Tongue in Chic

by Kirstie Clements

  * * *

  Despite the fact that our must-have list consisted of items that were so pricey it took me two decades to buy even a fraction of them, the editors also appreciated basic, unpretentious pieces, and understood that the younger team members were on a budget and could only do their best. They responded to authenticity, not necessarily to price, and also loved inexpensive things like a pair of simple white plimsolls, jeans, a straw basket, your grandfather’s tweed coat, a Greek fisherman’s sweater or a vintage costume brooch. It was the stuff in the middle that was disparaged: knockoffs; fakes; anything too sexy, clingy, tizzy or try-hard. Dress was thought to have an obvious correlation with a person’s manners and behaviour. Being dressed head to toe in labels was not thought to be stylish—on the contrary. Lack of pretension, as opposed to desperation to be noticed, gathered kudos.

  The world of fashion was still relatively cloistered in the eighties, when I was promoted to junior fashion writer from the reception desk. Only the insiders were privy to what was going on; it was the fortunate few who travelled to the RTW or couture collections and had access to the world of designers. Then, there were few high-fashion titles. But over the years the fashion press grew, and the marketing of fashion and luxury became more extensive. There was an increasing desire that every type of product have some sort of attachment to the glamorous bubble we inhabited, however tenuous the link. Cars, mobile phones, ovens, alcohol; everybody wanted to collaborate with high-fashion magazines on marketing their products, hoping our gloss would rub off. There would soon be more models than jobs, more celebrity stylists than celebrities, more PRs than products to promote, and more press than audience.

  Twenty-year-old hopefuls would constantly file into my office looking for employment, longing to be part of what they perceived to be one long red-carpet event and telling me they loved Alexander Wang. I would think back to myself as a twenty-year-old, and an obsession with designer clothes or, indeed, a specific label was not in my frame of reference. I bought my clothes at vintage markets, army disposal stores or ballet-wear outlets. My friends and I bought regulation jeans and altered them on the sewing machine to achieve the super-skinny look we were after. There weren’t 100-plus jeans brands to choose from, and those that did exist didn’t have styles that routinely cost hundred of dollars. We would have never envisaged paying $1000 for a handbag or a pair of shoes, let alone think that parting with that sort of money was desirable. We were more interested in being cool and, as everybody knows, coolness cannot be bought.

  At Chic, we almost never had to interview for junior editor positions, as staff very rarely left, and if they did, there was always someone on hand to slip into the role. However, during my editorship, a junior editor position did open up in the fashion office. We were swamped with applications the moment the job was advertised online—so much so that we had to take the ad down after a few hours. Alicia diligently interviewed candidate after candidate, narrowing the list to the likely few for the fashion director and myself to decide on. Given that most of the girls had similar skills and ambitions, their personal style, as evinced by what they chose to wear to the interview session, would prove to be an all-important factor in our ultimate decision. It was not labels, or name-dropping of them, that we were seeking; it was personality, it was flair, it was something innate. All the designer outfits, it bags and awful fashion-victim shoes I saw became one long blur of unimaginative susceptibility.

  And then Tessa arrived. Softly spoken, she was wearing a white shirt tucked into a full navy and white cotton skirt covered in polka dots (a fashion perennial), which was probably vintage, and cute inexpensive sandals; and her hair was styled in two neat plaits, tied with over-long satin ribbons that trailed down her back, and she wore bright-pink blush.We hired her on the spot. (As it happened, the runner-up was clad head to toe in black, no piece being discernably designer, but with an enthusiasm and an edgy credibility that can’t be faked. We employed her too, as soon as we could make a space for her.) Ultimately, though, when I try to recall who have been the most stylish people I’ve known, it is not their clothes I remember but how they made me feel. Were they intelligent, inclusive, charming, interested in what I had to say? Fashion can be so one-dimensional, and the latest $5000 anything isn’t going to disguise the fact that you are a self-obsessed bore.

