It was difficult for her, the only black woman on the front row of houses, navigating and decimating the often-nuanced discrimination. While she quietly built up her reputation, she supported the industry and established a standard for her shows.
Normal American audiences were shown examples of high fashion they never could have imagined. And it was all done for local charities.
By the time I went to work for her, Mrs. Johnson was received like an empress by all the top designers. She could do no wrong. Everyone was polite to her, her daughter, and her team, including yours truly. I covered the collections and went to the Paris and Rome haute couture shows with her. Then we would take side trips to Florence, where she would buy gold jewelry. We flew by Concorde, but she wasn’t extravagant in booking enormous suites in hotels; regular rooms were preferred.
Mrs. Johnson treated me like family, including me in evening meals and worrying over my welfare like a mother. It was endearing. At hotels, she made sure I was booked on the same floor as her and her daughter, which had never happened and never would happen again at any other magazine I worked for. Once, at the Plaza Athénée, she came knocking on my door at eleven P.M. She said she wanted to make sure I was all right, but I think she was checking to see if I had gone out to Club Sept. Even if I was going out for the night, I would never have left that early.
At the Yves Saint Laurent collections, we were front row, and following each presentation she had an appointment at the couture house. There she bought costly original samples for the Fashion Fair, the finest examples of Paris refinement and workmanship. At the same time, she would purchase a dress or coat for her personal wardrobe, to meet her black-tie social demands back home in Chicago. An invoice was handed to her and she never debated the cost, yet with her prominence, she could have whittled the price down to what she thought was fair.
In Paris, she bought one of the most expensive jackets from Saint Laurent.
Embroidered with gold, by hand, at the famous house of Lesage for Saint Laurent, it cost over fifty thousand dollars. It was worn by Mounia, Saint Laurent’s favorite model, with black trousers stuffed into little black boots trimmed in black mink. On her head was a pagoda with a complete, dramatic black chiffon veil. Mrs. Johnson loved the theatricality of that look. It was inspired by the Far East and the fantasy of Moghuls.
The culmination of our strong relationship came about when Mrs. Johnson asked if I would bring Diana Vreeland to that year’s New York City Ebony Fashion Fair. On that Sunday afternoon, I went to Mrs. Vreeland’s Park Avenue apartment and picked her up, and we took a cab to the show. Mrs. Vreeland wore her favorite black and white trouser suit, by Mila Schön (someone Mrs. Johnson had supported in Rome alta moda by buying her intricate designs), and her favorite polished Gucci bamboo-handled handbag, with her Vivier rock-star vinyl python boots. The audience applauded wildly when Mrs. Vreeland, seated next to Mrs. Johnson, was introduced from the stage.
Kevin and Robert, menswear designers seated in the row behind us, reached over during intermission. Kevin said to Mrs. Vreeland, “May I touch you?” It was as if they had gone to a shrine, or in this case, the shrine had come to them. Kevin gingerly touched the slightly padded shoulder of Vreeland’s black and white jacquard suit.
Mrs. Johnson was a true visionary, impeccable in style, and a self-educated American who loved beauty, art, and most of all, fashion. By the time the Ebony Fashion Fair folded in 2008, after five decades, it had reached over 190 cities in the United States of America and had helped to launch the careers of famous models, such as Pat Cleveland, and a great commentator, Audrey Smaltz, and supported the great black talents: Stephen Burrows, Scott Barrie, and B Michael.
I was only at Ebony for one year before Mr. Johnson decided I was too expensive for their payroll. Mr. Johnson fired me, yet Mrs. Johnson and I remained friends. This was important to me and I shall never regret that year.
Photograph by Arthur Elgort
In between the morning show and afternoon presentation of Karl Lagerfeld’s first Chanel couture show, on January 25, 1983. Bonnie Berman was the star American model of the show. She was one of the best models ever, and one of the kindest, too. Here she is wearing her final exit, an exquisite white crepe dress, cut like a shirt with a set of pockets on the bodice, edged in cartridge sequins, hand-embroidered by Lesage. The dress was inspired by the memory of Karl’s mother.
