New York Magazine February 23, 2009 : Kate Moss by Bert Stern
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Kate 
I was so excited when I saw the title, her first 2009 cover. She looks stunning.
I was so excited when I saw the title, her first 2009 cover. She looks stunning.
Kate: ‘I Am a Woman Now’
Her Topshop line will finally hit New York this spring. Just to get it out of the way, she’s not pregnant. She does, rather suddenly, have curves, which she enjoys. But here—let her tell you.
In a world of models on juice fasts and yoga retreats taking bit parts in movies because “really the plan was always to act,” Kate Moss is a fantastic bit of sex and rock and roll. She doesn’t bore us with talk of green tea or locavore cuisine; instead, she dates grungy-hot rock stars—like Pete Doherty, admitted heroin addict and bona fide rock god—and then appears on the Internet dancing around topless to their songs. She’s something from another era, when there was no question that celebrities’ lives were nothing at all like our own: They were far, far more fun.
She is, of course, very pretty. But it’s more than that. She has an innate understanding of how to wear clothes—wearing clothes is what a model does, but Kate Moss can whip up a global frenzy with a single walk down her North London block. It doesn’t have to be high fashion or expensive fashion: Quite often, it’s the opposite, as she makes the mundane look so magnificent. When Kate wore Hunter-brand Wellington boots in the mud at the Glastonbury Festival, the shoe of the year was suddenly a dumpy rubber clomper previously preferred by ruddy Englishmen out for a hunt.
Enter Topshop, the most fashion-y of London’s so-called High Street chain stores, which translates in American to “great big thumping shops on Lower Broadway or on the middle of Fifth where trendy, well-designed clothes cost relatively little money and all the salespeople are weirdly cute.”
Sir Philip Green, who is Topshop’s top dog (as well as one of Britain’s richest men), bid £60,000 at a charity auction in 2006 for a kiss with Kate Moss. The happily married mogul won the prize—he quickly turned his smooching rights over to hot socialite Jemima Khan—but most important, he met Kate Moss and a collaboration was born. They’re both from Croydon in South London and speak in a dialect where th is sometimes pronounced like an f (so: Sarf London). He’s a born Daddy Warbucks, expansive in every sense of the word. They make each other laugh: She calls him Uncle Phil, and he plays the overindulgent benefactor, quick with a gift and a deeply affectionate roll of the eyes.
The first Kate Moss for Topshop collection sold out on the spot. And why wouldn’t it? The clothes all looked as if they had been plucked from Moss’s own wardrobe: sweet, nostalgic riffs on Moss’s legendary flea-market finds, all of it with the charming magpie, Ibizan bohemian aesthetic that Moss works ever so well. It was inevitable that such a phenom would, eventually, land in New York, and now, after delays and false starts, it arrives in Soho on April 2.
Moss and Green sat down to explain it all in Green’s swank London office.
Kate: I’m not a designer. I’ve never been to school or been trained. I can’t draw a dress, really. But I know what I like.
Philip: It’s not easy. Before Kate, there wasn’t anybody we’ve ever wanted to work with. I mean, when you look at what Kate’s done over 25 years ...
K: Twenty-five? I’m not that old!
P: If you look at what Kate’s done over those twenty years, 25 Vogue covers?
K: Twenty-seven. That’s British Vogue. My agent told me the other day. The next one is less than half that.
P: I think from Kate’s point of view, becoming a designer was a natural progression. Kate was at a particular moment …
K: I love clothes. I know how clothes should fit and feel. When I would go to shoots, stylists would say to me, “You really should do something. You should take it another step.” But it never felt right until I met Philip and the whole atmosphere of Topshop.
P: This wasn’t something we needed to do, either of us. We didn’t need to make money that week, that month. Make Kate a part of our family. The types of things Kate had to learn about—these things take time.
K: I’ve never done it before. Now I know what is possible and what we can do, which is a lot. It’s really just making things that I want: the little sundresses that I always wanted, the little bus-stop dresses that I always cut too short and now I can’t wear anymore. Now I make them a couple of inches longer. Even before I started modeling, I was cutting up flares and making miniskirts. When I started modeling, I used to just go to jumble sales and have bags and bags of clothes and then the stylists would use them on shoots. Harper’s Bazaar asked me to edit the magazine— the whole magazine!—as a fashion editor. I went into the office and, oh my goodness, there was no way. It wasn’t right.
P: Most people don’t know how to work with people like Kate.
K: It’s true. They try to make you into something you’re not.
P: She calls me up and says, “Uncle Phil, I want to go to Cornwall on Wednesday.” And I say, “Fine, go to Cornwall.”
K: But it was for work!
P: Fine. It’s got to flow. If Kate thinks it’s just a workhorse job, you end up with a rail of product you hate.
K: It’s not just turning up and doing a job. Because turning up on a modeling call—I still enjoy it, but it doesn’t get me going.
P: In spite of all that party living, you look good.
K: I haven’t partied since … last Friday!
P: We’ve taken a decision of saying we’re going to change nothing for New York. I think with the climate what it is …
K: People want a dress which is not a thousand bucks! With Topshop, you can go in and … you’re on budget, major … you can go in and not have to spend fortunes. I didn’t want to be charging $3,000. The thing is … I know clothes. I just want a dress that fits and makes me feel good and makes me feel pretty. I don’t really think about the masses.
P: It is all about feel.
K: Instinct.
[A packet of pictures arrives: Kate with a police escort, with Prince Edward …]
P: We went to the palace.
K: Buckingham Palace! With our police escorts! We were going the wrong way round roundabouts and things … I was like, “Do you want to give me a ride home?” It was so much fun, we were looking at the crown jewels. With Prince Edward.
P: It was a private viewing. At the Tower of London.
K: Look at me and the prince. HRH! That’s what I called him. HRH.
P: Then we went back to Buckingham Palace for a private dinner. It was fun. It was a fun night, wasn’t it, Kate?
K: It was hilarious. I’d been before. I was one of the 200 women who succeeded in the face of adversity. Honestly. That’s what it said on the card. So it was like, Everybody here comes from a council estate! I mean, I don’t think Dame Judi does … but … you know …
P: We do have fun. I was in this Mexican restaurant with my wife. In Soho. This girl looks at me, and she says, “Where are you from?” and I say London, and she says, “Oh, well, you’re nice,” and she says, “Do you want to come to The Box?” and I said sure. Then I get this text message: Kate’s in New York. So I invite her, too.
K: And I’m like, “What’s The Box?” I get in there, he’s in the front row. I was shocked! This girl—oh my goodness. She got out of a Russian doll and she was ballerina-ing around and then she got all of these other dolls out of her … something. And then she took this little doll and oh! It was very odd.
[Kate fingers a dress on a rack.]
K: Isn’t this dress great? It’s not like a rip-off designer thing. It’s not a knockoff. When I’m not modeling, I’m in here. I’m working! When I’m not getting booked for modeling anymore, it’ll be like, “Oh, look! She’s here at nine o’clock in the morning!”
P: Yeah, right. You don’t know there’s two nine o’clocks in the same day! Nine o’clock in the morning …
K: I do, actually! I’ve been very busy.
P: We’re going to try and do lingerie for next season.
K: I’ve got a clear idea of what I want for lingerie. I’ve just started wearing bras. It’s a miracle. Not today, but I have been. Great timing for my lingerie collection. I’ve just grown breasts.
P: Have you? I noticed.
K: I am a woman now! It’s true. No, honestly, I’ve never worn a bra in my life. Ever! It’s so awful, even my friends are phoning me up and saying “Are you pregnant?” And I’m like, “No! I just put on a couple of pounds, and they went in the right place.” Isn’t that weird? And how perfect for lingerie.
