As it turned out, I didn’t need to play it up much: the poor ANTM girls were absolutely scared stiff when they arrived, so I just went with it and did my Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie routine. When the twelve finalists filed into my office, one girl, Alice Burdeau, stood out immediately. She was five-foot eleven, skinny and pale, with large, slightly melancholy eyes and long, thick red hair. She already looked like an off duty model. I could just see her backstage in Paris, reading a book, wearing motorcycle boots and being made up for a runway show. She was the real deal, I could see it. She looked international; there was something cool about her.
I joined the ANTM panel for two more segments after that, which was tons of fun. Gorgeous Jodhi Meares was hosting, and the atmosphere on set was very warm and good spirited. I was not involved in the filming of most of the stunts and shoots, but was called in on the panel to judge how they appeared in photographs. I swiftly realised the show was also raising my profile, because I kept getting stopped by eager young girls when I went shopping.
There was some negative coverage regarding Alice being underweight, but I knew that—rightly or wrongly—even if she was, her protruding clavicles were just the ticket for the world of high fashion. Alice won easily, purely because of her beauty. She didn’t have a great deal of energy, and was not the best model in the world when it came to striking a pose, but when the moment is captured she looks great. Full stop. All the judges were in total agreement, as were the viewers. We immediately set up her shoot, based around long, flowing evening-wear, with photographer Troyt Coburn.
The resultant images were very beautiful and we quickly saw that one of the shots was cover material. She was seated, staring down the barrel of the camera, and she looked serene and self-assured. Although we were not contractually obliged to run a cover, it made sense to me to do so. Sales on that issue lifted 13 per cent. As I had hoped, our involvement in the show had helped us to reach a new readership.
Alice went on to work internationally, hitting the runways for all the big designers in New York, Milan and Paris, such as Marc Jacobs, Jil Sander, Lanvin and Dolce & Gabbana. She was the most credible winner the ANTM franchise had ever had—globally. I always felt a tinge of pride when she swept past me at subsequent shows. The whole association had been win/win, and Alice was a legitimate star who still models regularly five years.
The experience of the next series, number four, however was very different. When I was first introduced to the contestants, I struggled to find a girl who I thought had true potential. They were all pretty, but there wasn’t a standout. One girl, Sam, had the best legs I’ve ever seen, but apart from that there wasn’t one girl I would have considered booking for Vogue. It struck home that discovering someone like Alice was a miracle.
The first segment I filmed involved the girls being given five minutes to rush into a room full of clothes, put together an outfit, and then place themselves in front of a panel while I and designer Fernando Frisoni appraised and/or criticised them. Perhaps I was taking it a bit too seriously, because I was stressed and irritable and really needed to get back to the office, but it struck me that the whole exercise wasn’t fair. The clothes provided were frankly horrible, and the girls weren’t given enough time to think, let alone style themselves. It was an impossible task, and it felt like we were belittling them. Charlotte Dawson was brilliant in the series at playing the cranky mentor with the heart of gold, but I was struggling with the stupidity of the exercises.
The second part of the episode, filmed on the same day, involved magazine covers where the girls had to pick a card with the name of a supermodel on it and ‘Match the Supermodel to the Cover’. It was imbecilic.
I felt a similar sense of injustice when a bad photograph was taken of a girl and she was then criticised for ‘not bringing it to the camera’, when in fact the photographer should have been blamed for their crappy shot. Every element on a shoot counts: the photographer, hair, makeup, styling. The model is one component and certainly can’t be singled out for the amateurism of others. Also, as a mother and as a professional, I wasn’t comfortable telling a young, hopeful girl that she had a huge, huge future as a successful model ahead of her when I knew full well she didn’t.
Over the years, I have had many young women approach me, sending photos to the office, wanting to become models. I would always refer them to reputable model agencies, as it requires a professional to deal with the often unrealisitic expectations of young girls, and their families. Only very few girls, around the world, have what it takes to appear in Vogue. A genetic one in a million.
