airily, ‘Oh, I think I’ll just have a salad’, so we could keep the bill down. It wasn’t worth the torture we would endure from Patricia Watson, the business manager, when we got back. Tory could survive for days on Diet Coke.

  Back to our pensioner/model, who then decided to chain-smoke cigarettes and refused to put them out while we tried on clothes. In between shots she would return to the bed and spill corn chips all over the 1000 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. She was as animated and engaged as a basket of laundry. Eventually we brought in a male model who was so insanely buff that she brightened up enough to take a decent picture, but all we wanted to do was to pour the (uneaten as it turned out) nachos over Nana’s head, as I had taken to calling her.

  For the next shoot we had booked a sixteen-year-old girl who was purportedly the agency’s next big thing. We had seen her model card and some amateur test shots, and she certainly had something: pouty, blonde and innocent. She and her mother met us at the hotel and we were dismayed to see the first problem. She had thick ankles. Either we had not seen a head-to-toe shot, or it had been doctored. Fashion editors are fanatical about girls having good legs. Even Cyd Charisse probably would have struggled to get through at a Vogue casting.

  But what was truly distressing was that it became obvious the women were in dire financial straits. Her mother had driven from we weren’t sure where, and we noticed that her beaten-up sedan was full of personal possessions. They were living in the car. The girl ordered chilli for lunch and was surprised at how it tasted, because she told us she had only ever had it from a can. We didn’t have the budget to put them up for m
ore than one night, but it was clear the mother saw her daughter’s burgeoning career as their ticket out of poverty. Sadly, that was unlikely to happen because her calves weren’t ever going to be slim enough.

  Apart from the various fashion trips I had managed to insinuate myself into, there were also opportunities for travel that related to beauty shoots and stories. Fortunately for me, Karin did not like to travel excessively, while I on the other hand was willing to hang onto the wing of a plane, especially if it meant going to the US.

  In 1992, a press trip or ‘junket’ to San Francisco had been offered to Vogue, and Nancy decided that I could take the trip, and then fly on to New York to do two beauty shoots, which would hopefully also produce two covers. I was nervous, but ecstatic. Thirty years old and my first trip to America. Business-class. I remember literally skipping across Rushcutters Bay Park that night I was so happy. I’d never been on a press junket before, and I quickly learnt an irrefutable fact—there will always be one major dickhead in the party who will ruin the entire experience for you.

  On this particular occasion it was a newspaper journalist, who wasn’t even a travel writer. I suspect his editor had given him the trip to get him out of the office and give the rest of the staff a break from his inane rambling. He commenced proceedings by getting totally wasted in the departure lounge, topping himself up to almost-legless status once we were in the air. He was so smashed by the time we lined up at customs and immigration in the US, he started swaying, swearing and complaining about American imperialism at the top of his voice. Always a sensible call in the States.

  The debonair PR representative who was accompanying our group was mortified and, I sensed, ready to put him on the first plane back, but unfortunately he remained with us for the four days we spent in San Francisco. His crowning achievement came on the last night when we were dining at one of the city’s finest establishments, and the very famous chef came out specially to run through the menu with us, dish by dish. As he finished the intricate explanations, the moron took a breath and said, ‘Yeah, but do you have any spaghetti?’ waiting for the huge laughs that surprisingly did not spill from our clenched jaws. From then on I vowed I would avoid junkets at all costs, but at times I have been obliged to join them. And there would usually be someone I wanted to strangle.

  From San Francisco I continued on to New York, and arrived at La Guardia late at night, laden with suitcases. The very chi chi Mark Hotel had just opened uptown, and I checked into the vast presidential suite on the top floor, which had glittering views all the way downtown. There was jazz playing on the brand-new CD player. I was in heaven. For the umpteenth time in my career at Vogue, I took a minute to appreciate how privileged I was.

  The phone rang. It was the general manager of the hotel. Would I care to have dinner the following night? The writer Paul Theroux would be joining us. I nearly wept when I had to decline because I was expected at a perfume launch. It is something we were all taught as juniors. You never blew something off because you got a better offer. Vogue staff have always been expected to attend everything they are invited to, no excuses. That is your job, first and foremost. I have seen other journalists throughout the years be incredibly cavalier with their invitations and appointments and it has always infuriated me. The invitations come because of the job, not because you’re so special.

  The two beauty stories I shot that week in New York ultimately did produce covers and both taught me a great deal. One, with model Daniela Pestova, was a triumph. The shot was upbeat and she was reader-friendly, in that she was able to appear glamorous yet approachable. I had even managed to magically choose the right earrings to match the Simona silk blouse. (Styling on my own was always hit and miss.) It was one of our biggest-selling covers ever.

  The other cover was taken from an arty black-and-white hair story I did with a humourless Swedish photographer, who was very talented but incredibly arrogant. He studiously ignored me all day on the shoot, conferring only with the surly British makeup artist who kept calling me Kylie on purpose, despite me correcting her umpteen times. The pictures were gorgeous, the model resonating with a vintage glamour not unlike that of Marlene Dietrich. A shot of her wearing long, black, satin gloves was chosen for the next cover. I was on a roll. What a triumph! Kirstie took on New York and won! Was Australia big enough for me now?