P: That’s how it works. You’ve got to be lucky.
K: Now I can fill a B-cup. My friend does say I’ve got horseshoes up my ***. I’m like, What does that mean? It means I’m lucky—I’ve got a horseshoe up my ***.
P: We started in May ’07. We put $22 million, $25 million into it, and after a few seasons, suddenly Kate comes in here.
Next: "I’m trying to be a businesswoman as well. I am!"
K: I called a meeting.
P: She comes in here: “Uncle Phil, I want to see you.”
K: You were shocked. Your jaw was on the floor. You were like, “You’re calling a meeting with me?” I was like, “Why, haven’t we got enough? Why is it sold out?” It all sold out in the first day.
P: She was, “Oh, we haven’t bought enough.”
K: I’m not just like playing around. I’m trying to be a businesswoman as well. I am!
P: Let me tell you something about how this all works. Last summer, we’re in Ibiza. And I have not been in Ibiza for five years.
K: Oh, shush.
P: So I decide to go to Ibiza, and this is how freaky it is …
K: The tide had come in, and we were completely stranded. Like refugees. And then I saw this massive boat go speeding past and I was like, That’s Uncle Phil, I know it is.
P: Two minutes later, the phone rings: “Uncle Phil. We’re shipwrecked.” And there’s Kate. On a rock. Seriously!
K: It is like that, though. It just happens.
P: It is funny. We do have fun. It works well. Everybody’s happy.
K: We get the job done.
P: If I hate it, I say, “Oh, God, it’s horrible.”
K: He does not beat around the bush. I’d much prefer someone to say “Oh, that’s ****.” So it’s really nice, honestly. And my name has become a brand, an entity. “I want to have the world of … ” Can you imagine? [Laughs] Like Ralph Lauren!
[Messenger arrives with a floor-length Alexander McQueen green velvet dress.]
P: This was a charity fashion show. I bought this for a present for Kate.
K: It is amazing. Look at it. It is so beautiful.
P: I paid a lot of money for that. They wanted to auction it, and I said I’m going to buy that for Kate as a present. I think you should wear that to the Metropolitan ball.
K: I can wear it now that I’ve got it. Oh, Uncle Phil. Thank you.
P: And then if you get drunk, there’s about three yards we can cut off. It is hellishly long.
K: I can just chop a bit off. I love a train.
P: Put it on.
K: What, now?
P: Yes. Go on, put it on.
K: I’m dying to put it on.
P: That’s what we do.
K: Clothes are my favorite thing in the world. I love clothes. It’s my favorite thing in the entire world.
[Kate puts on the dress].
Her Topshop line will finally hit New York this spring. Just to get it out of the way, she’s not pregnant. She does, rather suddenly, have curves, which she enjoys. But here—let her tell you.
- By Amy Larocca
- Published Feb 15, 2009
In a world of models on juice fasts and yoga retreats taking bit parts in movies because “really the plan was always to act,” Kate Moss is a fantastic bit of sex and rock and roll. She doesn’t bore us with talk of green tea or locavore cuisine; instead, she dates grungy-hot rock stars—like Pete Doherty, admitted heroin addict and bona fide rock god—and then appears on the Internet dancing around topless to their songs. She’s something from another era, when there was no question that celebrities’ lives were nothing at all like our own: They were far, far more fun.
She is, of course, very pretty. But it’s more than that. She has an innate understanding of how to wear clothes—wearing clothes is what a model does, but Kate Moss can whip up a global frenzy with a single walk down her North London block. It doesn’t have to be high fashion or expensive fashion: Quite often, it’s the opposite, as she makes the mundane look so magnificent. When Kate wore Hunter-brand Wellington boots in the mud at the Glastonbury Festival, the shoe of the year was suddenly a dumpy rubber clomper previously preferred by ruddy Englishmen out for a hunt.
Enter Topshop, the most fashion-y of London’s so-called High Street chain stores, which translates in American to “great big thumping shops on Lower Broadway or on the middle of Fifth where trendy, well-designed clothes cost relatively little money and all the salespeople are weirdly cute.”
Sir Philip Green, who is Topshop’s top dog (as well as one of Britain’s richest men), bid £60,000 at a charity auction in 2006 for a kiss with Kate Moss. The happily married mogul won the prize—he quickly turned his smooching rights over to hot socialite Jemima Khan—but most important, he met Kate Moss and a collaboration was born. They’re both from Croydon in South London and speak in a dialect where th is sometimes pronounced like an f (so: Sarf London). He’s a born Daddy Warbucks, expansive in every sense of the word. They make each other laugh: She calls him Uncle Phil, and he plays the overindulgent benefactor, quick with a gift and a deeply affectionate roll of the eyes.
The first Kate Moss for Topshop collection sold out on the spot. And why wouldn’t it? The clothes all looked as if they had been plucked from Moss’s own wardrobe: sweet, nostalgic riffs on Moss’s legendary flea-market finds, all of it with the charming magpie, Ibizan bohemian aesthetic that Moss works ever so well. It was inevitable that such a phenom would, eventually, land in New York, and now, after delays and false starts, it arrives in Soho on April 2.
Moss and Green sat down to explain it all in Green’s swank London office.
Kate: I’m not a designer. I’ve never been to school or been trained. I can’t draw a dress, really. But I know what I like.
Philip: It’s not easy. Before Kate, there wasn’t anybody we’ve ever wanted to work with. I mean, when you look at what Kate’s done over 25 years ...
K: Twenty-five? I’m not that old!
P: If you look at what Kate’s done over those twenty years, 25 Vogue covers?
K: Twenty-seven. That’s British Vogue. My agent told me the other day. The next one is less than half that.
P: I think from Kate’s point of view, becoming a designer was a natural progression. Kate was at a particular moment …
K: I love clothes. I know how clothes should fit and feel. When I would go to shoots, stylists would say to me, “You really should do something. You should take it another step.” But it never felt right until I met Philip and the whole atmosphere of Topshop.
P: This wasn’t something we needed to do, either of us. We didn’t need to make money that week, that month. Make Kate a part of our family. The types of things Kate had to learn about—these things take time.
K: I’ve never done it before. Now I know what is possible and what we can do, which is a lot. It’s really just making things that I want: the little sundresses that I always wanted, the little bus-stop dresses that I always cut too short and now I can’t wear anymore. Now I make them a couple of inches longer. Even before I started modeling, I was cutting up flares and making miniskirts. When I started modeling, I used to just go to jumble sales and have bags and bags of clothes and then the stylists would use them on shoots. Harper’s Bazaar asked me to edit the magazine— the whole magazine!—as a fashion editor. I went into the office and, oh my goodness, there was no way. It wasn’t right.
P: Most people don’t know how to work with people like Kate.
K: It’s true. They try to make you into something you’re not.
P: She calls me up and says, “Uncle Phil, I want to go to Cornwall on Wednesday.” And I say, “Fine, go to Cornwall.”
K: But it was for work!
P: Fine. It’s got to flow. If Kate thinks it’s just a workhorse job, you end up with a rail of product you hate.
K: It’s not just turning up and doing a job. Because turning up on a modeling call—I still enjoy it, but it doesn’t get me going.
P: In spite of all that party living, you look good.
K: I haven’t partied since … last Friday!
P: We’ve taken a decision of saying we’re going to change nothing for New York. I think with the climate what it is …
K: People want a dress which is not a thousand bucks! With Topshop, you can go in and … you’re on budget, major … you can go in and not have to spend fortunes. I didn’t want to be charging $3,000. The thing is … I know clothes. I just want a dress that fits and makes me feel good and makes me feel pretty. I don’t really think about the masses.