VI
In 1982, Karl Lagerfeld announced he was taking over as creative director of Chanel.
Paris was abuzz with the news, a beehive of intrigue and envy. Vogue wrote at the time that it was the talk of Paris; Karl Lagerfeld, who was not French, going to the top of the fashion hill at Chanel was in fact momentous. Alicia Drake said in her book The Beautiful Fall that Karl’s ascension “was a black day at the house of Saint Laurent.”
Grace Mirabella, Vogue’s editor in chief, recommended Karl to Chanel’s president, Kitty D’Alessio. For a year, Karl had taken unannounced trips alone to London, where he met with Kitty, who was sure that only Karl could breathe fresh air into the famous brand. Chanel had been on life support and near death since Chanel herself died in July 1971. Karl was secretive about his new job, keeping his contractual negotiations to himself, telling no one except his trusted lawyers.
On January 25, 1983, at precisely eleven A.M., Karl Lagerfeld’s debut haute couture collection took place in the legendary Chanel salon at 31 rue Cambon, with its elegant curving bronze-balustrade staircase, the same one Coco Chanel would often sit atop while watching her own collections parade by. Even though I wasn’t connected to any news publication or magazine, Karl flew me from New York to Paris first-class and paid my entire bill at the Saint James Albany. It was the most important debut show of Karl’s life and he wanted me there as his close friend. I couldn’t help but feel touched.
All of my skirmishes and successes culminated in a front-row seat at the changing of the guard, the new dawn of high fashion in Paris, the very capital of couture. I wore a gray glen plaid suit, inspired by the Duke of Windsor, and an incredibly dramatic fluffy white mohair maxi coat, an original design from Perry Ellis’s menswear, which he had gifted to me with great generosity and kindness. My gloves were from London, the best buff chamois that could be purchased at Huntsman, where I went for all my made-to-
measure suits.
Like a kid brother, I was in awe of Karl. At that first collection, Karl treated the decades of refinement at Chanel with irreverence. The clothes were astonishingly retro, with elements of Chanel’s design aesthetic from the twenties and thirties, but didn’t scream a retro vintage, archival mood. There were wrist-length white gloves shown with very beautiful navy or black crêpe dresses, belted with gilt chains; gold bangles with interlocking CCs—the ubiquitous Chanel logo; faux diamonds; and bowed Alice bands that held back sleek coiffures that were right out of Hollywood black and white classics.
Inès de la Fressange, the French model, who looked like and had the nonchalant attitude of Mademoiselle herself, walked out in a black, sleek straw boater, worn for spectator sports, for shopping, or to lunch with the ladies who lunch, and a single strand of pearls. These accessories were worn with silk printed soft day jackets in bouclé tweeds and with gilt buttons, and with the linings anchored in gilt chains, with the lapels hand-sewn with the same print matching the dress.
One incredible dress—Karl’s favorite—was worn near the finale by Bonnie Berman, the blond American model. It was a heavy silk white marocain crêpe, lean and slim, short-sleeved, and to the floor. There were two large patch pockets on the torso, which, along with the notch lapel, were edged in beautiful gold cartridge beads, hand-applied by the famous house of François Lesage, who had worked with Chanel and other famous houses in Paris since the 1930s.
Bonnie walked in this long white evening dress in the casual but spry way Americans do, briskly and with no allusions to any affectation. It was as though she had jumped out of the shower, splashed herself in Chanel No. 5, tie
d a grosgrain bow to keep her bangs out of her face, and slapped on some lip rouge. She glided along like an athlete, all ramrod-straight back, with a fresh smile, through the tight alley of little gilt chairs on each side. The polar opposite of Inès de la Fressange, whose elegance seemed lighthearted, carefree, but very aristocratic. Inès flowed through her changes and looked at the audience as if she had somewhere else to be, like the Prix de Diane or an embassy reception, just stepping from a gleaming chauffeur-driven car, the chauffeur in a gray uniform and matching gray gloves and cap.
