Beauty, Disrupted

by Carre Otis

  “Get out of here, Carré! Get the fuck out. And don’t you ever fucking set foot in here again.” She looked at me with disbelief and hurt. And then it turned to disgust.

  I felt like shit. I had disappointed her and myself. And with that, she slammed the door, leaving me face-to-face with a roomful of models, each silently staring at me. We all stood motionless, amid the yells and the thumps and the shattering of glass as Eric and Trudi argued in the next room.

  In my bed I pulled the covers around me and listened to the drone of city traffic, then a pounding rain. I blew it. I could see Trudi’s expression over and over in my head. I couldn’t imagine exactly what my fate would be after this, though I had my fears. As it happened, I wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.

  The next morning the phone rang in the models’ apartment.

  “Carré, it’s for you.”

  It was Trudi’s assistant.

  “Pack your bags. You’re heading out.”

  “Wait . . . what?” I stammered. “Where to?”

  “Paris, France.” I knew after my meeting with Mr. Casablancas that this call would be coming, but I had hoped it wouldn’t be so soon . . . and that the incident with Eric didn’t hasten it. What would have been welcome news yesterday sounded more like a death sentence today. I knew the truth and it hung over me like a black cloud.

  I had blown it. Again.

  PARIS, TAHITI, MILAN

  The next night I took the red-eye on Air France. It seemed to last forever—hour after hour, flying through darkness. By the time we landed at Charles de Gaulle just before dawn, I was exhausted and disoriented. Some ­people imagine that traveling must be a particularly glamorous perk for a model. Many assume that models all fly first class. There would come a time when I would travel in the front of the plane, and even on private jets. But in 1985 I traveled the way most models did and still do: in coach. Luxuries in the industry were reserved for a lucky few, and John Casablancas wasn’t going to spend more than he had to on sending a difficult young model off to Paris.

  What little sleep I got had been in some cramped and compromised position. Even for my young body, that flight was a haul. I got off the plane, every bit of me aching, and trudged through a maze of escalators and moving walkways. I longed for a soft bed. A flat bed. But as I arrived at the baggage claim, I saw through the windows that the sun was already rising. The airport was a long distance from the city. I would catch my first glimpse of it in broad daylight. In spite of my exhaustion, I began to wake up. It was too noisy not to. De Gaulle was a cacophony of sounds. The strange language and the overpowering smells of smoke, perfume, and espresso all hung heavy in the air.

  My one bag came around on the carousel, and I swung it over my shoulder and headed through customs. As I walked toward the glass doors that divided new arrivals from the outside world, I saw the waiting and expectant faces on the other side. I didn’t know what face to look for. I had only a name. I prayed that I would find him; I realized that I had no idea how to use a French pay phone, and I didn’t even have a number to call.

  I stepped out into a sea of ­people and looked around. I didn’t see my name on a sign or anyone waving at me. I walked slowly toward the street exit, holding on tightly to my bag. As I pivoted to avoid getting run over, I saw a short man with a round and flushed face come my way. He had on an old-fashioned cap, a corduroy blazer, a button-down shirt, and a colorful ascot. Even in a Paris airport, he stood out as particularly French. “Carré? Carré, is this you?” He extended his hand, and as I reached out to shake it, he pumped my arm up and down, a bit too enthusiastically. I had just met the infamous Jacques de Nointel.

  Jacques was a close associate of Gérald Marie, the president of Elite Europe. I would later learn that in that distinctive corduroy coat he carried dozens of watches that he tried to sell at every opportunity. Patek Philippe, Cartier, Tiffany, Rolex. Like a character out of an old movie, Jacques was ready and eager to throw open his coat and make every new “good friend” a special offer. He was a bit of a nut, and not necessarily the endearing kind. I would learn to steer well clear of Jacques.

  Jacques informed me that “zee boss” (Gérald) wanted me to come straight to the agency. “He needs to see you immediately,” I was told. I got the picture: It was not about my comfort. It didn’t matter that I needed to shower, needed to sleep. How I felt was irrelevant to the “boss.” I was now one of his soldiers. Elite owned my ass; I couldn’t possibly say no, so I acquiesced, and we got into Jacques’s car.

