by Roxy Jacenko
For shopoholic Shelley, a trip to LA was a lifeline because she had been away from her favourite stores for far too long. She had started waking in a sweat in the middle of the night murmuring ‘Giorgio Armani, Chanel, Barneys, Neiman’s’. This trip to LA was her equivalent of a pilgrimage to mecca (not the beauty stores but the holy site). Shelley and I had been good buddies ever since we had attended the same private school and had repeatedly found ourselves in trouble. She was bright, fearless and a couple of clothing sizes ahead of her classmates. Brought up in a single parent family, her mum was particularly lenient but she sadly passed away just before Shelley’s eighteenth birthday. This left Shelley with her own home and a big, fat inheritance, so now she was a Trustafarian who dabbled in property development. Her main occupation, which she playfully noted on Visa documentation was ‘shopper’. But Shell hated to be seen in the same outfit twice, which was great for me because she continually gifted them to me along with the ones that she never wore. This was because she suffered from an unfortunate case of body dysmorphia – she was a gorgeous size four but in her mind, she was a zero.
‘Sweetie, I can’t believe that we are finally having a girls’ day out,’ she cried down the line, when I told her about the LA trip. ‘You owe me so many of these that we’ll be gone for around a month, right?’
‘Wrong, less than a week,’ I responded with a big grin on my face. Shelley had a way of making everything seem like an hilarious escapade. She was like a Darren Star version of a fairy godmother. In fact the Sex and the City creators could build an entire mini-series around my mate, Shell – and it was sure to be a winner.
Fifi was far too tiny to come on this escapade with us but she would be well taken care of at home by Anna and her two grandmothers, along with Michael before he went back to Asia on business.
Michael wasn’t too excited about it but, since he couldn’t really come shopping with me for a wedding dress and he had to be in Beijing for meetings, he accepted it – although the thought of my travelling companion made him a bit nervous. ‘You’re taking Shelley,’ he pointed out, ‘and you know how you two love to party.’
‘Not anymore,’ I said sternly. ‘I’m a mother now.’
My trip to LA would also be the perfect opportunity to present our proposal to Tod. I was genuinely excited by the idea of launching Spelt, which was fast becoming one of the hottest labels in the world. Another Australian great, design king Marc Newson, had created the deeply sexy packaging for Spelt’s beauty lines, and it was well on its way to becoming a cosmetic icon, taken up by the top echelon of fashion bloggers and influencers. We had already started to plan the launch into Australia, which would include staging a fashion show like no other at a top-secret and controversial venue. Sydney’s blasé fashion set wouldn’t know what had hit them. They would be sitting on the edge of their seats – the setting would be so startling that, at least for the first few minutes, everyone would totally forget to reach for their iPhones. Then Instagram would go into meltdown. I wanted to stage the entire show around Rubica, the Australian model of the moment, who was currently working in Paris. At the show’s finale, Amazonian male and female models dressed only in glistening body paint would distribute Marc Newson-designed cosmetic satchels to the crowd. This would be the show that everyone would talk about for the rest of the year, and I was hoping to do it at a reasonable budget. Perhaps many of the event and production people would be so taken with being a part of the Spelt launch that they would offer their services at a greatly reduced price. The whole launch had been so well planned that I hoped to lay out everything in front of Tod and his advisers, including the shots of the location, the models and even the guest lists for the launch. It was like a true military exercise in the war against fashion boredom, and I was very proud of it.
But when the call finally came through from LA, let’s just say it wasn’t the one that I was expecting. Lulu answered, and I could tell immediately from the frown on her face that something was up.
‘You had better tell Ms Lewis that yourself,’ she said, shortly after taking the call, and handed the receiver to me.
‘Hello? Yes, this is Jasmine Lewis,’ I confirmed to the dreaded Jenna Katz, Tod Spelsen ’s humourless American PA. ‘Are you calling to confirm our meeting?’
There was a silence on the line – the kind of vacuum that can just suck all the energy out of you and leave you with a sense of foreboding.
