Covering the waterfront at Interview was ideal preparation for Women’s Wear Daily and W magazine. As Bob Colacello and Fred Hughes used to cry, “Yes we’re superficial, deeply superficial,” and so was I. A media boot camp, Fairchild Publications was often hilarious, occasionally nerve-racking, on a par with the dark moments of Tudor England. Heads could roll. Yet it was never dull. “Did you bring back the bacon?” a senior editor would cry, after an assignment. And I quickly learned the rule that when the door was slammed, it meant climbing in through the window or the equivalent. There was always another way. That when couturiers like Thierry Mugler turned icy cold and said, “I refuse to talk to Women’s Wear,” it was important to repeat the question just in case they changed their mind. Fat chance with Thierry—“I already told you, I refuse to talk to Women’s Wear,” he hissed—but still! And that everything was possible because “I can’t do” was not an option at Fairchild: a key rule for journalism.
After Karl, John Fairchild became my second fashion mentor because he was the real deal. Like most greats, Mr. Fairchild—always addressed as Mr. Fairchild—was interested in the authentic and had a horror of the pretentious and pompous. No question, Fairchild had a sort of genius for his world. He worshipped at the altar of Yves Saint Laurent—I understood, even if Yves’s great fashion moment had been in the 1970s. Fairchild coined the terms “Jackie O,” “hot pants,” “Beautiful People,” and “walker” for those gracing the pages of WWD and W. He understood that the British “shabby chic” lifestyle would become the rage and influence the minimal 1990s.
I first spied Mr. Fairchild at the Warhol Studio. He was one of the contenders to buy Interview in 1987. I can still recall the shock of white hair, his roomy wool overcoat, the sway of his suit trousers, and his polished shoes. Accompanied by Patrick McCarthy, he went up to see Fred, whose elegant figure happened to haunt the society pages of WWD and W.
When encountering him at the Chanel studio, Mr. Fairchild reminded me of an overgrown leprechaun. He had cocked bushy eyebrows and blue eyes that were both alert and amused. In a harmless, old-fashioned way, he flirted as he would with any woman possessing a British accent. “Patrick is wearing his new jacket from Huntsman, what do you think?” he asked. I replied that it was handsome but the buttons were “twinky.” It was my way of saying “queeny,” and Mr. Fairchild loved it. According to Kate Betts, then Fairchild’s bureau chief, twinky became a favorite word for the next few days.
During that period, he dissuaded his employees from getting too close to fashion folk. Being a detached observer was preferable for interviewing and writing reviews. He also nursed doubts about the designers’ grasp of reality. “They’re all liars, liars,” he occasionally barked. Nevertheless, Saint Laurent was an untouchable. And sometimes it became nutsy. “He’s as strong as an ox,” Mr. Fairchild would declare after the frail couturier had literally slobbered down the runway.
Mr. Fairchild—or Mr. Frogchild, as Kate nicknamed him—was a curious mixture. In one way, he was very gallant, looking after the swans who’d been forgotten. Or offering unsolicited advice: “You should get married,” he told Diane von Furstenberg, eyeing her pantherlike legs stretched out at a fashion show. Or immediately contacting Marc Jacobs when financing fell through on the designer’s company. Clearly concerned, Mr. Fairchild’s squawk morphed into a soft and dulcet tone. Being hypersensitive, he knew how to handle the creative. Or playing the disapproving parent or uncle figure. When lunching at the Ritz Bar, he caught sight of Tom Ford’s hairy chest and announced, “Your shirt is buttoned too low.”
Then there was the other side, which led to his being called the “Ayatollah of Fashion” by Taki Theodoracopulos, or worst type of grown-up and spoiled child. If designers turned down Mr. Fairchild’s request (usually it involved getting advance info about their collections) he took it very personally, hence his feuds with designers Geoffrey Beene and Pauline Trigère. More often than not, Mr. Fairchild would take his revenge by barring them from Women’s Wear, then viewed as the all-important fashion bible.
