In Fashion Part 1
In Fashion.
Annemarie Iverson.
Dedicated to the memory of Liz Tilberis.
The brightest star of the fashion constellation, Liz allowed many of us to shine in her orbit, her sparkle, elegance, and warmth forever inside us.
Special thanks to ...
All the cool people I've ever worked with, for, alongside, above, and below. I hope you find my vision of our time together accurate, maybe even amusing.
All my new fashionista friends who were open and generous to share their stories with me.
Diane Reverand, for believing in me; David Vigliano for making this book happen; Rosy Ngo for bringing it to life.
I thank my mother, Mary Ellen Iverson, for helping me get my first break in magazines all the way from Wisconsin, and my two sons, Francesco and Giacomo, whose pa.s.sion and enthusiasm fuel and inspire me. Lastly, I thank my husband, Alberto Finali, for sharing with us his love and impeccable vision of a fashionable life.
FOREWORD.
BY DIANE VON FURSTENBERG.
I first met Annemarie Iverson at my then-offices at 757 Fifth Avenue in the early 1990s. She was working in creative at Revlon, which held the license for my fragrance Tatiana, and had accompanied one of its suits to the meeting. For my part, I was thinking to restart my fashion company, bringing everything I'd once created back together again. It was clear to me then-and I probably communicated it rather directly-that Annemarie needed to find a way to get herself out of Revlon and more directly in fashion, so to speak.
It didn't take long. A year or so later, Annemarie rode with me to my country house to interview me for a fashion feature she'd started writing for New York Woman magazine. It was called "In Her Closet."
Then, coming full circle a few years later, Annemarie, now the fashion and beauty news director of Harper's Bazaar, attended a fragrance launch in my then-new Twelfth Street showroom. We were both on our way.
I started doing runway shows on Sunday evenings at the start of fashion week, and Annemarie was usually there. I ran into her at the Couture in Paris one January: The very American optimist who was taking on the fashion world had married a handsome Italian banker and was pregnant with her second son.
Her path intertwined over the years with many others, as well. Through a combination of Midwestern pluck and sheer dumb luck, Annemarie has found herself in the presence of other fashion icons, people like Diana Vreeland, Jackie Ona.s.sis, Yves Saint Laurent, Liz Tilberis, and Gianni Versace. Not to mention, my peers, Calvin, Ralph, Karl, and Donna. This access bestowed on Annemarie a rich understanding of the global fashion milieu allowing her to take on in In Fashion a topic enticingly impenetrable to many: How to get your start in the Fashion Industry.
In Fashion is a chunky, humorous, insider-y, but ultimately accessible, manual that will help focus and guide the next generation of young people dreaming of entering this world. My story is embedded here-how I became a designer nearly four decades ago and how I made my return just one decade ago to become an even larger force in fashion thanks, in part, to my role as president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA)-but there are also the stories of window dressers ("visual merchandisers"), public relations people, department store fashion executives, and editorial and celebrity stylists here. Through targeted and amusing dossiers of people in these roles, Annemarie plots out lots of different career paths-where they started and how they arrived in the world of fashion.
The point is that there is likely to be a mentor here with whom each reader can relate. Highlighted throughout are the hot twenty-first century jobs (in public relations, online fashion journalism, accessories design, visual merchandising, retail fashion management), where to go now for the best start to your career, and up to the minute advice for navigating in fashion's ever-changing landscape.
In addition, Annemarie charts out the precise educational path you should follow: If you want to be Vogue's next cover hairstylist, for example, there is no compelling reason to go to Harvard or Brown or the University of Geneva. If you want to be the next me, however, it wouldn't be a bad idea. While fashion is big business and involves big brands, it is also craft, handmade and artisan; at any given moment, fashion pivots around a handful of key individuals, but it also touches everyone. Fashion is everywhere, but the heart of fashion is centered in a few fashion capitals of the world. Also, while fashion itself is highly accessible today thanks to the Internet, fashion careers are not. In Fashion understands all that.
Almost every day, I receive letters from students all over the world looking to apprentice with me. I try to hire as many of them as I possibly can. The United States has this amazing inst.i.tution called the internship that gives young people practical skills and something on their resume to help them get their first job. In fact, I created the DVF studio in the Meatpacking district in Manhattan as a creative lab in which young people could learn.
