The May issue ofHarper’s Bazaar is on stands now, and included is my newest Best Dressed column. Who captured my sartorial spirit this month? Well, there was obviously the Rooney Mara moment, which I saw all over both the couture and fall 2012 runways. At those same shows were my two new favorite faces, Cara Delevingne (who we’ve seen pop up a few times already on this blog, both before the Met andat the gala’s afterparties), and Ruby Aldridge. The crocodile leather was another big trend last month, only made more timely by Rihanna’s Tom Ford dress at the Met gala, whichI Tweeted about that night. And finally, I couldn’t help but acknowledge the power of Downton Abbey. Michelle Dockery is my new favorite person, and her Lady Mary is my new favorite character. Since this issue went to press, I’ve met Michelle a few times and I can say she’s just as inspiring in person.
V magazine is a rewarding place to work for a variety of reasons. But the best is probably the access and possibility of collaboration with some of the most important artist and image makers currently working today. In the March issue of the magazine, which was inspired by the beauty of athletics, I had one of these opportunities when I teamed up with the artist Marilyn Minter on a fashion story.
I don’t mind admitting that my earliest exposures to Minter’s work were in the fashion arena. The images she took for Tom Ford and Tamara Mellon when she was at Jimmy Choo are still some of my favorite fashion campaigns to date. It was through those pictures I became more familiar with her artwork, which is bold, sweaty and sexual. So when we were brainstorming about stories for our March issue, she was the first person to came to mind. And, wouldn’t you know it, she said yes.
On set, Marilyn was fun, easy and fabulous. She was hardly broody, and nary a difficult moment. She always wanted more, more, more! More skin, more sweat, more muscle, more jewelry. She was constantly spritzing the body builder we had booked for the shoot, and constantly steaming the Plexi-glass she uses in her studio. She lives and works in the same space, just a few blocks from our V office in Soho. It’s a constant hub of creativity.
It was a quick, easy day, and we loved the resultant pictures. What I love about much of Marilyn’s work is that she’s not afraid to portray something as bold, strong, and in-your-face. But there’s always a feeling of sexuality about it, which is important. And which I hope we included here.
Mr. Blasberg’s Best Dressed is getting the paper treatment. After appearing exclusively on the Harper’s Bazaar website, starting from the March issue I’ve gone in-book. Behold my April column, which is all my favorite things from the month: Louis Vuitton’s feathered and fabulous spring decadence, as seen on my favorite girls Lauren Santo Domingo, Emma Watson, Sarah Jessica Parker and Elle Fanning; the devastating Anthony Vaccerrello dress that Karlie Kloss wore to Carine Roitfeld’s Vampire Ball in Paris after she wore on Anthony’s runway; the importance of a letterman’s jacket, which I’ve already bragged about here on this site; and finally, a couture ballerina flat at the Valentino couture show. (If you have any suggestions for best dressed moments for future columns, leave them in the comments!)
Fashion is an industry that cherishes it’s old, but feeds off the new. That’s why we see so many archaic elements constantly come back into style with the passing of every season; and why, as I write about here, we can see a 26-year-old take the helm of a storied, historic fashion house. During the couture shows in Paris in January, I met two designers that are mixing things up on the other side of the Atlantic: Olivier Rousteing, who just presented his second full collection at Balmain; and Jonathan Anderson, an Irishman based in London, who designs for his label JW Anderson. I profiled them in the March issue of Vmagazine, and have included the text — and pictures of their handsome mugs — here.
Olivier Rousteing is curled up, catlike, on a sofa at Balmain’s headquarters on rue Pierre Charron. It is a rare moment of downtime for the 26-year-old creative director who, in the last two weeks, has shown his first pre-Fall collection in New York, a second men’s collection in Paris, and delved headfirst into his first solo Autumn effort for the house. Balancing three highly anticipated collections in less than a month is a daunting task. (To wit: the frantic pace and high pressure is what led Rousteing’s predecessor, Christophe Decarnin, to vacate the house amid reports of exhaustion and depression in the spring of 2011.) But the young designer, who is wearing a black T-shirt and quilted jersey trousers (i.e. rockstar sweatpants) is taking it all excitedly in stride. “Is it crazy right now?” he reiterates with a smile. “Yes, and I’m a little freaked out, but I thrive on the adrenaline and the excitement.”