The voting process on ANTM is indeed democratic, and the audience cast the deciding vote at the season finale. The eventual winner, Demelza, had been accused of bullying one of the other girls during the series, but she won the car anyway. I did not agree with the decision. I went backstage after the finale to find the girl she had purportedly bullied in hysterics and had to try to console her.
For weeks afterwards I was bombarded with emails from furious readers, threatening to cancel their subscriptions. Even though I had voted for the other finalist, it appeared that the viewers were incensed that Vogue was even on the panel. Our online chat room, the Vogue Forum, went into meltdown. The whole situation had, all of a sudden, become quite problematic, and very ‘off-brand’ for us.
A side effect of being the editor of Vogue is that the public expect you to also set a moral benchmark, which is slightly bizarre when you think about it. I mean, it’s a fashion magazine full of shoes and bags. But the brand values of Vogue represent manners, respect and integrity, and so the backlash was fierce. The public consensus was that Vogue had made the decision, which was entirely erroneous. I realised after that experience that the power of the Vogue masthead meant that we had to be in total control of the outcome, or we risked losing credibility. ANTM and Vogue agreed to part company thereafter.
Demelza was duly given her eight pages as pledged, but no cover, which the media whipped up and interpreted as a snub by me, but in fact we were under no obligation to run one. ANTM aligned with Harper’s Bazaar after that and they did unearth some credible models such as Montana Cox and Amanda Ware. We continued to shoot Alice for Vogue over the next few years. She was, as it turned out, that one in a million.
15
GOLDEN YEARS
Vogue Australia was due to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2009, and it struck me that I was the last one left in the building who had long-standing experience and knowledge of the history of Vogue. I was the only person there with more than two decades of corporate or cultural memory. I recruited my dear friend, author Lee Tulloch, to coedit a book with me to record this important milestone, as she had an astute understanding and appreciation for the brand. HarperCollins were engaged as publishers and we set to work, with the help of erstwhile editorial coordinator Kimberley Walsh.
One would expect there to be a gleaming archive of painstakingly sorted Vogue material, but in fact all that exists are some leather-bound copies of the magazines that have to be taken out of the stacks and photocopied. No photographic library of all the shoots was ever kept, and any film that did remain was thrown willy-nilly into boxes and stored in a shed on the FPC premises. Poor Kimberley spent days cautiously picking through water-damaged and possibly rat-infested piles of unidentified film to salvage any original material whatsoever. The whole endeavour was a gruelling exercise, but Lee, Kimberley and I all shared a passion for having the history of the magazine recorded, both for ourselves and for posterity. I felt that Vogue was changing, especially with the departure of many of the Condé Nast stalwarts. It became terribly important for Lee and I to capture what it had been.
We worked laboriously to finish on deadline, with Lee completing an enormous amount of research and stellar writing within a miraculous timeframe. It was a six-month slog, and probably the most exacting editing job I ever had. We had to turn five decades of, quite frankly, patchy material, into something glossy, concise and impactful.
When the first advance copy of the book In Vogue: 50 Years of Australian Style arrived on my desk, fresh from the printers, Kimberley and I burst into tears, overcome with a sense of achievement and relief. Lee and I packed all the photocopies of the magazines into a box, and I left it in the stockroom as a time capsule for the next editor of Vogue Australia.
Once the book was finished, we had to get cracking on the anniversary issue of the magazine itself. During a brainstorming meeting with all the Vogue editorial staff, the then art director Ella Munro put forward a brilliant cover idea.
I had already suggested the idea of featuring Cate Blanchett. I have always thought her beauty, talent and intelligence combined to make her the quintessential Vogue covergirl. The big debate would be how we approached it: which photographer, how she would be dressed, and the feeling we wanted to portray for such an important milestone issue.
Ella had gathered together a series of portraits by renowned English fashion illustrator David Downton. ‘I thought it would be lovely to have an illustrated cover,’ she proposed. ‘It would show a beautiful sense of continuity, pulling the history of fashion illustration through to the present day by featuring a contemporary celebrity, in contemporary fashion.’ I got goosebumps. I loved the idea. It was redolent of the past, yet modern in its use of a current actress. As the discussion progressed we decided we would create four different covers, including one deluxe version with a hand-illustrated Vogue masthead, which would be sold in its own gold box at a slightly higher price.
