In Vogue: The 90s (2024) s01e01 Episode Script
Episode 1
1
-[car horn beeping]
-[sirens wailing in distance]
-Okay, so we'll try to take as much off.
-[Anna Wintour] Yeah.
-As quick as possible.
-[Wintour] Yeah, that'd be great.
Ooh.
Sorry.
[phone ringing]
Hi, so it went well?
Yes, it was good.
-Yeah?
-Yeah.
It was romantic and cinematic.
-[Wintour] You look great, right?
-He cannot take a bad picture.
-[Wintour] Good. Hiya.
-Hello.
Vogue has always been the defining
magazine publication about fashion.
[woman] Stop it.
[Edward Enninful] Fresh!
[woman] O-M-G.
-Wow!
-There's only one, look at that face.
-Look at that body, look at it.
-The body!
-I mean
-[exclaims]
[Enninful] There's no one
like Naomi Campbell,
there isn't.
No wonder she gets away with murder.
-Okay, that's not here yet?
-No, it's there.
[Wintour] So three in, three out
and the cover.
You never forget your Vogue covers.
The dream ultimately
was to be on the cover of Vogue.
When Anna put me on the cover,
it was like, "What?"
Where's that blue one
we were looking at the other day?
[woman] I think we have that one.
When you think of Anna Wintour,
you think of just this like,
chic, strong, boss woman.
I mean, that seems
to be more in the palette.
She is this Warholian enigma,
like a famous haircut,
kind of like a living legend.
[Tonne Goodman]
There's no two ways about it.
Vogue is Anna Wintour
and Anna Wintour is Vogue.
-[Wintour] So you want me to sit here?
-Yes please, Anna.
-Okay.
-[woman] Anna, I'm sorry to ask you,
would you mind awfully
taking your sunglasses off?
No, I'm gonna wear them.
-[Naomi Campbell] Right, are we ready?
-[man] Sound's rolling.
[sighs] Wow,
what does the '90s mean to me?
God, the '90s just changed everything.
Way too much fun, way too messy.
But I'll let Kate tell you those stories.
[laughs]
Oh, no. [laughs]
[Enninful] It was the decade that turned
the fashion industry upside down.
-It was a whirlwind.
-If you made movies,
you didn't hang out
with the fashion people.
If you did fashion,
you didn't hang out with music people.
[Amber Valletta] There was a huge change
that kind of happened with fashion,
film, music
all of these creative industries
were starting to converge.
It wasn't just about music,
it became about the clothes too.
It was a great time to be alive.
[Enninful] It really felt
like a revolution was underway.
Every corner you would see this image,
it was inescapable.
You have to anticipate what they want
before they know they want it.
Oh. But we need to talk about the fact
that I was the only Black person too.
They weren't treating us the way
they treat us now. Absolutely not.
The public was fascinated by fashion.
When I saw the Tom Ford Gucci,
it was like, "Oh, my God."
You're like, "Yeah, I wanna turn heads,
why not?"
[laughs]
-Is everyone happy?
-[Gwyneth Paltrow] Define happy.
[laughs]
[electronic music playing]
That decade changed everything.
Okay.
-Okay.
-Okay.
-All right.
-So I'm looking at you?
[man] Yes, please.
[radio host] No place like New York today.
What a day.
Right now in Central Park,
the present temperature
is still pleasant, 49 degrees,
humidity 44%, the wind's starting
Ever since Anna Wintour,
the editor of British Vogue,
was brought to New York by Condé Nast,
there have been rumours
that Miss Wintour would become
the editor of American Vogue.
Now the hot publishing story
is that this probably will happen
on September 1st.
It was a big deal
when Anna went to American Vogue.
I remember it very well.
[Jonathan Van Meter] There was
a picture in some publication
and then I, like,
leaned in to look at her,
and it was just like a whole new character
in the universe
was introduced at the moment.
I was like instantly fascinated.
I'm actually concerned
about those bathing suits.