Seated in this room, where the clothes came quietly by to soft recorded mixes of Karl’s chosen music, I felt the immediate emotional exaltation of being seated on the first row, the most important seats in any fashion presentation. This was the apex for me. I was lucky to be a friend of Karl Lagerfeld. The color of my skin, my humble background, my current lack of work mattered not. There were maybe two hundred– plus guests crammed into the salon, and there I was, on the front row, when fashion history was made.
One didn’t talk during the show. The front row was a phalanx of silent sphinxes in rigidity. Any applause could create the effect of a firecracker going off in the room; it could distract the fluid pace of the fashion parade. For so many decades, people followed the norm at the Paris couture. No clapping until the end. Silence, no exchange of conversation. It was like going to mass, except the main function was to sell the designer’s ideas for affluent women. As the show progressed to a climax, although the press seemed somewhat neutral about this first collection of Karl’s, my emotions went into overdrive and I clapped loudly, profusely. I didn’t care; I always clapped and I never felt as if I behaved inappropriately.
This collection happened to have been a great one, inspired by the very life of Chanel. “It’s like doing the revival of a play,” Karl was quoted as saying after the show in an article by Suzy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune. “It’s important for young people to touch her style—it must be fun.”
Karl Lagerfeld was that day established as a new fashion emperor, giving the house of Saint Laurent a most worthy genius to reckon with. “Kaiser Karl” is what John Fairchild called him. A year later, he presented his first ready-to-wear collection for spring. And until his death, he created a global brand and image that Coco Chanel herself could never have done.
This was his moment: Karl Lagerfeld.
—
Iinterviewed twice to work at Vogue.
The first time was in 1980, soon after I left Paris and WWD/ W. I was friendly with the great Alexander Liberman, the editorial director of Condé Nast. He was the one who fired Diana Vreeland; she never got over it. She called him the “yellow Russian.”
But I had been to his house in the country with the de la Rentas and knew his wife, Tatiana, a great woman.
Mr. Liberman wore a simple navy blue and black suit and a neat, trimmed mustache. He had a buzzer under his desk that would automatically shut his door, so when I sat down in his office the door clamped shut behind me. I told him I wanted to work at Vogue, and he smiled warmly and said, “I think you’re brilliant, but if you want to work at Vogue you have to go downstairs and convince Grace Mirabella.”
“That’s all?” I said. I only knew the editor in chief from seeing her out socially—I had just barely said hello to her—but I knew by reputation she did not suffer dramatic people. Grace Mirabella was all beige cashmere and very subdued. She had been Diana Vreeland’s assistant, but she was the opposite of Mrs. Vreeland in almost every way. Mr.
Liberman was very gracious, even though we both knew he was giving me an impossible task.
I went down to Grace’s office with a prepared speech ready. She wore impeccable Saint Laurent trousers, which was so Vogue, and had wavy, silvery hair, worn in a classic, traditional way. Very elegant and very straightforward.
As I began to speak, so did she, and I respectfully demurred.
“I remember you, from Paris. You were with Marian McEvoy, sitting in the front row at Claude Montana, madly applauding the collection on the runway. And then I saw you at Thierry Mugler, clapping loudly. Why is that?”
Claude Montana was a young upstart designer at that point, and a total genius. And Thierry Mugler was an outlier, very talented but part of a new generation of designers.
They represented youth, which I loved, but not everyone in fashion is quick to embrace new designers.
Grace stared at me, very dry and cold. Honest indignation felt an appropriate response, and so I sat back, folded my arms, and said, “I react exuberantly when I see a talented designer and I love what they’re doing. Both Claude Montana and Thierry Mugler have wonderful things to say!”
“Hm, hm,” she said. Completely unmoved. Then, with a snide smile: “Okay, thank you very much.”
I left the office and I knew it was finished. I wasn’t going to work for Grace Mirabella or Vogue. She thought of me as superficial, some loudmouth on the front row, clapping like a seal for designers she could not understand or appreciate.
No matter. Vogue was a dream job but there were plenty of other stimulating opportunities. I continued to work at other magazines.
In 1983, two years after my first interview, Grace called me back into her office.
Photographer Arthur Elgort had shown her a video of me interviewing Karl Lagerfeld in the backseat of a car, heading to a fashion show. It was an experimental interview, but it was a serious, passionate conversation about fashion. I guess Grace realized what I was capable of and rethought her initial impression of me.
