I met Caroline of Monaco in Helmut’s apartment, for dinner. Before she arrived, June told me, “You cannot get up from the table and leave before Caroline does. It is protocol.”
Caroline stayed until three in the morning, drinking champagne. She was very entertaining, but she kept going! Finally I proclaimed, “I am falling asleep either at this table or in a bed in this apartment!”
I did a shoot with Bridget Fonda in Monte Carlo. And a beautiful swimsuit shoot with Cindy Crawford. Always with Manolo Blahniks. I never did a shoot without Manolo Blahniks; I didn’t care what the shoot was for, there was always a Manolo Blahnik made just for the shoot.
When Iman announced she was going to retire from modeling, Helmut was hired to do her final shoot, and Anna sent me down to Monte Carlo to style the shoot. It was one of my favorite shoots; Iman was nude in one shot (she didn’t pose nude for just anyone), with brocaded gold Yves Saint Laurent knee-high boots. In another, she wore jeans with a Chanel couture jacket. Diana Vreeland always called Iman “Nefertiti reborn.” Helmut loved working with her, as she always worked 200 percent harder than the other models. Stunning photos. And of course she didn’t really retire.
Once Anna sent me to do Antonio Banderas with Helmut. Antonio was rough around the edges at that point, still up-and-coming in those Pedro Almodóvar films. He was wearing a gold lamé Versace swimsuit, like a brief. “André, get me a mirror,”
Helmut said, and I rushed to find one. Helmut did not discuss his ideas with me; I was basically like a steward for him. He sprayed talcum powder on the mirror and had Antonio simulate sniffing a substance.
Soon after the pictures arrived at Vogue, I got a call from Anna. She screamed at me, “This is a woman’s magazine, what were you thinking?!”
I tried to explain that it was not in fact cocaine, but that did not stop the guillotine. I was silently flabbergasted. She did not yell at Helmut. I was the editor of the shoot and I was supposed to be responsible. The pictures were excised, and I was never sent to work with Helmut Newton again.
It was one of the few shoots I did that Anna ever expressed a verbal opinion on. She knew what she wanted and that’s what she would get. There was no need for protestations; she wasn’t changing her mind. She was very hands-on with editors, but once the work was in, she edited by herself and didn’t share anything. The pictures were taken to the art department, and maybe she discussed them with the art director. Then the pictures would go up on the light board in the art room. It was a large layout board, with room for each numbered page. If your layout was up on the board, great! Though it could still end up getting cut further down the line.
If your photos were not up on the board, then they must have been hidden away in a drawer somewhere, never to be mentioned again. Since I was in Paris, after I sent in my work I’d call and ask one of the assistants in the art department if it was on the board or not. If my story wasn’t used, there was no explanation given. And I wasn’t going to call up Anna Wintour and say, “Why isn’t my work up there? Did you not like the hair? Was it the shoes?” If your work wasn’t up on the board, Anna didn’t like it and there was nothing else to talk about. No nonsense, all business. It was simply an unspoken rule; Anna had to make the decisions, and the rest of us had to accept them.
No one dared question her. No one had the nerve.
Except Grace Coddington.
If Grace Coddington had one picture cut from a photo spread, she would have a breakdown. She’d try again and again to get Anna to change her mind. Sometimes she would wear her down with style. On the very rare occasion that Grace had her shoot totally killed, she would spend weeks in orbit.
I understood how she felt. Many of my shoots were trashed, with no explanation given. Many. Many. It could be devastating, going through the whole process of a shoot, knowing the expense to the magazine, and then having the whole thing dropped? It’s hard not to be crushed. “These editors should get a life,” Anna would say in response. All the great editors at Vogue dealt with these blows, but some took it harder than others.
Grace Coddington and I never had any real problems between us. Sure, there was a silent tension, but Anna never pitted us against each other. Anna would ask my advice for certain things and Grace’s for others. If there were black models, for instance, Anna would ask me if I thought it was a good picture or not. When she did ask me about a shoot Grace had done, Grace would walk around the office in deep, deep dismay.