Picking up where Decarnin left off was not easy for Rousteing, who was born in the South of France, studied fashion in Bourdeaux, and worked for Roberto Cavalli before joining the Balmain design team. “It was a weird situation,” he says delicately. “I really love Christophe, and he is an amazing person who taught me a lot. So when they told me what happened I reflected, but not whether or not I should take the job, more like what it meant to me. You can love fashion, but when you work at a company it becomes something different.” He took two days to accept. “What made me happy is that I was working with my team. In the end it was a really good decision.”
And one that has paid off. The buzz surrounding Rousteing has gone from a whisper to a roar since his debut, which paid homage to all of the body-con elements of the house while also subtly establishing his own footing. Fashion critics were pleased to see less flesh and more embroidery in the collection, which was playfully inspired by an imaginary journey Elvis took through Las Vegas dressed as a Spanish bullfighter. “I want to have fun,” he says jovially. “And then I want to have glamour. I mix that with tailoring and construction, which are hallmarks of the house of Balmain, and something I would never want to turn my back on.”
There are still some elements of the job that Rousteing needs to get more comfortable with—like the designer’s bow. “I went out there and didn’t know what to do,” he says of his Spring show. “I was super scared—but super happy.”
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JONATHAN ANDERSON AT JW ANDERSON
onathan William Anderson, 27, whose line is called J.W. Anderson, manifested his label in a roundabout way. He came to New York to study acting, but when that became dull he moved to London to do a menswear course at the London College of Fashion. “It’s the only school that let me in,” deadpans the designer, who has a kinetic energy and fabulous sense of humor. He attributes his untraditional career arc in part to sheer boredom. “In 2008, I started making weird jewelry out of clock parts and forced them on friends and family,” says Anderson. “This went on for a while, and after I received my degree in menswear design I decided to do a show that summer in an old church, and I’ve never looked back.” He branched out into womenswear three seasons ago because, he explains, “I love the dichotomy of a man’s and woman’s wardrobe mashup.”
These days his men’s and womenswear lines are two of the London fashion calendar’s most hotly anticipated collections. Last year, Anderson was nominated for a British Fashion Council Award. The designer, originally from a small Irish town called Loup, fondly recalls that fashion is a family pastime. His grandmother would knit many of his childhood outfits, including charming but embarrassing sweaters featuring farm animals and tractors. “I realize now how much I loved the idea that something could be made from nothing,” he says.
His design process is as smooth now as his grandmother’s was then. It starts with what he calls a rat’s nest of ideas and ends with a rat’s nest of ideas. Anderson pushes himself to build many layers of concepts before building fabrics and prints. “A collection cannot be real if it has a single concept, or else it becomes costume,” he says. “Life is about lots of layers, and collections have to be built that way too.”
As of yesterday, it’s officially spring time in New York! To welcome my favorite of the four seasons, not to mention the glorious weather that’s been taking over New York these past few days, I dug into our archives at Visionaire and dug up #56: Solar. This issue, which was sponsored by Calvin Klein, was one of my favorites: Several artists (Ryan McGinley, Inez + Vinoodh, Peter Lindbergh and more) contributed works that went from a monochromatic scheme to vibrant colors when exposed to sunlight. My favorite in the series, a paint-by-numbers contribution from the artist Alex Katz. Check out the video we made in the office of Katz’s piece above, and click HERE for more from Vmagazine and to see more videos about old issues of Visionaire.
In the April issue of Harper’s Bazzar, I did a story on a new documentary from the filmmaker and photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders on the idea of ageless beauty. He had spoken to some of the world’s most iconic faces: Jerry Hall, who we both agreed was one of our favorites; Patti Hansen, who I wrote about in the December issue of Bazzar; and Beverly Johnson, the first black woman to be on the cover of Vogue are just some of them women we discussed. There was a fabulous group photo, which actually inspired the entire project, and then we picked three of our favorites — China Mechado, Christie Brinkley and Isabella Rossellini — to get their take on their careers, on their own concept of beauty, and what it means to be considered a beautiful face today. My story, along with my interviews with these three lovely ladies, are below.
To make his latest documentary, renowned portrait photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders was simply in the right place at the right time. Specifically, a supermodel-packed party in 2009 at the New York pad of seminal hairdresser Harry King. “I said I’d go for five minutes, but when I walked in I was floored by all these gorgeous women in the same room,” he recalls. “It looked like a Charlie ad come to life. And I thought, This would be the most amazing group shot.”
He did it–and he was right. The resulting image—a portrait of the biggest faces from the 1950s through the ’80s, including Beverly Johnson, Carol Alt, Cheryl Tiegs, and Patti Hansen—sums up what beauty meant in America in the latter part of the 20th century. “I was so inspired by these women, I thought it would make an even better documentary,” says Greenfield-Sanders. “You wanted to hear what these beautiful faces had to say.”
