The Vogue Factor

by Kirstie Clements

  Fortunately, I was surrounded by more practical people who did. While still in Sydney I moved in with my friend Deborah Thomas, saving on rent to try to build up my bank balance. Deborah was the editor of Mode at the time. We would share a bottle of wine at night, while she worked on her magazine grid and I read all the trash magazines she brought home from the office.

  Vogue’s publisher Lesley Wild was on good terms with the French Consul General and managed to help me secure both an appointment and the requisite visa. Editor Nancy Pilcher, who never stopped helping me throughout my career, agreed that I could contribute stories from Paris. It is gratifying to remember how supportive my colleagues were in those days. Everyone had your back, as opposed to stabbing you in it.

  I was determined to find my own apartment in Paris, and not immediately move in with Mourad, who seemed reasonably nonchalant about me relocating there anyway. I didn’t want the relationship to be the sole basis of my decision—if things didn’t work out with him then no problem, I would still have my independence.

  The Vogue team threw a farewell party in the boardroom and I was handed a card and present. We had a ‘little blue box’ tradition, which meant that any gift for a staff member always came from Tiffany. My package, however, revealed two sets of Yves Saint Laurent lingerie and a cookbook, which were the perfect send off for a Gallic romance.

  In reality, I should have asked for a fax machine.

  It was 1994 and I was living in my first Paris home, a tiny one-bedroom apartment on the Rue Rameau, in the busy 2nd arrondissement. It was seven flights up a steep circular stairway, with no elevator. The mere act of collecting the mail every day was arduous, but in three months I dropped a dress size. I was probably about a size 8, if that, when I arrived in Paris, but I immediately felt hefty compared to the sparrow-thin French girls. The tables and chairs were always so close in the cafés; I felt conspicuous and ungainly.

  Shopping one day, I walked into the Miu Miu boutique in the Rue de Grenelle and timidly asked the sales assistant if she had a particular coat that was in the window in my size. She stared at me stony-faced, took a deep drag on her cigarette (they smoked in the shops then), blew it out through her nose and said: ‘No, there is nothing in this store that would fit you.’ I left, mortified.

  I had promised myself when I settled in Paris that I would avoid the patisseries, except for bread and croissants. I do not have a sweet tooth at any rate so it was not difficult. That was my only dietary restriction, and by the end of the year I was the slimmest I have ever been. I chalk it all up to walking. Perhaps that’s why French women don’t get fat, because they all walk everywhere. For me, every single square inch of Paris was enthralling. I covered tons of ground on foot every day.

  That first year in Paris was one of the best years of my life. Because I could not yet speak the language, I spent an enormous amount of time in my own thoughts, just observing. I read a book each day and explored the city, with no specific destinations planned. I was mostly alone, but never lonely. At night I lived a crazy nightclub existence with Mourad. I called him Le Vampire because he never saw full daylight, going to bed at 8 a.m. and getting up at 4 p.m.

  Le Casbah was the top club in Paris, and Mourad was the man you needed to know to get in. Everywhere we went, the doors opened, tables were miraculously found, champagne was sent out; he would toss his keys to someone and they would park his car. He ripped up his parking tickets. He didn’t have to settle restaurant bills. He knew every policeman. It was intoxicating. It was like I had been dropped into the film Goodfellas, although it needed English subtitles. I couldn’t understand a word anyone was saying, especially at 4 a.m. in Les Bain Douches, but everything sounded sexy and thrilling. No doubt it was just the regular alcohol- and drug-fuelled rubbish people say in nightclubs in the early hours of the morning, but in my head, Jean Paul Sartre and Anaïs Nin would have struggled to keep up.

  In general, our regime was to wake up in the late afternoon, have something resembling a brunch at a local bistro in the lesbian district in the 2nd, visit three or four nightclubs, and usually end up at a smoky, windowless, red-velvet bar called Babylone in Les Halles, at 7 a.m., eating steak frites with the African musicians who had just finished their gigs at various venues around town. Every night we mingled with celebrities, aristocrats, artists, drag queens, designers and criminals; it was fabulous.

