by Roxy Jacenko
The Australian designer had been in the hunt for another sort of egg – some glistening beads of the finest Sevruga caviar in downtown Moscow. It was a taste of the good life that would have come with his promised status as a superstar designer in eastern Europe. As everyone knew, when it came to spending, Russians were the new Arabs.
But now all those ‘big in Siberia’ promises had left him slightly shattered after the news had filtered out that Ivan Shavalik and the seriously unchic Diane Wilderstein’s partnership had fallen apart. Worse, Shavalik had accrued huge debts and was set to be thrown out of Australia. So Tod Spelsen’s dream of effortless world domination – and especially the chance of being big in Russia – had been too good to be true after all.
With his launch into Australia and New Zealand now heading rapidly towards countdown mode, Spelsen was desperate to hook up with the public relations agency which always delivered the goods, fast. Queen Bee had this reputation because I would always pull an all-nighter or do whatever it took to get the job done. Of course it was delicious that Tod Spelsen was now knocking on Queen Bee’s doors begging to be let back in, but our primary duty was to successfully launch reality star Chelsea Ware’s first CD in Australia.
The timing of it all was so tight – even though the wedding dress expedition had gone off without a hitch, we were due to leave LA in a few days before Chelsea so everything could be organised for her arrival. On the other hand, I never like to let anyone down – particularly a prestige brand like Tod Spelsen which had the potential to make us a key player in international markets, allowing us to launch even more big brands in Australia, where everyone from Zara to Top Shop was trying to colonise. Another plus with Tod’s label is that we would have every one of Sydney’s tribe of serious, full-of-themselves fashionistas trying to gain access to him, so we could maybe get them to look at some of our lesser known labels along the way. Tod would be our PR bargaining chip of the year.
You see, it didn’t just come down to money. Tod’s budget would probably come in somewhere under Chelsea Ware’s, but while Chelsea would give us a bit more cred when it came to celebrity, promoting Tod’s high-end beauty line meant that we would be taken more seriously in the marketplace. Soon after discovering the cupcakes, I received a call on my phone from Tod’s assistant, the dreaded Jenna Katz, who was so cold on the phone she would make the perfect door bitch at Pelicano. Despite the fact they now needed me, her voice still as icy as the Russian tundra. ‘Tod will see you at his office tomorrow at five pm,’ she informed me, sounding as if she couldn’t quite understand why I had been granted this special audience with him.
She was about to hang up on me, no doubt thinking it was mission accomplished, when I said breezily, ‘Sorry, that won’t work for me.’
Seconds passed. I could almost hear Jenna hyperventilating over the phone. For a moment I thought she was about to have a fit. Should I call 911?
‘What?’ she said finally, as if she hadn’t heard me correctly.
‘Yeah, no, I can’t make it,’ I said, deliberately sounding as Aussie as possible, just to drive her a little more cray-cray. Of course, this was extremely childish of me but I’d had to grovel to her in the past and had been rejected, so I did indulge myself with a little play acting since the roles did seem to have been reversed a tad. Besides, right now my intuition told me that if I pretended to be quite blasé about the whole deal, Tod was going to be even more desperate to sign on the dotted line.
‘I’ll be heading back to Australia soon with Chelsea Ware to help her launch her CD there and I’m afraid that this is seriously eating into my time in LA,’ I explained, feeling a little sorry for Jenna, who clearly wasn’t used to the man she idolised being turned down by anyone – let alone an Australian PR lass. I pressed on regardless. ‘In fact, the only time I could see Tod is around five o’clock today here at my hotel. Oh, and do thank him for the fabulous cupcakes. They were delicious.’
What sounded as if it might be a massive fault on the line was actually just Jenna sucking in her breath. ‘You can’t seriously imagine–’ she began, but I cut her off at the pass.
‘Sorry, Jenna, love to chat but I have to take a call from Australia,’ I lied. ‘Maybe we can all catch up next time?’ And with that I hung up with a great big smirk on my face. This was shaping up to be the best trip to LA ever.