P: It is all about feel.
K: Instinct.
[A packet of pictures arrives: Kate with a police escort, with Prince Edward …]
P: We went to the palace.
K: Buckingham Palace! With our police escorts! We were going the wrong way round roundabouts and things … I was like, “Do you want to give me a ride home?” It was so much fun, we were looking at the crown jewels. With Prince Edward.
P: It was a private viewing. At the Tower of London.
K: Look at me and the prince. HRH! That’s what I called him. HRH.
P: Then we went back to Buckingham Palace for a private dinner. It was fun. It was a fun night, wasn’t it, Kate?
K: It was hilarious. I’d been before. I was one of the 200 women who succeeded in the face of adversity. Honestly. That’s what it said on the card. So it was like, Everybody here comes from a council estate! I mean, I don’t think Dame Judi does … but … you know …
P: We do have fun. I was in this Mexican restaurant with my wife. In Soho. This girl looks at me, and she says, “Where are you from?” and I say London, and she says, “Oh, well, you’re nice,” and she says, “Do you want to come to The Box?” and I said sure. Then I get this text message: Kate’s in New York. So I invite her, too.
K: And I’m like, “What’s The Box?” I get in there, he’s in the front row. I was shocked! This girl—oh my goodness. She got out of a Russian doll and she was ballerina-ing around and then she got all of these other dolls out of her … something. And then she took this little doll and oh! It was very odd.
[Kate fingers a dress on a rack.]
K: Isn’t this dress great? It’s not like a rip-off designer thing. It’s not a knockoff. When I’m not modeling, I’m in here. I’m working! When I’m not getting booked for modeling anymore, it’ll be like, “Oh, look! She’s here at nine o’clock in the morning!”
P: Yeah, right. You don’t know there’s two nine o’clocks in the same day! Nine o’clock in the morning …
K: I do, actually! I’ve been very busy.
P: We’re going to try and do lingerie for next season.
K: I’ve got a clear idea of what I want for lingerie. I’ve just started wearing bras. It’s a miracle. Not today, but I have been. Great timing for my lingerie collection. I’ve just grown breasts.
P: Have you? I noticed.
K: I am a woman now! It’s true. No, honestly, I’ve never worn a bra in my life. Ever! It’s so awful, even my friends are phoning me up and saying “Are you pregnant?” And I’m like, “No! I just put on a couple of pounds, and they went in the right place.” Isn’t that weird? And how perfect for lingerie.
P: That’s how it works. You’ve got to be lucky.
K: Now I can fill a B-cup. My friend does say I’ve got horseshoes up my ***. I’m like, What does that mean? It means I’m lucky—I’ve got a horseshoe up my ***.
P: We started in May ’07. We put $22 million, $25 million into it, and after a few seasons, suddenly Kate comes in here.
Next: "I’m trying to be a businesswoman as well. I am!"
K: I called a meeting.
P: She comes in here: “Uncle Phil, I want to see you.”
K: You were shocked. Your jaw was on the floor. You were like, “You’re calling a meeting with me?” I was like, “Why, haven’t we got enough? Why is it sold out?” It all sold out in the first day.
P: She was, “Oh, we haven’t bought enough.”
K: I’m not just like playing around. I’m trying to be a businesswoman as well. I am!
P: Let me tell you something about how this all works. Last summer, we’re in Ibiza. And I have not been in Ibiza for five years.
K: Oh, shush.
P: So I decide to go to Ibiza, and this is how freaky it is …
K: The tide had come in, and we were completely stranded. Like refugees. And then I saw this massive boat go speeding past and I was like, That’s Uncle Phil, I know it is.
P: Two minutes later, the phone rings: “Uncle Phil. We’re shipwrecked.” And there’s Kate. On a rock. Seriously!
K: It is like that, though. It just happens.
P: It is funny. We do have fun. It works well. Everybody’s happy.
K: We get the job done.
P: If I hate it, I say, “Oh, God, it’s horrible.”
K: He does not beat around the bush. I’d much prefer someone to say “Oh, that’s ****.” So it’s really nice, honestly. And my name has become a brand, an entity. “I want to have the world of … ” Can you imagine? [Laughs] Like Ralph Lauren!
[Messenger arrives with a floor-length Alexander McQueen green velvet dress.]
P: This was a charity fashion show. I bought this for a present for Kate.
K: It is amazing. Look at it. It is so beautiful.
P: I paid a lot of money for that. They wanted to auction it, and I said I’m going to buy that for Kate as a present. I think you should wear that to the Metropolitan ball.
K: I can wear it now that I’ve got it. Oh, Uncle Phil. Thank you.
P: And then if you get drunk, there’s about three yards we can cut off. It is hellishly long.
K: I can just chop a bit off. I love a train.
P: Put it on.
K: What, now?
P: Yes. Go on, put it on.
K: I’m dying to put it on.
P: That’s what we do.
K: Clothes are my favorite thing in the world. I love clothes. It’s my favorite thing in the entire world.
[Kate puts on the dress].
Last edited by a moderator:
Pt 2
P: Kate! It’s a total showstopper. Come on. Let me see.
K: It’s gorgeous.
P: Turn around.
K: Oh, it is gorge. I need a few alterations.
P: It’s better than amazing.
K: Okay. But my boobs are too big!
P: Oh my God! How exciting! Now you’ve got t*tties. How exciting.
K: My boyfriend might not like them. I’m a bit worried.
P: Well, they are a bit bigger than they were, aren’t they?
K: Massively bigger. Anyway, enough about my boobs. Let’s get back to business.
P: You know Kate is going to be one of the hosts at the Met ball with Marc Jacobs.
K: Marc Jacobs, I’m hosting with him. Marc’s going to have a creation for me.
P: No, you’re going to wear your own dress. You’ve got to have your own creation.
K: Philip … you’ll not have me wearing Marc? Marc is one of my oldest friends, you know that?
P: You’re wearing your own dress.
K: You are terrible! Indiscretions. Beyond. No model has ever hosted it before. I’m the first model. It’s the muse. Wonderful theme … I am the muse!
P: You’re definitely wearing your own dress. It’s not even in debate. If they want me to fly you there, it’s your own dress, kid.
K: You don’t have to fly me there. I’ve got air miles!
P: I’m taking you there.
K: I do! I’ve got air miles.
P: Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll make two or three dresses, and if they’re up to the mark, you’ll wear it, and if not, we’ll make a sensible decision.
K: After the last one, I went with Stella—we’ve been friends for a very, very long time. And the thing is, we stood in line for an hour or something to say hello to the meet and greet in the receiving line. Donatella is in front of us, and Francesco Clemente was behind us with his wife, who I knew from back in the day. And we’re going, I can’t believe this. You can’t smoke. You can’t have a drink. When we got to the receiving line, this lady came up and said, “We’re sorry, they’ve all gone to their tables.” We were like, What? Tom and Katie just walked right up to the front, and we were like, Who the **** are they? They’re not even in fashion! And then two days later Anna calls and says, “I’d like you to host.” And also, it is an honor to be asked by Anna with Marc to host the Met ball and being the first model and all that. I did say “What do you have to do?” and she said, “You have to stand in the receiving line for an hour and a half.” But everybody’s in the toilets at the Met smoking. The last time I went, Vanessa Redgrave—I love Vanessa Redgrave—had pockets in her dress with her fags in it.
P: Excuse me. I thought we had a conversation about you giving up one January.
K: Silence!