When I arrived at Women’s Wear Daily, he still had that power and was annoyed when it was not respected. André Oliver, then the right-hand man of Pierre Cardin, had been discourteous with me, and Fairchild was furious. Later, there was the Oscar de la Renta debacle christened “Oscar of the Right Table–gate.” It was at a party given to celebrate his arrival at the house of Balmain. There were seventy tables. Oscar’s ladies—read: bejeweled beauties and powerhouses—filled up the first ten and I was put at table 69 with the Polish seamstresses and unknown foreign journalists.
“Why that little . . .” Mr. Fairchild said when he heard about my placement. A call was made to Oscar. “But John, I believe that any table that I’m sitting at is the right table,” he had purred. The designer oozed suave. But it was too much for Frogchild, who wasn’t afraid of a fight. “Oscar,” he boomed. “That’s the biggest load of bull . . .” And for a brief moment, the designer was christened “Oscar of the Right Table” chez Fairchild.
I watched my premier Valentino couture show in the front row, sitting next to Mr. Fairchild. It was July 1991. “Look at that suit,” he announced, clearly excited. “It has snap, crackle, and pop.” “Snap, crackle, and pop” meant that it was flawless. A suit that could be traveled in for ten hours and, because of the cut and choice of fabric, wouldn’t have a single crease. It was an invaluable lesson and an excellent way to be initiated to the high standards of the Italian-born couturier. A day later, I was put in the front row again at Chanel. “Good for you,” said Lucy Ferry, the wife of rock star Bryan Ferry. In fact, it was a question of politics. Having lost Kate Betts to Vogue, Fairchild was keeping up appearances.
The Chanel show, held at the Beaux-Arts, was sweltering, or “hot as Hades,” to use the favorite expression of Dennis Thim, Fairchild’s bureau chief. Yet it didn’t stop Chanel’s couture ladies turning up in their power tweed suits. Tiny and doll-like, they were practically melting. All apart from Paloma Picasso, the jewelry designer and daughter of the famous artist, who turned up in a stripy cotton Hermès shirtdress and gold sandals. “She looks chic,” I said. Fairchild remained tight-lipped. And I soon learned that he only ever voiced his opinion in the privacy of the car afterward.
When my mother’s New York friends heard that I was working for John Fairchild, certain of them were horrified. In their minds, he was the beast who created the infamous “in” and “out” list as well as masterminded cruel exposés. My mother, on the other hand, refused to hear a word against him, “I’m on the side of anyone who employs my children” being her party line.
Within days of arriving at Fairchild, I realized that while my colleagues in Paris were good-natured and funny, the New York office was different and even tricky on occasion. Mildly chippy, some seemed convinced that I did nothing in Paris but swan around swilling champagne and downing smoked-salmon hors d’oeuvres. That too—I was “deeply superficial”—but I was also never off the telephone, keen to fill the society or home interior pages. Sometimes my connections could surprise. The entertainment editor was put out that I’d befriended Molly Ringwald, the teen actress. After reading my piece, she called back and said, “We only want to know one thing, Natasha, did she or didn’t she fuck Warren Beatty?” This rather stopped me in my tracks. The same editor also called up asking if Marseilles was a museum. But on a power level, New York had the upper hand and needed to be endured. Occasionally, Patrick McCarthy, Fairchild’s unofficial dauphin, had to step in and intervene. However, as he once warned: “Natasha, if I brought you over for the New York collections, my office would eat you up for breakfast.” Naturally, I played nonchalant when he said this but secretly shook in my boots and vowed never to go near the place.
True, I was opinionated and irritating, but I had a much-valued secret weapon—social access, armed by the fact that I delivered religiously. And until the mid-’90s, when Patrick decided to do a 180-degree turn with W magazine and focus on Hollywood film stars as opposed to the exclusive chic of European society, that made me untouchable.
Fortunately, my premiere months at W demonstrated this. My first task was persuading Mollie, the then Marchioness of Salisbury, to give an interview, going with a set of photographs of her garden taken by Christopher Simon Sykes. Having turned down Jim Fallon, who ran the London office, she immediately agreed to my request. It helped that I knew her and her brood. Fairchild et al. were delighted, but Jim attempted his revenge. That often happened with members of the Fairchild dysfunctional family.
My next article concerned Loulou de la Falaise. She had just bought a nineteenth-century country house in Ile-de-France, and although it was far from finished, she agreed to have it photographed. A legendary fashion stylist, she was equally talented with interiors.