So he made About Face: The Supermodels, Then and Now, which will air on HBO this summer. “They’re all survivors,” he says of his muses. “They defined beauty for their generations. And they have the most fabulous personalities.”
On-screen, Jerry Hall, 55, reminisces about her first job at a Texas Dairy Queen, and how her mother sent her off to the French Riviera with a suitcase of homemade dresses copied from the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue to be discovered. The iconic Carmen Dell’Orefice, 80, admitted that, when she began her career in 1946, models were thought to be “working girls,” while now they are considered businesswomen. Marisa Berenson, 65, the famed ’70s beauty and a granddaughter of Elsa Schiaparelli, “told us regret was a useless emotion,” Greenfield-Sanders says.
Shooting these cover girls was an education for the photographer, whose portraits have been exhibited everywhere from the Smithsonian to London’s Saatchi Collection. “These women are complex creatures; they’re smart women who survived in a tough business,” he says. “In front of the camera they come alive. But more important, they’re beautiful on the inside and out.”
Another tip he picked up: Never skip a party. If he hadn’t gone to King’s house (and, yes, King did the hair in these portraits), he wouldn’t have made the film. “So that’s the moral of the story: Go to the party if there will be beautiful women there. They’ll inspire you.”
Isabella Rossellini, 59
I was lucky, because I started modeling when I was 28 years old. Now they start so young and there is much more pressure. Modeling taught me to be confident and financially independent, but it’s not always the result today. When my daughter [Elettra Wiedemann] started modeling at 20, an agent told her she should get plastic surgery immediately. I was completely scandalized. I could have killed someone. I made a phone call that was one of the most ferocious I’ve ever made. So I was relieved that my daughter had me.
I was happy to be a part of this documentary because I was curious about what had happened to the other models. I wanted to hear about girls like Carol Alt, Beverly Johnson, and the other people I’d lost touch with.
I do miss modeling. In fact, I miss it terribly. But it’s the same problem in film: There are fewer roles for older women. I do think that there are women of a certain age who are in better shape now. There wasn’t an emphasis on women’s fitness when I was young, even with actresses. My mom [Ingrid Bergman] exercised at home every morning for 20 minutes. That was it. She wasn’t like me. I exercise every day for at least an hour, and on weekends I try to do two hours—everything from yoga to swimming to Zumba—but I don’t do anything too strenuous because I’m almost 60.
As for plastic surgery and injectables like Botox, some days I wake up and say, “Well, they have this new technology, why not use it?” And some days I feel the opposite: “Why don’t we accept what is natural?” I don’t think I’ll do it. It’s too late. My mother once told me that growing older was the only way to have a long life. So my attitude is, of course we are aging. And it’s natural, and it’s beautiful.
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China Machado, 82
I was born to be a model. I don’t mean that physically because, as Dick [Avedon] once told me, “You’ll never make a lot of money in this industry because you’re too special.” But like models now, from an early age I was accustomed to moving a lot. I was born in Shanghai in 1929 and lived there till I was 16. We were forced out [during the Japanese occupation], and then I lived between Argentina and Peru before I came to Europe.
I fell in love with a bullfighter, Luis Miguel Dominguín, which was a very big scandal. My family didn’t speak to me for 15 years. But I don’t regret it. He was 27 and gorgeous, like Mick Jagger. In Paris I sang in a nightclub, and I met Hubert de Givenchy and started to work in his atelier. There were two types of models in the early ’50s: photographic models and runway models, which is what I was. It was different then. I would work with a designer for three months, as they would create dresses specifically for me. It was couture. I made $100 a month, and I was the highest-paid model in Europe at the time. I had a very distinctive walk.
In September 1958, I arrived in New York. Diana Vreeland cast me in a group fashion show, which I opened wearing a fabulous Balenciaga dress. Dick saw me, and the next thing I knew I was in his studio. I worked exclusively with Dick and Bazaar for the next three years. I stopped in 1962 because, frankly, I couldn’t give a damn. A model had so much to worry about: We had to get our own hair done and do our own makeup. I was happy to become a fashion editor at Bazaar [from 1962 to 1972].
I eat all the time. My favorite food is rice, and I eat it at least once a day. I’m always active. Perhaps that’s what keeps me in shape—I’m always moving. In 1972 I was on the cover of Bazaar, and I said the same thing: I don’t exercise, I don’t diet, and I dye my own hair. People thought I was lying. But it was true then and it’s true now.