But first you must know what to write and to whom to send the letter. I believe this important book will inspire and help young people do just that, to find their way or feel invited into the world of fashion: With In Fashion and your own pa.s.sion, discipline, and persistence, you can find your way.
PREFACE:.
AN UNLIKELY FASHONISTA.
From the time I was four or five growing up in deep, dark, desolate Wisconsin, I collected those annoying blow-in cards from magazines that all arrived from the same place-New York City. I filled Stride Rite s...o...b..xes with my cherished postcard-size offers from Good Housekeeping, the rare Glamour that fell into my hands, House & Garden, Mademoiselle. It was my crude attempt to connect with the fashionable world.
I found Vogue at the Port Edwards two-dryer hair salon. I used these pages to instruct my mother how to knit and sew a collection of couture Barbie doll clothes. She did so, amazingly well. I still treasure these tiny creations. Nail enamel, makeup, hair color, according to this same good conservative mother, were not for ladies. But I instinctively ignored her. I knew I belonged to a different world, one where style and color and elegance mattered, where women were fresh and sleek and well groomed all the time.
I secretly groomed my inner city girl and, eventually, found my way to that magic world of magazine chic where beauty closets bulge with (free!) lipsticks, miraculous mascaras, and weird gadgets that promise to eviscerate cellulite; where models, writers, and photographers roam the halls looking fabulous and original; where editors go click, click teetering on the most dangerous never-worn-out or soiled shoes; where fashion closets spill out the dresses and shoes and bags that are the bright new vision for next season and for how we want to look now; and where sleek publishing executives package and sell everything editors touch and photograph and write about as the latest, best, and brightest. This is a world where you, like me, might find yourself in the same room with superstars like Kate Moss, Calvin Klein, Tom Ford, Courtney Love, Hugh Grant, Sting, Madonna, and Robin Williams or legends like Yves Saint Laurent, Jackie O, Diana Vreeland, or Princess Diana, as I unexpectedly did. Strangely, the superstars inspired less awe in me than the people with and for whom I worked.
I finally did arrive at the epicenter of the magazine universe, but getting there was not easy or obvious. What has motivated me to write In Fashion? To help others as clueless and unconnected as I was find a more direct path while making sense of my twisted journey.
I have experienced more and I have done more than I knew to even expect of myself. I was wooed. Courted. Hired. Lauded. I hired, lauded, congratulated, promoted others. Early on, I was dubbed by Adweek the "fashion girl to watch." And ... I've been fired, gently-"There's this 'other job' at Ca-fugly Un-fashion Magazine that we think you'd be great for!"-and much more publicly and brutally.
I sat through my most recent-and let's hope last-firing as editor in chief of Seventeen magazine while lapping up frozen fat-free yogurt with Heath bar topping, trying to appear as cool as a cuc.u.mber. I'd been called back to the city from vacation for an "important" meeting that turned out to be a sham. My termination was carefully planned by the company's "management team." As it turned out, no one would survive much longer than I did with the bigger corporate mess they had created. My immediate, annoyingly smug boss, who had been imposed on me only recently, was soon fired herself. The boss's boss lasted not much longer and is now pursuing a career in either sporting goods or packaged goods, I don't remember which. None of the rest would be pictured "slipping up" in the New York Post, as I was, which felt brutal at the time but was, in fact, a kind of honor, I suppose. As they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
In a twisted, back-glancing way, I guess I won. I never sold out. I didn't allow myself to be turned into a rat in a maze trying to put out a magazine that some committee of executives determined would sell best, second-guessing every picture and forgetting about The Reader. I left with what I value most about myself-my gut, my pa.s.sion, and my honesty. All three, I'm happy to report, are still intact.
There's nothing like deadline therapy to get me past lingering hurt feelings. After several quiet years of freelancing and consulting, I experienced the weirdest twist of my career: I was asked to return to Harper's Bazaar in my original role of beauty director for six months. While my husband was trying to talk me out of going back to a position I had held a lifetime ago, I saw it more cosmically, like time travel, and going back to a t.i.tle that was golden for me. It would allow me to leap forward to next season, months before the rest of the world would get there.
Humbly and happily, I returned. It helped that Bazaar is now housed on the twenty-fifth floor of New York City's most glamorous and green skysc.r.a.per, the Hearst Tower. I found I still loved the nutty creative world of magazines, with its mix of young talent and swirl of creative businesses around them. I discovered that things just don't throw me anymore and that I can write fast, really fast.