There was a Bruce Weber shoot with Mike Tyson and Naomi Campbell that Grace was especially proud of. It was bold and daring, sexy and dangerous. Anna called me into the art department and asked if I thought it was offensive and I said no. No no no.
Grace was sitting right there and she didn’t say anything, but her knitted brow told me she was furious another editor was even consulted. Anna was just being prophylactic.
And it ran, as did most of Grace’s pictures. Grace was a consummate professional and a brilliant human being. I was aligned to her; I supported her and her creativity, and she, mine.
—
Catie Marron, a Vogue contributing editor, commissioned Lee Radziwill to help her decorate the dining room of her first apartment on Park Avenue. They scheduled a lunch meeting at Harry Cipriani while I was in New York and Catie asked me to come along. How exciting! I had interviewed Lee Radziwill on the phone during my WWD
years, but this would be my first formal lunch with American society royalty.
Before the occasion, Catie pulled me aside. “There’s an unspoken rule with Lee.
Never mention her sister Jackie. If you ask anything about Jackie, Lee will shut down and never talk to you or see you again.”
“Of course!” I said. I had manners, after all; I’d never have been so vulgar. But the warning was appreciated.
For the Cipriani lunch, I knew just what to wear: my best custom-made taupe cavalry twill suit. I was so proud of this suit; it was completely lined in Hermès silk scarves, in a Napoleonic-themed print of pink, yellow, and gray. The sleeves had Edwardian cuffs that, when unbuttoned and rolled back, revealed a hint of the Hermès lining.
When Lee sat down, she remarked that my suit reminded her of suits her father, Jack Bouvier, wore when she was a young girl.
“Of course it does. I took a photo of your father and told Mr. Morty Sills, master tailor, that I wanted a suit just like Jack Bouvier’s!”
I loved the suit, and so did Lee. I was heartbroken when it was later stolen from one of Vogue’s go-to dry cleaners, Ernest Winzer, located in the Bronx. The only time that ever happened. It was probably lost in delivery, no doubt due to the flamboyant Hermès silk-scarf lining. I had another made, in periwinkle-blue linen, lined in a series of bright pink Hermès silk scarves. For summer.
Whenever Lee came to Paris or I came to New York, we would get together. I’ve sat next to Lee at dinners given by Eric and Beatrice de Rothschild, in their beautiful Paris home, with the Zurbarán and Gauguin and Lucian Freud canvases, and the famous bed Madame de Maintenon slept on. Trophies from hunts in Siberia were strewn across huge sofas, and underground was a garage full of Warhol portraits of Marilyn.
I would often go to Lee’s home for dinner, which she loved serving in her impeccable kitchen. I went shopping with her, to Yohji Yamamoto, to Chanel couture, to Comme des Garçons, and to Roger Vivier, the creator of the Pilgrim-buckle shoes she wore in the sixties. Lee was always the advance guard; she was the first to wear André Courrèges, brilliantly, and Ungaro. She loved Halston custom, especially his luxurious, simple fabrics and silhouettes. She wore Givenchy before her sister Jackie did. She loved Zandra Rhodes.
Landing a job as Diana Vreeland’s assistant at Harper’s Bazaar back in 1950 was one of the most significant victories in Lee’s young adult life. “Diana Vreeland was a mad fashion genius,” Lee recalled. “I loved her, I idolized her. I loved the way she walked and talked. She was creative and daring. I wanted to walk into a room and feel just the way I imagined she felt, wi
th all eyes on her.”
Mrs. Vreeland told me that it was Lee, not Jackie, who had the taste, the true chic, an intuition for good clothes and quality. I believed her, as Mrs. Vreeland was also close to Jackie Kennedy. She told me from her bedroom, propped up in her Porthault symphony of printed layers, that it was from Lee that Jackie learned how to dress.
Lee was one of Truman Capote’s “swans,” the term Truman used for his favorite society and best-dressed women friends. I’ll always think of her as the best-dressed woman at the legendary Truman Capote Black and White Ball. Designed by Italian couturier Mila Schön, her gown was a floor-length column, with hand-embroidered silver vertical waves running up the sides. A bold move; no one else at the ball would be in that particular Italian couturier’s dress, even though Mila Schön happened to be a favorite of Diana Vreeland. Lee was at the height of glamour, perfect in her original choice.
