Guilty Pleasures

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘We are expecting a very tiny uplift in figures,’ said Cassandra, taking a sip of water. ‘As you know we have had some incredible sales in this period, but it’s a very competitive market out there right now. That said, our market share is excellent: we remain the number one choice for premium fashion advertisers and our covers are some of the most talked about in the business. Which,’ she paused and placed her manicured hands flat on the table, ‘is why we’re here.’

  At the back of the room, Lianne flipped a switch and the covers from Rive over the last six months flashed up. Next came Vogue’s covers, then those of Class magazine.

  What was noticeable was the regularity with which the magazines’ cover stars were repeated. If Angelina was on one cover one month, she’d be on somebody else’s the next – in many instances, the same actress or singer was on two or three magazines the same month. Deborah Kane, Rive’s entertainment editor, leant forward. Deborah was in charge of liaising with celebrity publicists and securing the celebrities for the magazine.

  ‘It’s getting more and more difficult, Cassandra,’ said Deborah. ‘Increasingly we can only get a star to agree to be in Rive when they are promoting something. And I can name five top LA and New York publicists who won’t agree to exclusivity, so you get Jennifer turning up on three covers in one month. It’s the same problem for everybody.’

  ‘We aren’t everybody,’ snapped Cassandra. ‘We have to provide our readers with exclusivity. We have to get them the un-get-able.’

  ‘Well, what about using more models?’ suggested Deborah.

  ‘With the exception of Clover Connor and Summer Sinclair, models just don’t work as well for us as celebrities,’ said Giles, folding his arms.

  ‘Besides, as some of you here may know,’ said Cassandra, ‘I want to refresh the magazine for our March issue.’ The March and September issues were the two most important issues of the year because they launched the new fashion season and would be full of advertising for the new lines from every fashion house.

  ‘You mean redesign?’ asked Jeremy, her features editor.

  She glared at Jeremy, fully understanding his implication. The dreaded ‘R’ word – a redesign – was the industry’s tool for propping up an ailing or stagnant magazine.

  ‘Not a redesign, Jeremy,’ she said, icily, ‘a refresh. I don’t expect you to be aware of the subtler nuances of magazine publishing, but we need to mix things up for the reader. So what do we have so far?’

  Giles cleared his throat. ‘We have an entertaining slot pencilled in: Cavalli has agreed to throw a lunch on his yacht. He’ll get lots of celebrities there although, obviously, they’ll have to be wearing Cavalli. We also have an art special…’ he said, pushing across a 1930s cover of French Vogue which featured a beautiful water-colour of a model. ‘Lagerfeld is doing some exclusive illustrations for us along these lines. I think they’ll be fabulous.’

  Cassandra nodded her approval. ‘Art and fashion. Very Rive,’ she said.

  Francesca, her fashion director, looked efficiently through her notes. ‘We obviously won’t know our stories until after the shows but I think Mert & Marcus are on board to shoot twenty pages of trends, which will be a studio shoot. For our location shoot, I’m thinking somewhere edgy and difficult. Maybe a knitwear shoot in Sierre Leone or perhaps guns and couture in Darfur.’

  David Stern grimaced as Cassandra glanced over at Lianne to make sure she was taking full notes.

  ‘I like it. Features?’

  ‘I thought of the cover-line ‘Fashion Muses Compare Notes,’ where we do a big photo-shoot with everyone from Amanda Harlech to Stella Tennant and Sophia Coppola,’ said Jeremy, feeling less bold after his dressing down.

  ‘Salman Rushdie wants to do an essay for us. He’s thinking of appropriate subject matter.’

  ‘Nothing too contentious,’ replied Cassandra raising an eyebrow.

  ‘“Botox Beneath the Burka” is a report we wanted to do on plastic surgery in the Middle East. And of course we have the “At Home” special.’

  ‘Continue,’ Cassandra nodded. At Home’s were the holy grail of features. Voyeuristic and usually sumptuous, they offered an insight into the celebrity’s world you just couldn’t get from a straightforward interview.’