Even my friends are phoning me up and saying, “Are you pregnant?” And I’m like, “No! I just put on a couple of pounds, and they went in the right place.” Isn’t that weird?
P: Kate! It’s a total showstopper. Come on. Let me see.
K: It’s gorgeous.
P: Turn around.
K: Oh, it is gorge. I need a few alterations.
P: It’s better than amazing.
K: Okay. But my boobs are too big!
P: Oh my God! How exciting! Now you’ve got t*tties. How exciting.
K: My boyfriend might not like them. I’m a bit worried.
P: Well, they are a bit bigger than they were, aren’t they?
K: Massively bigger. Anyway, enough about my boobs. Let’s get back to business.
P: You know Kate is going to be one of the hosts at the Met ball with Marc Jacobs.
K: Marc Jacobs, I’m hosting with him. Marc’s going to have a creation for me.
P: No, you’re going to wear your own dress. You’ve got to have your own creation.
K: Philip … you’ll not have me wearing Marc? Marc is one of my oldest friends, you know that?
P: You’re wearing your own dress.
K: You are terrible! Indiscretions. Beyond. No model has ever hosted it before. I’m the first model. It’s the muse. Wonderful theme … I am the muse!
P: You’re definitely wearing your own dress. It’s not even in debate. If they want me to fly you there, it’s your own dress, kid.
K: You don’t have to fly me there. I’ve got air miles!
P: I’m taking you there.
K: I do! I’ve got air miles.
P: Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll make two or three dresses, and if they’re up to the mark, you’ll wear it, and if not, we’ll make a sensible decision.
K: After the last one, I went with Stella—we’ve been friends for a very, very long time. And the thing is, we stood in line for an hour or something to say hello to the meet and greet in the receiving line. Donatella is in front of us, and Francesco Clemente was behind us with his wife, who I knew from back in the day. And we’re going, I can’t believe this. You can’t smoke. You can’t have a drink. When we got to the receiving line, this lady came up and said, “We’re sorry, they’ve all gone to their tables.” We were like, What? Tom and Katie just walked right up to the front, and we were like, Who the **** are they? They’re not even in fashion! And then two days later Anna calls and says, “I’d like you to host.” And also, it is an honor to be asked by Anna with Marc to host the Met ball and being the first model and all that. I did say “What do you have to do?” and she said, “You have to stand in the receiving line for an hour and a half.” But everybody’s in the toilets at the Met smoking. The last time I went, Vanessa Redgrave—I love Vanessa Redgrave—had pockets in her dress with her fags in it.
P: Excuse me. I thought we had a conversation about you giving up one January.
K: Silence!
Even my friends are phoning me up and saying, “Are you pregnant?” And I’m like, “No! I just put on a couple of pounds, and they went in the right place.” Isn’t that weird?
From Gere to Gladiators
On the eve of opening his biggest New York store, Giorgio Armani reflects on some career-changing moments.
The wardrobe for American Gigolo was a turning point for men’s fashion. How did that happen?
In 1980, Director Paul Schrader selected my designs for his film. The look was revolutionary for the time—when menswear turned elegant, with casual tailoring. Richard Gere was the dream actor and model; he had a sensuality in the way he moved. His character mixed rebellious unconventionality with style. Our careers are linked for life.
The Untouchableswas another influential menswear movie moment.
Collaborating with costume designer Marilyn Vance and director Brian De Palma on this legendary film gave me deep creative satisfaction, and produced longtime friendships with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Andy Garcia.
You realized early on that the Academy Awards were a fashion opportunity, and dressed Jodie Foster in a particularly memorable gown.
Jodie and I have similar personalities—we both know what we want and are clear in our decisions. When we started working together, twenty years ago, I appreciated the fact that she declared, “I’m an actor. You tell me what I should wear.” She told me this was the best evening gown she ever wore because of its comfort, even fully beaded.
You’ve also dressed a lot of the men on the red carpet, like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
Matt and Ben gave me one of my first indelible “Hollywood” memories. I dressed them for their first Academy Awards ceremony, when they won the Oscar for Good Will Hunting. They were so exuberant on the red carpet. They were beaming like little boys, saying, “Thanks for the tuxes, Giorgio!”
You decided to launch a couture line, Armani Privé, in 2005, even though that’s generally considered to be a dying art.
The first collection—just 35 outfits—was mainly evening wear. For some, couture is about costume and theater. But not for me. I am creating this collection in a very thought-out, pragmatic way. This is about offering a very special, personalized service for my best clients.
You put a Nobu restaurant inside your store in central Milan. What made you think people would want to eat among clothes?
Nobu in Milan is a great place for an aperitivo, always packed with an interesting mix of different kinds of people—hip, young, chic. I often go there right before dinner just to check out the atmosphere. I admire Nobu-san’s genius in combining traditional Japanese cuisine with international flavors from South America. His attention to the aesthetic and detail makes the dining experience unique.
And then there’s the furniture line, Armani Casa.
Made to measure and bespoke are two concepts that I find particularly interesting both for my fashion and my home creations. Furnishings like my limited- edition “Borromini” chaise have an added appeal because they are unique and will not be mass-produced.
You’ve done a lot of off-field outfits for sports teams, including the Chelsea football club and the Rabbitohs rugby team from Australia. What’s appealing about athletes?
I’ve always been interested in dressing sports personalities because to me they are like modern gladiators. On my last trip to Sydney, I visited Russell Crowe, who had gotten involved with the Rabbitohs. They were training on a beach near Bondi and I finally got to meet these amazing athletes. It was inspiring.
On the eve of opening his biggest New York store, Giorgio Armani reflects on some career-changing moments.
- By Janet Ozzard
- Published Feb 15, 2009
- nymag.com
The wardrobe for American Gigolo was a turning point for men’s fashion. How did that happen?
In 1980, Director Paul Schrader selected my designs for his film. The look was revolutionary for the time—when menswear turned elegant, with casual tailoring. Richard Gere was the dream actor and model; he had a sensuality in the way he moved. His character mixed rebellious unconventionality with style. Our careers are linked for life.
The Untouchableswas another influential menswear movie moment.
Collaborating with costume designer Marilyn Vance and director Brian De Palma on this legendary film gave me deep creative satisfaction, and produced longtime friendships with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Andy Garcia.
You realized early on that the Academy Awards were a fashion opportunity, and dressed Jodie Foster in a particularly memorable gown.
Jodie and I have similar personalities—we both know what we want and are clear in our decisions. When we started working together, twenty years ago, I appreciated the fact that she declared, “I’m an actor. You tell me what I should wear.” She told me this was the best evening gown she ever wore because of its comfort, even fully beaded.
You’ve also dressed a lot of the men on the red carpet, like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
Matt and Ben gave me one of my first indelible “Hollywood” memories. I dressed them for their first Academy Awards ceremony, when they won the Oscar for Good Will Hunting. They were so exuberant on the red carpet. They were beaming like little boys, saying, “Thanks for the tuxes, Giorgio!”
You decided to launch a couture line, Armani Privé, in 2005, even though that’s generally considered to be a dying art.
The first collection—just 35 outfits—was mainly evening wear. For some, couture is about costume and theater. But not for me. I am creating this collection in a very thought-out, pragmatic way. This is about offering a very special, personalized service for my best clients.
You put a Nobu restaurant inside your store in central Milan. What made you think people would want to eat among clothes?
Nobu in Milan is a great place for an aperitivo, always packed with an interesting mix of different kinds of people—hip, young, chic. I often go there right before dinner just to check out the atmosphere. I admire Nobu-san’s genius in combining traditional Japanese cuisine with international flavors from South America. His attention to the aesthetic and detail makes the dining experience unique.
