by Jeanne Beker
“There’s nothing about the whole experience that’s normal or natural, or anything that’s very fun about it for me, except the few minutes of the show,” confided Ashley. “I think that’s why we don’t go to very many shows, based on that other, negative side,” she explained.
It suddenly became crystal clear to me why the twins never utter a word to the reporters who clamour after them in those preposterous situations. I was a little ashamed of myself for ever thinking that fame and fortune had corrupted them. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I gave them each a big hug, and they asked me to say hi to Bekky and Joey for them. I told them that I most certainly would, and that I would be looking forward to seeing them out there in the trenches. If they didn’t acknowledge me, I’d totally understand why.
ENDINGS
In fashion, as in life, change is the only constant. It’s an exhilarating concept, one that always keeps me on my toes, ready for the next big wave—whatever that may be. Sometimes, though, it makes for heart-rending situations, and the pain of letting go is something you never get used to. Over the past twenty-five years, the fashion world has lost some incredible people—a few of whom I had managed to make a profound personal connection with. Losing these bright lights certainly makes the world a darker place. It also makes me realize just how fleeting everything is, and how blessed I have been to have known such extraordinary individuals.
MISTRESS OF ILLUSION
THE WORLD is filled with illusions, especially in the fashion arena, where so much importance is placed on image and appearances, and things are so often not what they seem to be. One of fashion’s most fearless and flamboyant icons, the late Isabella Blow, was also one of the saddest and most tragic figures I’ve ever encountered. As revered as her sharp eye for fashion talent was—she discovered the brilliant Irish milliner Philip Treacy and the inimitable Alexander McQueen, as well as the models Sophie Dahl and Stella Tennant—and as much of an inspiration as she was to designers, acting as a muse to several, this ultra-talented fashion editor was terrifyingly insecure and shockingly vulnerable.
For years, I had watched Blow at fashion shows, always making a grand entrance, often clad in wildly eccentric and expensive designer gear. One afternoon, she dazzled photographers as she swept across a Paris courtyard in an outlandishly dramatic creation from a young Japanese designer that looked as though it was made from ballooning plastic garbage bags. I asked her what had inspired her to wear it. “’Cause you think it’s going to be some fun for the day,” she told me matter-of-factly. A seasoned stylist, she was often backstage, helping a favourite designer with last-minute details or just being there for moral support. Or she’d be sitting front row centre, hobnobbing with all the hip fashion cognoscenti, dressed to the nines, frequently in amazing vintage clothing or original couture pieces that had been designed especially for her. A fashion show just didn’t seem worthwhile unless “Issie” was in the house.
It never occurred to me that she would be an especially friendly person. She just seemed a little too eccentric, offbeat, and intimidating to be personable too. But it was Issie who first approached me, backstage at a Philip Treacy show, complimenting me on the pink eye shadow I was wearing. Our next little chat came just after McQueen had shown his first Givenchy collection in 1997. She must have known that I had a special relationship with McQueen, and she was sympathetic to the preposterous situation in which he was finding himself: a true artiste having to follow the dictates of a big commercial fashion house. “The artistry has totally gone out of fashion!” she wailed at the end of McQueen’s Givenchy debut. McQueen himself told American Vogue later that year that he knew the collection was “crap.” But by the end of his tenure at Givenchy, three years later, he had certainly redeemed himself. Still, Issie seemed to see the writing on the wall: Fashion had become big business, and the days of unbridled artistic expression, with no regard for commercial viability, might very well be numbered. “Globalization has destroyed the designers,” she declared.
In the years that followed, I would regularly run into Issie at Paris shows, and I always took delight in her unabashed critiques. There were times when she was so totally unimpressed by a collection, however, that she wouldn’t comment at all. But even getting turned down by Issie made for good TV. We were such big fans, we just wanted her on our show, in all her sartorial splendour, whether she gave us a sound bite or not.