  There were various talented Aussie expatriates living in Paris at that period: Christina Zimpel, the previous art director of Vogue Australia, and her husband Patric Shaw, who had turned to photography, and writer Lee Tulloch and her photographer husband Tony Amos. Lee, Tony and their daughter Lolita lived in the most beautiful apartment near the Sorbonne, and would often invite me over for a home-cooked dinner. Some of my most delightful recollections of that time in Paris were sitting with Lee in cafés for hours and hours, talking about the books we were reading, or in her case, writing. Lee was contributing to Elle Australia, under the editorship of Deborah Thomas who had moved from Mode, while I had been hired to be the beauty editor and editor-at-large for Vogue Singapore, which had launched in 1994. Lee, who had seen great success with her first novel Fabulous Nobodies, was writing her second book Wraith.

  Needless to say Paris was an endless source of possibilities for a fashion and beauty journalist. For the first time in my career I was attending the ready-to-wear (RTW) shows. I would later work under many managers who never fully appreciated the importance of the RTW to a fashion journalist. The shows, to a purely financial person, appeared to be an indulgent waste of money. It is impossible to explain to someone who is fixated on reducing costs that the international shows deliver inspiration and expertise, giving an editor a sense of context, history and insider knowledge. By experiencing the moments, you can make comparisons and draw conclusions. You meet the players; you are a legitimate part of the game. But the RTW show season was pretty much viewed by Australian management as editors and writers taking an overseas holiday. I have had to write a lengthy justification explaining why I thought it was necessary to attend each RTW season, twice a year for the last decade.

  I need to clarify that I have never been completely obsessed with fashion. I am fascinated by popular culture, and fashion is of course one of its most important informants and signifiers. But the couture shows, which I was now excitingly attending in Paris, gave me a whole new appreciation. The shows were very intimate, and reserved for only top-shelf press and customers. Couture is by its very nature a luxury, and only very select journalists were in attendance. Working for Vogue Singapore meant that I was automatically granted a front row seat, as opposed to either no seat or a standing seat for Vogue Australia. It was not exactly snobbery, but if you don’t have the couture customers, you don’t get the chair. My colleagues and I used to call it the ‘you’re only as good as your economy’ rule.

  There were often two shows: the first for the press, the second exclusively for clients. Back then no one dressed up; no one took photos of each other outside wearing the latest Givenchy sweater. There were no ‘It Girls’. We all had notebooks and wrote or sketched each ‘exit’ (not my biggest strength, but Charla Carter’s sketches were a work of art). We watched the show, as opposed to trying to be the show.

  Although I was usually seated with the international press, I felt more like part of the French brigade because I was living there. I recall rushing to a Chanel show at the Hôtel Ritz, late, because there had been a problem with the Metro. I dashed through torrential rain and made it just in time to hurl myself into my tiny gilt chair. I looked down at my sodden ballet slippers, and was bunching my dripping everyday trench in my lap when I noticed I was seated right beside the impenetrable US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Reality would not have touched her Manolo Blahniks, but I didn’t care about my wet feet. I was in heaven, living and working in Paris. And it was a very good seat.

  If I was asked what the ultimate moment might be in the world of Paris high fashion, I would suggest t
hat Christian Lacroix couture shows came very, very close. They were such an old-world, feminine experience, always held in grand ballrooms with the prerequisite spindly-gold chairs. His sense of fabrics, of clashing and combining colour, of texture and pattern, was extraordinary; each exit a work of art with a flamboyant nod to history and costume. A pink carnation was always placed across each chair, and when Lacroix appeared on the runway at the finale, guests would shower him with flowers, all accompanied by a soaring classical soundtrack. I’m not one to cry at fashion shows, but for some reason I often found his particularly moving and could find myself getting teary. For me, only the perfection of couture can produce that sort of emotion.

  The appearance of a frail Yves Saint Laurent on the runway was also especially thrilling, not just for the beauty of his clothes. I felt an appreciation of the artist himself, his sensibilities, his innate taste, his love for the female form. He was Paris personified. Saint Laurent, creator of the iconic evening tuxedo ‘Le Smoking’. What, to this day, could be more sexy? Actress Catherine Deneuve was almost always in the front row.

