"The Real Daphne Guinness" [from the archives]
PLUS! Chloë Sevigny, Kim Kardashian, and Elizabeth Taylor (!) all in the same 2011 issue of Harper’s Bazaar
Howdy fashion fans, and welcome back to AND ANOTHER THING! Pack a lunch because we’re going on a fabulous trip down memory lane.
I'm still out east, squeezing the last drops out of summer. Last week, I discussed Vogue, Vanity Fair, and GQ dropping their September issues. That sent me spelunking down to my basement archive—hundreds of issues of magazines from my quartery centry in this business—to dig up the May 2004 issue of Vogue, which featured a fabulously minimalist cover of Nicole Kidman shot by Irving Penn. (Imagine my joy when Phyllis Posnick, the sittings editor from that shoot, showed up in the comments section.)
While I was down there, I stumbled upon the March 2011 issue of Harper's Bazaar, which stopped me in my tracks. Kim Kardashian is on the cover, before her Kanye-era makeover, styled as Egypt’s most famous queen. Would you believe the title of the story is "Cleopatra with a K"? In-kredible.
Perhaps what’s even more mind-boggling is that Kim's conversation with Elizabeth Taylor would become the screen legend's last-ever interview. She died at the end of that month.
At the time this issue was published, Glenda Bailey was the Editor-in-Chief, and one of her skills was creating these impossible conceptual mashups: Karl Lagerfeld shooting an editorial inspired by Interview with the Vampire, a portfolio of fashion designers posing as characters from Mike Nichols films, so we have Diane von Furstenberg as Mrs Robinson from The Graduate, and Marc Jacobs and Winona Ryder recreating the drunk, enraged couple from Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? Fabulous pull quote: "It was actually difficult to yell at Marc because all I could think of to yell was how much I love him," Winona says of Marc, who, in a surreal twist, already had a tattoo of George and Martha, the movie’s fictional couple.
Also in the issue is a photo shoot and exclusive interview with—get ready for it—Hillary Clinton. At the time, she was President Obama’s Secretary of State, and in the story, she talks about her favorite pink Ferragamo purse and WikiLeaks. She demurs when she’s asked whether or not she'll run for President in 2016—her future plans include “beaches and speeches.”
I have three stories in this issue: The first is a “Personal Style” story on Elisa Sednaoui, which Theo Wenner photographed at her home in Soho. The second is a profile of Chloë Sevigny, which accompanied a fashion story shot by Cédric Buchet. The year before, she had won a Golden Globe for her performance in the polygamist drama Big Love. (When I came to her house, the trophy was in her bathroom.) In our interview, we covered the essentials: rumors she was dating Pauly D from The Jersey Shore, and the time she skipped a Steven Meisel shoot as a teenager.
But the crown jewel of the issue? Daphne Guinness, "fashion's reigning eccentric icon," as she is identified in the story, photographed by David Bailey. I wrote—and styled—this feature, which still amazes me. I was only 28 at the time.
When I arrived at the studio, Bailey’s opening line to me was: “Ah fuck, they sent an American? I hate Americans.”
I worked only occasionally as a sittings editor, typically when I was friendly with the talent or the photographer, and this was by far my most significant assignment yet. (And maybe since?) I kept my head down, stayed out of the way, made a few jokes that landed at lunch, and by the end of the day, he warmed up to me.
"I guess you're alright. For an American," he said at the end of the shoot. (Ten years later, I interviewed him about his life in the 1960s for Gagosian Quarterly.) Also, it was to my benefit that Daphne had brought her friend Bernard-Henri Lévy to the shoot, who was French, even worse than an American for Bailey, so he had decided he disliked him more than me. Merci!
I still cannot recall the first time I met Daphne, although we were friends for years before this story was shot. The selfie of me, her, and the artist Francesco Clemente at the top of this text is from 2007, and it's the first shot I have of her on my camera roll. (It's from a dinner that Alison Sarofim hosted for Valentino at her West Village townhouse.) Like all exotic creatures, she sort of magically appeared in front of everyone, radiating couture cool and her brand of freakish glamour: the two-tone, perfectly set bouffant, the exacting style, the layers of diamonds worn casually, as if they were Mardi Gras beads.
She was then—and continues to be now—an inspiration to me, as well as fashion designers, photographers, stylists, and creatives around the world. When we were all in peak lockdown during the pandemic, I binge-watched Schitt's Creek, and nearly fell off my chair when Catherine O’Hara explained in a bonus featurette (am I the only one who watches the bonus featurettes?) that Daphne was an inspiration for her character, Moira Ros.
I was honored that she asked me to collaborate on this project. See below for the original layouts of that story, as well as my original text.