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Christie Brinkley, 58
I must say, when I look back on my career, I feel slightly cheated. Ha! Most of my editorial happened in the ’80s, and that is definitely not my aesthetic. I remember thinking, “Do my shoulders really need to be that big? And my hair?” I just joined Facebook last year, and people started posting pictures I hadn’t seen in ages, and some of it’s just really funny.
Even though it wasn’t really my style, I did get to work with legends. I did several covers of Bazaar with Francesco Scavullo, and working with him was fantastic. You would go into his studio, and there would be a big umbrella light with a string tied to the center of it. He would touch the string to your nose, and you just knew that, bathed in Scavullo’s light, you looked the most beautiful you ever could.
I was discovered when I lived in Paris when I was 19. I was living as a struggling artist, and I didn’t have a telephone or even running water. An American photographer saw me, and asked me to pose for him. Eventually I did, and he took me to an agency. I was mildly curious but I didn’t want to leave Paris. Finally, on a trip home to California, I met Eileen Ford. I had done a few jobs by then and skipped town on a little vacation, which the clients thought was a bargaining tool. So, unbeknownst to me, I created a demand. That was a good lesson to learn: Fashion people want what is elusive.
I’ve had a long career, even though for the last 25 years the press has referred to me as “the former supermodel.” It’s, like, Jeez, give a girl a break. They called me that when I was making a very nice living as a model, even before I branched out. A few things have changed in modeling. For one, we can become brands now. Before, you were just a girl, or a clothes hanger, but now you can have a name. You’re a real person, which is nice.
Sure, I’ve always thought that Ricky Gervais was sort of funny. In fact, two Golden Globe ceremonies ago, when he walked on stage with a pint of beer and made a crack about Mel Gibson being a mean drunk just as Mel Gibson was coming onstage, I thought he was a comedic genius. But I was never overly fond of the Brit comedian. It’s something I find particular to funny people from across The Pond. Aren’t they just a little too arrogant? A little too snobby with their humor? The original Office was amazing, but was it too amazing? All of my British friends love to tell me their comedians are better than ours, and that some random, obscure BBC comedy mini series is so much funnier than our American dribble, so I often can’t help but always find a pretense for disliking non-American actors. Mind you, this logic has become more and more difficult as our former prizes like Adam Sandler decreases in comedic value, but that’s beside the point.
This brings me back to Ricky Gervais. An avid reader of my little website here will indicate just how much time I’ve spent in airports lately. What this means from a literary stand point is that I’ve devoted many hours to the magazine racks at newsagents around the world. Basically, I’ve read everything. Even travel magazines and fashion magazines in foreign languages. It was one of these glossy pilgrimages that I found the new issue of Esquire. (I must make a very non-butch confession: I rarely pick up mens magazines. Harper’s Bazaar? Vogue? Elle? Japanese Nylon Kids? Sure. But the lad rags don’t really give me the fantasy I crave in horribly lit sterile airport lounges.) In this issue of Esquire was an interview with Gervais, and it was at that moment that I finally succumbed to the Gervais charm. Within the first few minutes of the interview, he quoted Churchill:
RG: Churchill’s advisors once came to him and said, “We’re going to stop all funding for the arts so we can put that into the war effort.” And Churchill said, “Then what are we fighting for?” Sends a chill down my spine. Incredible.
A little later, he was giving anecdotes about how the ancient Romans maintained humility in the Senate:
RG: There was a Roman emperor that hired someone to whisper “You’re just a man” in his ear as he walked around the crowds. Just to remind him, because he knew if everyone tells you you’re a god, then you are. And so he hired someone to say “You’re just a man.”
The rest of the interview was full of further humility, cultural observations, and insight into both his craft and his personal life. Here I was, folded up like a lawn chair into a coach seat on an American Airlines flight, and falling for Ricky Gervais. I never saw it coming. He talks about a vertically challenged actor with respect, and then discusses how his parents had died before they could see his major successes. I liked the article so much I ripped it out for safe keeping (that’s my copy, folded and mangled and on my couch, above). In what I think is the true mark of a good comedian, he made me think while he made me laugh. And that’s pretty rare nowadays.