For the incredible Black and White Ball, Lee’s hair was combed out by the famous Kenneth, whom she and her sister Jackie Kennedy would see for comb-outs before catching a flight anywhere. Gloves and a comb-out: de rigueur.
Lee loved true creative types, people who lived life, as Yves Saint Laurent once said, “with the eyes of a child.” She was bold enough to be friends with Andy Warhol, she went on a tour with the Rolling Stones, and Truman Capote put her onstage and on television.
It was John Fairchild who initially introduced me to Lee by telephone back when I worked for him in 1977. One Saturday I called and I think she had been drinking. The conversation was odd; I vividly recall her saying in a boozy, languid drawl, “André, who are all these people?” I took it she meant that the people taking over the Hamptons were not up to her standards.
That’s how I met Lee in the seventies; then she moved back to New York and lived in a sprawling Fifth Avenue apartment, where she ordered Halston custom charmeuse and was known to have a huge triptych by Francis Bacon. Lee sold her Bacon early on; she could have kept it and sold it for at least sixty million dollars.
No decision was ever regretted; Lee simply moved quickly to another passion or addiction. She was a fashion plate, an icon, a couture muse. Tory Burch, Carolina Herrera, Marc Jacobs, Ralph Rucci, and Giambattista Valli were all her friends and inspired by Lee.
In my favorite photograph of Lee, she is with Truman Capote, before they had a huge falling-out, in 1977. There are Lee and Truman, the same height and size, in modern elegance: Lee with her natural beautiful hair (which had been washed when she was a child in pure egg yolks) and big television-screen sunglasses; a shirtwaist dress, single-buttoned and cinched in a tortoiseshell belt made of circles hooked by gold links; and her Roger Vivier low-heeled Pilgrim-buckle shoes. This is the modern, of-the-moment “It girl,” Lee. To Lee Radziwill, every friendship was approached as if she were carefully navigating a serious love affair, or at least a heavy seduction. To me, she gave nothing but unconditional love.
IX
John Galliano was a unique visionary, but in the early nineties he was an underground success in the world of fashion. His clothes weren’t commercial; he wasn’t in any stores. I’d seen him around London, but I didn’t know he was a great designer until Emmanuelle Alt, from French Vogue, said to me, “You just have to see a John Galliano collection.”
“Describe it to me,” I said.
“It’s hard to describe, you just have to see one.”
Finally I got to see a Galliano collection, and Emmanuelle was right.
The way Galliano cut clothes was magical. He approached it in a younger, sexier way than had ever been done before. He broke all the rules and made his own. Grace Coddington was sent, along with Steven Meisel, to shoot Galliano’s clothes for Vogue.
Suddenly Galliano was on everyone’s radar.
After the 1993 autumn/winter Milan Fashion Week, I came back to Paris late at night, with Anna Wintour. I dropped her off at the Ritz and took her car to see Galliano.
I found him and his assistant, the caustic Steven Robinson, in a scene right out of Charles Dickens. They were sitting on the floor, heating up cans of food over a Bunsen burner. Behind them was one mannequin, with a big, amazing ball gown on it.
Looking at that dress, I knew Galliano was creating one of the greatest collections in Paris. It wasn’t even finished yet but I could just tell. It was a big hoop skirt, with plastic tubing—from the hardware store—sewn into the fabric. The effect made the skirts so light they would fly when a girl walked, going way up, all over the place. Nothing like it had ever been seen in fashion before, and yet it was so clearly inspired by the nineteenth century.
“This is going to be amazing,” I said.
The synopsis of the fashion show had been written by Amanda Harlech, Galliano’s creative director and muse. Her idea was that the models were Russian tsarinas, leaving the Winter Palace during the revolution, and ending up in Scotland on their way to Ascot in England. This was the narrative of fashion; this was how Diana Vreeland spoke about fashion, and this is how I spoke about fashion. And this is the idea Galliano took and made into a collection.