  ‘Who have we got so far?’

  ‘George Clooney’s Lake Como villa …’

  ‘Gorgeous but done already by Vanity Fair,’ Cassandra snapped. ‘Come on, work harder, I want exclusives here.’

  ‘Well, Catherine Zeta Jones at her Bermuda house fell through.’

  ‘Why?’

  Deborah Kane had the pinched look of someone who was sucking a lemon.

  ‘A clash with filming,’ she shrugged, ‘plus I think she really wanted to be shot in a studio.’

  ‘I don’t want excuses,’ said Cassandra, struggling to control her temper, ‘I want results. What Rive needs for its March cover is something special, something extra special, something that has never been seen before in the pages of a magazine. We need to be the ones to deliver the unbelievable.’

  She thought of the Princess Diana pictures shot by Mario Testino, images that were still being talked about over a decade later, or Demi Moore naked and pregnant, a pose that had been copied by dozens of magazines around the world. She needed something to make the readers sit up and notice. That would make Pierre Desseau sit up and notice, she thought. She looked round the room and was met by a sea of blank faces.

  ‘Meredith. Give me a name,’ said Cassandra pointing at her beauty director.

  ‘Julia and Cameron don’t do much. It’d be good to get them.’

  ‘Are you people not listening to me?’ she said, her voice raised. ‘We want somebody we have never seen on the front cover of a magazine. Somebody new, somebody exciting.’

  Deborah Kane shuffled uncomfortably in her chair.

  ‘When you think about it Cassandra, there are only so many celebrities in the world and everyone has taken a bite out of them. We could look at doing an ensemble cover, maybe? Five of the hottest new actresses breaking through. Do it as a gate-fold?’

  ‘And copy Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood issue?’ said Cassandra. ‘Come on, we are Rive, we lead, we do not follow. Who else?’

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause, while all the staff avoided her gaze.

  ‘Where did we ever get with Georgia Kennedy?’ Giles said finally. Now that was a name, thought Cassandra. Georgia Kennedy was the twenty-first century’s Grace Kelly. An Oscar-winning actress, her acting talent was only matched by her beauty and her sense of style. She’d burned brightly in Hollywood in the early Nineties, scoring half a dozen near-legendary leading lady roles in some of the biggest hits of the decade. She had been a true superstar. But five years ago, at the peak of her fame and desirability, she had met and married Sayed Jalid, the ruling prince of oil-rich country Sulka, and had effectively disappeared from view. There were occasional photographs of her doing charity work, visiting land-mine victims in Angola or orphanages in southern Africa, or a rare appearance at a gala dinner or royal wedding but, in celebrity terms, that made Georgia Kennedy a recluse.

  ‘Now we’re talking,’ said Cassandra, the hint of a smile on her lips. ‘I want her on our March cover. And not just the cover. I want Georgia Kennedy – At Home.’

  Deborah stifled a surprised little laugh and Cassandra immediately rounded on her.

  ‘You find this funny, Deborah?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but you’re asking for the impossible. I’ve tried at least a dozen times to get her and it’s always a polite no. There’s a reason she hasn’t been on a single magazine cover in the last five years – she doesn’t want to be. She doesn’t do photo-shoots and she doesn’t do interviews, not even about her charity work.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear this!’ spat Cassandra. ‘All I’m hearing is “can’t” and “won’t” and all I’m getting is excuses and easy options. Doesn’t anyone in this room have any ambition? A
ny passion? Doesn’t anyone want Rive to be the best fashion magazine in the world? Well, I do. In fact, forget fashion, I want Rive to be the best magazine in the world! Now get out there and get me Georgia Kennedy.’

  The other members of staff looked nervously at each other as Cassandra closed her notebook to signify the meeting was over.

  ‘Perhaps we should have a backup plan as well?’ said Giles politely.