  The great couturiers and their ateliers set a standard that is so remarkable, you feel transported when you see their vision come to life on the runway. Witness a Valentino couture show and you can imagine you are a princess at a dinner party in Rome in 1969. His collections were always so glossy, so expensive, so drop-dead chic. I was chatting to a British fashion journalist after one Valentino showing at the Louvre and she said grumpily: ‘I thought all that was boring.’ I can’t begin to describe how badly dressed and ill-groomed the woman was. My response was a little more blunt. ‘If you don’t appreciate a Valentino couture show, then I don’t think you should be working in fashion.’

  In early 1995, Nancy contacted me and requested that I organise an interview and photoshoot with Tom Ford, a young American designing for Gucci who was creating waves in the industry. I dutifully began the arrangements, booking photographer Pascal Chevallier and newish model Diane Kruger, who is now an extremely successful Hollywood actress.

  Ford was in the midst of preparing the Fall 1995 collection, so there were numerous phone calls and faxes back and forth with the Gucci PR office, trying to pin him down to a time. The whole process dragged on for weeks, and became so torturous Pascal called me at home one night and said, ‘Really, ca suffit. Who does this Tom Ford think he is?’ As it happened, the superb Fall 1995 collection, featuring skin-tight velvet hipsters, unbuttoned satin shirts and mohair coats, was a spectacular success that radically transformed the fortunes of the famed luxury house. Tom did, finally, arrive at the studio for our shoot, and immediately managed to charm the entire Vogue team. He is a dream to interview: extremely engaged, engaging and old-school polite. On the subsequent occasions that we met over the years, he always mentioned that shoot and told me that he regarded Pascal’s portrait one of his favourite photographs ever taken. Ford went on to become so famous after our shoot it was impossible for an Australian publication to ever get access like that again, but I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. With the right editor.

  Life wasn’t a complete bed of roses in Paris. My retainer just stretched from week to week, the incessantly chilly weather took some getting used to, and there seemed to be a public transport strike weekly. My non-existent French became frustrating, never more so than when I applied for a carte de residence visa. Each time I visited the dreaded prefecture for one interview after the other, the tetchy staff would roll their eyes at my halting French. I knew enough to understand one woman when she hissed to her colleague: ‘I don’t know why these idiots want to live here when they can’t even speak our language.’ She did, I suppose, have a point, so I took to spending afternoons with Mourad’s mother watching bad television.

  For some inexplicable reason, the original Dallas and Dynasty series were still on-air in France, dubbed, and they are the perfect way to learn how to speak French fast. ‘C’est pas vrai!’ (‘It’s not true!) ‘How can you say that?’ ‘What do you think you are doing?!’ Granted, the delivery may have been a little melodramatic, but it was thanks to those banal TV shows I learnt French 101.

  Once I got the basics and knew how to marry, divorce and murder a man in French, I decided to enroll in language classes at the Alliance Francaise. I was happily ensconced in the middle of Course Two when I was surprised to discover that I was pregnant. ‘C’est pas vrai!’ Mourad was thrilled. He had told me the first time we met that we would make beautiful babies, which was one of the major reasons I liked him in the first place.

  My first visit to the obstetrician proved to be interesting. His English was worse than my French and after he had performed the ultrasound he said: ‘The baby is good.’ Then there was a pause and he continued staring at the screen. ‘And the second baby is good.’ I took it to mean, because of our jumbled Franglais, that the baby, the one baby, was really, really good. ‘No,’ he said haltingly. ‘There are two babies.’ I was having twins. Of course I was.

  The first three months were a little tricky because—although I felt fine—I had the most heightened sense of smell, so using the Metro was impossible. The odours of Paris were too much. I could smell chewing gum stuck on the pavement one block away. With my supersensitive nose, I was like the character Grenouille in Patrick Susskind’s novel Perfume. I would walk miles out of my way to avoid a cheese shop.