  We passed enormous billboards on our drive into Paris. I was amazed by what I saw: The models were nearly all nude. Every American who comes to Europe notices the greater openness about nakedness in advertising, but my shock was compounded by what I was in Paris to do. I was a model—and couldn’t take my eyes off the exposed nipple on the Clarins body-lotion ad and the perfectly tanned butt of another model in an advertisement for suntan lotion. This was a different world.

  Jacques drove fast. Not unusual for a Frenchman. We wended our way at a breakneck pace through the small streets, still slick from rain, zipping past cars tinier than any I had ever seen. As we drove into the heart of Paris, the city seemed to wake up around us. Our tires bounced over cobblestones as café doors opened and shopkeepers set out their street-level displays of fresh produce and fish on ice. The exhaustion soon faded, and exhilaration pulsed through me. It was so new, so different, so perfectly beautiful. Everyone falls in love with Paris at first sight, and I was no exception. The difference was that I was also thinking of my career. In the fresh light of morning, I felt a wave of optimism. Perhaps everyone had been right: I just needed a new start, a new chance. That was the magic of Paris, a magic that makes anything and everything seem possible.

  My reverie stopped as abruptly as the car did. We rounded one last bend and came to a sudden halt. We had arrived at 21 avenue Montaigne, Elite’s glorious Paris office. Before I got out of the car, I stole a quick look in my little handheld mirror, smoothing my hair and making sure I didn’t have any sleep left in my eyes. It would have been nice to have showered after the flight, but if “zee boss” wanted to see me right away, he’d just have to cope with Carré au naturel.

  I climbed out of the backseat of the car and took a deep breath. I gazed at the stunning (and to my eyes, ancient) building. This was my moment. I knew I needed to make a great impression. And as I stood there, right on the sidewalk, something shifted inside. It was as if the clouds had parted and I realized all at once that my prayers were as good as anyone’s; I deserved a break as much as the next girl. That sudden sense of well-being was rare and elusive when I was seventeen. I would learn, many years later, how to connect to that energy and confidence at will. But all those years ago, it was a most surprising, welcome, and needed gift. And with that gift and that sudden surge of confidence, I followed Jacques through the front gates.

  With each step I took, I felt my doubts and mistrust slip away. I felt certainty rise in me; everything was about to change for the better. Upon walking into the inner courtyard of 21 avenue Montaigne, I felt almost defiant. Come hell or high water, I told myself, I won’t go back home defeated. What I didn’t know was that defeat wears many faces. I thought defeat would be failing to make it as a model. What I was about to discover is that our most devastating defeats sometimes come disguised in the form of success.

  Walking through that door was electrifying. Even early in the morning, you could feel the energy. My exhaustion was gone; my pulse grew quicker. In the center of the room, half a dozen agents sat around a circular booking table, all on phones, all talking, smoking, laughing, and glancing intently at the model board. I moved around that table in slow motion, checking out all the model composites, the famous faces of past and present framed and hung on the walls. These photos were their trophies, I realized. These were their stars. These were their victories. It was the first time I realized how much I wanted to make it in this industry. I wanted to work. Badly. And I wanted
to succeed.

  I didn’t have much time to linger over the portraits. When a short, stringy-haired, pug-eyed man walked briskly and deliberately toward me, I had no trouble figuring out who “zee boss” was. Gérald Marie was wearing leather pants, pulled a bit too high and cinched at the waist with a cowboy belt and oversize buckle. The look was completed with snakeskin boots and a button-down shirt and blazer, Gérald’s greasy curls touching just below his shoulders. He was the walking embodiment of what Americans already called Eurotrash. He was quite a sight.

  Gérald looked me up and down. He took my hand and twirled me around, studying me from my head to my toes. I was numb to this sort of thing at this point, having learned to stand back and wait for the verbal assessment to come. If you weren’t numb, those candid assessments could be brutal. They could hit a girl like a punch in the gut. I had steeled myself against those words for so long already that it rarely seemed to matter what any agent or photographer said. But Gérald wasn’t brutal. He nodded with a slight smile and a little wink. “You will do well here, my dear. Let’s get you on the set and see what you are made of.”