I had already half decided that perhaps I could do an early breakfast meeting with Tod the next day, but I wanted to make Jenna work for that. All of her skills as a personal assistant who knew how to wangle a meeting would be called into question – and I wasn’t even a big-name celeb but just a lowly publicist from Sydney.
Now it was all about Instagramming some shots of the Sprinkle cupcake gift to my hundred thousand followers on that social network. (More people followed me than picked up a copy of Mode to read every month, but that was because I worked it.) I wondered whether it would be too OTT to snap Tod’s handwritten note as well? Perhaps I’d just show a little bit of it, leaving off his signature. If people really wanted to know who had sent them, they would have to do their detective work.
QueenBeePR – Nice receiving this very delicious gift of #Sprinklecupcakes at my #Peninsula hotel suite today. The personal handwritten note was a sweet touch #designertalent #AussieinLA #Aussiewood, I posted. Surely that would get them all talking – and dear old Fabian, who followed me with missionary zeal on Instagram, would be beside herself.
It had already been a huge day but there was just enough time left to go over the final details of Chelsea Ware’s arrival and media commitments in Sydney. Eric, her agent, had been emailing his amendments to the schedule all day. It turned out that due to some late filming commitments Chelsea would be flying into Sydney a couple of days later than we planned. But at least it gave us lots of time when I was back on the ground to get the paps prepped for her eventual arrival and to put some more arrangements in place. Unfortunately, Eric wouldn’t be able to make it down with her on this trip himself but he was sending along his loyal, brilliantly unassuming assistant, Louise. I was thankful about this. Louise would be Chelsea’s human buffer zone and official porter. She would be the one who would keep the reality star on track for all her appointments, no doubt saving me the trouble of hauling Chelsea’s arse out of Sydney’s best clubs so she could look all fresh for her early morning interviews. At least, I hoped that’s what the plan would be. I’d had enough of a tough time a couple of years earlier with Raven, another American pop starlet, who had hit Sydney as the pin-up girl for Vixenary lingerie but then spent most of her time in Kit and Kaboodle’s toilets barely able to keep her knickers on. Raven was only in Sydney for a few days but she’d managed to get around like the town bike – and one with a scooter motor.
‘I think I’m going to have to go out and buy another suitcase,’ Shelley announced as she walked into the sitting room of our Peninsula suite, her arms loaded with various garment bags but her sights set on the fast-diminishing tray of cupcakes.
‘Red velvet!’ she cried, as she put down the garment bags and twirled a cupcake theatrically towards her mouth, licking her lips lasciviously. ‘Mmm, my favourite.’ Momentarily satisfied, she returned to her predicament. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to fit this lot into my luggage.’
Somewhere in between trying to track down the perfect wedding shoe for me, Shelley had managed to clean up on Rodeo Drive. No doubt she’d been in too much of a rush to try anything on (she thought she was only slightly bigger than an LA size zero). Even I struggled to fit into her purchases most of the time, and I was rail thin, having been blessed with the Formula 1 of metabolisms – plus I never seem to be able to sit down long enough to finish a plate.
‘Uh-uh, you’re not going to take over one of my bags,’ I warned her as I noticed her eyeing off my largest suitcase, which looked invitingly empty. But this was only because I hadn’t started to pack it yet.
With Shelley happily heading off on yet another shopping expedition on the prete
xt of needing to find a bigger suitcase (she absolutely hated exercise but when it came to shopping, she suddenly found the stamina that was almost Olympian), I went through my emails again. Most were from Lulu advising me about which clients wanted Queen Bee to look after them again following the apparent demise of Diane Wilderstein’s business. There was a grim missive by a certain oily male publicist, Sam Hevner, who was urgently tracking down some of his client’s tennis gear which had been sent to the Queen Bee office by mistake after it had been used on a special celebrity tennis day we had organised for one of our soft-drink clients. The only problem was that it had been sent several months ago, and when no one came to pick it up the gear had been earmarked to go to charity. Now Sam was furious, claiming that if it was not immediately returned we would be charged the full price of all the garments and sued by their client. This was ridiculous: it was simply not our responsibility to sort out another PR company’s delivery issues. Eventually Lulu had been able to track down most of the garments but Sam wasn’t pleased that he’d have to send a courier to pick them up. This petty-mindedness was undoubtedly one of the reasons why the Sam Hevner agency has remained so small. Plus the fact that Hevner had been so sleazy in his prime that he had basically hit on everyone with a pulse.