‘I’m afraid not, Ms Lewis. Tod has asked me to say thank you for your efforts but he has now decided to go with another Sydney publicity company. However, he would like to keep all of your details on file and, should another opportunity come up, Queen Bee will be the first one he calls.’
I swallowed hard. ‘Excuse me, what?’ I was flabbergasted. I glanced at Lulu, who looked sick. What could have influenced Tod to make such a sudden decision? Had news of Ella Von Scandale’s ruined white carpet reached LA? Surely not.
‘Just to clarify the situation, Tod is using someone else,’ said Jenna Katz who seemed to be enjoying her power in imparting such devastating news.
‘Who is it?’ I blurted out.
Jenna probably shouldn’t have told me but apparently she couldn’t help herself. ‘Wilderstein Public Relations,’ she announced with a hint of satisfaction.
WTF? Lulu looked as though she was about to burst into tears as I put down the receiver, having sweetly thanked Jenna for taking the time to make the call. (There was no way I was going to give her the satisfaction of knowing that she had rocked my world.)
What inducements could Diane Wilderstein have offered the uber-stylish Tod Spelsen to get him over the line? Surely she and Ivan did not have what it takes to pull off such an important launch. What would be their big idea: a lunch for the beauty and fashion editors at Rockpool Bar and Grill? Diane’s time of being a creative powerhouse were long gone.
‘I mean, has he even Googled her?’ I asked as Lulu nodded her head in wonderment. ‘Diane’s still wearing her original acid brights from the eighties. She doesn’t understand that fashion has already moved full circle since then.’
What to do?
In times of great calamity, it pays to listen to your inner GPS, and right now the voice inside my head was telling me to go for it anyway. I had nothing to lose by continuing with my plans to fly to LA. There was always the possibility that if I could get in to see Tod and personally show him Queen Bee’s impressive blueprint for his launch, he would come to his senses. I just had to hope that he didn’t steal any of our ideas and give them to Diane Wilderstein. But surely he had only got as far as he had in life by acting with some integrity? And, besides, doing something like that would just be bad karma.
Meanwhile, I would be able to buy my wedding gown and take a well deserved breather from all the drama and intrigue of the Sydney fashion industry. Short of becoming a Tibetan monk and hiding out in a remote cave (which my Bubbe would basically kill me for), a trip to LA on a shopping expedition for a wedding gown was pretty much it. In the days before our departure, the details of the deal came through on the PR grapevine. Tod Spelsen had signed up Diane Wilderstein because Ivan had had vowed to get the American luxury line into the lucrative Russian market (which had become the promised land for anyone with a luxury product to sell).
The kicker was that Tod would have to hand over all the international PR contracts to Wilderstein PR (well, good luck with that). I was all for Diane taking the Shavaliks off my hands, but not one of my exciting, potential clients as well. It was a good thing that I liked a challenge. I could get a new pitch together in the time it took for Diane to return to the office from one of her signature boozy lunches.
On the eve of my departure to the US, there was even more bad news. We lost two more accounts to Diane, Polar Sunglasses and Fizzy Green Tea. She was welcome to them, because their budgets were so low that pretty much all Queen Bee could do for them was to add them as products in A-list goodie bags. Unfortunately, the chances of an A-lister even
putting on a pair of Polars, let alone being snapped in them in public, were roughly the same as Kyle Sandilands becoming the next ambassador for Bonds undies. Polars were about $300 too cheap and had no designer hook up. Sometimes clients presented themselves to Queen Bee and expected us to perform miracles for them but then they refused to take our advice, which was pretty much like insisting on the buffet breakfast option at a restaurant and then just eating the toast.
9
The Four Seasons Hotel on Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills, was one of the places I stayed in LA when The Peninsula had no rooms left. Let everyone else battle with the dim lighting at the SLS, the too-cool-for-school rooms at the Mondrian and, of course, the distressed boho style of the Chateau Marmont, I liked the Four Seasons’ old-style glamour. Plus it was a favourite of the visiting stars, with most of the international film junkets taking place within the property. I even loved the smell of the Four Seasons, especially when I walked into the lobby and took in the massive floral displays in all of the public rooms; on top of that, every suite had Bvlgari fragrances.
