Being Conchita

by Conchita Wurst

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED

  ‘I saw the you in me and the me in you’

  FROM THE MUSICAL SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK

  Experts say we need seven to eight hours’ sleep a night. From 10 May onwards, I learnt that you can also survive on far less, at least for a certain period of time. In the weeks after the contest, I would have had to create numerous copies of myself in order to meet all the interview and performance requests coming my way. These poured in from the world’s largest cities and from the farthest-flung corners of the earth alike. Luckily, René decided that staying level-headed was the best approach to all the hype surrounding me. Otherwise I might have met with the same fate as the actor John Belushi, who was rushing around so much towards the end of his life that people in New York and Los Angeles could have sworn on the Bible that they had both seen him at the same time. Having success is one thing, but being able to shape your success is quite a different matter. We – that is, my team and I – were criticised after the contest by various know-it-alls for showing no interest in making a fast buck. But we were clear in our own minds that life is less a sprint than a marathon, and it’s important to pace yourself properly. Nevertheless, we still had a hectic time of it in the days after the final.

  The reception in Vienna alone was mind-blowing. My adopted home city welcomed me with open arms. I attended one event after another, getting nowhere near enough sleep. First there was the annual two-day Boylesque Festival. This was followed by a talk at TEDx, an offshot of the global TED conferences, which seeks to give a platform to ‘ideas worth spreading’. Then there was the annual Life Ball in Vienna which, together with the Opera Ball, forms the highlight of the city’s year. The Life Ball is a combination of gala, ball, revue and party, and it’s the top charity event in Europe supporting people with AIDS/HIV. It was founded by Gery Keszler and seems to get bigger each year, attracting stars such as Bill Clinton, Sharon Stone, Elton John and Catherine Deneuve. The event is held in Vienna’s grand City Hall and its surrounding squares, with a magenta-coloured carpet laid out from the grand Ringstraße ring road to the main grandstand. With TV broadcasters from all around the world, countless journalists, a dense throng of celebrities, thousands and thousands of spectators, top TV ratings, and huge sums of money raised, the Life Ball is always guaranteed to dominate newspaper headlines.

  As part of the event, there’s also an annual fashion show, which in 2014 featured Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gaultier. I’d always liked going to the Life Ball and had even appeared on stage there once, playing the lead role in a performance of The Valiant Little Tailor. That had been at the fairytale-themed 2007 Life Ball, whose motto was, ‘Once upon a time there was a princess called Hope’. This time round, it was going to be a little different. I had been invited to sing, and so the existing programme had to be hurriedly re-arranged to incorporate my appearance. Normally everything runs like clockwork at the Life Ball but now, of all times, there were some technical hitches. When you sing live on stage, you experience the unpleasant phenomenon of not being able to hear yourself in real-time: there’s always a time delay, as if you’re making a phone call on a line with poor connection. At rock concerts, in order to avoid this problem, the organisers build speakers into the side of the stage that are directed at the performers rather than the audience. In sound engineering this is known as ‘foldback monitoring’, and if there are no speakers available you are given special earplugs that can carry out the same function. I had hardly walked out onto the stage when it became clear that the monitoring was not working. So I was now singing to a home audience of many thousands and all I could hear was cheering and shouting, applause, the accompanying music, but not myself. Every time I sang a few words I had to wait for an echo – not the best performance I’ve ever given. Luckily, the fans were feeling well-disposed towards me and were in full-blown party mood, because when it was all over they said: ‘We didn’t notice a thing, you were great!’ But I was seething inside. When something like this happens, I become quiet rather than loud. My Copenhagen team – apart from Tamara who was busy elsewhere – now rallied round me and, surrounded by my friends, I quickly regained my composure.

  Soon I was able to joke and laugh again and look forward to the fashion show. Naturally, considering my background, I was especially curious to see Vivienne Westwood – or, rather, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire Vivienne Westwood. Possibly because, just like me, she rose from very humble beginnings. Her mother Dora was a weaver, a notoriously tough profession, while her father Gordon came from a family of shoemakers: hardly an illustrious background. In any case, Vivienne’s progress to the top of the fashion world was not easy. As a young mother of two, she decided to make clothes for her children. At some point, she began taking traditional designs and combining them with unusual fabrics and her own original ideas for patterns and shapes. This was what led to her big breakthrough. Despite her phenomenal success, she lived for more than thirty years in a simple council flat. All of this was running through the back of my mind as she took me to one side after the fashion show.

  ‘You’re the star they’re all talking about’, she said, eyeing me from head to toe. ‘I’d like to give you some good advice.’ You get to hear a lot of good advice over the course of your life, and it isn’t always welcome. Yet I’d taken to Vivienne immediately. She reminded me of my grandma and, just like her, she smelled of that wonderful mixture of menthol and eau de cologne – a hallmark of people of her generation. I answered respectfully that I would be very glad to hear her advice.