The concept was there. Now we had to make it happen.
Cate was in London, filming the movie Robin Hood, co-starring my favourite Russell Crowe. David Downton also lived outside of London and, once contacted, eagerly agreed to the commission. I telephoned Cate’s agent in LA, Lisa Kasteler of WKT, to pitch the idea. In the tradition of all celebrity agents, Lisa is tough. If she’s not on board it’s not going to happen, full stop. I went into my spiel about what we envisaged, and how Cate was my one and only choice for the cover, which was true. I explained the idea of the illustrations and how Cate could nominate the designers she would like to wear, and we would do an old-fashioned portrait sitting with David, with full hair and makeup. Lisa was quiet on the other end of the line for what seemed like an eternity, when finally she replied: ‘I think that’s a wonderful idea.’ Coming from Lisa Kasteler, I knew we had a winner.
The sitting was arranged to take place at The Dorchester Hotel. Lisa would be attending so it was crucial that I be there to make sure proceedings flowed smoothly and we achieved the four covers we needed. I was also doubling as the stylist.
Lisa and I met for breakfast and stationed ourselves in the hotel’s grand lobby, waiting for Cate’s arrival. She had a day off from her shooting schedule and was dropping her children to school first. She swept in briskly, with total professionalism as usual, and we took the lift to the suite we had booked for the day.
It’s something I love about Cate; she’s always ready to get straight to work. She had chosen to wear four designers: Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Giorgio Armani and Australian Martin Grant. They were very lavish, very formal pieces, as Cate seems to fall into a shoot more comfortably if there is a sense of theatre about the clothes.
I had also organised for some very special and hugely expensive Tiffany jewels, necklaces and rings to be flown in, and they were there with their own bodyguard. Cate and I did the prerequisite try-on of all the clothes I had hanging in the dressing room until we settled on what she felt best in. I mentioned that I could hardly wait to see her in the upcoming Sydney Theatre Company production of A Streetcar Named Desire. ‘Oh no, don’t put so much pressure on me,’ Cate laughed. I was stunned to hear that even someone with the formidable talent of Cate Blanchett possessed an element of self-doubt. I voiced my surprise. ‘I often think I am Blanche DuBois,’ I confessed, admitting my penchant for complicated Tennessee Williams heroines. ‘You know, there’s a little bit of Blanche in all of us,’ Cate replied.
The process of the sitting was unusual in that the team, which included the amazing hairstylist Sam McKnight and makeup artist Dotti, would get Cate ready in full hair, makeup, clothes and accessories, and present her to David. Afterwards, we retired to my room, leaving them alone to capture the moment. Normally a shoot will have at least ten people on set, but David’s work required intimacy, and a personal connection to his subject. Each sketch took approximately half an hour, after which David would summon us back to the suite to start over again. These were the initial drawings, which he would later work on and perfect to produce the final images. It felt rather old-school and marvellous. It was also, for me as an editor, a joy to have such a controllable process—we could execute a headshot, a full length, a three-quarter length, whatever we desired, in the knowledge that every one of them would work. We could make them work. You cannot do that with film. You either get the shot, or you don’t. But with illustration, we could embellish, tweak, play. I felt—well I hoped—the reader would see them as a present. They were exquisite enough to be framed.
Writing the book was one thing; producing the fiftieth anniversary issue was another. But nothing was more stressful than planning the fiftieth anniversary party. Deciding who should be on the guest list was exhausting and highly political, as we strove to create a delicate balance of past and present, and of industry, clients and party people. News Magazines events director Fiona Westall managed to secure the sound stage at Fox Studios, in Sydney’s Moore Park, a venue that had never previously been used for a party. The building itself had the appropriate grandeur, with a flight of stone steps leading to the entrance doors. Add searchlights and you had dazzling, Hollywood-style glamour. Rizer Productions built a clever and sumptuous venue within a venue, creating an ‘intimate’ feel for what was to be around 900 guests.