Once we were all settled and unpacked, with Shelley in the adjoining room to mine, it was time to try and talk some sense into Tod Spelsen. It was all very well being hooked into the Russian market, but did Tod really want to owe his success to the mafia through his new besties Ivan and Svetlana. It was a tricky predicament for everyone including me, because if I leaked stories to the media about their troubles with Immigration, I risked them coming after me. Diane had been supposed to keep them busy so they wouldn’t bother about Queen Bee, but not so frenetic that they decimated our business. I wondered how I could delicately convey some of the potential danger to Tod. But then I also wondered how I was going to get to Tod at all with his energetic minder, Jenna Katz, ready to pounce on any unauthorised callers.
I organised with the Four Seasons concierge, Rick, to send a beautiful floral arrangement in Tod Spelsen’s signature colours of cream and mint with an invitation to meet at the hotel for a coffee. I wrote the short note to him myself in Mont Blanc fountain pen, because style is of course everything when communicating with a design star. On the note, I advised him that I would call later to arrange a time and was very much looking forward to catching up.
So far, so good. In the meantime, I also asked the hotel to organise a Mercedes convertible for Shelley and me to rent so that we could go bridal shopping much faster.
‘And make sure it has a big trunk,’ Shelley shouted when I was on the phone to the front desk, ‘because I plan to give my black Amex such a workout, I might almost wear it out.’
This sounded so ominous that I wondered whether Rodeo Drive might be prepared for what was about to hit it. According to Shelley, I should have hired a pantechnicon instead of a Merc convertible but, hell, we could always have her shopping delivered to the hotel if we couldn’t fit it in our ride.
Waiting around for a meeting has never been my strong point. I prefer to dive straight in, but the timing on this one had to be perfect – I wanted to give Tod enough time to be wowed by the flowers and digest the news that I had flown in to see him in spite of the fact that he’d turned us down. He had to be flattered by that, right?
Lulu had also lined up a meeting for me with Rufus, a boutique talent agency in Beverly Hills, who were interested in hooking up with an Australian PR company, project by project. The whisper was that global reality star Chelsea Ware, who plays Kitty, the sexsational tampon heiress from the hit series The Bel Air Life, was going to be releasing her first album and was embarking on a worldwide publicity tour. I was such a fan of The Bel Air Life – best described as Sex and the City meets posh Bel Air – that I wanted to take a tour of the places where it was shot.
The man I was meeting at Rufus was Eric Lacey, and a quick check on his Facebook and Twitter postings suggested that he was not only out every night but at several different upscale events with his celebrity clients in the space of just a few hours. LA is a town where appearances are paramount, so I decided that the meeting called for a brand-new outfit. When our car finally arrived, Shelley and I headed straight to Barneys. We didn’t even have to ask directions; the car almost drove itself to Wilshire Boulevard.
‘I fucking love LA,’ Shelley sang out as the warm wind lifted her hair back off her shoulders. ‘Once we have done our first round of shopping, we are taking this little baby and heading down Sunset Boulevard because I won’t really believe that I am here until I have sunk my first voddie cocktail at Skybar. And they better have that one with acai berries because I am going to be extra healthy this trip, I promise.’
‘Of course,’ I said as I swung the car into Barneys’ service area, nearly wiping out an entire family of Japanese shoppers with my action. ‘You’ve got to look great in your bridesmaid gown.’
‘Shit, I’m glad you reminded me,’ said Shelley, smacking her thighs. ‘Maybe I’ll go on the voddie cocktail diet. Someone here is sure to have written a book about it.’
Several hours later, we returned to the hotel, ridiculously elated over our purchases, which meant that we had basically ransacked Barneys’ designer floors. Pity that the news when I eventually called Tod Spelsen was so dire. Jenna primly informed me that yes, he had received the flowers thank you very much, but he felt there was no point in seeing me at this time.
