The Vogue Factor

by Kirstie Clements

  Other collaborations in the issue included Kylie Minogue, whom Karl photographed wearing Chanel and cavorting on his piano at his home in Paris. Kylie was also more than happy to participate. It doesn’t matter how big a star you are, everybody wants to be in Karl’s orbit.

  I was also in negotiations with Nicole Kidman, who was high on Karl’s wish list. This was not uncommon: oftentimes during my career, I was in negotiations regarding Nicole Kidman, most of them fruitless. I started to sense that Nicole’s management had a strategy in place which meant she would be available to shoot for Harper’s Bazaar Australia but only allow Vogue Australia to lift other material that had been produced for international Vogue editions. I can see that this plan certainly saved Nicole’s time and energy, but it didn’t save mine, because for years I had conversations with her agent about the possibility of us shooting her that would drag on for months and never eventuate.

  On this particular occasion it began on a vaguely positive note, but then became more and more convoluted. Nicole would be in New York; no, she would be in London; yes, maybe Paris; no, no, in an unspecified location. At one point I thought I almost had her on a jet, or in a helicopter, or a spaceship, or something, going to Karl’s home in Biarritz for a half-day shoot, and then no, it all fell through again. Added to this was the difficulty of making a date work in Karl’s diary, who was not idle or unimportant himself.

  Baz Luhrmann had been commissioned to fly to Biarritz to conduct a one-on-one interview with Karl for the issue. This article would give a wonderful and piercingly honest insight into Karl, his career, and his complicated relationship with his mother. Shortly afterwards I became aware that Karl and Baz were also talking about a future collaboration on a short promotional film for Chanel No. 5, starring—who would have predicted—Nicole Kidman. And yet, Karl’s people were asking me every day how far I’d got with pinning a date down with her.

  The agent was now suggesting that we fly Karl and his entire photographic retinue to New York for a day with Nicole. Given that Karl travels by private jet and with a major domo, for starters, I feigned breathless excitement over the phone while mentally calculating the preposterous cost of sending God knows how many people to NYC for a possible one-day shoot. No more faxes. I needed to speak to Karl.

  After days and days of wrangling we eventually settled on a time for him to call. I was at a Diesel dinner in Sydney when finally my mobile sounded. I rushed outside and stood on the wharf in the moonlight looking at the Opera House when Karl came on the line. Friendly and enthusiastic, he talked about how much he was enjoying working on the issue, and how he hoped to come to Sydney for the launch. I politely suggested that he should take over the Nicole Kidman negotiations because I was certain he had more pull, and he told me—not unlike a kindly uncle—to leave it with him. We agreed to meet during the Paris RTW collections in the coming weeks to finalise details and conduct the cover shoot. Karl Lagerfeld had basically just given me a ‘Don’t worry Kirstie, everything’s going to be fine’ pep talk. It was another one of my pinch-me moments.

  The cover was always going to be problematic though. I absolutely could not have two stars as big as Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman in one issue and choose one over the other to be on the cover. Their agents had made that perfectly plain from the outset, and if we were to go back on our word we would have hell to pay. I made the bird-in-the-hand decision of completing the Cate Blanchett shoot first. I would worry about Nicole afterwards.

  Leigh Ann always spent a large percentage of her working life being tortured by Hollywood agents, often being called in Sydney at 3 a.m. for some insane request to be addressed, such as who was going to meet the ‘star’ at the curb at Heathrow airport when the town car pulled up and then walk them to the first-class check in? When you are dealing with celebrities you have to toughen up and play the game. The Karl issue was no walk in the park, but we’d had worse on other occasions. There was one unspeakably obnoxious LA agent we used to call the ‘raw nerve’. Anytime we had to deal with her, we would be compelled to have a cup of tea and take ten deep breaths in my office afterwards, before we went home to hug our children.

  Karl’s timetable was too crowded for him to make a visit to Australia while he was making the issue, so it was decided that he would instead dispatch his friend Hedi Slimane, the designer of Dior Homme (now the creative director of Saint Laurent), to contribute. We were all huge fans of Hedi Slimane, and his brief was to explore Sydney and produce his own personal photographic essay.