  Who doesn’t admire a beautiful watch, a quality coat or a gorgeous pair of earrings? But if it’s worn discreetly, nonchalantly, as just one part of your persona, then all the better. Appropriateness is another element that informs the truly stylish. We had a saying in the office that it is always best to dress as though you have somewhere better to go later, but that doesn’t always translate. Sometimes, in a sea of ballgowns, spray tans and blow-drys at an event, a renegade would float in, in a simple cotton dress and little to no makeup, her hair caught in a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck, and look a million dollars. I always loved the way the Italian fashion editors dressed at the September shows in Milan, most of them having just returned from their summer vacation. You could see they were happy and relaxed: tanned, barefaced, with their hair in natural waves and with flat sandals showing off their brown feet and bright pedicures.

  * * *

  Even as an editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine, I made mistakes many times: overthinking what I was going to wear, or not thinking it through enough. The idea of appropriateness was brought home to me when I attended a very posh wedding in the country. My outfit for the wedding was easy enough: a pretty floral mid-calf dress, worn with wedges, so that my heels would not get bogged in the grass. After the wedding, our shoes were kicked off, and we danced on the backs of flatbed trucks, surrounded by hay-bales, until the early hours of the morning. Later the next day, brunch was held next to the river. It was a piercingly hot morning and, having packed hurriedly for the trip, my only option was a black, shiny stretch-silk dress, and my handbag, a giant crocodile Gucci, worn with the same brown leather wedges. I arrived at the brunch spot, which had been set up with picnic tables and blankets on the ground, and long trestle tables serving bacon, sausage and egg rolls, Pimm’s and champagne. Then the wedding party arrived, in the ultimate casual chic: Tommy Hilfiger cotton polo shirts, T-shirts, canvas shorts and sneakers. I felt terribly overdressed and wondered how I had got it so wrong; in fact, I had been in such a rush when I was packing that I didn’t step back and think about what was likely to be the most appropriate clothing as the weekend unfolded. When they all stripped down to swimming costumes and started floating down the river on rubber inner-tubes, I realised that the chic thing to do to redeem myself was probably to join them wearing my cocktail dress, but unfortunately I had a plane to catch.

  A good friend of mine once displayed that kind of enviable sangfroid when we were both at a party in Bali. The dress code was formal, so Lisa had worn a full-length Ben de Lisi gown, with bare feet, her hair tied in a bun, and zero makeup; I was wearing a knee-length silk dress and jewelled sandals. As we were standing by the pool for pre-dinner drinks, the humidity began to rise. Most guests were perspiring rivers of sweat, especially the brave men who had worn linen dinner jackets.

  ‘It’s so hot,’ I complained to Lisa, who silently handed me her glass of champagne. She then dove straight into the pool, emerged dripping at the other end, and returned to reclaim her glass.

  * * *

  The ever-increasing amount of fast fashion, ecommerce and chain stores has delivered a more homogenised dress sense across the globe. What a young woman is wearing in a nightclub this week in Singapore, Sweden or South Africa could largely be the same, and there is now some debate as to whether one nationality could be called the most stylish. My friend Charla, a fashion editor who is originally from California, has lived and worked in Paris for thirty years.

  ‘Do you think French women are the most stylish in the world?’ I asked her over lunch one day in the rue de Grenelle, watching a bird-thin Parisienne in her forties who was wearing the perfect pair of pants, fl
ats and a T-shirt, and just the right amount of jewellery.

  Charla was a stylish Parisienne herself, her wardrobe consisting mostly of Prada, Miu Miu and Marni, topped up with a key piece every season—say, a new belt, coat or pair of boots. Essentially, though, she wore an ongoing mix and match of classic pieces that meant she was always the best dressed in the room. That day, she had on a chocolate-brown cashmere tank and cardigan belted into a knee-length brocade Prada skirt, soft suede Bottega Veneta boots in moss green, a quirky multicoloured resin Marni necklace and a matte bronze Louis Vuitton tote.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed. ‘I used to think that, but now everyone just wears the same thing from Zara. The traditions, like the striped maillot, the cropped chino, the neat trench, are fading. If I see a very well-dressed woman now, she tends to be more mature. There’s definitely a set of Frenchwomen who are forty-plus who rock the classic jeans, leather jacket and boots combo better than anyone else in the world.’