During the shoot, Loulou sped around. If she wasn’t moving furniture or arranging the wildflowers, she was picking herbs from the vegetable garden and supervising lunch. The article showed that the thoroughly chic Loulou was a country gal at heart, and Fairchild was delighted with the story. Loulou and her family—including her mother, Maxime de la Falaise; uncle Mark Birley; brother, Alexis de la Falaise; and niece Lucie de la Falaise—could do no wrong in his eyes. “They’re the real McCoy,” he said.
Nevertheless, my Volpi Ball coup eclipsed everything else. All summer long, le tout Paris, New York, and Milan had been talking about Giovanni Volpi’s ball for his goddaughter, Elizabeth de Balkany. Held at the beginning of September, at the height of the Venice season, it promised to be the jet-set event with billionaires, beauties, and ball gowns. It was very Andy in tone: he knew most of the contenders, had done portraits of quite a few, and used to go to Venice most summers.
Cristiana Brandolini, one of the Serenissima’s social powerhouses, had actually turned down a Warhol portrait. “It was much too expensive, nor was it quite my mind-set,” she says. However, she had admired the picture that Warhol had done of her brother, Gianni Agnelli, the influential automobile industrialist. “Andy would stay at the Cipriani hotel,” she recalls. “And I would notice him sitting in the Piazza San Marco. Now you see people looking strange. But then to see this pale man in this white wig who was photographing and photographing. It was funny. But Andy was way, way ahead of us. He knew and understood before we did.”
Regarding the Volpi Ball, Glynis Costin and Art Streiber were up against it. Since they ran Fairchild’s Milan bureau, they were friendly with tutto il mondo, but Count Volpi was press-shy and refused to have journalists. And that’s when I trotted in on my Shetland pony. Giovanni was the half uncle of Dominique Lacloche. She gave me his cell number. I called him up and invited myself. He agreed, to my utter surprise and the shock of everyone else. It turned out he thought I was another Fraser, living in London.
Being a gent, he didn’t go back on his word. Indeed, wearing my elder sister’s red taffeta Bellville Sassoon gown, I went to the ball of the ’90s that was held in the Volpi family’s palazzo. It was my first time in Venice. I ate at Harry’s Bar. I saw Jacqueline de Ribes and other members of the International Best Dressed list close up, as well as the next generation of beauties. However, exciting as it sounded, the actual ball was a big fat anticlimax. The smart Italians only hung out with one another and rather stuck their noses up at the rest of us. I had never felt so excluded.
“These people are dreadful,” I remember saying to Dominique, who’d been brought up with most of them. “It’s because we don’t look the part”—professionals had not done our hair and makeup—“and they’re not interested in us,” she said. Still, I had never come across that before, being judged exclusively on my appearance.
Naturally, I didn’t report this to Glynis and Art, who were probably keen to hear the worst. Schadenfreude would have been human and oh-so-Fairchild-family–like. Instead, I made out that it was fantastic and that I had made tons of new friends. Behind my back, they then nicknamed me “the duchess.” If only! One genuine highlight had been watching Richard Avedon. He was taking photographs of Tatiana von Furstenberg and other nubile creatures for Egoïste, an elitist French magazine. Otherwise, the experience was a disappointment. My mistake was going with expectation. I thought it would be a Visconti version of the balls of my youth, but I was forgetting that I knew everyone at the English balls and that made a crucial difference.
An encounter with Fred Hughes had also been dire, bringing to mind the tragic undertones of Thomas Mann’s short story “Death in Venice” but without the romantic interest. Staying at the Gritti Palace, Fred had masterfully transformed the salon by switching the paintings with his own, covering the sofas with fabric, and using scarves to calm the lighting. Unfortunately, he was ensconced in a wheelchair and had become even more tempestuous.
While he was ordering tea, I had sneaked a raspberry tart from the plate of petit fours. Two minutes later, Fred noticed that it was missing and started freaking. He called the hotel management and accused the staff of stealing. Marisa Berenson, visiting at the same time, tried to soothe and steady him. Turning quite pink, I admitted that I had stolen the tart (no doubt made “all on a summer’s day”). “Well, why didn’t you say so, Natasha?” Fred said with renewed calm.