  We booked him into the penthouse suite at hotel Blue, in Woolloomooloo, and I went to meet him for a cup of tea on the wharf one dazzlingly sunny morning. Slimane had never been to Australia, and admitted to a large degree of trepidation over travelling such a long way from Paris. He was a quiet, gentle person who seemed either shy, or perhaps not interested in talking just for the sake of it. As we were discussing what he intended to do during his stay, an enormous flock of cockatoos flew in, landed on the wharf near our table and began screeching at each other raucously. Slimane, who couldn’t have looked more out of place in his David Bowie, Man Who Fell To Earth-way, whippet-thin with a black Dior Homme jacket, perfect white shirt and bowl haircut, looked at me in utter amazement and said: ‘Does this always happen?’

  Slimane was very easy to entertain for his week-long stay, requesting only a car and driver, and a camera. He had his own contacts, and mainly wanted to hang out with skaters and musicians, so we sent him off to headquarters at the über-trendy fashion label Ksubi to meet the cool kids and told him to call us if he needed anything. He didn’t. He called one morning and said he would like to meet with Paul Meany, the magazine’s art director, so I gave him the address of the office and didn’t tell the staff he was coming. It was fun walking into the fashion office and saying, ‘Hi girls, have you met Hedi Slimane by the way?’ Everybody was beside themselves, but he was so natural and unassuming. His photographic essay was a very personal take on Sydney, a series of black-and-white portraits of youth subculture, displaying his signature sense of grungy realism.

  My next step was to organise for Paul Meany, Charla and myself to meet with Karl in Paris, so we could discuss the rest of the issue. The meeting was held at 7L in the Rue de Lille, which is the address of Karl’s photographic studio and which also has a large bookstore facing the streetfront. He was late, but we were installed in the studio and enjoying ourselves immensely, delving into the piles and piles of art and photography books that were stacked around the room. There was a shoot being set up for another magazine, and streams of people were dashing in and out, one being the English aristocrat and Chanel muse Lady Amanda Harlech, who was absolutely charming and self-deprecating. Karl’s personal chef was in the kitchen off to the side and kept sending out the most delicious appetizers for us to nibble on while we waited.

  Finally, in the late afternoon, Karl appeared with his goblet of Pepsi Max on a silver tray. Paul and I were understandably nervous but he could not have been more welcoming and understated. He was fast and funny, and we spent the first few minutes talking about his iPod, which was oh-so-new in 2003. Just as impressive was the case he had that contained 36 iPods, each of which he claimed was at capacity. Obviously there was a full-time employee to do the syncing.

  Karl has immense charisma. The air crackles when he arrives. He is the opposite of aloof, and can switch from German to English to French in mid-sentence, while being witty and erudite in all of them. If I had a wish where I could invite any ten people in the world to a dinner party, I’d simply just invite him.

  We flicked though a number of books on his table and Karl indicated that he admired the work of the moody Australia photographer Bill Henson, so it was decided that we would ask him to contribute a portfolio to the issue, which he ultimately did. That was a first for any fashion publication in Australia.

  Karl then very generously invited us all to join him for a private lunch at his home on the Rue de l’Universite later that week. As I pic
ked myself up off the floor and hurriedly accepted, Charla said, ‘Oh, damn, I can’t. I have a freelance job.’ Karl just laughed and said, ‘No, no, I get it. We all have to make a living.’

  Paul and I were so excited on the day of the proposed lunch I think we arrived about half an hour early and had to circle the block a number of times. At the appointed hour we were ushered through the main dining room of his beautiful 18 000 square foot hôtel particulier, which was adorned with the most spectacular floral centrepiece. Karl emerged and explained that there was to be a formal dinner that evening, and a TV show taping that afternoon, so he was being a very grand ‘Karl’. Eric Pfrunder joined us and we moved into a smaller ‘breakfast’ room, adjacent to the dining room and overlooking the garden, furnished with eccentric German and Viennese ceramics, lamps and furniture from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  Lunch was easy and convivial, and even though Karl was on his very strict diet, the food was sensational. I mentioned that we had just been to see a wonderful exhibition of Marlene Dietrich’s personal wardrobe. Karl had known her and said he couldn’t stand her, and made some salacious and hilarious comments, best not repeated. He knew Marlene Dietrich! I was in awe. When Paul and I tumbled onto the street a couple of hours later, it took a few minutes for us to compose ourselves. It was a once in a lifetime experience.