  He turned to Jacques and told him, “Take her to Phil Stadtmiller at La Tour Eiffel. Now. Everyone is there, and you are running late!”

  I stammered. “But wait. I just got here. My bags. My hair. I’m exhausted.”

  Gérald spun around, his voice hard. “Are you in or out, my dear?” (And this was twenty years before Heidi Klum would make a nearly identical phrase legendary on Project Runway!) I could barely understand what he said; Gérald’s accent was particularly thick when he got annoyed. But there was no misunderstanding after what he did next: He took me by the hand once again and marched me down the hall, away from Jacques and the agents. When we were out of earshot, he hissed, “On my dime I do not want your opinion, Carré. I want your obedience.” With that, he slapped my ass, a bit too hard. “Are you game?”

  I nodded in shock, but also in resignation. I knew that working in Paris would be different from anywhere else, and because I had no choice, I would be game for anything. As for the slap, I ought to have taken it for the bad sign that it was. Today no one smacks any part of my body without my permission. But it was a common enough thing for agents and photographers to do. Sometimes the gesture was sexual, sometimes it was meant as encouragement, and sometimes it was just a way of punctuating a conversation. But Gérald’s slap was different. It felt possessive. And mean.

  We rushed out of the Elite offices, Jacques whisking me over to the Eiffel Tower as fast as he could. We pulled up and saw that Gérald had been right. A small van and an entire photo crew were waiting, none too patiently. Everyone was in a rush, and I—still unrested and unshowered—was in the center of the bustle. I sat on the tiny chair in the van, the hairdresser frantically brushing and pulling, blowing and curling as the makeup artist did her thing. No one said much of anything, and none of what they did say was in English. I could see wild, colorful clothes hanging on a rack, my outfits for the day. Just as the team was finishing the task of pulling my look together, the door of the van flew open. The next voice I heard wasn’t French but pure New York.

  “What the fuck is taking so long?”

  Enter Phil Stadtmiller, asshole extraordinaire. Really, there’s no other way for me to describe this impressively belligerent human being. We were like oil and water from the moment we met. Of course, I knew he hadn’t come all the way to France just to torture me, but damned if it didn’t seem that way. What’s worse was that Phil understood very well what it meant for a “New York model” to be sent to Paris: I hadn’t been able to make it. As far as he was concerned, I was already a failure, and he was skeptical that I’d have anything to offer.

  Working in the confines of this tiny van, the crew stuffed me into stockings, a frilled skirt, a corset, and go-go boots. If you’ve seen the Cyndi Lauper or Madonna videos of the mid-1980s, you know the look. The moment they were done, they kicked me—literally—out of the van. There was no time to complain. We were racing the light.

  That first day in Paris was as terrifying as it was amazing. I climbed the base of the Eiffel Tower, at more than one point swinging from those famous metal girders like a monkey. Time and again I clambered into dangerous, seemingly impossible positions, all to get to the best angle and shot. Phil said little that was pleasant, but the other members of the photo crew were exuberant. “Genius!” they cried. “Ça c’est très belle!” On and on the thick French compliments came. And at last, as the sun sank toward the horizon and the light began to fade, as I began to shiver from cold and exhaustion, I realized just how good I looked. This was working. I was working. John Casablancas had been right, it seemed: Everything was different in Paris.

  By the time the shoot was finished, I felt delirious. I hadn’t slept properly in what seemed like days, not since New York. As I finished changing for the last time, Jacques sidled up to tell me that Gérald had called him and directed him to drive me to his home at 8 rue du Bac, in the seventh arrondissement—the very heart of Paris.

  I had not expected to stay at Gérald’s house. Alarm bells ought to have gone off again. But I was too tired, and I knew I didn’t really have any other options. I was eager to collapse into sleep, and I knew that as long as I had my own room and my own bed, I’d be just fine.

  As it turned out, in that house things wouldn’t be fine. Not at all.