  Walking on the Rue du Rivoli one steamy, hot lunchtime, I was so overcome by the smell of the traffic that I decided to duck into the WH Smith bookstore to breathe in the air conditioning. Once inside, I felt the nausea begin to overcome me, and I sort of slumped down next to the crime-novel section, pretending to read them, even though I was soon lying horizontal on the floor. A lovely Englishman came to my aid and said, ‘You don’t look so good. Shall I put you in a taxi?’ He very kindly deposited me into a cab, which shortly pulled up outside my apartment block. As I walked gingerly to the door of the building, I had to pass the café outside and got a whiff of steak tartare. With the raw egg on the top. I promptly threw up in the street, on my Robert Clergerie sandals, in full view of the horrified patrons. It wasn’t my finest moment in Paris, but from that day forward I felt absolutely brilliant.

  My pregnancy did not slow my work, although I was so big people seemed a little nervous around me, thinking that I may be about to give birth any minute. My position as beauty editor of Vogue Singapore meant that I had to fly back and forth from Paris to Singapore quite regularly, but even at five months the airline officials were reluctant to let me on the plane, as it looked like labour was imminent.

  I had decided that I wanted to give birth in Sydney so, six months pregnant, I flew back and moved in with my mother Gloria and her partner Robert. Mourad was to arrive just before my due date. For two weeks I caught up with friends, popped in and out of the Vogue offices and was having a generally marvellous time. Top of my list was to find an obstetrician and make all the necessary arrangements, but I was so busy I didn’t quite get around to it. I did have a checkup at the local clinic and all was fine.

  Nancy threw me the most lavish baby shower. I knew I was having boys, so everything was white and blue. The presents were beyond chic. It was a true Vogue pregnancy. Then, a few days after the celebration, as I sat at my mother’s dining table typing out an invoice, my water broke. I was only thirty-one weeks.

  My mother was out, so I very calmly wrote her a note, which I left on the table, saying that I thought the babies were coming and I would call her later. I then rang my friend Janet, who—having no idea about having a baby whatsoever—suggested that I have a shower, and instructed me on what to wear and what to pack in my toiletries bag (well, she worked at Revlon).

  I telephoned for a taxi, waited patiently, and when I got into the car asked the driver to take me to the nearest hospital. ‘Are you going to have a baby?’ he enquired, looking at me nervously. ‘Yes,’ was my response. ‘Probably not right this second, but I can’t be sure.’ He drove like a d
emon, tossed me out into the driveway of Sutherland District Hospital and screeched away.

  I trotted slowly into to the reception area. I thought I was handling myself with absolute aplomb, although Mum told me later that I had left the front door of the house wide open. ‘Good afternoon,’ I said politely to the woman on the desk. ‘Ah. I’m pregnant. With twins. I’m only thirty-one weeks. And my waters just broke. I’m not registered here. Or with any doctor. And I’m not sure where my Medicare card is. My apologies.’

  I will forever be one of Australia’s greatest advocates of our health care system because I was immediately whisked to the labour ward and had the finest care anyone could be given, for what was a complicated premature delivery. It was necessary for the boys to be taken straight to special care and placed into humicribs, as they each weighed just under two kilos and were having difficulty breathing. My mother and my best friend from schooldays, Jenny, had both been with me in the labour ward, and I believe the experience put poor Jenny off having a baby for life.

  I called Mourad in France, from my bed, letting him know his sons had arrived a little earlier than expected. Later that day I awoke in my own room, in the hospital I had been born in, knowing my babies were in safe hands. A magisterial kookaburra was sitting on the ledge of the balcony. It felt good to be home, if only for a while.

  There were some truly Vogue moments during the fortnight I was in the hospital. I was inundated with the most amazing flowers, from the best floral designers in Sydney, more and more, until my room resembled an enchanted garden. The nurses asked if they could bring people through to admire them, which was fine by me. My room became a popular tourist destination. You couldn’t even find the twins among the foliage. And of course the beauty industry demonstrated their usual generosity and showered me with bounty. Displaying a classy understanding of what is truly important to a new mother after giving birth naturally to twins, Chanel sent the entire product line of Chanel No. 5. I distinctly recall shuffling down the hall in one of those regulation-issue hospital gowns, wheeling my drip and clutching a bottle of No. 5 Bath and Shower Gel.