  ‘Embrace everything while you can. It can all disappear quicker than you think.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I intend to do.’ My answer was heartfelt. Someone like Vivienne knows what she’s talking about. After all, it was way back in 1973 that she’d named her boutique Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die, in reference to James Dean, who’s life was cut short aged twenty-four. The stardust of today is the dust that lines the streets tomorrow. She and I got on like a house on fire and could have talked all day and night, despite all the hectic activity that is part and parcel of such events. She told me about her latest creation, a nineenth century tea set made of extremely thin eggshell porcelain. At this point, a horde of photographers came rushing towards us, with one of them wanting to know what the chain around her neck was supposed to signify.

  ‘Well, what will this be meant to be?’ she answered mischievously, leaving the question open. Any answer she’d given would have got lost in the meaninglessness of its interpretation. I liked her English sense of humour, and when she asked if I’d like to accompany her to a fashion show in Milan, I said yes immediately. After all, it was she who’d advised me to embrace everything while I could.

  There was something else I took away from that night, something of extraordinary value: the friendship of a remarkable man – Jean Paul Gaultier. Jean Paul and I already look back on a history together, but it’s only recently that we really came to know each other. I had of course always been a fan of his. He on the other hand had only watched my first attempt to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest and invited me to Paris after that. Back then we hadn’t had time for intense and meaningful discussions, which is what we wanted to make amends for now. It didn’t take long to discover that we had a lot in common.

  After the fashion show we found a bit of time to talk, again to find a lot of common ground. ‘The funny thing’, said Jean Paul, ‘is that I don’t have any training as a fashion designer. I always liked sketching, and found the human body interesting. So I started off doing shaded drawings of bodies, and afterwards added clothing to them. Then I sent off my sketches to a few people to look at.’

  Jean Paul is a perfect example of talent and hard work combining in perfect harmony. Pierre Cardin, the fashion designer who launched the first haute couture enterprise selling prêt-à-porter garments to the masses, hired him as an assistant, and the rest is history: in 1
976 Jean Paul presented his own collection, and today he is now one of the few people in fashion to personally run a worldwide operation. His company recently announced it wants to give up its prêt-à-porter division in order to concentrate exclusively on haute couture. It’ll be interesting to see how this works out, particularly for me: a few months after our first meeting, I appeared at Le Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris wearing one of Jean Paul’s custom-made designer dresses. This wasn’t something we discussed during that first conversation, having only just met. Nevertheless, we could sense that we liked each other and would like to work together at some point in the future. A spark of friendship had already been ignited during our arrival at the Life Ball.

  The organizers had timed things in such a way that, even though our arrival would not be simultaneous, we would step onto the carpet at the same time. This was a tricky task which resulted in a bit of confusion. Straight after the parade, the magenta-coloured carpet had to be replaced by a blue one. While Jean Paul and I were walking through the crowd of onlookers, the Berlin photographer Julian Laidig, a close friend of mine, was standing close by. Very shortly afterwards, he was to take the best photo I’ve ever seen, one that could only have been taken by someone with a trained eye and a perfect sense of timing. Julian says that ‘photography is more than just pressing a button’, and this picture is the proof. It captures the precise point at which another one of those miraculous time bubbles was formed. I was right in the middle of the bubble when the chaos erupted. The onlookers were pushing from behind, while Gery Keszler wanted me both to stay put and to carry on walking and was unable to decide between the two. René was just the opposite: he shouted out an instruction to me which I could not hear, and in the end I just detached from the situation completely. Behind me, Jean Paul was holding onto the train of my dress, while Matthias was tugging at it from the front. This moment was, of course, just another fleeting instant in my life, but Julian managed to capture it for ever and, what’s more, to use this moment to convey a sense of eternity. Previously, I had only experienced this time bubble from the inside; being able to observe it from the outside is a rare stroke of luck. Jean Paul liked the photo too, and when the opportunity presented itself, I gave him a really huge print of it.

  It’s rare to meet people like Jean Paul, people with whom you can have such a genuinely good time. When the opportunity later arose to spend a night out on the town with him in Vienna, I grabbed it with both hands. But that was still a while off, and right now I had just one thing on my mind: to finally catch up on some proper sleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PARIS, OOH-LA-LA

  ‘There’s no business like show business’

  FROM THE MUSICAL ANNIE GET YOUR GUN

  From our very first meeting at the Life Ball, it was clear that Jean Paul and I were going to be friends. Soon afterwards, he invited me to appear in his haute couture fashion show. Just like all the other models, I was given a comp card displaying my body measurements and shoe size. While I’m obviously no stranger to the world of fashion, I was unbelievably excited. Models who work for big designer brands are professionals, whereas I was almost a complete novice on the catwalk. The very fact that we westerners are used to starting out on our heels before transferring our weight to the balls of our feet makes the way we walk look a bit ungraceful. In Asia they often do things differently – you start off gently on the balls of your feet before bringing your heels down. While this can feel a little strange to us, it’s better for the back and allows models to virtually float down the catwalk. Yet this approach also contains an element of danger, as I was about to discover.

  Jean Paul is one of the few designers to put on shows in his own premises, in the tradition of early Chanel fashion house shows. On the ground floor are the makeup and changing rooms, which can get as busy as a tube station at rush hour. The hall where the fashion show is held is one floor higher. The guests were already in their seats and the models were being asked to line up in the stairway. Because I was in such a lavish dress, an anxious-looking stage manager led me past all the models and parked me in a wall recess.