Meanwhile my buddy, Luke Jefferson, wanted to interview me about Queen Bee’s dealings with the Russians. But it was far too early to go into the ins and outs of why our deal had fallen through – besides, when it came to Diane Wilderstein, anything could still happen.
I had hardly noticed how much time had passed when I received a call from reception. Answering quite casually, I thought it would probably be someone wanting to know when they could clean the room or return the laundry. I almost dropped the receiver when the front desk informed me that I had a visitor downstairs – a Mr Tod Spelsen. ‘Shit!’ I yelled before I could stop myself. ‘Tell him I’ll be right down.’
Probably the last thing I had expected was that Tod would obey my directive to meet at my hotel. At the back of my mind I had been gearing myself up for another call from poor Jenna Katz, insisting I hotfoot it to Tod’s headquarters first thing in the morning. But to actually have him come to me was beyond what I had thought possible.
And what the hell was I wearing? It should have been something by Tod himself, but I was wearing my favourite outfit of skinny jeans, a Balenciaga tee, Balmain blazer and Alaïa heels. There really wasn’t time to change, so I just scooped up my iPad and keyboard, threw it into a Chanel pouch and headed out the door.
Tod was sitting with his back to me as I walked into The Peninsula’s drawing room, and this time his dark curls had been contained in a ponytail so prissy looking it would have put Karl Lagerfeld’s to shame. But there was nothing superior about the look on Tod’s face when he turned and saw me. He looked embarrassed that he’d had to come to me cap in hand.
‘I’ve already ordered tea for two,’ he said after I lowered myself into a chair opposite him. ‘This hotel has some of the rare Da Hong Pao tea available at the moment and I couldn’t pass it up.’
Fortunately I had heard of Da Hong Pao tea, having read about it in some airline magazine (it was said to be the most expensive blend of Chinese tea in the world), but I wasn’t about to admit to Tod Spelsen that this was as close as I had got to it. I would have to watch him to see whether the correct etiquette was to take it straight.
‘We seem to have had a missed communication,’ he said, adjusting the sleeve of what looked suspiciously like a Gucci leather jacket. Tod didn’t yet design his own collection for men, but surely it could only be a matter of time.
I nodded – best not to say too much at this point, just let him do the talking. I had very early learnt the value of silence: it made most people feel uncomfortable and they would rush to say anything to fill in the space. It was a power play.
‘Look, I stuffed up,’ he suddenly blurted out. ‘I really liked all of your suggestions for our launch back home but I’m afraid that I had to give the account to Wilderstein PR because it was going to be our gateway into Russia.’
I was taken aback. Before now I had encountered cool Tod, gushy Tod and businesslike Tod, but this celebrated designer contritely admitting to me that he had taken the wrong path was completely unexpected.
I glanced at his face and noticed he was making full eye contact with me, no doubt confident that once he gave anyone his undivided attention, whatever he wanted was pretty much a done deal. And I had to admit I was hardly immune. I was almost having an out-of-body experience. Here was Tod Spelsen, one of the world’s hottest fashion designers, sitting across from me at The Peninsula Hotel in LA, begging me to take his account. I wouldn’t dare come up with a scenario like that in my dreams in case I was laughed at by the sleep fairy.
I found myself nodding, almost as though my body had broken away from my brain and was making all the decisions for itself. After all, I admired his candour; it was very Australian of him to come clean and explain his actions when most people in the US would never admit to fucking up. I did want to help him, but it was still going to take some doing because: a) I was already committed to Chelsea Ware’s CD launch; b) I had Fifi, whom I was missing like mad, to look after; and c) there was that smallish project of my forthcoming wedding to plan – with all this work I was definitely not giving myself enough time to be a bridezilla.
I noticed that Tod was taking something out of his Louis Vuitton Keepall. He handled the tissue-wrapped box as delicately as if it contained pieces of fine china.
