The Spotlight

by Roxy Jacenko

  A girls’ night was long overdue, and an evening spent raiding Shelley’s cast-offs was always appealing, but I had a new baby to attend to – and I don’t mean Fifi.

  Can you keep a secret? I had decided to overhaul my business, and move away from fashion and lifestyle brands and into celebrity management. It was an area I had been considering for a while but I’d put the idea on the backburner. I’ve always been put off the idea of working with D-listers such as Belle Single and Sydney’s other homegrown ‘talent’ like occasional model (and constant bogan) Samantha Priest. Australia’s celebrity scene isn’t exactly Oscars-worthy. As soon as a local actress or singer gets onto the first rung of stardom, they hop onto a plane to Los Angeles to schlep with Hugh Jackman and Chris Hemsworth. So much for loyalty!

  So why was I suddenly prepared to move into people management? Because there was a new breed of celebrity taking over the scene – bloggers! A blog is no longer seen as the thing you do if you can’t get a ‘real job’ writing. The underdogs of the internet had risen to greatness and had the potential to earn themselves a fortune.

  I’d been watching the steady ascent of bloggers for the past year or so, waiting to see if their status would continue to rise. This was a multimillion-dollar business if you knew how to work the system. In this town and across the world, bloggers are the new celebrities, much to the annoyance of the ‘old’ celebrities, who can’t understand why they don’t have the same currency.

  The Sartorialist, Scott Schuman, sells advertising space to American Apparel and Net-A-Porter for ‘a good fraction of a million dollars’. How incred is that? And when Topshop opened their latest store in Sydney, they weren’t clamouring to clothe the cast of Home and Away (sorry, guys). They were sending out free swag to online mavericks such as Sydney Fashion Blogger and the duo from Doncha Wanna Be Us. I had already reached out to both bloggers and organised a coffee meet-up to discuss signing them up.

  My friend Shay works for the biggest advertising agency in Sydney and summed up the sea change perfectly: ‘No brand wants to be aligned with a celebrity on a pedestal. They want someone their customers can relate to. It’s cool to be normal.’

  Of course, when these brands say ‘normal’ they don’t really mean it. They don’t actually want their billboard girl to be an ‘average’ Australian (size sixteen, bad roots, shops at Supré). It’s just like when a fashion brand wants to hire a plus-size model. Real women? Not likely. All too often, rather than hiring a size-sixteen they hire a size-twelve girl and then make her wear a fat suit. A little padding on the hips, a lot of padding on the boobs. They don’t really want ‘real’ – they want a fembot with Victoria Beckham’s legs and waist, but Scarlett Johansson’s curves.

  This is why fashion bloggers are so appealing. They straddle the gap between ‘normal’ people and celebrities. Oh, you think you can dress like them, but just try copying the outfit of a blogger like Nicole Warne from Gary Pepper Girl. You can buy all the components, but you’ll end up looking like a dog’s dinner. That’s okay – you can just live vicariously through her daily blog posts. And the more fans a blogger gets, the more they can charge for advertising. We’re not talking small change either. Fashion blog The Refinery made $25 million last year. Show me the money!

  It would be a brave new world for Queen Bee PR. My plan was to still represent a select few of my fashion and lifestyle brands but do a mass cull of the rest. I intended to pour the majority of my resources into The Talent Hive, which is what I’d decided to call Queen Bee’s new division. Cute, huh?

  My reincarnation wasn’t public knowledge yet. I’d only told Shelley, Michael and Anya, because I couldn’t risk the news being leaked. But I planned to say a polite goodbye to forty of our current clients. However, deciding who to keep and who to cull was proving more difficult than I’d first thought.

  ‘It feels so weird purposefully trying to get rid of clients, when we put so much effort into getting them in the first place,’ confessed Anya during one of our late-night planning sessions, as we showered Byron Bay Cookie crumbs over our keyboards. At least when I ditched some of our food brands, we’d have fewer snacks in the office to tempt us.

  I knew what Anya meant. I did feel odd – though pretty smug – choosing whom to wave goodbye to after so many years chasing clients. Now the shoe was on the other foot, as I was sure many of my clients would be devastated when I gave them the boot. (Speaking of boots, I was keeping the Balenciaga account!)

