William and I saw September Issue last night. It’s the documentary about Vogue magazine, its editor-in-chief Anna Wintour (shown here), and her gifted second-in-command, former model Grace Coddington. Some people say the documentary came about to show what Ms. Wintour is really like, not the caricature supposedly patterned after her in The Devil Wears Prada. The doc does depict her as tough and decisive and not one to curry favor, and I hate it that she’s such a champion of the wretched fur industry. Even so, I couldn’t help admiring her focus and wishing I had some of her grit. Ms. Coddington seems to get the brunt of her superior’s overarching executive decision-making, and yet she shines through the film as the creative brilliance behind those amazing photo shoots. I see today that the reason I love the magazine is her esthetic sense.
Although I probably owe William half-a-dozen guy flicks for sitting through all that fashion, I loved spending two hours immersed in that world, the world I once thought would be my life.
I read my first fashion mag when I was ten. I was in Rome with my dad (my mother had married a man in the Air Force and they were stationed in Madrid; it meant that I got to go to Europe for three childhood summers, not something most kids in Kansas City were doing at the time.) Anyway, there wasn’t a lot to read in English and I was excited to find a copy of Mademoiselle magazine at a newsstand. I was holding it in the lift when the very handsome young French elevator operator saw the title and said, “C’est francais, n’est-ce pas?” And I’m thinking, “No, not francais, but if reading one of these magazines gets me attention from a guy who looks likes you, I’m totally going to keep reading.”
And I did, adding on Glamour, Seventeen, Harper’s Bazaar, and the grande dame of them all, Vogue. I was going to be a fashion writer. Or a fashion coordinator. (I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded good.) Toward that end, I got a job proofreading credit cards for an oil company the day after high school. I saved every money so I could move to London to attend Lucie Clayton’s School of Fashion.
School was a bust. It turned out to be a design program, and my IQ ends at my wrists. I was hopeless at drawing, cutting, and sewing, but I was in London, the center of young style at that time, and I had a calendar that told me when every issue of Vogue would hit the newsstands. That way, I’d be up on British, French, Italian, and American Vogue, the latter of which then came out more than once a month; knowing its somewhat improbable schedule was a sign of savoir faire that I was totally proud of.
I went back to the States, back to Kansas City, after a year, far wiser (and better dressed). I got a job as an assistant in the advertising department at Harzfeld’s, a lovely old women’s and children’s specialty store. I’d lost a lot of weight in England (I’d done Weight Watchers) and it hadn’t backfired yet, so the artists often used me as a model. I remember the day they put me in a Norman Norell dress. The price tag was $1200; I made $85 a week. I’ll never forget how that dress felt, touching me nowhere but my shoulders, hanging with a sort of perfection I thought was reserved for the next life. I learned then why some people who could afford them (and some who couldn’t) craved “good” clothes. Like good architecture and music and wine, there’s something to it. It lets us be a vicarious part of creativity that isn’t our own.
Several years later when I was married to my first husband, Patrick, we were talking once about spiritual things and I said, “Where do think fashion fits into spirituality?” He said, “Not very high.” I knew he was right, of course, and yet it made me a little sad. I got so much joy from fashion, even at that time when we had no money and my style was thrift-shoppe chic. And joy, I knew then and I know even better now, is at the heart of spirituality, right up there with love and faith and kindness and the other big guns.
So watching the movie last night gave me a glimpse into the making of those glossy fantasy pages I’ve enjoyed for so long. Truth be told, I don’t read Vogue every month anymore. It seems to be somewhat less about fashion and beauty than it used to be, and more about the lives of society people. Those are the folks who are actually buying the clothes, so giving them something of themselves to read makes sense, I suppose. Still, when I really want to rest and rejuvenate, there is nothing like a couple of free hours, a mug of licorice tea, and the latest issue of the fashion Bible. Every now and then, William buys me a copy. I fall in love a little extra every time he does.
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Only a few more days to get free downloadable gifts from over 100 authors, teachers, and luminaries — John Gray, Mariel Hemingway, Barbara Stanny, SARK, Jennifer Louden, Our Lady of Weight Loss, Marci Shimoff, Judith Orloff, and many more—when you purchase your copy of Living a Charmed Life: Your Guide to Finding Magic in Every Moment of Every Day, Victoria’s latest book. You can only get the gifts if you order the book from this link: www.victoriamoran.com/charmed. The offer ends on Labor Day.
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If you’re in the New York City area, come this Sunday, September 6, 11 a.m., to hear Victoria speak on “Becoming a Spiritual Superhero!” She’ll be doing this at the Sunday service at Unity Church of New York, which meets in Symphony Space, on the southwest corner of 94th and Broadway. Book signing follows.
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