Back where the universe clearly wanted me, sitting on a rich heap of advice, products, the newest and the latest, with an eye that can't help itself but to critique the looks and grooming of nearly every person strutting by my office, I had a great, soothing epiphany: Regardless of where I am physically, fashion is so deeply ingrained in my soul that, come what may, I will always be in fashion.
INTRODUCTION.
So, YOU want to be the next greatest fashionista on earth. Maybe you imagine yourself taking the big honors on Project Runway and launching your design career in the footsteps of stars like Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, or Tom Ford. Or maybe you see yourself in the realm of The Devil Wears Prada, striking out in the world of fashion editorial and training yourself to be a great fashion editor, like Anna Wintour. Maybe you are the next Rachel Zoe, styling stars like Kate Winslet and Jennifer Aniston, and in the process, transforming yourself into a front row, red carpet star in your own right. Or do you see yourself ON the runway? Are you the next Kate Moss, Tyra Banks, or Gisele Bundchen? Or are you more the behind-the-scenes type-quietly, creatively producing the iconic images of fashion as the next great fashion photographer, a Steven Meisel or Mario Testino? Maybe you want to live it and loosely fictionalize yourself like Candace Bushnell did when she wrote about her modern fashion adventures in s.e.x and the City?
Or there's always the high-power corner office you could occupy as a fashion executive wearing crisp white suits and reptile-skin platform sandals twelve months a year, collecting contemporary art, designer bags, and important jewelry, and employing your own team of hair stylist, makeup artist, personal a.s.sistant, chauffeur, and housekeeper, all while hauling in more digits than you ever dreamed.
In Fashion is first and foremost a career manual-everything you need to know to enter the fashion business, and then to climb up the ranks and make it. Though I've spent the bulk of my career in magazines, I've had extensive firsthand experience in the related worlds of design, photography and styling, public relations, and events planning, as well as fashion retail and advertising. When my own experiences wouldn't give you maximum insight and mentoring, I've created profiles, or dossiers, of individuals who've struggled just as hard as I did and have landed just where they aimed on the global fashion freeway. Their career stories are filled with highs and lows and very detailed advice for people starting out in fashion today. People like Marc Jacobs' former a.s.sistant from Louis Vuitton, celebrity stylists, Prada U.S.A.'s visual merchandise director, the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman, a highly recruited Internet fashion writer, Michael Kors' accessories genius, art directors, fashion photographers, the head of Vince's global sales, and more. See for yourself whether you feel aligned with these personalities.
Embedded in these stories are nuggets of advice you won't learn at Parsons, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, the State University of New York's Fashion Inst.i.tute of Technology, the Wharton School, Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), or Sarah Lawrence College. My conversations with these friends, or friends of friends, or people I found and turned into friends, have always included this one question sent back to me: "Why didn't this book exist when I was trying to get into fashion?"
The reason I have felt compelled to write this book is that fashion follows no rules. If you want to be a pharmacist, teacher, engineer, doctor, or lawyer, the path is straight and obvious. In fashion, there is no clear path. That's the reason for In Fashion. Each of us-a total package of education, upbringing, ethnicity, innate style, looks, personality, s.e.xuality-must find his or her own way. If you are blessed with luminous NYC-Paris-London-Milan connections and A-list cool parents, your career might just fall conveniently into your lap.
If, like me, you are an obscure mortal from nowhere-with good Lutheran parents, a math teacher mother and a paper-making chemist father-things are not as clear. You might just feel like a mouse (albeit a chic lab mouse) in a maze. I am here to light your way and to add some humor, mostly at my expense, along the way.
I served as editor in chief of Seventeen and YM magazines, and for seven years, I worked under the legendary Liz Tilberis as the fashion and beauty news director of Harper's Bazaar. I have written two New York Times bestsellers-Bobbi Brown Beauty and Bobbi Brown Teenage Beauty-and I aided Tilberis in writing her autobiography, No Time to Die. For years, I covered the Milan, Paris, New York, and London fashion shows, and I count among my friends industry power brokers from these worlds.
Besides its central mission as the essential career guide for a quite daunting industry, In Fashion captures the best and the worst events of my career. I feel lucky for the sweet highs and I accept complete responsibility for the blinding lows. I treat both with self-effacing humor, a survival tactic if there ever was one. My hope is that you benefit or learn from or are amused in some small measure by my telling of these episodes. That, for me, is the biggest prize.