  The drive to Gérald’s place was mercifully quick. Jacques parked his Mercedes on the sidewalk and retrieved my bag from the trunk. I waited on the pavement, staring at yet another gorgeous building. I’d already seen so many throughout the endless day, but 8 rue du Bac was particularly striking. We went in through two enormous wooden doors and turned to the right to climb an elegant spiral staircase. Encased within that spiral was a fine but time-worn cage elevator. Jacques ignored it and took the stairs, perspiring all the way as he lugged my bag. We were only climbing two flights.

  We rang the bell on the second floor and waited. Jacques sighed. With a fat paw, he fished out a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the sweat from his face. As we stood there, he looked at me intently, almost hungrily, his eyes moving up and down. I tried not to shudder. He made me feel naked.

  Fortunately, the door swung open a moment later. To my amazement the woman standing there was Linda Evangelista, wearing nothing but a silk robe. Linda was already world-famous as an up-and-coming star, though she had not yet claimed true supermodel status. That was still a year or two in the future for her. Almost comically, Linda mimicked what Jacques had been doing a moment earlier. She, too, looked me up and down, though I felt as if she did it more with evident disdain than desire.

  “Oh, yes, here you are,” Linda said as she stepped aside to let us in. “Gérald just informed me you were coming.”

  As we entered, Linda pivoted on her heel, waving one dramatic hand in the air. “Follow me,” she said, the exasperation still evident in her high-pitched voice. She led us into the living room of one of the most exquisite apartments I’d ever seen. The wooden floors creaked underfoot; the curtains were pulled open next to the tall windows, revealing the bakery and café in the street below.

  “Come along,” Linda repeated as she took us down a narrow hallway to a large bedroom. Gérald’s. The king-size bed dominated the room, but it was impossible to miss the mirrors on the ceiling. I noticed the open shower and bath, which were in plain view of the bed. Gérald was clearly a man who didn’t like anything hidden from him.

  We circled the flat to the wonderful, expansive kitchen. A wooden chopping-block island stood in the center, with stools at each end. Gleaming copper pots and pans hung next to braids of garlic and other herbs that I didn’t recognize. The stone counters were lined with elegant little jars of honey and jams. An ornate wicker bread basket had pride of place on the counter, baguettes protruding from it. The room was what so many of us imagine when we envision a truly refined Parisian kitchen, glamorous and cozy all at once. Sadly, I would tast
e and experience very few of the kitchen’s glorious comforts during my stay.

  Linda told the cook to prepare another plate for dinner. At this point I was too tired to think about food. I only wanted to get to bed, and I tried to politely refuse the invitation to eat. Linda fixed me with a stare.

  “In Gérald’s house we do as we are told. You are having dinner with us.”

  Linda took me by the hand, her firm grip belying her childlike voice. She guided me along still another narrow hallway, to a room that I can only describe as Lilliputian. Compared to the expansive splendors of the rest of the apartment, it was tiny: a small single bed, a small chair, and a round porthole window—the sort one finds in the cheaper cabins on a cruise ship. A child’s treasure chest stood at the foot of the bed, and a single lamp perched on a fragile little bedside table, providing most of the artificial light in the dim room. The ceilings were very low; if I wore heels, I wouldn’t be able to stand up straight.

  “This is yours,” Linda said briskly. “While you’re with us, that is. It’s normally Roxanne’s room. We call her ‘Cookie.’ Gérald’s daughter.”

  His daughter’s name was Cookie? Really? I bit back the question, asking another instead. “Where is she now?”

  “With her mother. Do you remember Lisa Rutledge? The Australian model? She and Gérald divorced a while ago?” Three questions in rapid-fire succession.

  Linda waited for a flash of recognition to cross my face. Unfortunately, I hadn’t a clue who Lisa Rutledge was. I’d never been a student of the industry’s history. I stifled a grim laugh, thinking that I’d been too busy Dumpster diving for dinner in Berkeley to pay much attention to top models.

  “Oh, yes, of course.” I willed Linda to see that flash of recognition. I was afraid that she already thought so little of me, and I had a past to hide. I didn’t need to give her any reason to be suspicious of me.