Julien is very romantic. He is also French, complex, and artistic. For photographs he likes to give hair a certain texture—it could be with either a clay paste or salt or sugar water—so that he can mold it. He’s a little like a sculptor, except he doesn’t like things to look “finished.” For him, it’s better when the hair looks rough or tousled. When he arrives on a session, he brings a great many references, all to do with paintings (not other people’s shoots). He is brilliant with wigs and fearless with color. As he goes along, he fills the huge scrapbooks he carries around with all sorts of ideas for the shoots he is working on—newspaper clippings, Polaroids, and masses of sketches of the way he sees the hair. He also watches a great many films and gathers stills to add to his inspirations.
I like to book him with most any of the photographers I work with, but especially Annie Leibovitz. They have a very good relationship and a mutual respect—and he is the only one who can stand up to her, although it can blow up every now and again. You have to treat Julien gently, because when he takes offense, he shows it. Also, his kind of styling lends itself well to display of all kinds. He has worked on several exhibits for the Met, and once a year, when I am asked for Fashion’s Night Out to design the windows for Prada, he always helps me out with something really surprising.
Didier makes women appear real, touchable. They look as though they have been discreetly fooling around. And they are believable and sexy. He can do extreme, but it looks plausible. For example, he never does straightforward retro, but his modern version of it. The styles he creates in photographs of women are the kind you could quite happily wear in the street. The men’s hair he did for Bruce Weber’s fashion editorials in the eighties and nineties—heavily combed glossy wedges and waves—were so intrinsic to the photographs that it gave them a strong style, completely identifying them in the history of fashion. As did the way he merged hair with nature in our groundbreaking photos for Karl Lagerfeld and the British Vogue series in an English garden, which are still popular and hugely influential reference points today.
Didier does really Big hair
“By the way, do you like cats?”
Didier is old-school, like the brilliant Garren—a hairdresser who started in the seventies and whom I worked with a lot in earlier days. They are hands-on, whereas others might get their assistants to fill in for them. They can do a great chignon or cut because they had the sort of training that doesn’t happen now. When Didier began his career in Paris in the sixties working at the hairdressing salon of the Carita sisters, he learned all the traditional techniques. The salon was popular with Catherine Deneuve and many of the French film actresses of the day. When he left, he went to work at Jean Louis David, where he was persuaded to abandon those techniques and become much more spontaneous. His studio work commenced there. When Jean Louis decided he wanted more publicity for his salon, he put together a band of young stylists and sent them out to the studios to do editorials. This was way before hairdressers were even part of a photographer’s team.
Didier has always preferred being completely independent and free, so he doesn’t have hugely lucrative hair-product contracts like many of the others. Nor, like some, does he ever dream of having his own hairdressing salon. For him, an unpredictable work schedule is something to relish, an approach that couldn’t be more different from mine. But like Jack Sprat and his wife, we muddle through just fine. At least I know my hair will be in good shape, however old I get.
XVIII
ON
CATS
In which
our heroine has
cats up to there,
cats in her hair,
a few cat-astrophes
in the country,
and goes cat-crazy
with Martha
Stewart.
Do I dream very much? Do I dream predominately about fashion? No. I dream much more about cats.
Cats are such special animals. They feel your emotions and are incredibly calming. If ever I’ve had a bad day, Bart, my blue Persian, will lie on my bed purring and massaging my head in order to soothe me. (Sometimes, however, he forgets to retract his claws, and that can get a bit painful.)
Having said that, both Bart and Pumpkin, my orange-and-white Persian, are extremely high-maintenance. They have highly sensitive stomachs, so each has an individual diet, and I have to wash their eyes every morning and evening. As their long fur gets easily matted, they also need combing and brushing at least twice a day. Luckily, they have their own live-in hairdresser.
I must say, I like the independence of cats. You can’t make them do anything they don’t want to. And they’re funny. They get themselves into all kinds of wacky situations and behave in a really silly way. Persians have fairly short legs and aren’t able to jump high or climb trees, so they spend a great deal of time earthbound. Bart, for instance, will sit on our bed for hours with his paws crossed or pressed together in the posture of a meditating Buddha. (He also has a strange habit of jumping on my lap when I’m sitting on the toilet, which is really annoying, as it means I could be stuck there for hours.) Pumpkin, when the weather’s hot, will lie on her back on the cold bathroom floor like a wanton harlot, waving her legs in the air. When we are in the country and it is time to come in from the garden for the night, she likes to play catch-me-if-you-can, hiding in the ferns and running this way and that, any way but through the door, with me in hot pursuit.
“Just a little too cozy Bart”
In New York, I’m cat central: Absolutely everyone calls me for advice. They call me if they need to find a vet or discuss their cat’s symptoms or get the telephone number of my cat psychic. She’s brilliant, by the way. Her name is Christine Agro, and I was introduced to her by Bruce Weber. Christine lives in upstate New York with her artist husband and their son. When she was still quite young, she discovered that she had an exceptional ability to communicate with animals; she also treats them holistically. Whether or not you fully subscribe to her findings, the insights she reveals about the inner world of your pets are so charming—and conjure such compelling images—that they’re impossible to ignore.