In the telling of my experiences, it is not my intent to skewer others; I apologize in case my words bring pain or grief. I harbor no bitterness and know of no enemies. (Okay, maybe there was one, but I've long considered us made up.) This is supposed to be funny (!!!) and really useful.
Everything here is true and it absolutely happened, though I sometimes disguise exact places and/or ident.i.ties. I am often struck by details unnoticed by others; I also get the feeling that I sense things more profoundly than others. These traits have helped me develop into a good reporter, but they have also burdened me with too much information. I'm a cla.s.sic fashionista type C, a Critic, one who comments on the world around her. You'll hear more about this later.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK.
In Fashion is a slash kind of book: Glam career manual slash fashionista memoir. Writing instructional copy was my earliest training. Here I've applied the how-to format to the daunting exercise of breaking into and succeeding in fashion. I've sometimes felt I could find the essential how-to in any topic, and here I condense learning from my twenty-year career into lists of essential dos and don'ts. My intent is to share my story with fellow fashionistas, inviting their most brutal scrutiny while encouraging the next generation to pa.s.sionately, deliberately go for it.
We'll start out, of course, with YOU! Explore the Fashionista Apt.i.tude Survey to try to understand exactly what sort of fashionista you're likely to be and where you're most likely to fit in and find happiness and success. At the end of the survey, you'll see which of the four key fashion tribes you were born into, although no one bothered filling you in until now.
Creator Visualizer Critic Seller.
Creators are fashion designers and their courts. They exist at the center of the fashion universe around which all the other planets...o...b..t.
Visualizers bring fashion to life. Stylists are Visualizers, occupying what is probably the fastest growing, most appealing new role out there. Also among the Visualizers are photographers, ill.u.s.trators, models, hair stylists, and makeup artists. Together, these people are charged with the task of capturing the imagination of the consuming audience by presenting next season's clothes and accessories in advertising and editorial in a compelling way. Sometimes their visuals inspire. Other times, they scandalize. The point is that you notice.
Critics are those who have opinions about what the Creators create. Critics express those opinions in fashion magazines, on fashion television, and over the Internet.
Sellers comprise the business end of fashion. The guy helping you "find your size" in jeans at the Gap is called a "retail sales a.s.sociate," but he's a Seller. So are the entire publishing staffs of fashion magazines and the parts of advertising agencies that scare up business and maintain relationships with clients. While admitting that there's a lot of creativity and originality that goes into their work, I've also taken the old-fashioned view that public relations, merchandising, and marketing fall under this category: Ultimately their performances are judged by what sells.
These are not perfect blunt unyielding categories-just useful lenses through which to see the fashion world. Using these categories will help you make sense of things and, hopefully, avoid false starts and frustrations. If you find that you don't fall neatly into one or even two of the categories, don't be discouraged. You might just be one of those rare ubertalents whose biggest decision is where to begin his or her most amazing career.
In Fashion is organized according to these four key sectors of the fashion world. But don't just read about your specific career. Flip through the other sections of the book for general help on doing the perfect resume, creating a concept book or portfolio, interviewing, what to wear on your first day, and every other little thing that might trip you up.
My dream is that this book will help people realize their dreams. Of course, times are different from when I was growing up in central Wisconsin. Everything is more accessible and open to view. By logging in to www.style.com, you can see Derek Lam's fall collection online the same chilly February night it is presented in New York. With limited research, you could discover how many Diet c.o.kes designer Karl Lagerfeld has for lunch with whom, at which table in which restaurant in which city. The next "cool" band or trend or shoe or nail color takes milliseconds, not years, these days to beam into Wisconsin. Thanks to style-democratizing stores like H&M, IKEA, and Target, anyone, anywhere can live with good design, style, and "cool." If your hometown is anything like mine, Hollywood celebrities are discussed with the same intimacy as the local football team. Yet, while it might feel like this whole shimmering world is at your doorstep, the realization that it isn't and that you are missing it makes becoming a real fashionista all the more enticing.
FASHIONISTA APt.i.tUDE SURVEY.