For our spring 2004 issue of FQ, we decided to go with an “Artistry in Fashion” theme, and I felt that the perfect designer item to feature on the cover was a Philip Treacy hat. I called Philip, who said he would be delighted to participate and suggested we use as a model his and Issie’s newest discovery, twenty-one-year-old Lady Eloise Anson. The daughter of the society photographer Lord Lichfield, niece of the Duke of Westminster, and goddaughter of Princess Anne, Anson was destined to become London’s new “It girl.” Philip also suggested that Issie be on hand to help style the shoot. We were thrilled! I had wanted to do a proper sit-down interview with her for some time now and figured this would be the perfect opportunity.
When my crew and I arrived at the studio for our cover shoot, Philip apologized and said that Issie couldn’t be there—she was off doing her own editorial shoot for Tatler magazine, for which she was fashion director. I asked if I could take my crew to where she was shooting and grab something with her there. Philip gave Issie a call, and she said we could drop by anytime. So once our cover shoot with Lady Eloise was done, my cameraman and I scooted over to the Tatler shoot. We met Issie in a large trailer filled with models and clothes. The pictures were being taken right out on the street.
Issie was dressed in a white mink coat that set off her signature red lips. She was sitting in the trailer with a young man—an aspiring photographer—whom she introduced as the son of the rock star Bryan Ferry. She was affable, but confessed right off the bat that she was feeling out of sorts, quite depressed, actually. She told me that so many of the people she had discovered—people she had helped promote— were abandoning her. She had also recently lost her consultancy gig with Swarovski. She had been working with the Austrian crystal company for quite a while, helping team them up with designers and inspiring designers to use crystals in their collections. But now that Swarovski had established themselves, they had no need for Issie’s services anymore. “That really represented a lot of my income,” she confided. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” I was surprised to think that this iconic figure, who was so extraordinarily well connected and so talented, was freaked out about her finances. I tried to make her feel better, telling her that she was so respected that she would surely find more work to make up for what she had lost. But she kept saying that she was overwhelmed and everybody was abandoning her.
She asked me if I had kids. I told her about my two girls. “You’re so lucky!” she said. “I wish I had children.” Then she said again how depressed she was. I told her I had gone through a bout of depression a few years before, when my marriage ended, but happily had come out of it.
“How?” she asked, with an air of desperation.
“You’ve just got to hold on to your sense of yourself. Believe in yourself. Your situation will change. Things will get better. You have to have faith,” I told her. I added that I had written a book in which I described some of what I had gone through. I said I would be happy to send her a copy.
“Oh, yes, please do!” she said. “I would love to read it!”
So the next day, I sent her Jeanne Unbottled: Adventures in High Style, feeling both proud that Issie wanted to read it and a little insecure that my humble fashion adventures would seem pretty measly compared to hers.
A couple of months later, I ran into Issie at a show in Paris. She was dressed elegantly in a chic, edgy suit and dynamite stilettos—the very picture of haute style.
“I absolutely loved your book!” she said. “Thanks so much for sending it.”
I asked her if she was feeling any better.<
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“Oh, no. I’m worse. Totally depressed. And my marriage is falling apart. I should probably just end it all now. No one would even care.”
“Don’t say that!” I said, trying to comfort her. “You always look amazing. You’re an inspiration to all of us! We need you in this world!”
She looked at me incredulously and told me how horrid she felt she looked. She confided that she had lost her drive. “You don’t get paid for this, you know … And the boys have drained Mummy.”
I gathered she was referring to those designers who she felt didn’t need her anymore. My heart went out to her. There she was: a bona fide fashion icon, flitting about the Paris shows, hobnobbing with all the A-listers, looking like the total queen of the scene. Who could have known that she was so torn up inside, gasping for breath and doubting herself every step of the way?
About a year later, in 2005, shortly after Kate Moss was featured doing cocaine on the cover of London’s Daily Mirror, we did a story on drug use in the fashion industry, and I questioned a variety of movers and shakers about the subject at Paris Fashion Week. When I asked Issie, she readily admitted that she needed medication just to be able to cope with everything that was going on around her, and she asserted that most people in her situation would as well. I cringed at her painfully truthful response.