And then there’s the furniture line, Armani Casa.
Made to measure and bespoke are two concepts that I find particularly interesting both for my fashion and my home creations. Furnishings like my limited- edition “Borromini” chaise have an added appeal because they are unique and will not be mass-produced.
You’ve done a lot of off-field outfits for sports teams, including the Chelsea football club and the Rabbitohs rugby team from Australia. What’s appealing about athletes?
I’ve always been interested in dressing sports personalities because to me they are like modern gladiators. On my last trip to Sydney, I visited Russell Crowe, who had gotten involved with the Rabbitohs. They were training on a beach near Bondi and I finally got to meet these amazing athletes. It was inspiring.
Attachments
Petey and the Boys
The wandering days and bunk-bed nights of Fashion Week’s handsome rookies.
Not long ago, last year in fact, Petey was working at a restaurant in Nashville called Rafferty’s. A woman he was serving asked him if he had ever thought about being a model. He said he had not, even though a co-worker had once suggested he could be one. The woman took a few photos of him and gave him her card. She sent the test shots to Ford, where his smooth, skinny body and dramatic Johnny Depp jawline landed him a multiyear contract. “He has a natural ease in front of the camera that a lot of new kids don’t have right away,” says Blake Woods, an agent in Ford’s men’s division.
By September, Pete had broken up with his girlfriend Sally, moved up to New York, and, like dozens of other fresh boys, spent Fashion Week rushing from runway show to casting to fitting to party to get his face noticed. A typical day: a meeting at Steven Meisel’s office to take a test shot for a new Calvin Klein jeans campaign, then the Duckie Brown fashion show, then the Rag & Bone fashion show, then a fitting at DKNY, then a fitting at Tim Hamilton. I rode the N train with him down to Meisel’s studio in Soho. On the subway, we saw another male model, with long blond hair. “There’s one. You can spot them really easily,” Petey said with the geeky glee of a freshman. In person, Petey is friendly and endearingly dorky. “Sometimes I’ll see another model on the street and we will nod ‘hey’ to each other. It’s like a club.”
At the Duckie Brown show in Bryant Park, Petey is getting ready to walk. There must be about 25 or 30 other long-torsoed boys as well, including Petey’s fellow Ford models AJ and Nico. They had to get there at 10:30 a.m. for a 1 p.m. show. “They are young and they need to learn to be on time,” says Ford men’s agent Emily Novak. “It’s a multilevel job. We’re mom, we’re financial advisers, we’re getting the work. They are our responsibility.”
The Duckie clothes have Velcro hoods, nylon mesh, long pants, and two-tone hybrid sneaker-shoes. Petey, in makeup, his hair foofed high on his head, is stuffing his face with free food and joking around with AJ. “Oh, no, look who it is,” AJ says and gestures to another model who walks in. The boy is decked out in a fedora, skinny pants, and suspenders. He poses and struts around the room. “That guy’s a dick,” Petey says. “There are guys who love that they are models. If I have to hear about your Herbal Essences commercial, I’m out.”
Duckie Brown has hired a friendly-looking silver-haired Asian woman named Lynne O’Neill to produce the show. Like a patient eighth-grade teacher, she tells the boys how to walk. “Everyone, this is Modeling 101. Look at that specific point where the cameras are while walking. Don’t cut the walls. Come out center. Make a clean turn.”
The boys are restless but pay attention. Then they each practice walking—a normal, nothing walk. Unlike the female models who lean back and clomp down the runway, the men just walk like they were caught thinking about vanilla. “At first I was thinking about it too hard, but now I just walk,” says Petey. “It’s pretty easy.”
When the show is over, Petey, AJ, and I speed over to Pier 94 on the West Side Highway for the Rag & Bone show. Neither of Petey’s runway gigs today will pay any money. Instead, he’ll receive “trade”: a free sweater and sneakers from Duckie Brown and a $1,000 credit at Rag & Bone. The clothes are all right, but it’s hard to pay rent with a retro peacoat.
Financially speaking, male modeling is not unlike being a straight-male p*rn star: The men have always made less than the women, and very few become big names. For most magazine work, models are paid less than $250. Twenty percent of that goes to the agency, which also bills models for their board and expenses. “Sometimes you get charged for things you never thought of,” says Petey, “like $30 a month to be on the website.”
Next: The models' only hope for making ends meet.
The only hope of making ends meet is to book an ad campaign or catalogue job. But even those are less lucrative than they once were. “Where you used to get $5K for a job, it’s now $2K,” says JD Ferguson, a former model who now works as a fashion photographer. “I remember my booker saying to me, ‘Hey, if you won’t do $2,000, there’s another guy right behind you that will.’ ”
Backstage, a photographer comes over to take a photo of AJ. He makes a stern face—not a clichéd Zoolander pout so much as an expression of vacant cruelty. AJ is from Kentucky, has light-brown hair, steely blue eyes, and an action-hero physique. He is mild-mannered, speaks Arabic, and is studying business. But he wants to be an actor. “I want to be Daniel Craig and be the next 007.”
He and another guy watch a female model as she assumes various poses (shrug shoulders, pretend to laugh, make a peace sign) for photographers. “God, that girl is gorgeous. I would drag my balls though a mile of broken glass to be with her,” says the other guy.
Almost all of the male models I meet seem straight. “Gay models will go down in history as the biggest misconception about the male modeling world,” says Ferguson.
But being straight doesn’t seem to make any difference backstage, where the female models are avoiding the male models like at recess in elementary school. The women are preened over by stylists, surrounded by fashion reporters, while the guys just hang around and smoke. Maybe it’s the discrepancy in income and age—the girls all seem to be highly paid 15-year-olds. “They seem, I don’t know, really serious,” says AJ.
There are some women who are interested in Petey and his friends. The guys call them modelizers. “That’s some girl who will **** guys according to how many campaigns they’ve had,” Petey says. Apparently there are a lot of them, but Petey’s not that interested. “I don’t know what I am getting into with all this.”
Petey lives in an apartment in South Williamsburg with Jesse, a part-time model in film school, and Tiara, a waitress and aspiring actor. It’s a huge space, for which they pay $2,400. The place looks as if six families lived there and suddenly had to evacuate: clothes all over the floor, cheap furniture, cans of Polar Ice beer arranged in a triangle on the table like billiard balls.
Jesse and Petey sleep in gray metal bunk beds in the back room, and Tiara is sleeping on the futon in front of the TV because she doesn’t have a bed yet. AJ is crashing here for Fashion Week as well. Petey brought him over because otherwise he would have to stay at one of the model apartments. “It’s nuts at those places. They charge like $1,200 a month for a bunk bed,” he says. “There’s all these rules, and the guy who runs it is tense.”
Ford maintains two male-model apartments—one in Greenpoint and one in a high-rise in Chinatown—but agencies have them all over the city. In the Greenpoint apartment, there are five bedrooms, each with at least two sets of bunk beds, plus a central room with a large kitchen and living room that contains a Chuck Norris–style exercise machine. A model named Will Anderson found the place and persuaded Ford to let him be the super and manager. At 36 years old, he is like the stern Mrs. Garrett in the house. He has lived in model apartments for ten years now, and in 2006 he self-published a coffee-table photo book called Apt. 301, a collection of his snapshots of sexy boy models sleeping, eating, and horsing around in messy rooms and rumpled sheets.
Will has placed admonitory signs all over the apartment. “If you use a plate etc. wash it don’t leave it in the sink!!!” says one, hanging above the sink, written on a paper towel in bleeding red letters. On the front door: “To anyone staying here make yourself at home!! Be clean. DON’T **** with anything or you will be sent home + lose your contract with FORD.”
