Despite her exodus from the peak of haute fashion dictatorship in Vogue Paris, former editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld remains a powerful enigma to me. Actually, even more so now when she’s proven to everyone that a position as mighty as the one she used to have can be given up without drama. US Vogue editrix Anna Wintour has been on her throne for 22 years, Alexandra Schulman of British Vogue for 19. So it was quite a surprise, when after only 10 years, Carine left Vogue.
There were a lot of presumptions on why she did. Disagreements with the Vogue head over the Tom Ford guest editorial was one, but no one can really say. Although in an interview with the Financial Times, she did say that “she wasn’t friends anymore” with former fashion director and now new editor of French Vogue, Emmanuelle Alt. When there is a row between names in the staff box, it can get personal. And in an industry where intimate chemistry is needed for the best visual results, friction, albeit slow to burn, can start a fire. Professionalism can only go so far, but when there are personal differences involved, things can get catty.
I can only dream of sitting down and chatting with Carine, but as that new article in FT came out, I couldn’t help but nit and pick over her answers and consume ideas and words. For example, she uses the word “irreverent” for a total of three times, which somehow makes it all the more reverent. And as the writer observes during the three-hour lunch, she “doesn’t check her Blackberry, take calls or even betray the twitchiness that comes from ignoring them.” I don’t know if life post-Vogue is less hectic but I’m assuming that even then, three hours disconnected from our phones can seem like total social apocalyptic breakdown. But she did, either her phone battery was dead, or her irreverence for reverence includes old world etiquette — giving full attention to the person you’re talking to, which makes her way cooler.
Sorry to be a fan girl, but if theres anything that makes me act like a 12-year-old girl it is when I’m in the presence of style gods: Editors, designers and DJs — exactly in that order. I admire editors (you would know) because they have the keen discerning eye to not only discover new talents and champion them but also translate fashion into powerful visual collages that speak directly to the market. I like designers because they are artists that create the base for sartorial creativity and the sun around which the industry revolves, in, and DJs because they’re relatively nondescript but have the ability to dictate mood and give soundtrack to my life.
That said, I can only relate getting new insights (reading up on them) on my fashion deities as humanizing them. The marketing ploy on which blogs and Twitter accounts are based —personalizing the unreachables. And because my online trinity is not complete (Facebook, Twitter, blog), I still read interviews the old-fashioned way. And as opposed to getting to know someone in 140 characters or less, paragraphs formed in well- written articles still do the job for me. Especially in this particular FT article, where I discover that Carine doesn’t like champagne, prefers vodka, that it was her decision to leave because it’s best to quit while you’re ahead, and how she doesn’t mind being likened to pop star Iggy Pop, who happens to be a guy. I liked her insight on how a designer’s creativity has somehow been diluted in lieu of the business behind it, on how the shows were so much more exciting 10 years ago when people were passionate about the collections to the point of sleeping in the street just to get in line.
But most of all, I liked the fact that her once strong aversion for bags—having been quoted as saying: “I do not like handbags. It’s not a nice look to carry a handbag.” has now changed. And it in that particular lunch with the Financial Times, she had a black Alexander McQueen. Just goes to show that in fashion, change is never a bad thing.