She asked me about the Lagerfeld interview and praised me for it. “Clearly you know how to talk to designers. We’re going to try you out as a fashion news editor,” she said.
I said, “Thank you very much,” and left before she could change her mind.
On my way to the elevators, I saw Anna Wintour, who had recently, famously, been named creative director of Vogue. Anna and I did not know each other, but I knew her reputation quite well.
As I walked by, she smiled politely and I smiled back, but we did not exchange words. I took the subway to my Union Square apartment, a mere two stops away from Vogue’s offices. A messenger envelope was waiting for me beneath my door. Inside, a beautiful, handwritten note:
“Welcome to Vogue. I look forward to working with you. Anna Wintour.”
That was fast, I thought. But it also sent a clear message: I had an ally at Vogue. A formidable one.
—
Idid not know Anna Wintour at all, but even still, I was terribly terrified of her.
Whenever I went out with Andy Warhol, we would usually end up attending the same parties she did. She wore four-inch-high stilettos and simple, elegant clothes, like her Chanel coats, purchased at Bergdorf Goodman. Her bob, à la Louise Brooks, was more extreme, shorter at the nape of her neck. Otherwise her style has not changed much since.
Andy knew I was intimidated by her, and he would poke me in the ribs and say, “Oh, André, go say hello to Anna Wintour.”
“She doesn’t even know who I am, I cannot speak to her!”
“Oh, geez, of course she does, go say hello.”
“No, no, no, I can’t, she’s too intimidating, too famous!”
Anna Wintour was well-known for her time at New York magazine. When she went to Vogue, everyone knew it was Mr. Liberman who had hired her. Actually, he had imposed Anna upon Vogue…and upon Grace Mirabella. Publisher S. I. Newhouse and Mr. Liberman were smitten with this young English rose, taking over American Vogue and branding it with a European sensibility. Anna clearly knew how to behave to get the best out of them. But behind that was the structure; she was an instinctively good editor.
They believed in her. As Mr. Liberman often said, Anna Wintour “had the visions.”
Being close to Mr. Liberman meant Anna could say and do things other editors could not. “Creative director” was essentially a job he made up for her, giving her an ill-defined authority. Still, she had to gingerly walk the li
ne with Grace Mirabella in order to keep the peace.
It had to be Anna Wintour’s intuition that told her I was going to be someone close to her. She knew it before I did. As soon as I started working at Vogue, we became fast friends. We never really spoke about our friendship or worked to develop some long-lasting bond. It was just perfectly understood between us, like a silent language.
When Grace Mirabella gave me assignments, I would often depend upon Anna’s help. I had two pages to fill of contemporary fashion news that would go in the front of the book. Once, I wanted to write about feathers for my column. YSL had feathers, and I found a photograph by Leni Riefenstahl of an African tribal man with a feather on top of his head. I showed it to Grace and explained my thought process. She threw her arms in the air and said, “What have I done to deserve this underground influence?”
To Grace, Andy Warhol was still the underground. I told Anna Wintour what Grace had said and she shrugged. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Don’t…just don’t worry about it.”
Grace could be cold, but she also had a warm smile and engaged in a meaningful way. She had a great deal of respect from the industry; Bill Blass, Calvin Klein, and Ralph Lauren were all her favorites. As an editor, Mrs. Vreeland had been an extraordinary romantic—romantic about her work, romantic about her inspirations, and romantic about people. In contrast, Grace Mirabella was more mechanical in her focus and decision making.
Longtime editor Polly Mellen was using one of Calvin Klein’s skirts in Vogue. Calvin sent one over, but Grace and Polly sent it back, requesting a modification. Calvin happily complied…and the skirt came back again. There was something else they wanted changed, but they could not explain what was wrong with the skirt. Over the next few days, Calvin Klein sent the simple skirt back and forth to Vogue seventeen times. That’s not very inspiring. Maybe they were seeking perfection, but it seemed labored. How can you be enthusiastic about a skirt after seventeen send-backs?
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