At the Chinatown apartment, there’s no such chaperone. It’s more of a Just Put Crap Down When You Are Done With It guys’ dorm. A bowl of soggy, half-completed cereal is left on a desk; a cruddy shelf is filled with self-improvement books (Coaching the Artist Within, Live What You Love); a bottle of Grunge Off, used to clean the sticky resin out of a bong, sits next to the TV. The fridge contains ketchup, Smucker’s Goober jelly–peanut butter, eggs, one slice of American cheese, two Pepsis, and a half-eaten package of bologna. The rent here is $1,000 to $1,200 a month for a bed.
Next: What the boys do after Fashion Week.
For Fashion Week, Nico and Jakob are living here with three other models. Nico, from Chicago, was discovered at a skating event when he was 15. In 2007, when he was 17, he appeared with Sienna Miller in a Pepe Jeans campaign. He is shy and brooding and pretends to not care about modeling. Jakob, from Leipzig, looks like a rosy-cheeked private-school boy. He was discovered on the street near the Technische Universität in Berlin, where he studies economics. Last season, he became the lead male runway model for Givenchy.
When I visit, the guys are sitting on the big black leather couch watching Back to the Future Part III. The apartment smells like pot, but the boys pretend they don’t smoke it until I mention that I like pot, and then one expertly rolls a spliff. We watch Christopher Lloyd rescue Mary Steenburgen on a steam train.
They say that when they have girls over, the other roommate just agrees to sleep on the couch. But it doesn’t seem like many women have been here.
I notice a composition notebook wedged into a stack of books by the TV, left perhaps by a model passing through. The author takes account of his short modeling history: “The first **** agency. Signing with Ford. Not doing **** for almost 6 months. Then finally having a career, heading home, heading back, losing wallet.”
A few pages later, there is a self-improvement to-do list: “Start studying trends in fashion. Discovering more and more models transfer into acting. Big modeling begins in New York and then branches. Double major in business/acting.
“Thoughts: 1) Modeling is not just earned over time, it’s more being perfect all the time. 2) Take more care of self: working out, diet, skin care. 3) I love the way the static hits the screen and makes Heidi Klum’s t*ts shake.”
A couple nights later, we are at the Vman party at Indochine, celebrating the model-search winners. There is an ice-sculpture replica of Petey’s cover photo. “Look! I am immortalized in ice!” he jokes. I watch him glad-hand his way around the room. He is dressed up in a slim suit like a fifties greaser.
Jakob and Nico are here as well. Nico, who somehow knows how to exude sexuality like there is a smoke machine around him at all times, is wearing a silver-sequined jacket. All of them were dressed by stylists. “I would never wear this, ever,” says Nico.
Petey introduces me to a girl he is sort of seeing, Nika, who is tall, with a big face that is almost a perfect circle. She is also a model and is dressed in a tight kimono-style dress with heavy-looking earrings and a shiny brooch on the collar. They met a week ago on a photo shoot for a label’s look book. One photo had her topless with her hair in front of her breasts.
Nika’s friend, also a model, is equally tall with red hair and pale skin. I ask her why most female models seem to avoid the men backstage. “It’s because most guy models are douche bags.”
“Is it because they are always hitting on you and stuff?” I ask.
“No! The opposite! I’ll be changing and getting naked in front of them, and they will be staring at their own bodies.”
But here everyone is mingling. AJ, who was one of the finalists for the model search, tells me he was invited by another woman at the party to go upstairs and watch her while she changed clothes.
Another Vman finalist named Adam is wandering the party wearing a dark suit with platinum hair, which makes him look like a beautiful Anne Rice vampire-angel. He’s 18 years old, sweet, open, polite. He tells me he’s staying in a bottom bunk at the Greenpoint model apartment. “Every day I have had castings. Even on weekends,” he says. For the Vman competition, he entered snapshots that his girlfriend took. Like Petey, he broke up with her when he moved up here.
Later, he tells me he met an actress at the party. They both lied about their ages. “She has a small role in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and is up for a role in Gossip Girl.”
Over the course of the fall, Petey, Nico, Adam, and AJ all went back home. It wasn’t that they were giving up. They just missed home, and they couldn’t afford to stay in New York between jobs anyway.
The wandering days and bunk-bed nights of Fashion Week’s handsome rookies.
- By Mike Albo
- Published Feb 15, 2009
Not long ago, last year in fact, Petey was working at a restaurant in Nashville called Rafferty’s. A woman he was serving asked him if he had ever thought about being a model. He said he had not, even though a co-worker had once suggested he could be one. The woman took a few photos of him and gave him her card. She sent the test shots to Ford, where his smooth, skinny body and dramatic Johnny Depp jawline landed him a multiyear contract. “He has a natural ease in front of the camera that a lot of new kids don’t have right away,” says Blake Woods, an agent in Ford’s men’s division.
By September, Pete had broken up with his girlfriend Sally, moved up to New York, and, like dozens of other fresh boys, spent Fashion Week rushing from runway show to casting to fitting to party to get his face noticed. A typical day: a meeting at Steven Meisel’s office to take a test shot for a new Calvin Klein jeans campaign, then the Duckie Brown fashion show, then the Rag & Bone fashion show, then a fitting at DKNY, then a fitting at Tim Hamilton. I rode the N train with him down to Meisel’s studio in Soho. On the subway, we saw another male model, with long blond hair. “There’s one. You can spot them really easily,” Petey said with the geeky glee of a freshman. In person, Petey is friendly and endearingly dorky. “Sometimes I’ll see another model on the street and we will nod ‘hey’ to each other. It’s like a club.”
At the Duckie Brown show in Bryant Park, Petey is getting ready to walk. There must be about 25 or 30 other long-torsoed boys as well, including Petey’s fellow Ford models AJ and Nico. They had to get there at 10:30 a.m. for a 1 p.m. show. “They are young and they need to learn to be on time,” says Ford men’s agent Emily Novak. “It’s a multilevel job. We’re mom, we’re financial advisers, we’re getting the work. They are our responsibility.”
The Duckie clothes have Velcro hoods, nylon mesh, long pants, and two-tone hybrid sneaker-shoes. Petey, in makeup, his hair foofed high on his head, is stuffing his face with free food and joking around with AJ. “Oh, no, look who it is,” AJ says and gestures to another model who walks in. The boy is decked out in a fedora, skinny pants, and suspenders. He poses and struts around the room. “That guy’s a dick,” Petey says. “There are guys who love that they are models. If I have to hear about your Herbal Essences commercial, I’m out.”
Duckie Brown has hired a friendly-looking silver-haired Asian woman named Lynne O’Neill to produce the show. Like a patient eighth-grade teacher, she tells the boys how to walk. “Everyone, this is Modeling 101. Look at that specific point where the cameras are while walking. Don’t cut the walls. Come out center. Make a clean turn.”
The boys are restless but pay attention. Then they each practice walking—a normal, nothing walk. Unlike the female models who lean back and clomp down the runway, the men just walk like they were caught thinking about vanilla. “At first I was thinking about it too hard, but now I just walk,” says Petey. “It’s pretty easy.”
When the show is over, Petey, AJ, and I speed over to Pier 94 on the West Side Highway for the Rag & Bone show. Neither of Petey’s runway gigs today will pay any money. Instead, he’ll receive “trade”: a free sweater and sneakers from Duckie Brown and a $1,000 credit at Rag & Bone. The clothes are all right, but it’s hard to pay rent with a retro peacoat.