  We immediately caught the Metro over to the 16th and Paul bought a Dior Homme tuxedo worth two months’ pay to celebrate, but he had decided he must have something to wear to the launch party.

  My next rendezvous with Karl was scheduled during the Milan collections, which were due to start the following week. We met at the Fendi showroom the evening before the show, and I sat at the desk with him, watching with fascination as each exit was brought out for his tweaking and approval.

  He was in a somewhat mischievous mood and had tired of the long negotiations with Nicole Kidman. ‘You know, I saw a photo of the model Eva Herzigová in a magazine and she looks just like Nicole!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why don’t we shoot Eva wearing couture and we can have her doing all Nicole’s red carpet poses? We can have a little fun with it.’ That is exactly what we did. It solved both my cover and budget problems. We could put Cate on the cover, or a model. There would be no Hollywood agent stand-off.

  The shoot with Eva was held at 7L late one afternoon and we shot well into the night. Amanda Harlech was there again, and US Vogue’s contributing editor André Leon Talley dropped by to watch. Eva is so glamorous and a consummate model. She was mostly glued to her mobile phone all evening, and from what I could discern she is fluent in more than half a dozen languages. When she admired the gorgeous black Dior Homme overcoat Karl was wearing (in French), he promptly draped it over her bare shoulders and gave it to her. The Nicole Kidman homage was our little tongue-in-cheek secret, and I don’t think anyone in the Australian press (or Nicole’s agent) picked up on it, but every one of Eva’s poses were copied from Kidman’s past red carpet appearances.

  Getting the issue to the printers on time was a massive challenge for the entire staff, but Karl came through like the professional he is, just in the nick of time. We certainly had some nail-biting moments when we were waiting on elements, such as his approval of Paul’s layouts, but the emergency plans we had put in place meant that we could always progress with at least some pages and in the end it all came together.

  We then began to plan a massive launch party, which we decided to hold at the Sydney Opera House, choosing a suitably famous landmark to celebrate a most momentous occasion. Karl had expressed interest in attending right up until the very end, and we had booked hotels and started to lose sleep over details like chauffeurs, restaurants, bodyguards, weather, everything. Our events director Sally Bell was magnificent. The invitations, with a fold-out silhouette of Karl, designed by Paul Meany, were dispatched and the buzz around town was ‘would he or wouldn’t he be there?’ Then we received the devastating news that, due to overlapping commitments and the great distance, Karl would not be able to travel to Sydney. He promised however (I think to assuage my disappointment), he would record a video message to play on the night.

  The event planning went ahead, and then one afternoon Sally appeared at the door of my office. ‘Look what I’ve got,’ she said in her lilting Scottish accent, shaking a video tape. It was Karl’s recording. We rushed into the boardroom and watched Karl descend regally down his staircase at his home, pause at the bottom, and speak about how much he enjoyed editing Vogue Australia, working with me and how he dearly wished he could be at the party with us all. Sally and I burst into tears.

  The party was expensive, chic and swank, filled to capacity with elegantly dressed guests sipping on icy champagne and delicious canapés. Michael McHugh spoke, I spoke, and we ran Karl’s video. Charla flew out from Paris, there were fireworks on the harbour, and placed on tables around the room were the very first advance copies of the December 2003 issue, guest edited by Karl Lagerfeld. It had been a marvellous, unforgettable rollercoaster.

  10

  A PRINCESS DIARY

  There are some stories that are irresistible to an editor. I had been keeping my eye on the burgeoning romance between a young Australian woman, Mary Donaldson, and Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, who met at a pub during the Sydney Olympics in 2000. The story went that apparently not wanting to reveal his profile, the prince introduced himself to Mary as Fred. They fell head over heels in love. I noted that there were trips back and forth to Denmark and Sydney for the two of them, until it was reported that at the end of 2001 Mary had quietly moved to Denmark. It was obvious that the relationship was serious, and that she was perhaps ‘in training’ for the next stage.