So that was that. I was sure if I could get past Tod’s guard dog Jenna and speak to the designer directly I could talk him into at least seeing me. This probably meant calling first thing in the morning or late in the evening after she went home, because during the rest of the day she seemed to have control of his mobile phone. Blame it on jet lag, but I almost felt like bursting into tears at the rejection, and I couldn’t call Michael because he was on his way to Beijing. Some familiar feelings of inferiority threatened to overcome me. Who was I kidding, I told myself, I’m not cut out for PR. I’m just not smart enough. The thing about those kinds of feelings is that they never last, especially not with Shelley around. No sooner had I started moping about my inability to do my job than she was dialling up the craziest assortment of dishes from room service, while also pleading with them to procure her some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as there were none in the mini bar.
The main problem was that both of us were feeling jet lagged, so frazzled that we were in danger of falling asleep before the room service waiter had even knocked on the door. All I remember was that some time in the early hours of the morning I woke up to the scent of transfats from our all-American feast of club sandwiches, burgers and fries (so much for Shelley’s vow to eat healthy), much of it left uneaten. I managed to roll the trolley out into the hallway, drank a bottle of water and went straight back to sleep. By the time I woke up again, I was back to my upbeat self.
The Rufus agency turned out to be right opposite the Neiman Marcus and Saks department stores in Beverly Hills, almost where we were shopping yesterday, which was handy for Shelley, who could resume thrashing the plastic while I went to meet with the very social Eric Lacey.
I was a little concerned at first to find that Rufus had its own building, because I had thought the agency was a little more niche than that. But in my Ksubi skirt, mixed with a Josh Goot print tee and a Converse high-top, I was pretty sure I had nailed the LA look, which was really the Bondi hipster look to the power of six.
Eric, a tall, red-haired thirty-something man in a sleek Zegna suit and Hermès tie, came to meet me himself in Rufus’s chic reception area and almost bowled me over with the strength of the cologne he was wearing. The heavy fragrance seemed to suck all of the oxygen out of the space, but I recovered enough to be ushered into a boardroom where a girl in a T-shirt and denim skirt introduced herself as his assistant, Louise. She looked fresh-faced as if she’d just left college, and she had the kind of style to suggest that she was far too busy and important to think about fashion. I had been expecting that everyone from Rufus would look as though they belonged on the set of Entourage.
Once we had done with the plea
santries, Eric fixed me with his intense blue eyes (did he wear special contacts? I wondered). ‘We’ve seen a lot of the work you’ve done,’ he announced, ‘and I think you could be just the person to launch this particular reality star down under. Now, have you ever heard of Chelsea Ware?’
So it was true? Lulu’s intel was spot on as usual.
‘Have I? She’s practically the only reason I watch The Bel Air Life,’ I responded. ‘Oh my God, she’s fantastic!’
A beaming Eric outlined the proposal, which would include Chelsea’s trip to Australia next month to launch her first single. There would be a proper launch party with all of the young A-listers in attendance and as many TV and radio spots as we could muster. It was the kind of project that Queen Bee would revel in. ‘But there’s just one thing,’ Eric continued. ‘Even before we sit down to crunch numbers on it all, Chelsea will want to meet you. She needs to know that your chakras are all, ahem, aligned.’
Of course, she does, I thought. Chelsea did not want to have dozens of hapless PR interns slaving away on her behalf. She needed to know that I was basically not a bitch. I was certainly not any tougher than anyone else who headed up their own company, but I had my bad days that’s for sure. And as for seeing a more spiritual side of life, I just didn’t have time at the moment to fit it into my schedule – along with the emergency spray tans, the blow dries and the fortnightly eyelash job. Plus I had Fifi and Michael to look after; I just didn’t have time to lurk around in the third dimension, looking for the inner me. I noticed that Eric and Louise were studying my face, probably to see whether I could handle a full-blown Californian reality star. Or maybe they were checking whether my chakras looked dodgy. Who knows, maybe they scanned them on the way in? I wondered how much time it would take to get an emergency chakra workout and where the hell they might do that in this town. I was pretty sure it wasn’t on the spa menu at the Four Seasons. Hell, when it came to treatments in LA, the only specialist I wanted to see was the Botox doctor to the stars in Santa Monica. I was sure that this trip had already given me extra expression lines. At this rate I was going to look like a forty-year-old by the time I touched down in Sydney again.