  For the past three weeks, Anya and I had stayed behind in the office when the other Bees left for the day. A normal clocking-off time for my staff could be 9 pm, so Anya and I were practically sleeping under my desk. I felt like a teenager trying to choose her favourite schoolgirl crush as we wrote lists of pros and cons for the clients we were deciding between.

  Cocobella Coconut Water. Pro – Miranda Kerr loves it. Con – how many ways can you respin a coconut water story? Juicy Joo watches. Pro – the editors at the fashion mags loved the bright colours. Con – everyone who wore one got a nasty rash from the cheap plastic.

  ‘Add both of these to the reject list,’ I told Anya, who made a note on her laptop., ‘Can you pull up my diary? I need to arrange a face-to-face meeting with every brand we’re giving the shove.’ I wanted to tell them the news personally. I wasn’t going to wimp out with a Dear John email.

  ‘Your schedule is pretty packed over the next couple of weeks,’ replied Anya. ‘You don’t need time for eating and sleeping, do you?’

  She was only half joking. It was 10 pm and next to my keyboard was an untouched slice of toast with vegemite which I had planned to eat for breakfast. My schedule was even busier than usual, because as well as my usual duties, I had meetings arranged with numerous bloggers I wanted to sign up. I was eyeing off some veteran bloggers who still had life left in them, and the rising stars I could sign up early (and cheaply) just before their profiles took off.

  I wasn’t going to focus solely on fashion bloggers either – there were also the beauty bloggers, travel bloggers and health bloggers like Fitilicious (that body, those abs!). And let’s not forget the fashion ‘moggers’ (that’s male bloggers) like Front Row Suit and D’Marge, both of whom I had a major sartorial crush on. I also planned to sign up Jackson as my first interiors blogger. The Talent Hive would be a one-stop shop for brands who wanted to collaborate with an online megaphone. There’s no publicity like a blogger with 100,000+ followers on Instagram.

  ‘Jazzy, do you think you have enough . . . experience to focus on bloggers?’ asked Anya, who has been with Queen Bee PR since day one so has earned the right to be candid.

  I could understand her concern, as I’m not exactly technologically savvy. I have been known to refer to social media as ‘The Facebook’ during meetings with clients, and suspect that Fifi knows her way around my iPhone apps better than I do – although that may be because I sometimes use it as a replacement babysitter when I’m held up in a meeting (only as a last resort!).

  ‘My love, I don’t pretend to know it all,’ I told Anya. ‘But don’t sweat, sweetie. When I started Queen Bee, I didn’t have a clue about running a business. The secret is surrounding yourself with people who do know the answers.’ That’s why I planned to bring in Gen Y-ers who actually know what HTML stands for.

  I may not understand the workings of a computer but I am the master of faking it till you make it. During my career, I’d gone from selling burgers in a McDonald’s drive-through (I supersized more orders than any other employee) to selling million-dollar diamond rings to the wealthiest women in Sydney and then owning my own business. No way was I going to let something as minor as a lack of know-how stop me from jumping on the blogging bandwagon – and I planned to be in the driving seat. There was no time to waste, either, as this trend wouldn’t last forever.

  Here’s one thing you should know about me – I am obsessed with being the first to do everything, as I know from experience that you have to get in early and get out just as qu
ickly. The bloggers I planned to sign certainly had a shelf life, and I intended to chew them up and spit them out before they turned sour.

  3

  ‘That’s it. I cannot live like this anymore,’ I wailed. The last straw was when I leaned against a doorframe and got a stripe of ‘eggshell’ paint down the back of my new Josh Goot dress. I looked like a skunk . . . albeit a very fashionable one.

  And so I made a decision – the two of us were going to evacuate until the refurbishment of Casa De Lewis was over. When I say ‘the two of us’, I’m talking about myself and Fifi. When I’d cornered Michael in the kitchen one morning to tell him about our relocation, I thought he’d be relieved to escape the mayhem too, but I was mistaken.

  ‘I actually think I’ll stay here,’ he replied, pulling a bottle of Nudie juice from the fridge.

  Fifi is the only person in our household with a supply of solid food in the fridge. Since we moved into our house the week after we got married, neither Michael nor I had prepared a single meal in our fabulous kitchen. What? We’re busy people. Plus, have you seen the prices at Whole Foods? It’s just as cheap to eat out or get takeaway.

