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Lucire Living 2003

In inimitable style, Phillip D. Johnson reviews the summer’s latest fashion books from Fashion People and its rare glimpse into the class system of front-row politicking to the much talked-about The Devil Wears Prada

 


Fur Is Dead

 

HE CONFLICT in Iraq did what nothing else could accomplish: it forced me to turn off my television and put me off reading most newspapers with the exception of The New York Times, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal. Getting rid of cable (to cut expenses when times were extra hard) didn’t do it. Partying and going out to clubs and dinners proved to be somewhat expensive. While we all knew it was coming, I didn’t realize how quickly the whole Operation Iraqi Freedom situation would take our lives, leaving us saturated with all news Iraq all the time. I finally gave up the ghost on the fifth day and I went searching for something else to occupy my free time.
   I decided to read and review some of the more talked about fashion-themed books that have been published (in the last three months or so) or were soon to be published. And having an avid reader all my life, I soon rediscovered the joy and pleasure that comes from reading a good book.
   I met Gladys Perint Palmer at her book signing party at the Bryant Park tents during the fall 2003 shows and immediately had the intuition that she was someone worth knowing. Then I read her book, Fashion People (Assouline Publishing, 2003, $29·95), which only proved that my first impression of her was the right one. Fashion People, with a foreword by writer Colin McDowell, is a chronicle of the modern fashion industry as seen through the eyes of someone who has maintained the distance necessary to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. (So help us all.) As one of the last fashion illustrators left in the business, Ms Palmer has a highly developed idiosyncratic style that is at once amusing, sarcastic, shrewd, detached, intelligent, all-knowing and always interesting.
   While her illustrations are the main attractions in this book, I found her written text at the beginning of every chapter to be equally interesting as the drawings themselves. In preparing the reader for Chapter Two, ‘Front Row Faces’, she wrote the following words: ‘The front row at fashion shows are crammed with minor royals, film stars, café society, politicians and Mme Paul’s graduates. No attempt is made to protect celebrities from the paparazzi; they are seated in the front row to seen and abused by the press.’ And then she added salt to the wound by exposing a certain truth that people in fashion try their best not to acknowledge: ‘[then] there is the working front row. Merchants on one side, press on the other. A front-row seat indicated not only placement but also position. You Are Important. You Have Arrived. You Matter. You Are Beautiful. You Are Clever. Everybody Loves You. Until you lose your job and can’t get a seat.’ Ouch.
   Throughout the book, she dropped other pearls of wisdom such as an astute observation about the class system at work at fashion parties. In recalling the scene at one particularly memorable party in Paris, she separated the wheat from the chaff by coolly recounting how attendees were broken up into distinct groupings: the VVVIPs from the VVIPs from the merely VIPs and IPs. And you don’t have to be in the fashion business not to agree with her assessment of models today: ‘Dalma and Patti Cleveland (one of Antonio’s girls) were the last models who knew how to walk. Patti could pirouette, dance, turn on a dime, all the while buttoning or unbuttoning a jacket.’ So true, but I would also add Naomi Campbell and Gisèle Bündchen to this very exalted list. She goes on by saying, ‘Later; models seem to have received their training from the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. They stepped like Lippizaners. Claudia Schiffer walked like a farmhand.’ So true. So very true.
   As for the illustrations themselves, I was highly entertained by her sense of people and what makes them tick. She managed time after time to reveal the hidden faces beneath the public façade of her subjects. She drew Calvin Klein clad in athletic gear and an Olympic flame raised over his head with the caption, ‘Torchbearer, Calvin Klein, keeper of the Eternal Flame, passed to him by YSL, Armani, Prada … Will he ever pass it on?’ That’s the same question many in the industry are asking about most of the top-tier designers working today. Who is going to replace Armani? Ralph? Muiccia Prada? Who indeed?
   The recent incident in which Nicolas Ghesqueire was caught misappropriating the designs of the late San Francisco designer Kaisik Wong was rendered as both a tribute to Wong—as well as a rebuke to Ghesqueire. Not that it derailed his triumphant march onward as the Next Great Thing in fashion. She poked fun at everyone, being true to her agent provocateur reputation. The Kaiser Karl despises references to his German past, so she zinged him by portraying him in German military garb. Madonna and the cult of celebrity that has taken over the fashion shows in recent years were sharply commented upon by Ms Palmer (in text and drawings), especially in the ‘Front Row Faces’ chapter. Most of them deserve it.