  But the black-and-white glamour cover was a complete flop with readers. Sales were dismal. And thus I learned the lesson that is an editor’s greatest truism: you are only ever as good as your last cover.

  3

  THE BUSINESS OF BEAUTY

  By the early nineties I had become the beauty editor, a position that afforded me many glamorous experiences. ‘Beauty is great training ground for an editor-in-chief, because it’s intrinsically commercial. I don’t think I’m revealing state secrets when I say we were there to help an advertiser sell their moisturiser. Fashion is much more subjective, and emotional, whereas the health and beauty area is more logical. Bearing in mind that my job was to rationalise spending $1300 on a face cream. That’s logic, Vogue-style.

  I was expected to give our advertisers coverage in the magazine, of course, but I also had free reign to promote anything I desired. Our Melbourne fashion editor Sandra Hirsh telephoned me one day and mentioned that she knew a young girl, Poppy King, who had a small lipstick line I might like to take a look at. Poppy came in to see me, a tiny eighteen-year-old blonde with alabaster skin and the darkest matte red lips I’d ever seen outside Kabuki theatre. She had come up with the idea of seven super-matte dark red and brown lipsticks that contained double the pigment you could find in other lipsticks. You couldn’t find the shades at other companies, certainly not with the dramatic impact of her lip colours. Poppy showed me a few worse-for-wear samples, which she pulled out of a small makeup bag. I thought the idea was genius, and that she was certainly her own best publicity angle. I called to set up an appointment with the beauty buyer at David Jones and of course wrote a piece in Vogue. The rest is history, as the Poppy lipstick brand became an enormous success both here and in the US. That’s the sort of impact that editorial with a real and honest angle can make.

  The late eighties and early nineties were heady times for international beauty companies, who were spending big on launches and press trips. At one very extravagant lunch at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, for the launch of an at-home hair colour, I was seated next to the taciturn managing director who was clearly bored out of his brain and mentally calculating how much this was costing him, as the beauty editors were showered with champagne, gifts and themed desserts. After numerous speeches, videos and live models displaying their shiny beautiful locks he turned to me and said, ‘Don’t you think all of this is just stupid?’ I was taken aback for a moment, because I thought, ‘Yes, it is a gigantic waste of time’, but I was enjoying myself immensely. What I actually said however was: ‘Well, the amount of money, planning and effort that has gone into this event clearly demonstrates how important this product launch is on your marketing calendar, and is a good indication as to how much editorial you will be expecting us to produce for you.’ Which is the truth. The beauty editor just happens to be in the very fortunate position of having all this largesse reign down on her personally, while the implicit business agreement takes place.

  It was his turn to look taken aback, but he agreed with me. He resigned not long after. Chatting to twenty-something beauty editors while they scoff down cream cakes at lavish lunches clearly wasn’t his thing.

  I loved writing beauty copy, because a degree of wit and ingenuity is required to make an eye shadow palette sound exciting to the reader. It became slightly more challenging when advertisers had an expectation of a two-thousand-word article on a night serum. This is another tacit commercial exchange: you interview someone from their ‘laboratory’ and then produce an article insinuating that the cream may miraculously change the molecular structure of skin and resist gravity. The hugely powerful Estée Lauder Group
was Vogue’s biggest advertiser, and early on in my beauty editorship I was ‘Laudered’. They created the benchmark on how to do things with style, and happily that company does have a state-of-the-art research facility, so there was real science to draw on.

  In 1992 I was flown to New York, collected by limousine at the airport and whisked into a top hotel uptown, near the Lauder offices on Fifth Avenue. I checked into my suite to discover bags and bags of expensive lotions and potions, perfume and makeup waiting for me. There were tickets to The Frick Collection and The Whitney Museum on the desk, and a huge wooden box filled with exotic fruits from ‘The Fruit of the Month Club’. I was informed by handwritten note on a thick, creamy card that dinner was booked at the renowned restaurant Daniel that evening, where I would be joined by a Lauder representative.

  The following day I visited the plush Lauder corporate offices, housed in the General Motors building on Fifth Avenue. I met and chatted with the lovely Evelyn Lauder, the wife of Estée’s son Leonard, in the ‘Lauder’ rooms which were floral and feminine, with blue sofas and drapes, fine china teacups, pretty flowers and silver bowls. I was then taken to the Clinique offices where everything was white and minimal, and I was given a notepad with pale-green pencils and a glass of chilled water. Afterwards we moved on to Prescriptives, which was the new whizz-bang brand in their stable, its personality reflected in the matte-grey surrounds and the modernist coffee mugs. The New West rooms (an Estée Lauder line that has since folded) were all Sante Fe, with cactuses and bright colours. I was waiting for them to break out the tequila.

  The attention to detail, the manners, and the professionalism was mind-blowing. I knew I was at the centre of one of the truly great American companies. I was ‘Laudered’ many times over the years, but I have never forgotten that first one. After my office visit, I was taken to lunch at uptown Cipriani’s by Rebecca McGreevy, Lauder’s senior vice president of PR, an impeccable Southern woman in her sixties who was charm personified. At one point during the meal she said calmly, ‘I have a rather big surprise for you. Estée Lauder is going to join you and me for afternoon tea later today at The Plaza.’