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