  ‘And perhaps we need to rethink various members of staff if they can’t deliver,’ said Cassandra, already walking to the door.

  32

  Cassandra Grand was not a woman to take chances, not unless she had no choice. She knew she had to make Rive as talked-about as Pierre wanted but she had little faith in her staff to pull a world-class exclusive out of the bag. Which was why she was sitting in a velvet booth in a quiet bar in St James’s, facing a man who did not look as if he belonged in SW1. Nick Bowen was a retired New York cop who had married a Brit and left the States – and the force – for better-paid work in the private sector. He specialized in divorce cases: following the billionaire husbands of stay-at-home wives who were hungry for fat divorce settlements. He had strong international connections and a reputation for delivering whatever you wanted at any cost. She had called him the day after her editorial meeting and given him two weeks and an unlimited expense account.

  ‘Please tell me you have something of interest,’ said Cassandra, waving away the waiter.

  ‘If you’re looking for dirt on Georgia Kennedy then you’re going to be disappointed. She’s as clean as a whistle,’ said Bowen, trying hard to avert his eyes from Cassandra’s cleavage. One thing he liked about high-level divorce work was the good-looking women. The wives of rich men were almost always gorgeous. Too skinny for his liking, of course and they had the sort of attitude he could only stand in ten-minute, well-paid bursts but damn, it sure beat pulling stiffs outta the Hudson.

  ‘There must be something,’ frowned Cassandra. ‘You don’t get to be big in Hollywood without doing something underhand or illegal to get there. Casting couch? Drug parties?’

  Bowen shook his head.

  ‘Two weeks isn’t a long time for a comprehensive report, Ms Grand.’

  ‘Well, it should be, the money I’m paying you,’ snapped Cassandra.

  Bowen’s face was impassive. He’d taken abuse from professionals; another pissed-off broad didn’t dent his armour.

  ‘Ms Grand,’ he began patiently. ‘One of the reasons Sayed Jalid took her as a wife is because her closet is skeleton-free. She was an honours student in Missouri. Worked her way up through adverts and bit parts in films. No reputation of the casting coach. No scantily-clad magazine shoots. Very professional, very focused. Two long-term boyfriends, both respectable, both drug-free. Then she married Jalid and since then, no playing around and by all accounts they have a very happy marriage.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Cassandra quietly, tapping her fingers on the table. ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s a decent guy. Oxford scholar, Sandhurst. Georgia is the second wife, his first died in childbirth. Besides, even if we had something we can’t touch him. He’s super-protected 24/7 and surrounded by the sort of powerful friends and associates who could make any scandal disappear before you typed the first word.’

  ‘So you’re saying I’ve wasted my money?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Bowen with a crooked smile, placing a brown envelope on the table. He pulled out a large black and white photograph of a handsome young man. ‘Sayed has a daughter and a younger son from his first marriage. This is Alex Jalid, the son. He’s 20, an English student at Brown University. A good scholar, but lazy, bit of a party boy. And very extravagant, he flies student friends to New York on nights out in his father’s private jet.’

  He put another photograph on the table in front of Cassandra. It was a girl with exquisite features and a long tumble of pale hair.

  ‘This is Tania, Alex’s girlfriend. She’s a model in New York with a small agency called Mode.’

  Cassandra tutted suggesting her patience was wearing thin. ‘A playboy prince with a model? That’s hardly the most scandalous story I’ve ever heard of.’

  Bower smiled slowly. He took another photograph out of his briefcase and put it on the table.

  ‘And who’s this?’ asked Cassandra curiously.

  ‘This,’ replied Nick Bowen, ‘is where it starts to get interesting.’

  She smiled as he began explaining the photograph’s significance to her.

  ‘I’m sorry that’s all I could get in two weeks,’ he said, after he’d finished, looking at her face for approval.

  Cassandra touched his calf with her bare foot under the table, smiling as she saw his eyes widen.