  He just had time to say, ‘I’ll call you on’, before he disappeared. Shortly afterwards, the first model walked onto the catwalk; a few seconds later I heard the stage manager shout out: ‘Oh my God, she’s fallen!’ I felt myself go weak at the knees: firstly, because my thoughts went out to the poor model and, secondly, because I realised that if a professional can fall over, the same could easily happen to me. I then heard a second cry: ‘She’s fallen again.’ I was now getting really panicky. Yet there was no way I could make a run for it without attracting attention. The models were moving past me like beads on a string, while those who had already done their bit on the catwalk rushed down the stairs as if bitten by a snake, hurrying off to climb into their next outfit.

  To anyone who thinks modelling is an easy career – I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. I’ve now seen for myself how difficult it is. In those moments of extreme pressure, no thought is given to anything or anybody. If one of the girls fractures a toe while running, she’ll just grin and bear it and walk smiling down the catwalk a few minutes later as if nothing had happened. When it comes to their work, these girls are tough, and I liked that. A short time afterwards, we heard news that there had been a third fall. This time round, I no longer contemplated doing a runner, but thought only of doing what I had to do, and doing it well. It later transpired that the reflective foil used to cover the catwalk had not been stretched tightly enough in one place, causing any model unfortunate enough to dig her heel into that precise spot to stumble. Luckily for me, I stepped over it, managing to walk successfully down the catwalk as the final model of the show. Jean Paul ran up behind me and grabbed hold of the train of my dress – it was a dream of a wedding dress, black, gold and crimson, draped with lots of lace and sharply tapered hems, and complete with – my favourite part – a veil. He then went ahead and actually knelt down before me. On receiving this honour, I became a little flustered. The way I see it, I’ve only just started doing my bit to make the world a more beautiful place, whereas Jean Paul has been doing this for decades. Despite this, he still retains an utterly infectious enthusiasm, the sort only possessed by those who are doing exactly what they were destined to do.

  The effort that goes into achieving such magical moments never ceases to fascinate me. People in the audience are not allowed to either see or feel this: everything must appear to run of its own accord. In actual fact, a team of highly qualified specialists is working behind the scenes to inject some magic into our reality. I was now gradually getting to know more and more of these people, and one of the very first I became acquainted with was Camille Gilbert, whom I met at Jean Paul’s fashion show. She was responsible for my hair, a wig that Jean Paul had selected himself. As Camille painstakingly arranged every last strand, I couldn’t resist asking her one question: ‘Do you know that your beautiful name comes from the attendants guarding the temples in ancient Rome?’

  The French always seem somewhat surprised when someone speaks their language. My knowledge of French at the time was still ‘un peu rouillé’ – a little bit rusty – but this soon changed as I began to visit their country more frequently. I like chatting to the people who go to such lengths to take care of me, and this was also the case with Anny Errandonea, whom I met a few weeks later at Karl Lagerfeld’s. Her sole responsibility was to attend to my fingernails. She reminded me of a French headmistress – or at least how I imagined a French headmistress to be – addressing me haughtily in a harsh Parisian dialect without seeming too bothered about whether I understood her or not. She asked me to show her my hand, so I held it out to her. Raising one critical eyebrow, she stared at it intensely for what appeared to be a short eternity… and then let it drop back down.

  ‘C’est parfait’, she hissed, everything is in perfect order – but that’s not how it sounded to me. I was startled. Was she annoyed because I looked after my hands an
d was putting her out of a job? There’s a popular French saying – ‘C’est le ton qui fait la chanson’ – that translates roughly as, ‘It’s not what you say, but how you say it’. Right now, her voice didn’t sound particularly friendly. However, this soon changed once I started up a conversation with her. After some initial hesitancy, she came out of herself more and more, and I was yet again able to note how much people are willing to open up if you show some interest in them. Sifting gracefully through a potpourri of clothes, wigs, accessories, makeup paraphernalia and all the other things you might need for a fashion shoot, she soon started telling me about her life, where she’d started out, and what she thought of people who did not take care of themselves: ‘Absolument rien’. Nothing at all.

  I had to smile as I’d obviously misunderstood her ‘C’est parfait’ reaction. She now became less and less inhibited, and started to pay me compliments about my skin, eyelashes, hair – even my teeth. In the presence of an elegant woman, my thoughts returned automatically to my grandma, who also attached importance to a neat appearance. ‘It’s a mark of respect to others,’ is what she’d say, and I like this way of thinking. If you go round looking sloppy, you’re acting sloppily towards those around you, which isn’t right. At the end of our session, Anny wished me a warm goodbye, French style: a peck on the right, left, right and then left again, just as they do in Paris. In case anyone is planning on going to Provence, there it’s two kisses, starting with the left cheek. In Brest and Poitou it’s just one kiss, but in the Massif Central, Arles and the Drôme, Hérault, Gard, Vaucluse and Hautes-Alpes, it’s three. I was glad of this opportunity to study the customs of the French, because very soon I would be going down south. The blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea – La Grande Bleue, as they say poetically in France – were beckoning.