I didn’t exactly disguise how much I missed seeing my St. Louis sister Karlie Kloss on the New York fashion week runway this season. But luckily for me and my fellow fashion friends, there have been no shortage of chic betties on the catwalk this season. My two favorites were the sexy South African Candice Swanepoel and the Puerto Rican beauty Joan Smalls. This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen the two of them together: I was on set with Terry Richardson and Carine Roitfeld when we shot them together (in Balenciaga, natch) for the November cover of V magazine, and I wrote the piece that accompanied the article. In addition to giving fierce catwalk, they give fabulous Q+A too. To read my chat with Candice, CLICK HERE; and to check out my conversation with Joan, CLICK HERE.
The good thing about both of these girls: They’re drop dead sexy, but also the sweetest little things. They stopped to chat with me about their street style choices following Prabal Gurung, a designer they both count a close friend. Watch the video of our chat here:
When I first moved to New York, one of the first fashion people I met was Douglas Perrett. Our mutual friend, Teen Vogue‘s Jane Keltner, introduced us at his apartment, which was a small studio on Lower Fifth Avenue that was completely wall papered in Polaroid pictures of models. Some were new pictures, some were old, but all of them were taken when the models were brand new faces. Perrett started his own casting company in 2000, and in the decade since he’s amassed thousands of pictures. He edited them down for Wild Things, a limited edition book. I asked him to pick a few of his favorite male Polaroids and answer these questions about the art of Polaroid photography. (For some of his favorite females, including Abbey Lee Kershaw, Aline Weber, Hanne Gaby Odiele and more, jump over to my Vmagazine‘s story on Perrett.)
DEREK BLASBERG First, let’s start with the inscription on this book: “Dedicated to all the teenagers and their dreams.”
DOUGLAS PERRETT I look at models as teenagers and see very few success stories. I think teenagers should not be punished for a decision they made at 14 or 15, when they decided to drop everything and try to make a career as a professional model.
DB So you hang out with a bunch of kids. Do you ever get sick of it and wish there would be a 30-and-over law for modeling?
DP No way. Models in their thirties are way more annoying then models in their teens.
DB Give me some goss: Who’s the most mature teen model you’ve ever worked with? And who is the most immature? Did anyone show up to a shoot with Barbie dolls or something?
DP I’ve seen it all: A photographer injecting a tired model with Adderall. I’ve heard it all, male model gang bangs on the train from Milan to Paris, a sandbox being delivered on set for an underage girl.
DB Wow. That’s exactly the sort of stuff my mom warned me about when I moved to New York. Now tell me about this book. How many Polaroids do you think you own, and where do you store them?
DP I have over 10,000 polaroids archived in large plastic bins from the Container Store. We made an edit of 281 for the book.
DB How did you edit your collection for this book?
DP I was going for that right-off-the-boat look. Their first day in New York, not knowing a lick of English and all they have a is a subway map. That hunger for fame.
DB What I love about Polaroids is the same thing I hate about them: They’re immediate, and they’re finite. You can’t reproduce them. Have you ever lost any valuable or sentimental Polaroids? Or spilled coffee on them, like I have?
DP I loved the Polaroid. I hate how expensive they got, and even more when they were discontinued. As for regrets: I lost or threw out an Irina Lazareanu pre-muse picture, a beefy Channing Tatum shot, and a baby face Doutzen Kroes. And I think a Daria too.
DB Do you still use Polaroids? Or have you converted to digital? What is the future of Polaroids?
DP It’s all digital photos now, lots more to organize. I want to blow my Polaroids up and do a traveling show.
DB Is there an art to the Polaroid? (Andy Warhol thought there was!)
DP I’m self-taught. My Polaroids at the beginning were all out of focus and cropped irregular. But now all my Polaroids are cropped from the chest up, with little space showing above the head. That’s become my crop.
DB What’s your favorite picture in this book?
DP My favorite Polaroid is probably Katie Forgarty. Her neck is so long. And she was so peppy when she came into the office with her mother. I was obsessed by her right away. And I got so much flack for posting her photo online.
The fine folks at WhoWhatWear phoned me up in the start of the New Year to ask me if I would be willing to talk about a few things I love for a video series they were putting together with the fine folks from Samsung. Since talking about myself is one of the things I love, I immediately said yes. So, what’s on my list? Well, there’s Visionaire‘s Larger Than Life, the Nike bomber jacket I have already gushed about here, the New York City subway system, and my Schwinn bicycle. (And, as it turned out, I actually love the fancy pants new cell phone, the Samsung Galaxy Note, too.) It being near the Valentine’s season and all, and since I was born and raised a Momma’s Boy, I couldn’t help but send My Mom, Carol Blasberg, a little love not too.