  ‘I don’t like the idea of a bunch of strangers having free rein in our house,’ added Michael after taking a gulp. ‘I think I should be here to keep an eye on them.’

  At that moment a builder walked past outside the kitchen window, narrowly missing smashing the glass with the wooden plank he was carrying. I had to admit Michael had a point. I swear I caught one builder eyeing off my Birkin collection as he measured up my walk-in wardrobe. Luckily, when it comes to bags, I only do oversized. Just try smuggling one of those bad boys out in your toolbox.

  Yet I was still slightly offended that Michael was happy for me to move out without him, even if our separation was only temporary. It’s not like we were ever together in our house during daylight hours; these days, one of us was always asleep by the time the other got back from the office.

  ‘Fine, whatever,’ I said. ‘If you need me you know where to find me.’ He’d clearly made up his mind and I wasn’t going to try to convince him.

  My husband raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, come on, Jasmine. Don’t carry on. You’re the one who’s doing a runner. And you’re the one who brought Armageddon on our house in the first place. I didn’t even think it needed to be changed – I was happy with the way it was to begin with.’

  Of course you were, I wanted to shout. You’re Mr Groundhog Day! This is the man who, once a year, bulk-buys twenty Tom Ford suits. He has also signed up to a subscription shirt service, which means that at the start of each month he is mailed thirty identical Dolce & Gabbana shirts. He has no issue with repetition (and, you could say, no imagination). His focus is on convenience. We are very different animals, but they do say opposites attract, right?

  Despite Michael digging in his heels, I was excited about our temporary relocation to a hotel. It might sound excessive, but it was cheaper than hiring another house for three months. And the only other alternative was staying put, sleeping in a hard hat and steel-capped boots. Not freaking likely!

  My favourite book when I was growing up was Eloise. Do you remember it? It was about a six-year-old girl who lives in the ‘room on the tippy top floor’ of the Plaza Hotel in New York, with her pug dog and a turtle. During my last trip to New York, I’d taken Fifi on a guided tour of the suite they’ve dedicated to the fictional character. She was so taken by it (okay, I was so taken by it) that Jackson was going to remodel Fifi’s bedroom at home based on this suite. It would have an Eloise-inspired palette of pink, black and gold leaf and feature a signature Plaza chandelier, with crystals shaped like candy canes. It was my own childhood fantasy, made possible thanks to my adult workaholism. Candy-cane crystals don’t come cheap!

  If we lived in the Big Apple, I’d have happily shelled out to stay at the Plaza for the estimated three to six months it would take to complete our reno. Luckily, Sydney has no shortage of luxury accommodation either, and I’d chosen the Four Seasons Hotel, overlooking the harbour with views of the Sydney Opera House. Yes, I would be joining the esteemed ranks of the ‘long-termers’ (that’s how hotel managers describe the guests who stay for a while, sometimes sticking around long enough to have suites named after them). My monochrome idol, Coco Chanel, lived in The Ritz in Paris for more than thirty years and even died in her suite, which she’d had redecorated with her own furnishings. Hopefully Jackson wouldn’t take that long to complete his interior masterpiece.

  ‘What an appropriate moving-day outfit you’re wearing, Jazzy Lou,’ said Michael with more than a touch of sarcasm as he watched Lulu and me struggling to load eight giant suitcases into the back of my Jeep. A courier from the hotel would also be arriving soon to collect a pile of storage boxes containing my accessories.

  I didn’t know why my husband was mocking my outfit. This Givenchy dress was sports luxe and so totally practical. Okay, I’d teamed it with strappy Valentino stilettos, but I was a pro when it came to heavy lifting in high heels. It’s all in a fashion publicist’s job description (along with an ability to sip champagne for hours on end at press events without getting drunk).

  Anyone who thinks you don’t do manual labour when you’re the head of your own company is very much mistaken. Okay, some bigwigs refuse to get their hands dirty but I’m not one of them. As a boss, I’d never ask my Bees to do any task I’m not prepared to do myself.