  It was a real-life fairytale, every woman’s fantasy of becoming a princess. Editorial co-ordinator Kimberley Walsh was obsessed with Mary. She had a ‘Mary’ file on her desktop and she would scan the internet for shots of her every morning. Kimberley, Leigh Ann and I were looking at some Mary photographs one morning over tea, musing over how daunting the royal grooming lessons might be when I said, ‘She’s probably homesick. Let’s send her a Vogue Australia subscription.’ Leigh found the palace contact details and Kimberley eagerly wrapped our latest issue in white tissue paper, tied it with a Vogue ribbon and airfreighted it to Mary. Every single month.

  Sometimes I would pop a handwritten card inside, other times not. It just became a monthly ritual, and meanwhile Leigh Ann also began to make polite enquires through the official palace channels about a possible Vogue article.

  This went on for over a year when finally the engagement was announced in October 2003. Leigh Ann intensified her campaign with no definite word either way coming back from palace officials. The royal wedding was held in May 2004, and attracted nation-wide attention in Australia. Most weddings leave me dry-eyed, but the story behind this couple accidentally finding love in an ordinary Aussie pub was catnip to me as a journalist.

  Several months before the wedding I had travelled to Copenhagen with the Danish luxury house Georg Jensen to join a press tour of their atelier and attend a gala dinner held in the National Gallery. My great friend fashion scribe Tim Blanks was also on the trip, and one chilly afternoon we were treated to a daytime harbour cruise and a visit to the Amalienborg Palace complex, a large square in central Denmark flanked by four palaces.

  The Changing of the Guard had just begun, so Tim and I jostled our way to the front to watch the proceedings. I stared up at one of the palace balconies and imagined Mary somewhere inside, taking Danish lessons. ‘You know,’ I said to Tim, ‘there’s a beautiful Tasmanian girl named Mary who is set to wed the Crown Prince. I want that story for Vogue soooo badly.’ Tim, in his usual glib manner said, ‘Are you having an “it should have been me” moment Kirst?’ Admittedly I was caught up in the whole romantic dream, but more than anything I wanted to be in that palace, interviewing Mary. ‘I am going to get the story, believe me,’ I said to Tim as we readjusted our scarves in the freezing win
d and headed back to the boat.

  By the time the royal wedding was over, Kimberley’s Princess Mary obsession had taken on biblical proportions. Leigh Ann had continued to valiantly email the palace, but then we decided to get serious and ramp it up a notch. We wrote an email to Mary, suggesting that this was the ideal time to capture her as she embarked on her journey as the Princess of Denmark; we would create a photographic marking of this new, remarkable stage in her life. We dropped top photographer’s names like no tomorrow. We heard nothing.

  Then, one Friday about 6 p.m., I was in my office gathering my things to go home. The rest of the team had left for the weekend. I glanced at my watch and realised that now was the ideal hour to call Denmark. Leigh Ann had tracked down the direct line to the Lord Chamberlain of the Household, so I dialled the number with no great sense of expectation that he would even answer. But surprisingly, he did.

  I hastily regrouped my thoughts, introduced myself and humbly went through my spiel. Then he said affably, ‘Ah hello. Yes. I know about this. I spoke to the princess this morning. She said yes, she would like to do it.’

  Much like when the doctor told me I was having twins, I thought I’d misheard.

  ‘Excuse me?’ I stammered, trying to stay composed. ‘Did you say, yes, she’ll do it?’

  ‘Yes, we just have to work out when,’ he replied.

  This was unbelievable. Mary had done no interviews, no magazine sittings. They were one of the world’s most glamorous, and private, royal couples. This was a coup nonpareil.

  I recall hanging up and actually screaming ‘Yeeessssss!’ down an empty office corridor, before I called Leigh Ann and Kimberley to give them the news. I called to let Michael McHugh know, and he also—to his credit—joined in the general hysteria. The project was not going to be cheap, so he would have to sell it to FPC’s proprietor Michael Hannan as a huge win for potential circulation.