What's your fashion fantasy? Do you love clothes and design so much that you dream of becoming a famous fashion designer? Are you obsessed with shoes, endlessly sketching heels and soles and researching trims, buying vintage stilettos at flea markets for your collection? Or do you devour fashion magazines and envision yourself as an exquisitely dressed editor at Vogue? Maybe you secretly imagine yourself in front of the camera, the smoky-eyed model in the Chanel ad, bringing next season's designs to life for the whole world to admire? Or maybe you see yourself behind the scenes as the fashion photographer or the stylist who brings his or her own original twist to clothes and accessories or as the hair stylist or makeup artist on the shoot. All of these people-and thousands more-populate the world of fashion. Each of them is In Fashion, and that's where you want to be too. But how can you get there?
Well, you're already on your way: The pa.s.sion that's in your heart and mind for your future career is essential and will help shape your success and happiness almost more than anything else. While your fashion dreams may quickly become reality and you will soon be touted as the next Donna Karan, Anna Wintour, or Kate Moss, chances are there are years of education, tough work, highs, but mostly lows between you and that happy ending. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to know up front what path to follow? Or at least to know of a path or two that would be so wrong for your personality, so abhorrent to your tastes, that you shouldn't bother exploring them?
Beyond the pa.s.sion (or obsession), where do you start? What's the right educational path and best possible schools, internships, and summer jobs? To get you started, we first need to understand: What sort of fashionista are you?
To answer that question, we need to delve deep inside your DNA to see how your personality is hardwired: What inspires you? And, conversely, what makes you glaze over? Shut down?
Just as millions of young people take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test to help determine their best possible career paths, you are about to take the In Fashion Fashionista Apt.i.tude Survey to see where you might best fit in the ephemeral, glamorous, exhausting, and unpredictable world of fashion. The survey explores whether you are naturally outgoing or introverted; whether, when faced with information, you take it in on face value or, instead, you interpret it and add new meaning; whether, in dealing with the outside world, you tend to instantly judge a situation or you prefer to allow elements and details to seep in slowly.
Since there are no right or wrong answers to these questions, go with your first instinct and don't overthink. It is best to take a couple of quiet minutes to do these questions on your own: Doing the survey out loud with friends will inevitably skew the results. Given that fashion is a visual industry driven by image, creativity, and illusion, even in the hardest of economic times, this survey is designed for those who are naturally drawn to glamour. If you think the survey questions are inane and/or you don't identify with any of the responses, you might want to seriously question your inclination to the field itself. Let's face it, if you need something more concrete, there's always engineering, accounting, medicine, IT ...
Those fields aren't for you? Okay, then. Let's begin.
WORD THAT BEST DESCRIBES YOU:.
Outrageous Sensitive Insightful Ingenious AS A CHILD, YOU MOST LIKED:.
Performing Drawing Reading Socializing PERSONALITIES WHOSE BIOGRAPHIES YOU'D MOST WANT TO READ: Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar Wilde, Princess Diana, Stephen Sprouse Leonardo da Vinci, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Lee Miller Diana Vreeland, Nora Ephron, Carmel Snow, Anna Wintour Donald Trump, Niccol Machiavelli, J.P. Morgan, Warren Buffett, Diane von Furstenberg EXPRESSION YOU'RE MOST LIKELY TO OVERUSE: "Heaven"
"Cool"
"Genius"
"Perfect"
PERSON YOU'D MOST LIKE TO HANG OUT WITH: Sofia Coppola Kate Moss Christiane Amanpour Madonna ON SUMMER BREAKS DURING HIGH SCHOOL, YOU WERE MOST LIKELY TO BE:.
Starring in a summer stage production Developing black-and-white prints for a photography cla.s.s Winning the prize for the most books read at the public library Running a lemonade stand by day and babysitting by night HISTORIC PERSONALITY YOU'D MOST LIKE TO MEET: Marie Antoinette Joan of Arc Queen Elizabeth I Catherine the Great YOUR BIGGEST WEAKNESS:.
Meeting deadlines Making conversation Being impatient Letting go WHAT YOU VALUE MOST:.
Originality Creativity Truth Results IF FORCED TO PLAY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING SOCIAL SPORTS, YOU'D CHOOSE: Bowling Croquet Tennis Squash YOUR FACEBOOK HABIT:.
You sometimes forget you're signed up.
You log on once or twice a week when you have downtime.
You compulsively sign in every morning to check flagged photos from last night's parties and film openings.