The next year, Issie was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. With her celebrity status on the wane, her depression escalated, and she attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Later that year, she jumped off the Hammersmith Flyover Bridge, breaking both her ankles. I remember talking to Philip Treacy, who told me that Issie was despondent, and that most of her friends had indeed abandoned her. In 2007, she tried to take her life several times again, eventually succeeding by drinking a bottle of weedkiller. She was forty-eight years old. My heart sank when I heard the news. I knew the scene would never be the same to me again.
“She’s the spice in the stew,” the designer Michael Kors once told me. Issie’s relentless passion for fashion ran deep, and her philosophy will always resonate with me. “It’s about emotions,” she once reflected. “It’s about love.”
BITTERSWEET
PURE, UNADULTERATED GLAMOUR is something I have always craved: to be swept away, to see the world through rose-coloured glasses, to be titillated by beauty and excited by life’s endless possibilities. This brand of glamour happily comes my way quite often, though my appetite for it is never completely satisfied. But glamour at its most alluring isn’t necessarily black and white. Sometimes, glamour possesses a contradictory nature—a kind of bittersweet taste that speaks of heart, struggle, and passion. And perhaps that is why, for me, the personification of true glamour has always been the great Valentino Garavani.
Valentino, who retired to much fanfare in 2008, remains one of the kindest and classiest gentlemen I have ever met. I often ran into him backstage, sometimes just minutes before showtime, as he was tending to some last-minute detail. He always took the time to say hello, and often would stop what he was doing, if only for a few moments, to talk about what he was up to or ask me what I thought of the clothes hanging on the backstage racks. Sometimes, his business partner, Giancarlo Giametti—another extraordinarily kind and caring individual—would get a little frustrated as he tried to get Valentino back on track so the show could get under way. But as tense as things would sometimes get at his shows—as they do at all shows—Valentino never ignored me. He always indulged me and my TV camera, if only for a few fleeting moments.
I first met Valentino in the late 1980s. He came to Toronto for a fragrance launch, and I found him to be the personification of elegance and charm. The next year, I visited him at his Rome atelier, and once again was taken with how personable and warm he was. We talked about how confusing the times were for women, in terms of style. Never before had they been offered so many options, and Valentino was sensitive to their dilemmas. “Often today, a woman doesn’t know on which foot to dance,” he said. That vivid image has stayed with me.
As the years passed, I had the pleasure of attending countless Valentino shows, and I had several opportunities to interview the master. He never failed to inspire me with his romantic vision and perfectionist nature. Valentino always knew what he wanted, and he was fiercely proud of the exquisite creations his Rome atelier turned out. In 2007, ownership of his venerable house changed hands, but he still seemed determined to hang on to his position as creative head of his label. That spring, he invited me to a fitting at his Paris atelier just days before presenting his spring couture collection.
When we arrived, he was perched on an overstuffed chair—looking like a country gent in a brown tweed jacket, striped tie, and chinos— in the stately Place Vendôme showroom. Two of his beloved pugs, Maude and Milton, were dancing at his feet as a lithe and lovely model emerged, wearing a black-and-white suit. The model fixed her eyes on the designer and confidently strutted towards him down a narrow cream carpet that ran the length of the huge room. Valentino smiled, and the handful of seamstresses standing by broke into applause. And so it went, with Valentino carefully assessing each outfit that emerged, generally pleased with how his ideas had so beautifully materialized. “Nice dress, ah?” he called out to me from across the room, always looking for approval but knowing full well that he had another hit with this Hollywood-inspired collection. I gave him a nod, amazed that at seventy-something, this guy was actually getting better.
“I myself want glamour,” he told me that day. “I want beautiful women. I want sensational things. I always want to have girls that look unbelievable dressed in my designs.”
I asked him if his idea of beauty had changed over the years.