  Just yesterday, I had to schlep up all 1504 steps of the Sydney Tower carrying twenty-four gift bags because the elevator had malfunctioned. One of my newest clients – a local Cross Fit school – held a special class on the top deck. Imagine the health editors of every women’s magazine trussed in safety harnesses, trying to heave barbells above their heads. It was certainly memorable. The Queen Bee gift bags are legendary, and these ones weighed a ton, as they included a Lululemon yoga mat, a pair of Nike high-tops and a real coconut. I didn’t actually need to take part in the Cross Fit class, as bringing the bags up those stairs was workout enough.

  It’s all in a day’s work. I’m frequently found on my hands and knees unpacking boxes in the Queen Bee showroom (to the amazement of my accountant, who was confronted with the sight of my butt when he last came to visit). That’s why I love my Alice Temperley biker pants with the leather patches on the knees, as they give me more padding when I’m acting as a dogsbody.

  ‘Umm, you could always help, you know,’ I huffed at Michael as I heaved the cases into the car. ‘We’re schvieting over here.’ My husband was leaning on the bonnet of his silver Mercedes, scrolling through his iPad, wearing aviator sunglasses and a bored expression. He hadn’t offered to lend a hand even though we were obviously struggling.

  Poor Lulu was particularly red in the face, although that was mostly because she was wearing a thick Bottega Veneta sweater in thirty-two-degree heat. I had offered her a cooler tee but my assistant, a dedicated follower of fashion, and refused to get changed despite the blazing sunshine. ‘It’s limited edition and dip-dyed,’ Lulu argued. ‘I’m never taking this beauty off, like, ever!’

  Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m a good or bad influence on my protégées. I once fainted at Sydney Fashion Week when the air-conditioning broke during Ellery’s show and I refused to take off my Saint Laurent leather jacket. I’d been on a six-month waiting list for this baby and wasn’t going to waste a moment to show it off. Even when I was lying flat on my back on the floor that jacket looked great. I figure I pioneered ‘unconscious chic’.

  ‘How can size-zero clothes weigh so much?’ groaned Lulu as she crammed a hatbox into the boot of my car beside a plastic crate marked ‘flats’, which was significantly smaller than the crate marked ‘heels’ (there were also boxes marked ‘midi’, ‘sandals’ and ‘sneakers’).

  If I’m honest I may have overpacked a little. My Goyard luggage pile made Rachel Zoe look low maintenance. However, I maintain that my haul only contained the essentials I needed for my day-to-day life: Chanel balle
t flats in six colours, my collection of vintage Vogues for inspiration, and my travelling spray-tan booth – I haven’t seen my natural skin colour since about 1999. And in my defence, five out of the eight suitcases belonged to my toddler. Despite being less than a metre tall, this mini fashionista in the making did not pack lightly.

  Now that Fifi was nearing her second birthday, she was starting to show a personality as strong as her mother’s. While most toddlers have tantrums over what they want to eat or which dolly to take on a car ride, my daughter’s terrible twos revolved around her fashion sense. She had very firm ideas about what she would and wouldn’t be seen out in – and they changed faster than Belle Single’s boyfriends.

  On a good day, I found Fifi’s reluctance to wear any dress with spots or any shoes with a buckle (her current fashion no-nos) amusing. On a bad day, I was seriously concerned I was raising a diva to rival Jennifer Lopez. If she grazed her knee, even her bandaids had to be colour-coordinated with her clutch bag (yes, my daughter carried a clutch, containing a Juicy Tube lip gloss and one of my old credit cards).

  It was all my fault, really. It’s not like Fifi had stocked her walk-in closet out of her own pocket. I was clearly her enabler. I’m just thankful that Net-A-Porter is yet to launch their children’s website Petit-A-Porter because I think I’d be bankrupt by now. There are just sooo many treasures to buy for little girls. I have to admit that in the first eighteen months of Fifi’s life I may have gone a little OTT when it came to filling her wardrobe. If you’d looked at her bedroom, you’d have thought I’d given birth to triplets, as every corner was crammed with Gucci onesies and Dior sleeping bags.

  When I look back at some of the ‘must-have’ items I bought my baby daughter they seem ridiculous. I mean, what newborn baby can wear suede driving shoes? And matching driving gloves? I laugh when I look at some of the most expensive items I bought, as they were totally impractical. One puke or wee through a nappy and they were ruined. (And dry-clean-only baby clothes? Really?) I bought her a $2000 cashmere onesie that I now view as a work of art, rather than an item of clothing.