  I was keen to talk more about different styles internationally.

  ‘I like the way New Yorkers dress. They always look like they’ve come straight from Barneys; great dresses, coats, high heels. So polished and put together, like they’ve got a town car waiting,’ said Charla.

  ‘I like the style of the young guys in Tokyo,’ I replied. ‘I think they look so much better than the girls—they have the best haircuts, they put things together in such an interesting way. They can look quite masculine, yet be wearing a designer skirt, and you’ll think, “Yes, yes, that looks perfect”.’

  We were on a roll.

  ‘The young women out after dark in Istanbul are lovely,’ I threw in. ‘Classy. They all wear shortish dresses, but not too short, and not too tight, like they do in a lot of cities. And they wear their hair long, with natural curls and waves, not flat-ironed within an inch of its life. They have an un-done prettiness that you don’t see very often unless it’s on the beach.’

  Speaking of the beach, there are the kids on Bondi, with their incredibly buff bodies, their bikinis, body art and cut-off shorts, the lifestyle almost eclipsing any fashion trend. Every culture, every country, has its most stylish: whether it’s an Indian woman at a cocktail party wearing bright silks and exquisite jewellery, or a young girl at a wedding in Mexico wearing a snowy white lace cotton dress. And it doesn’t always have much to do with high fashion. It has to do with knowing yourself.

  The worst thing you could be accused of in the Chic office in terms of dress was being a ‘try-hard’. I recall a top designer once admitting to me that he thought luxury was about comfort, and being comfortable in your own skin, no matter what you were wearing. Looking overly styled, with your skirt riding up, your bodice too tight, your dress straining at the seams, does not project a feeling of easy glamour. Much better is an evening gown worn with flat sandals, a trenchcoat thrown over the shoulders when the sun sets; a sundress and a favourite beaten-up pair of cowboy boots at the races; or your husband’s sweater teamed with your old jeans and an antique watch.

  We believed that a person could make a pair of grey marle tracksuit pants and a T-shirt look like couture if they felt fabulous. But we didn’t forget that we worked at Chic. They had to be the right grey.

  10

  Season Finale

  It was 2013. It was 11 am and all was quiet in the Chic offices. The editorial staff were sitting at their desks, either punching out copy, designing pages or conferring with one another, gathering opinions on the various projects they were working on. One of the ad team dropped into my office to share happily that she had scored a big campaign: twenty pages booked exclusively to Chic .

  This was another part of the job that I loved: the teamwork, the camaraderie and the way that ideas would pop up spontaneously as you passed someone’s desk. Of course, there was also bitching, moaning and gossip, but these are part of the usual cut and thrust of a competitive office. Most of our venom was reserved for our opposition, Faux magazine, but even this was never meant to be as vindictive as it no doubt sounded some days. The behind-closed-doors disparagement of rivals was really just us attempting to boost our own morale. We were under the pump from all sides. The cushy dream jobs most people thought we had, the endless holidays we were supposedly on, had become more like one of those cruise-ship nightmares where you become stuck on a reef and start running out of supplies. It doesn’t matter how many lovely clothes and designer handbags you have in your suitcase; eventually, you would have to eat each other.

  It wasn’t that anyone had run out of ideas. In fact, the pressure we were under to multi-task and think smarter was producing some wonderful out-of-the box ingenuity. We had learned to be social-media savvy, to see the magazine as just one part of a multi-platform brand. The problem was the dwindling budgets to resource them and the diminishing number of staff to make it happen. We believed our readers deserved the very best, and we wanted to provide them with original, quality material. Trawling the internet every morning for information to reappropriate and running behind-the-scenes films of ad campaigns was not journalism as I knew it.