‘This is part of the beauty collection we’ll be launching worldwide in just a few weeks,’ he said, handing over the box. ‘I’ve selected the products which would be best for your skin and your colouring and I’d like you to try them. But it’s not for public consumption,’ he cautioned. ‘Now, about the launch itself – I wanted the setting to say Sydney, because we are going to video it and link it to other international launches. What do you think of having it at the Opera House?’
Absolute nightmare, was what I really thought. The Sydney Opera House is not the sort of place you cruise into at the last moment – it’s one of the most in-demand buildings in Sydney. And, besides, Lulu and I had already come up with an astonishing venue. It just didn’t seem like the perfect moment to push him on it. More to placate him than anything else, I found myself saying, ‘Brilliant. I’ll see if I can work something out, although the Opera House is pretty booked out except for some sections of the forecourt which unfortunately do attract a lot of wind.’
Nearly an hour and several cups of Da Hong Pao tea later, we had come up with a plan, one I knew would be a masterstroke in itself because basically I sold him on my original idea but let him think that he had come up with most of it himself. Clutching my Spelsen swag – the beauty products that Tod wanted me to try – I headed back to my room, which now resembled one of the shops on West Hollywood’s hippest shopping boulevard, with all Shelley’s recent purchases stacked up. Shelley herself was slumped in an armchair staring warily at it. I shared her concern. She probably wouldn’t be able to get it all into her bags and out the door without a team of sherpas to help her along. In fact, we needed two sherpa teams because we still had to figure out a way of transporting the wedding dress through US Security and onto the plane. We’d realised it was going to be a logistical nightmare when we hadn’t even been able to get it in the car.
I had such an information overload from my meeting that I couldn’t even face reviewing all her new purchases with her and making the appropriate squeals of joy. ‘I’m beat,’ I announced to Shelley and the world in general. ‘Let’s go get something to eat and tackle the packing and the plotting later.’
Shelley almost leapt from her chair at the suggestion. ‘I’m starving, the only thing I’ve had to eat since breakfast are all those Sparkle cupcakes – and quite frankly, if I eat another one of those I’ll puke. I think I’m over-Sparkled.’ Of course, Shelley clearly had food amnesia. She had conveniently forgotten ab
out breakfast and about our oyster spread at the Polo Lounge where she had singlehandedly dismantled the bread basket, but I wasn’t about to take her through it all again.
‘There’s only one place for it – let’s head to Cecconi’s.’
Cecconi’s in West Hollywood is that rarest of destinations, a hot spot that is actually nurturing. Just the place for Shelley and me to unwind after yet another epic day in LA. The shimmer of Cecconi’s fairy lights outside and the odd glint of a camera lens as the paparazzi lay in wait out the front was enough to make me feel a bit reckless, a little excited by the possibilities of what lay ahead. Not to mention receiving a case of the rubber neck from always spinning around to see who or what had just come in. Simon Cowell is a regular here and if he came in tonight with his baby mamma, Lauren Silverman, well my visit to Cecconi’s would be a highlight of the year. And if I could somehow get an Instagram of me with the couple – boom! Gossip column heaven. No wonder all the stars love Cecconi’s – it’s infused with a golden light that makes everyone look as though they’re up to that stage post-facial where your skin is glowing and dewy.
‘Unfortunately we haven’t booked,’ I said in my best Australian drawl to the woman who was perched at a little stand by the door. ‘We just flew in a couple of hours ago, put our bags down and said, “Stone the crows, let’s have dinner at Cecconi’s.”’
Shelley pummelled me on the back, almost shrieking with laughter, but I pretended not to notice. The Aussie accent and the news that you have just flown in is guaranteed to open some doors in LA. And there’s no such thing as being too OTT Aussie – not when you have Sam Worthington and Hugh Jackman running around banging it on as if they had just stepped off the set of The Man from Snowy Bloody River or something.
‘Certainly, ladies. Welcome to Cecconi’s. Please come this way,’ she beckoned for us to enter and delivered us to yet another stunning looking server, who led us to a table, which was luckily in eye view of the bar and the entrance. Before Shelley could even think of plonking herself down on the more ‘scenic’ of the two seats, I’d already taken it and accepted a menu.