I have loved cats ever since I was a child, even though we didn’t have any at home; my mother kept dogs. Still, there were a few of them around—feral mostly, wild ones that hung about the hotel grounds, scavenging for scraps. The first cats I ever remember owning came my way when I was modeling in the early sixties. They were a pair of pedigree Siamese given to me by the Armenian photographer Peter Carapetian, whom I worked with a great deal and who, in 1962, shot my first Vogue cover.
Cats didn’t figure during the period I was with Michael Chow, my first husband, because he was allergic to them. My next pair, Brian and Stanley, you could call my divorce settlement after the collapse of my marriage to Willie Christie. When I moved out of his house in Gunter Grove, they accompanied me to a new apartment down the road. There they made friends with a grumpy old cat called Miss Puddy, who belonged to a neighbor.
Sadly, a couple of years later, I arrived back in England from my summer holiday to discover I had lost Brian. He had been run over by a car in the Fulham Road. Andrew Powell, the Vogue travel editor who was cat-sitting for me at the time, was mortified. I, of course, was devastated. Sobbing, I fell into his arms for comfort—and we ended up having a two-year affair. Meanwhile, Stanley, who never recovered from the loss of his brother, abandoned me and my apartment to move in next door with Miss Puddy.
me and my pussy
When I became a New York resident and settled down with Didier, we acquired three new kittens: Coco, Henri, and a little later, Baby. I discovered them on a visit to the cat show at Madison Square Garden. All three were a French breed known as Chartreux and were very fashion-conscious felines. Coco, we named after Coco Chanel. Henri was originally meant to be called Yves, after Yves Saint Laurent, until Didier pointed out that in France it was considered a very common name. So we settled instead on Henri, after the champion tennis player Henri Lecon
te. Baby was originally to be called Madame Grès, after the couturier, but that was a bit much, so she became Baby, since she was the youngest of the group.
Chartreux are a great breed to have as pets: loyal, perfect lap cats, and in contrast to Persians, easy to look after—and I just love their dense gray fur and chubby faces. Each of my trio had a distinct personality and appearance. Baby had a wonderfully thick, long tail but suffered from weight problems. Coco had a kink at the end of her tail, and Henri’s tail was very, very short.
Puff goes “Walkies”
When they were about four years old, while I was away on a fashion shoot, Didier kept passing the downtown pet store around the corner from where we lived. He spotted a red-haired kitten in the window and went inside for a closer look. (I think he was missing me.) Almost as soon as I got off the plane, I was marched off to check the kitten out. When he was taken from the window and placed on the counter, he strutted up and down with real attitude. He obviously had great character. He was a “marmalade cat,” just like Orlando in the books I had read as a child. I couldn’t resist, so we took him home straightaway in a little cardboard container and named him Puff. At first we called him Puff Daddy Junior, but this proved a bit of a mouthful, so it was shortened to Junior and finally to Puff. On meeting P. Diddy himself in the course of a photo shoot one day, I told him about our Puff, but I think he wasn’t too impressed with having a cat named after him.
Puff kept us all entertained and was as exasperating and endearing as a naughty boy. Like Didier, he was a huge Knicks fan. They would sit together watching the play-offs each season, carefully following the ball around the screen. If the team lost, both of them would be in a really bad mood.
When Puff grew up, he became the alpha cat in our family, and he liked to take charge of everyone. For instance, when we set off on a Friday evening for the Hamptons, Puff usually wanted to drive and insisted on sitting on Didier’s lap and getting his tail in the way of the controls. Occasionally, he got bored with driving and preferred to navigate, sitting between us in the front and keeping a keen eye on the road. As soon as we turned off the highway toward our house, he would become wildly excited, and the second we opened the car door, he would shoot out like a scalded cat to reclaim his turf.
Puff would become severely depressed if we didn’t go to the country every weekend. He was never happier than when we spent our entire August in the Hamptons. He stopped any other cat from entering his territory, which grew larger by the day, and I had to fend off the complaints of neighboring cat owners about his aggressive behavior.
Later still, he became independent, a totally outside animal. But at night I didn’t like him to stay out, because the woods on Long Island can be full of creatures dangerous to cats, like raccoons, foxes, owls, and hawks. There was even a rumor of a coyote spotted in our neighborhood. When he went on his long expeditions and we weren’t able to find him for hours, however much we called him, we asked Christine for help. She spoke to him (psychically, of course), explaining how worried we were and that he must come home. Finally, she heard from him, and he told her something like, “Yeah, Yeah, just another ten minutes.” Ten minutes later, there he was, sitting on the doorstep, ready to be welcomed like the Prodigal Son.
At one point we tried putting a leash on him to go for a walk after dark, and he loved that. From then on he would become so happy whenever we pulled the leash out of the drawer that taking Puff for a stroll became our regular routine each night in the country before turning in.
With age, however, he developed faulty kidneys, and eventually, he had a stroke that left him with a paralyzed leg so that he couldn’t even struggle into his litter box. It was heartbreaking: He was such a proud old feline that this wasn’t at all how he saw himself. On Christmas Day 2007, we finally had to let him go. For a long while afterward I found it difficult to return to our house in the country because I felt his presence everywhere. He was the most important cat in my life.