  ‘It’s enough, Nicholas. It’s more than enough,’ she said with a surge of excitement. Her plan was about to come together.

  It was the hottest summer in a decade and with the heat came a wave of positivity at Milford. The company’s advertising campaign was everywhere and Clover Connor was papped carrying a 100 Bag in Ibiza. The refurbishment of the Bond Street store finished on time, a crack sales team was headhunted from other designer stores and the Milford Autumn/Winter line was delivered. It looked fantastic.

  For Stella that meant twice the pleasure. Satisfaction of a job well done and the opportunity to start the creative process all over again, dreaming up new designs that women would be clamouring to buy in six months’ time. Of course, her earlier designs would live on; Emma wanted the 100 Bag and the Milford clutch as perennial pieces to be repeated in each collection in new leather and colourways. However each season there were to be six new designs to underline Milford as a fashion house and to increase profit potential as women wanted to add to their collection of bags.

  That summer Stella had found the perfect place to dream up new ideas: the roof terrace at Byron House. Strictly speaking, it was just a flat expanse of roof reached by a fire exit door that led off from her studio, but it was a sun-trap, a perfect place to take vintage magazines, source books and a cold lemonade to enjoy the weather, especially when Emma wasn’t due in the office all week.

  Lying out on a towel she had found in a store cupboard, Stella was enjoying the uninterrupted quiet and sun on her face when she heard Emma’s voice echo round the studio.

  ‘Stella?’

  ‘Out here,’ she called, surprised.

  Emma poked her head out onto the roof.

  ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Inside,’ said Emma. ‘It’s a deathtrap out there.’

  Stella climbed back into the studio and joined Emma at a round table in front of Stella’s mood board, an enormous expanse of cork tiles onto which she had pinned magazine tears, postcards of old films, photographs and swatches of fabric.

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be in Costa Rica this week,’ said Stella, dabbing at her forehead with her towel.

  ‘Cancelled. But I’ve been in London all morning.’

  ‘Hardly Central America,’ grinned Emma.

  ‘I’ve been down to the store,’ said Emma, frowning.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. In fact, quite the opposite.’

  Emma took a spreadsheet from her briefcase and handed it to Stella.

  ‘Sales from the Bond Street store in one week.’

  To Stella it was just a jumble of tiny numbers in little boxes.

  ‘Is this good?’

  Emma took a drink of water from the bottle on the table.

  ‘It’s 400 per cent up on what we were projected to be doing and we haven’t even officially launched yet. Bond Street has already called in with a stock order for more products.’

  She took a breath.

  ‘Which is why I want to launch a collection of womenswear next season.’

  Stella just gaped at her.

  ‘You’re not serious? You want to launch a ready-to-wear line in six months?’ she said, feeling a spike of fear. ‘
That’s crazy!’

  Emma looked at her determinedly. ‘There’s a real momentum building here, I can feel it. A year is a long time in fashion and I don’t think we can leave it another couple of seasons. I always saw Milford as a fashion and luxury goods company like Hermès or Louis Vuitton, rather than one that simply makes handbags and luggage. If results are this good, then I think it makes sense to expand quickly.’

  ‘How big a collection were you thinking?’ asked Stella with a sinking feeling. It didn’t take much to work out that Emma’s new plans had direct implications for her.

  ‘Small and exclusive,’ she said firmly. ‘It has to be in line with our brand message for the bags which are practically made to order. There seems to me to be a gap between haute couture and ready-to-wear and that’s where we should fit in.’

  Stella smiled thinking how far Emma had come in the literacy of fashion. Six months ago she didn’t know a Tod’s from a Toblerone; now she was proposing to break the mould and create an entirely new fashion market. Now Emma even looked the part in her camel Armani shift dress and Louboutin heels, her hair like a flaxen horse’s tail, swinging elegantly with every move of her head.

  ‘So you’re thinking sort of limited edition pieces,’ said Stella, beginning to get excited about the idea, despite herself.