   The other high-powered men and women of fashion didn’t get off so lightly either. You can be sure that not everyone appreciated being mentioned in Fashion People. The much-missed Elsa Klensch did not appreciate what was said about her (‘After CNN cancelled Style with Elsa Klensch in February 2002 there was nothing to watch at 7·30 A.M. Pacific time’). Although there is still some disagreement among the parties and onlookers as to what exactly went down when Ms Klensch arrived at the book launch and saw her particular illustration prominently displayed (‘I was not fired! I quit’), it only added to the drama that is New York Fashion Week.
   Color Stories: behind the Scenes of America’s Billion-dollar Beauty Industry (Simon & Schuster, 2002, $23) by Mary Lisa Gavenas is a brilliantly written exploration of the beauty industry by someone who knows where all the bodies are buried. Ms Gavenas has worked as a beauty editor at Glamour, Mirabella, and InStyle magazines; freelanced for Elle, Family Circle, Redbook and Harper’s Bazaar, as well as producing celebrity photo shoots and in-house magazines for Mary Kay Cosmetics.
   Using her vast experience in the industry and access to the people that really matter for background, she tells a story that is not unlike other stories told before about many other industries and the way they work. Only she does it better. From sitting in (and witnessing) the beginning and end results of a seasonal colour story campaign at Estée Lauder to trolling the perfume counters at department stores all over the country spying on the buying habits of shoppers at the various cosmetics counters, she opens up the process to the public in a way that is evenhandedly narrated, with the reader being left to make up one’s own mind about the subject matter.
   Ms Gavenas visited the factories where make-up is manufactured and packaged, the laboratories where chemists create new products while toiling to give new life to old products. She went backstage at the Bryant Park fashion shows (and to the offices of the beauty editors at the fashion magazines) where the truth is rarely ever given its due—and everyone blissfully buys into the fantasies created by the cosmetics companies. At 212 pp., Color Stories is never boring or condescending. Ms Gavenas keeps the reader entertained while educating them on a process that has long been kept behind closed doors. After reading this book, I came away from it entertained and a little bit more wiser than when I went in.
   Vig Morgan, the central character in Lynn Messina’s wonderfully witty new novel, Fashionistas (Red Dress Ink, March 2003, $12·95), has finally worked her up the middle from being the assistant to the editor-in-chief of the fictitious Fashionista magazine—after nearly 1,059 days—to an assistant editorship. At this point, she was certainly just hoping to keep herself out of harm’s way until something else better came along. The fact that she spent time counting the days is indicative of her ambivalence and other dissatisfied feelings she had yet to work through. One of the significant incidents that drove the plot was that the editorial director was abruptly fired for sitting in the editor-in-chief Jane McNeil’s front row seat at a Anna Sui fashion show. How scary is that? She resides in the seven circles of hell and couldn’t wait to get out.
   But sometimes life throws you a curve and you simply have to go with it.
   The real fun begins when ‘Marguerite Torneau Holland Beckett Velasquez Constantine Thomas’ (and Jane’s arch-rival from a previous magazine) joins the staff as the new editorial director; and she (Vig) is concurrently asked to join in a plot to rid the magazine of Jane’s poisonous influence, once and for all. I started laughing from page one and never stopped.
   Ms Messina captured the rarified world of New York’s fashion publishing empires perfectly. Her skill in deftly juggling several different storylines at the same time while advancing the overall plot of the novel won my admiration time and time again. With the exception of the introduction of Vig’s best friend, Maya (who comes across throughout the whole novel like a bottomless pit of emotional need), the other characters are adequately fleshed out to keep everything bubbling along at an even clip. While this particular novel has a fashion publishing industry background, one should not see that as a limitation to enjoying the book. There is a universality to the theme of workplace dissatisfaction that everyone can identify with. The boss from hell, the internal rivalries, the trying-to-get-ahead-while-staying-under-the-radar-and-faking-out-your-rivals tactics, the insecurity of not knowing if you will have a job next week, the persistent wondering if perhaps you have stayed in your present job too long.
   The build-up to the end of story came not with a roar but with a whisper, which is only fair. Most everyone received their just desserts and Vig averted disaster in the most human of ways possible. She didn’t live happily ever after, but she managed to live to fight another day. Sometimes in all our lives, that is the best outcome we can honestly hope for.

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Although there is disagreement among onlookers as to what went down when Ms Klensch arrived at the book launch and saw her particular illustration displayed (‘I was not fired! I quit’), it only added to the drama that is New York Fashion Week

 

 

Fashion People: click here to order

Order Color Stories

Order Fashionistas

FROM TOP: Fashion People is one of the most truthful looks at the fashion industry; author Gavenas of Color Stories: behind the Scenes of America’s Billion-dollar Beauty Industry ‘knows where the bodies are buried’; Fashionistas chronicles the rise to the middle for Lynn Messina’s fictional Vig Morgan.

 

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