Financially speaking, male modeling is not unlike being a straight-male p*rn star: The men have always made less than the women, and very few become big names. For most magazine work, models are paid less than $250. Twenty percent of that goes to the agency, which also bills models for their board and expenses. “Sometimes you get charged for things you never thought of,” says Petey, “like $30 a month to be on the website.”
Next: The models' only hope for making ends meet.
The only hope of making ends meet is to book an ad campaign or catalogue job. But even those are less lucrative than they once were. “Where you used to get $5K for a job, it’s now $2K,” says JD Ferguson, a former model who now works as a fashion photographer. “I remember my booker saying to me, ‘Hey, if you won’t do $2,000, there’s another guy right behind you that will.’ ”
Backstage, a photographer comes over to take a photo of AJ. He makes a stern face—not a clichéd Zoolander pout so much as an expression of vacant cruelty. AJ is from Kentucky, has light-brown hair, steely blue eyes, and an action-hero physique. He is mild-mannered, speaks Arabic, and is studying business. But he wants to be an actor. “I want to be Daniel Craig and be the next 007.”
He and another guy watch a female model as she assumes various poses (shrug shoulders, pretend to laugh, make a peace sign) for photographers. “God, that girl is gorgeous. I would drag my balls though a mile of broken glass to be with her,” says the other guy.
Almost all of the male models I meet seem straight. “Gay models will go down in history as the biggest misconception about the male modeling world,” says Ferguson.
But being straight doesn’t seem to make any difference backstage, where the female models are avoiding the male models like at recess in elementary school. The women are preened over by stylists, surrounded by fashion reporters, while the guys just hang around and smoke. Maybe it’s the discrepancy in income and age—the girls all seem to be highly paid 15-year-olds. “They seem, I don’t know, really serious,” says AJ.
There are some women who are interested in Petey and his friends. The guys call them modelizers. “That’s some girl who will **** guys according to how many campaigns they’ve had,” Petey says. Apparently there are a lot of them, but Petey’s not that interested. “I don’t know what I am getting into with all this.”
Petey lives in an apartment in South Williamsburg with Jesse, a part-time model in film school, and Tiara, a waitress and aspiring actor. It’s a huge space, for which they pay $2,400. The place looks as if six families lived there and suddenly had to evacuate: clothes all over the floor, cheap furniture, cans of Polar Ice beer arranged in a triangle on the table like billiard balls.
Jesse and Petey sleep in gray metal bunk beds in the back room, and Tiara is sleeping on the futon in front of the TV because she doesn’t have a bed yet. AJ is crashing here for Fashion Week as well. Petey brought him over because otherwise he would have to stay at one of the model apartments. “It’s nuts at those places. They charge like $1,200 a month for a bunk bed,” he says. “There’s all these rules, and the guy who runs it is tense.”
Ford maintains two male-model apartments—one in Greenpoint and one in a high-rise in Chinatown—but agencies have them all over the city. In the Greenpoint apartment, there are five bedrooms, each with at least two sets of bunk beds, plus a central room with a large kitchen and living room that contains a Chuck Norris–style exercise machine. A model named Will Anderson found the place and persuaded Ford to let him be the super and manager. At 36 years old, he is like the stern Mrs. Garrett in the house. He has lived in model apartments for ten years now, and in 2006 he self-published a coffee-table photo book called Apt. 301, a collection of his snapshots of sexy boy models sleeping, eating, and horsing around in messy rooms and rumpled sheets.
Will has placed admonitory signs all over the apartment. “If you use a plate etc. wash it don’t leave it in the sink!!!” says one, hanging above the sink, written on a paper towel in bleeding red letters. On the front door: “To anyone staying here make yourself at home!! Be clean. DON’T **** with anything or you will be sent home + lose your contract with FORD.”
At the Chinatown apartment, there’s no such chaperone. It’s more of a Just Put Crap Down When You Are Done With It guys’ dorm. A bowl of soggy, half-completed cereal is left on a desk; a cruddy shelf is filled with self-improvement books (Coaching the Artist Within, Live What You Love); a bottle of Grunge Off, used to clean the sticky resin out of a bong, sits next to the TV. The fridge contains ketchup, Smucker’s Goober jelly–peanut butter, eggs, one slice of American cheese, two Pepsis, and a half-eaten package of bologna. The rent here is $1,000 to $1,200 a month for a bed.
Next: What the boys do after Fashion Week.
For Fashion Week, Nico and Jakob are living here with three other models. Nico, from Chicago, was discovered at a skating event when he was 15. In 2007, when he was 17, he appeared with Sienna Miller in a Pepe Jeans campaign. He is shy and brooding and pretends to not care about modeling. Jakob, from Leipzig, looks like a rosy-cheeked private-school boy. He was discovered on the street near the Technische Universität in Berlin, where he studies economics. Last season, he became the lead male runway model for Givenchy.
When I visit, the guys are sitting on the big black leather couch watching Back to the Future Part III. The apartment smells like pot, but the boys pretend they don’t smoke it until I mention that I like pot, and then one expertly rolls a spliff. We watch Christopher Lloyd rescue Mary Steenburgen on a steam train.
They say that when they have girls over, the other roommate just agrees to sleep on the couch. But it doesn’t seem like many women have been here.
I notice a composition notebook wedged into a stack of books by the TV, left perhaps by a model passing through. The author takes account of his short modeling history: “The first **** agency. Signing with Ford. Not doing **** for almost 6 months. Then finally having a career, heading home, heading back, losing wallet.”
A few pages later, there is a self-improvement to-do list: “Start studying trends in fashion. Discovering more and more models transfer into acting. Big modeling begins in New York and then branches. Double major in business/acting.
“Thoughts: 1) Modeling is not just earned over time, it’s more being perfect all the time. 2) Take more care of self: working out, diet, skin care. 3) I love the way the static hits the screen and makes Heidi Klum’s t*ts shake.”
A couple nights later, we are at the Vman party at Indochine, celebrating the model-search winners. There is an ice-sculpture replica of Petey’s cover photo. “Look! I am immortalized in ice!” he jokes. I watch him glad-hand his way around the room. He is dressed up in a slim suit like a fifties greaser.
Jakob and Nico are here as well. Nico, who somehow knows how to exude sexuality like there is a smoke machine around him at all times, is wearing a silver-sequined jacket. All of them were dressed by stylists. “I would never wear this, ever,” says Nico.
Petey introduces me to a girl he is sort of seeing, Nika, who is tall, with a big face that is almost a perfect circle. She is also a model and is dressed in a tight kimono-style dress with heavy-looking earrings and a shiny brooch on the collar. They met a week ago on a photo shoot for a label’s look book. One photo had her topless with her hair in front of her breasts.
Nika’s friend, also a model, is equally tall with red hair and pale skin. I ask her why most female models seem to avoid the men backstage. “It’s because most guy models are douche bags.”
“Is it because they are always hitting on you and stuff?” I ask.
“No! The opposite! I’ll be changing and getting naked in front of them, and they will be staring at their own bodies.”
But here everyone is mingling. AJ, who was one of the finalists for the model search, tells me he was invited by another woman at the party to go upstairs and watch her while she changed clothes.
Another Vman finalist named Adam is wandering the party wearing a dark suit with platinum hair, which makes him look like a beautiful Anne Rice vampire-angel. He’s 18 years old, sweet, open, polite. He tells me he’s staying in a bottom bunk at the Greenpoint model apartment. “Every day I have had castings. Even on weekends,” he says. For the Vman competition, he entered snapshots that his girlfriend took. Like Petey, he broke up with her when he moved up here.