Despite a global financial crisis, gloomy publishing predictions and a not insignificant cost, News Limited came to the party, so to speak. There were numerous requests on my party wish list: ‘Never-ending magnums of ice-cold Moët & Chandon’, ‘an oyster bar serving dirty martinis’ and ‘indoor trees’, but my greatest wish was that Cate Blanchett be there to launch our fabulous covers. As the stress (and the costs) were mounting exponentially in the weeks leading up to the night, I received a phone call from Cate’s local agent. Her client was unfortunately going to have to decline the party, as she was right in the middle of rehearsals for Streetcar.
I was driving to work when I got the news. I pulled the car over and burst into tears. (When I look back I spent a great deal of time in my car trying to sort out problems.) It’s difficult to get celebrities to events these days. It’s all marketing and business. Unless they are promoting something for themselves they’re not interested. In many cases, you have to pay them. It’s a minefield of tedious negotiations. I find the idea of paying someone to go to a party odious. Cate never demands money, and I accepted that she was in rehearsal.
I felt miserable about it for a couple of days and then I decided to make one more last ditch attempt. It’s part of my career philosophy—it won’t hurt to ask. I think my Scottish grandmother taught me that, although her version was: ‘If you don’t ask, you won’t git.’
I called Lisa Kasteler and was completely transparent. ‘Lisa, I know how it all works, believe me. I understand that Cate is busy. But this means so much to me, not in order to get publicity for Vogue in particular, but to me personally. I’m so proud of this project.’
Lisa said ‘Leave it with me,’ and hung up.
Cate confirmed her attendance a few days later. Honesty is the best policy. A Hollywood agent, just like a gossip columnist, can spot a scam a mile away. Lisa and Cate were simply being gracious.
I had been rehearsing my speech for about, oh, six months, lying awake in bed between the hours of 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. It was such a momentous occasion for Vogue—and for me—I had to get it right. I wanted to acknowledge everyone who had contributed to Vogue over the years, what fifty years
in fashion publishing meant, why we were celebrating, everything Vogue Australia had achieved. All without sounding like a gushy fool.
The night of the party, I dressed at Lee Tulloch’s home beforehand. To avoid the problem of favouring one designer, I chose a black, forties-vintage dress that I had found in Paris for $91. My hair and makeup channelled the fifties, B-grade actress once again, with a lot of backcombing by my date for the evening, trusty hairdresser Bruce Packer, and with help from Kate from Napoleon, who layered on the eyeliner and lipstick with a trowel (at my insistence).
PR supremo Tracy Baker was also working on the event, and instead of a red carpet had installed a long stretch of zebra, flanked down each side by male models in black tie. John Hartigan and I stood and received every guest, as seemed fitting, but unfortunately there was a bottleneck for a period which meant a few of the guests were shivering outside in the chilly night air. Then suddenly, the space was filled. I was standing by the side of the stage, chatting to Joel Edgerton, who was also in rehearsals for Streetcar, playing Stanley. I mentioned I was about to go up and speak. ‘You don’t seem very nervous,’ he said. ‘Well, I don’t think anyone wants me to fail do they?’ I said hopefully, and he agreed that was the best way to approach it.
That and two champagnes.
Sandra Hook and John Hartigan both gave short, succinct speeches and then Bernard Leser, the man who was responsible for Vogue Australia, delivered my favourite line of the night during his elegant address: ‘Do quality work first and the profits will follow.’ You won’t hear anybody in management say things like that anymore.
Then it was my turn. The audience gave me a cheer, and I felt so buoyed and grateful and happy to be there it seemed to be over in seconds. The event was not to celebrate me as custodian, or to give lofty pronouncements on the power and authority of Vogue. It was to celebrate each and every person in the room, who had in some way contributed to the magazine over time. Afterwards, I was led down the steep stairs from the stage by two male models and walked over to stand next to Cate Blanchett, looking splendid in a red Ossie Clark vintage dress. ‘Gee, you really know how to deliver a good speech,’ she said. This, coming from Cate Blanchett, the world’s greatest actress. You could have picked me up off the floor. I’ll remember that compliment forever.
The Vogue Factor Page 18