  I wanted Chic to make the film, shoot the story and write the article, but delivering a print product had become increasingly expensive.

  The blog world, which was at first seen as the Wild West, and peripheral to the traditional magazine industry, had gained traction rapidly. It was faster and more nimble and immediate than print. Its form of commerce was different—the bloggers went direct to the marketer, and wore and promoted the product. The traditional separation-of-church-and-state business strategy of high-end magazines of keeping editorial and advertising separate was tipped on its head. The internet—which required no printing, no postage and, seemingly, not much subediting—was a more viable medium financially, and its reach was apparently limitless. Having 500 000 likes was suddenly so much more important than having 50 000 people spend $10 on a glossie. It was also true that many of the emerging websites, unencumbered by strident advertisers and obvious advertorials, displayed a real point of view and an artistry that was surpassing current print offerings.

  While at first I had been wary of the bloggers and skeptical about how rapidly they would take their place at the table, after twenty years of working in a world that I thoroughly believed in, championed and loved, I now found myself thinking that maybe I would be the one who would end up without a seat. There wasn’t a fashion-magazine editor in the world who didn’t look at the net-a-porter model of a spectacularly successful ecommerce site that also produced an extremely credible fashion magazine and think: ‘Oh shit, why didn’t we do that?’

  Despite the overwhelming and indisputable challenge of digital media, there was still a hopeful, if not delusional, expectation of magazine growth—based on the idea that we could attract more print ads, many more readers and thousands of dollars worth of digital advertising every single month—despite the fact that any young fashionista could watch the RTW shows on her laptop in bed for free, and pre-order the looks she saw on them that same day. She needed Chic for what?

  Despite our years of first-hand experience, was our opinion at risk of becoming irrelevant? Had legacy media stayed too long at the cocktail party? The next generation of digital journalists and bloggers could now live the dream of being an editor, wandering through Paris in a new skirt and bag that had been gifted. They wanted to go and do for themselves, their way, not beg us for a job. Why should you have all the fun? they asked. And the freebies. And the macarons.

  Is this what’s causing my malaise? I wondered, as I began to sign off the layouts stacked neatly on my desk. I still loved the business; for me, it had a magic like no other. So exactly what was it that I believed in?

  Over the years I was asked to speak at various fashion and beauty events, and each time I did, a group of eager young women would approach me afterwards to shyly ask how they could get into the industry. I had counselled them to start at the bottom, as I had done, work hard and eventually rise to the top—but, while hard work wa
s still a given, I questioned that advice as I stared out at the volcanic landscape of traditional media. Could they grow, learn and evolve in the current maelstrom of plunging revenues? When I considered their skills and their passion, the only worthwhile response I could think of was ‘Go out and start something yourself’.

  The drive to create and to tell stories was the thing that mattered. It wasn’t particularly motivating for a young person starting in the workforce to face a constant barrage of cost-cutting measures and emails telling them that they weren’t allowed to buy a coffee while on a shoot. While some blogs weren’t worth the time it took to download them, I had started to read other blogs with the same sense of anticipation I had when I was first buying magazines as a teenager. There was enormous talent out there that had never been let in the door—or perhaps had never even wanted to come through the established doors—so they created a stage for themselves. And that was exciting.

  * * *

  Bernard suddenly marched through the door of my office and closed it behind him. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to confide to me that he was pregnant, so I knew this wasn’t a good sign.

  ‘Darling, I don’t know how to tell you this,’ he said. ‘I’ve resigned.’

  I looked at him in dismay. This was a disaster. A clever businessman with incomparable taste and unparalleled people skills, Bernard had been my wingman for more than a decade. He couldn’t leave me to fend off Gordon—and his square-toed shoes—alone. I’d already had an email that morning asking me to predict how many photo shoots we would do in the next six months, and wanting to know if I could halve the cost of an idea we hadn’t yet thought of.