Later, he tells me he met an actress at the party. They both lied about their ages. “She has a small role in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and is up for a role in Gossip Girl.”
Over the course of the fall, Petey, Nico, Adam, and AJ all went back home. It wasn’t that they were giving up. They just missed home, and they couldn’t afford to stay in New York between jobs anyway.
Pt 2
Jakob went back to school in Europe, but he’s been the busiest of all the models, with campaigns for Givenchy, Lacoste, and Trussardi, and runway shows in Paris and Milan. Adam has been in demand as well, although he didn’t go to Europe for the shows because he couldn’t afford the airfare. He just returned to New York and moved into Petey’s old apartment in Williamsburg, with Jesse and two other guys. He plans on staying until May at least, “to lay the foundation and continue to develop the book,” he says, like a serious sophomore returning to school. He is in talks with his agent over the critical decision about whether he should keep his hair platinum or let it go natural. “I’ve dyed it three times so far, so it may fall out. Right now I have some cool roots going on,” he says. He hasn’t made much money yet, but photographers love him. “He’s an editorial star,” says Novak.
Petey’s been to Paris three times since Fashion Week to do work for Yves Saint Laurent. He also did a Joop! Jeans campaign. “It takes so long before I see the money, though. And with 40 percent for taxes, 20 percent for Ford, who knows how much it will be.”
He sounds a little weary, and lonely. “You get up and get on a plane, go through customs alone, your cell phone doesn’t work, you don’t talk to your friends. I’m in a weird state right now. I’m not sure what I really want.”
He’d mostly prefer to stay in Nashville, especially now that he’s trying to rekindle things with Sally. “I was doing some things I shouldn’t have been doing. She is in the process of forgiving me,” he says. “Sally was my first real girlfriend, not one of those three-week high-school girlfriends … I really love her.”
But his agents are urging him to get back to New York, fast. “They told me it’s a vital time in my career,” he says. Vman and Ford just announced the winners of the second-annual Model Search, and the model apartments will soon be filled with a new crop of pretty faces. Last year’s boys will have to hustle.
Jakob went back to school in Europe, but he’s been the busiest of all the models, with campaigns for Givenchy, Lacoste, and Trussardi, and runway shows in Paris and Milan. Adam has been in demand as well, although he didn’t go to Europe for the shows because he couldn’t afford the airfare. He just returned to New York and moved into Petey’s old apartment in Williamsburg, with Jesse and two other guys. He plans on staying until May at least, “to lay the foundation and continue to develop the book,” he says, like a serious sophomore returning to school. He is in talks with his agent over the critical decision about whether he should keep his hair platinum or let it go natural. “I’ve dyed it three times so far, so it may fall out. Right now I have some cool roots going on,” he says. He hasn’t made much money yet, but photographers love him. “He’s an editorial star,” says Novak.
Petey’s been to Paris three times since Fashion Week to do work for Yves Saint Laurent. He also did a Joop! Jeans campaign. “It takes so long before I see the money, though. And with 40 percent for taxes, 20 percent for Ford, who knows how much it will be.”
He sounds a little weary, and lonely. “You get up and get on a plane, go through customs alone, your cell phone doesn’t work, you don’t talk to your friends. I’m in a weird state right now. I’m not sure what I really want.”
He’d mostly prefer to stay in Nashville, especially now that he’s trying to rekindle things with Sally. “I was doing some things I shouldn’t have been doing. She is in the process of forgiving me,” he says. “Sally was my first real girlfriend, not one of those three-week high-school girlfriends … I really love her.”
But his agents are urging him to get back to New York, fast. “They told me it’s a vital time in my career,” he says. Vman and Ford just announced the winners of the second-annual Model Search, and the model apartments will soon be filled with a new crop of pretty faces. Last year’s boys will have to hustle.
Editorial with the Virgins
Photographs by Guy Aroch
The Virgins—Donald Cumming, Nick Zarin-Ackerman, and Wade Oates—grew up here (Queens, the Upper West Side, and assorted downtown locations, respectively) but didn’t become a band until 2006, when a series of chance meetings brought them together. Cumming (lead singer–songwriter) and Oates (guitar) met during one of photographer Ryan McGinley’s road trips, then became roommates, then recruited Zarin-Ackerman (bass). The Virgins’ self-titled debut, which came out this past year, is “meant to be an optimistic, fun record about kids who make the opposite decisions from what they’re meant to do,” says Cumming. “At some point we’ve all thought, I just want to have a really good time tonight, and I don’t give a **** about anything else.” They’ve sold out the Music Hall of Williamsburg and, seemingly, have an affinity for fashion; aside from looking good in the pictures here (with some of their loyal fans), they’re playing the opening of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.
Photographs by Guy Aroch
The Virgins—Donald Cumming, Nick Zarin-Ackerman, and Wade Oates—grew up here (Queens, the Upper West Side, and assorted downtown locations, respectively) but didn’t become a band until 2006, when a series of chance meetings brought them together. Cumming (lead singer–songwriter) and Oates (guitar) met during one of photographer Ryan McGinley’s road trips, then became roommates, then recruited Zarin-Ackerman (bass). The Virgins’ self-titled debut, which came out this past year, is “meant to be an optimistic, fun record about kids who make the opposite decisions from what they’re meant to do,” says Cumming. “At some point we’ve all thought, I just want to have a really good time tonight, and I don’t give a **** about anything else.” They’ve sold out the Music Hall of Williamsburg and, seemingly, have an affinity for fashion; aside from looking good in the pictures here (with some of their loyal fans), they’re playing the opening of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.
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I want that t-shirt with the V cover on!Field Trip
Nothing like a (virtual) day in the country, with some brand-new models wearing spring’s sweetest, lightest clothes.
For this shoot, Tierney Gearon incorporated the classic method of double exposure, a technique the artist has utilized in her new body of work “Explosure,” which will be on view at Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills, California, from February 19 through April 25, 2009.
Hair by Ryan Trygstad at the Wall Group. Makeup by Teresa Pemberton for Giorgio Armani Beauty at Judy Casey, Inc. Prop styling by Kadu Lennox at Frank Reps. Casting by James Lim. Models: Svetlana Kuznetsova at Elite; Joan Smalls at Elite; Mariana Idzkowska at Ford; Shelby Coleman at IMG; Sofia Bartos at Major; Elyse Saunders at Ford; Julia Goncharenko at Elite; Valeria Dmitrienko at Women Management; Marloes Horst at Next; Katrina Hunter at Elite; Georgie at Muse. Fashion assistant: Eve Bertin-Lang.(nymag.com)
Nothing like a (virtual) day in the country, with some brand-new models wearing spring’s sweetest, lightest clothes.
For this shoot, Tierney Gearon incorporated the classic method of double exposure, a technique the artist has utilized in her new body of work “Explosure,” which will be on view at Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills, California, from February 19 through April 25, 2009.
Hair by Ryan Trygstad at the Wall Group. Makeup by Teresa Pemberton for Giorgio Armani Beauty at Judy Casey, Inc. Prop styling by Kadu Lennox at Frank Reps. Casting by James Lim. Models: Svetlana Kuznetsova at Elite; Joan Smalls at Elite; Mariana Idzkowska at Ford; Shelby Coleman at IMG; Sofia Bartos at Major; Elyse Saunders at Ford; Julia Goncharenko at Elite; Valeria Dmitrienko at Women Management; Marloes Horst at Next; Katrina Hunter at Elite; Georgie at Muse. Fashion assistant: Eve Bertin-Lang.(nymag.com)
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stern light is horrible!!!
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