“I’ve always had blinders on,” he told me. “I just follow my own path. When fashion was upside down, in turmoil, I never really fell into that because that’s not what my vision was. My dream was never to see a woman looking like a poor girl who’s just come out of a convent, so I never followed that minimalist movement,” he said. “Many people weren’t so crazy about my way of thinking, but all my clients, all of my women—my admirers—loved my things. So it’s been important for me to work with a kind of consistency, without changing too much, without any kind of big revolutions.”
Valentino’s focus had been unwavering. But the rumour mill continued to speculate that his days in fashion were numbered. In July 2007, on the occasion of his forty-fifth year in the business, the seventy-five-year-old Valentino hosted a three-day extravaganza in Rome, inviting the movers and shakers of the international fashion scene, along with a galaxy of stars, to join him. First on the agenda was the opening of a retrospective at the Richard Meier–designed Ara Pacis Museum, a stunning year-old structure built around a two-thousand-year-old Roman peace altar. Featuring three hundred dresses and rare archival material, the impressive exhibit was a testament to Valentino’s prolific genius.
I was lucky enough to be one of the first people Valentino and his long-time business partner, Giancarlo Giametti, saw when they came through the door at the media preview. They made a beeline for me, and I told them how moved I was by the whole experience of coming to Rome, not only to see this retrospective but also to witness Valentino’s first couture show in the city in seventeen years. For the sake of business, the Italian had religiously presented his couture collections in Paris. Now, as an act of gratitude to the city that gave him his start, Valentino paid homage to Rome. “The only thing I ever wanted to do was make women look and feel beautiful,” he told me. “I’m so proud and happy to see my life’s work all together in this special city that I love so much. It really is an emotional moment for me.”
“I just find him to be such an inspiration,” mused a statuesque and stunning Uma Thurman on her way into the museum. She was wearing a simple white column gown, flat sandals, and gold embroidered shawl. “And more than being this brilliant creative artist, he’s also a good friend.”
Many of the stars who came out revealed that their relatio
nship with the designer was more than merely professional: They had learned a lot about style from the legend. “We often holiday together,” said Liz Hurley, clad in a sexy white beaded Valentino. “And I have to be careful what I pack. He notices every little detail of what I’m wearing!”
Sarah Jessica Parker, decked out in a gold brocade vintage Valentino suit, said, “He’s taught me the beauty of ultra-feminine style, and the meaning of grace and charm. Besides, his clothes just feel so good to wear!”
Other luminaries on hand included Anne Hathaway, Claire Danes, Jennifer Hudson, Eva Mendes, Claudia Schiffer, Elle Macpherson, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, and a sprinkling of world-class designers. Tom Ford claimed that beyond the inspiration Valentino had given him, the two had become close friends. Diane von Furstenberg and Carolina Herrera also sang the designer’s praises, and Zac Posen commented on Valentino’s technical genius. “His dresses seem so light of hand, but there’s so much work that goes into them. That’s the sign of a great couturier.”
What was most astounding about Valentino was his longevity in the business, and his constant red-carpet appeal. Downstairs, there was a collection of creations that had been worn on an assortment of red carpets by some of the biggest luminaries of our time. From a white beaded number that Liz Taylor wore to the Oscars back in the 1960s and Jackie Kennedy’s black velvet ruffles to a black-sequined lace gown worn by Sophia Loren and a white tulle dress originally worn by Audrey Hepburn, Valentino seemed to be saying there wasn’t anyone he hadn’t dressed. The display also included memorable dresses worn by the younger Hollywood set, such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s black lace-andmesh gown; the black-and-white vintage gown that Julia Roberts wore for her Oscar win; another “Oscar win” dress, worn by Cate Blanchett, in yellow; Penélope Cruz’s big flower-print ball gown; and the white tulle fantasy Cameron Diaz wore to the Oscars. And the list went on. Beside each dress was a small screen showing video footage and press coverage of the stars in their Valentinos. We all waxed nostalgic as we remembered the impact these dresses had had on us. But what impressed me most was that any of these dresses would work as well today as they did when they first debuted. It was that timelessness that explained the master’s extraordinary longevity.