One day, when all our Chartreux had finally passed away (but Puff was still with us), I was preparing a photo shoot with the English photographer Tim Walker, who is famous for including cats in his pictures. I spotted Bart—an unbearably cute fluffy gray kitten with a squashed-looking Persian face—for sale on the Internet. His picture popped up as if he were searching for me, rather than the other way around. Although it is not usually a good idea to find a pet in this fashion, I fell instantly in love.
I picked him up from some highly dubious Russians in Atlantic Beach whose house was filled with tons of Persian carpets and hundreds of Persian cats. Most likely, it was an illegal cat farm. Grabbing Bart as I handed over a fistful of dollars, I jumped in my car and headed straight for the Hamptons. When we arrived, Puff, who was outdoors as usual, at first refused to come inside. For the next week, to keep the cats separate and the new kitten safe, I slept in the spare room with Bart while Didier slept in the main bedroom with Puff. At the beginning of the second week, I moved back in with Didier. We woke the next morning to find both cats sleeping peacefully at the end of the bed.
In bed with my favorite cat, Puff, at home in Wainscott, Long Island. Photo: Didier Malige, 2000
Originally, Bart was called “Little Boy Bart” and Pumpkin was known as “Girly.” She also came from the cat show in Madison Square Garden, which has to be one of the craziest events around. It’s completely different from a dog show, where the animals are seriously put through their paces around a ring. Here the cages can be decorated in leopard print or pink satin with little four-poster beds inside, and each cat has an owner fawning all over it. The cats are there to compete, but there are also kittens for sale. You can put your name down for the next boy or girl cat, as I had done twenty years earlier with Coco, Henri, and Baby.
Pumpkin was in a cage with some other kittens waiting to be sold. She was the smallest of the litter. During the two days of the show, I kept walking past and chatting with her breeder, Pam Rutan, who had a couple of champions and several other cats in the event. Frankly, I was nervous about getting yet another pet, afraid that Didier would think I was overdoing it to bring a third cat home. But once I’d seen Pumpkin, I wanted her desperately. Although she was shy and cowered in the cage when a stranger came near, if Pam put her in my arms, she would purr at top volume. And how she could move! Pam would hold up a feathery stick, and off she’d cha-cha, back and forth like a contestant in Dancing with the Stars. Again it was love at first sight.
I arranged to pick up the newest and littlest member of our cat family the next day on our way out to the Hamptons. Didier was driving. Puff and Bart were also in the car. It was my intention that we should all come to know one another on the long drive down. But in her box, Pumpkin started screaming blue murder. We hadn’t even left the city when Didier shouted, “This isn’t going to work. Take the box out and leave it on the sidewalk. She’s so cute, someone is sure to give her a home.” “Absolutely not!” I screamed, outraged. And so we drove on through the suburbs and into the Hamptons, arguing all the way to our home in Wainscott, with Pumpkin relentlessly screeching the entire time.
Pumpkin
When Pumpkin arrived at the house, both Bart and Puff began spitting and attacking her. It was a nightmare that carried on for a full week. Finally, we called Christine. She came over, and the cats were soon all sitting around her in a circle, hissing. Afterward she explained what was bothering them: Bart was worried that there wasn’t enough love to go around for three cats. Christine reassured him there was, and we went out to dinner. When we returned, all three cats were calmly lying together, snuggled into the sofa.
As for Pumpkin’s traveling troubles, her breeder suggested a mild dose of valerian. A friend of ours, the fashion editor Alex White, gave us a CD of Beatles lullabies to play while we drove. Neither worked. My assistant, Michal Saad, opted to conduct a methodical series of experiments with different homeopathic drops—Panic Stop, Rescue Remedy, and so forth—as we drove my car up and down the West Side Highwa
y after work each day, with Michal at the wheel, and me taking care of Pumpkin. We tried putting her in the back, the front, on my knee, but every time, she screeched. Out of her carrier, back into her carrier, still she screeched. I would call Christine, who occasionally had a serious “talk” with Pumpkin, and she did calm down. But only for a moment.
In the end we discovered that the latest addition to our family remained reasonably quiet only if we attempted the entire journey in daylight, which in wintertime, as darkness fell so early, cut our weekends down considerably.
My cats are not only loved and comforting companions, but they also provide me with a constant source of inspiration: Row upon row of framed sketches I have made of them hang on the walls of our Hamptons house, and these are a fraction of the hundreds I have drawn over the past twenty-five years. As Didier and I both travel a huge amount, and because expensive phone calls at odd times of day and from different time zones are never a good idea, we became dedicated senders of faxes. Didier wrote his because he can actually write. I, because I cannot write well at all, drew mine. And what I chose to draw was the funny idea of our cats acting out scenes loosely based on our fashion careers and domestic lives—they would go to fashion shows in Paris, trick-or-treating in New York at Halloween, or spend Christmas in the Hamptons around the tree, opening presents. In the summer they would sail, learn to swim with water wings, and gorge themselves on buttery corn. Also, they were best friends with all the photographers and traveled to all the places we did.
Grace Page 23