The first models to walk were portraying the Russian tsarinas, Russian grandeur, running from the revolution, bloodied, traumatized, and still in little skinny stiletto heels. The models ran down the runway in huge, impossible crinolines and little frail blouses. They wore camisoles, tattered and torn, and big, exposed petticoats, as though they’d been ravaged and were running away with their jewels sewn into their clothing.
Cut to part two: The models have reached Scotland, the high mountains, stalking deer in jaunty micro-mini kilts, each of them like a heroine in a historical novel, with feather bustles sewn on their backsides like a duck’s bottom, and lace camisoles falling off their shoulders.
The third act had the girls reach the Ascot of the 1930s, wearing long, fluid bias-cut evening dresses in charmeuse and silk satin. Over the top they wore huge Russian-military-style topcoats, flung over their shoulders, the remnants of what they took with them out of Russia.
That was in March. Everyone in fashion was talking about Galliano; what was he going to do for the next season in ready to wear? In the summer, I called to check in on Galliano again.
“I don’t have any money,” he said. His financial backer had pulled out, withdrawing their funding for his collection.
This was terrible news, for Galliano, for me, and for the whole of the fashion world.
Talent like his is the lifeblood of our industry. Everyone was waiting to see what he would do, but they might not be waiting anymore next season.
We met for lunch, and Galliano and Steven Robinson were nervous and shaking as they told me more about the situation. Galliano’s backer, Plein Sud, was used to big commercial collections, very bread-and-butter, clothes for everybody. It sounded to me like they had no idea how to handle a personality like Galliano’s, and they didn’t think his collection was commercial enough for their investment.
And so, Galliano, an undeniable artistic talent, had no money, no means to manufacture his clothes, and no way to put on a show. He was literally sleeping on the floor of Steven’s apartment.
“You can’t just miss a season, you have to go on,” I said and I promised I would do whatever I could to help him.
I told Anna Wintour what was happening and went into my now-well-familiar praises of how brilliant Galliano’s collection was, full of bias-cut dresses that were accessible to everyone. There’s never been a more feminine dress than a Galliano. He reinvented the bias-cut technique.
“Galliano is a poet,” I said. “He’s the Baudelaire of couture!”
“Do whatever you need to do to make Galliano happen,” Anna told me.
Vogue paid for Galliano to come to New York that Christmas, 1993. For three days, everyone at Vogue introduced him to all the important people he needed to meet. He and I spent those three full days together, roaming around New York, Galliano in his everyday garb of pasted and powdered white hair and some sort of eighteenth-century waistcoa
t.
I then threw a dinner party in Galliano’s honor at Mortimer’s on the Upper East Side. Anna Wintour and Catie and Donald Marron were there, and I invited Iman, who showed up wearing a sizzling red horizontal-band jersey long dinner dress by Azzedine Alaïa, with matching gloves. (Breathtakingly stunning!) Also in attendance was John Bult, an investment banker with PaineWebber and a friend of the Marrons. The small dinner was really held expressly to finalize a deal for Bult to fund Galliano’s next show.
Galliano doesn’t talk much to strangers. He has since evolved and can articulate his vision, but back then, at dinner, he was practically mute and visibly shaking.
As the dinner ended, Bult offered to come to Paris to see what Galliano had been working on. “And maybe I can give him some money for a show?” he said.
In January, Bult took the Concorde to Paris and met Galliano and me in the hotel Bristol’s lobby for afternoon tea. Galliano was once again extremely shy, nervous, and trembling, but I filled the blank space with my pronouncements of love for his work.
“What kind of money do you think you need?” Bult asked.
Galliano didn’t have a clue.
I said, “We can take whatever you can give us. How about fifty thousand dollars?”
Bult flew back to New York and returned the next weekend, and we again met at the Bristol, this time with Galliano’s right-hand man, Steven Robinson.
“You can do the show on fifty thousand dollars?” Bult asked.
Galliano said, “Yes, I think we can.”
“Yes, we could get fabrics, do samples, and get fittings and have them sewn for that,” Steven said.
“My lawyer has the money in escrow for you. You can access the money as you need it. Use it wisely. Do the show.”
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