I'm not sure we should
be doing them anyway.
I grew up in England back in the '60s.
I was interested in the world of fashion
because it was such an explosive time
in London then.
My dad was a London Fleet Street
newspaper editor.
He also had a reputation
for being a little bit tough.
I first started working in journalism
when I was in my late teens.
And like so many things in life,
it just unfolded.
[woman] These are the colours.
What do you think?
-[Wintour] Fabulous.
-[man] It's great.
It's gonna be a wonderful sitting.
Condé Nast asked me to join Vogue
as Editor-in-Chief
because they felt
it was time for change.
Under the previous leadership,
every cover of Vogue looked all the same,
very close up, airbrushed,
big hair, big makeup, big earrings.
Everything was very ornate.
[in French accent] Before Anna arrived,
the magazine was extremely boring,
boring, boring, beige, boring, boring.
Sometimes you just need
to tear everything up and start over.
-[beep]
-[people chattering indistinctly]
[Wintour] I had no plan, but I knew
I had to have really creative,
brilliant people working with me.
She's very demanding,
she's very demanding.
You have to give a lot of your time,
but if she feels
you have a talent for a thing,
she totally supports it.
[Wintour] Hamish, I actually interviewed,
and I could see my assistant
looking a bit pale.
I'd been wearing my latest clobber
and one of Anna's right-hand women
looked at me aghast.
He walked into my office
and he and I were wearing the same jacket.
[laughs]
The same jacket.
[Wintour] So I knew
he was the person for me.
But I think
when you surround yourself with people
that agree with you, it's a disaster.
-Okay, I'd better see Jo. Thanks, Trudy.
-[Trudy] Thanks, Grace.
[Grace Coddington] I worked with her first
at British Vogue in the mid-'80s,
but I found it difficult, to be honest,
and she knew it.
Grace actually quit British Vogue
because she didn't like what she called
I was doing to Americanise British Vogue
and she went to work for Calvin Klein.
It was just a timing thing
that I thought was perfect
and she didn't, obviously,
but we didn't lose contact.
When I was given the editorship,
the very first phone call I had,
sitting at this desk, was from Grace.
She said,
"I'm starting on Monday, officially
"and so why don't you start with me?"
More, more, more. More, more.
At this point in time,
I really was on a different trajectory.
First Calvin and then Harper's Bazaar,
but Anna is very forthright.
[Wintour] It took me a while
to persuade her to join us,
but I succeeded.
I think we all need people
that challenge the way you think,
and that challenge the way
you have done things
and, you know why, for so many years
I worked so well with Grace or Tonne
or Carlyne, of course, Hamish,
because they looked at the world
through different eyes.
[Carlynne Cerf De Dudzeele]
It was a good team, I must say.
You know, when you are looking
at the row, it was like,
"Oh là là. The Vogue team is arriving."
I mean, it was fun! It was power!
[pilot] I'd like to welcome you aboard
this British Airways Concorde
and I hope that we'll
have a very special flight today.
[engine whirring]
I remember I was on a plane,
coming back from London
and a very conservative gentleman
sat next to me and we started to talk.
He asked me what I did,
and I said I worked at Vogue,
and he said, "I love Vogue,
it makes me think of Audrey Hepburn.
"Grace Kelly and I think about
all these amazing icons."
And then he said to me,
"And of course Vogue
could never be Madonna."
And that was like a light bulb going off
because I thought, "Well, of course,
Vogue should be Madonna."
[male reporter] Nudity,
suggestions of bisexuality,
sadomasochism, multiple partners.
I like to provoke people,
but I don't think about the danger of it,
and if there is a dangerous element,
that's exciting to me.
Madonna was controversial,
but she represented
such a shift in who was creating fashion,
who are young women,
young men looking up to
in terms of who their style icons were
and with all respect
to the very, very nice gentleman
I sat next to on the plane,
it wasn't Audrey Hepburn
and it wasn't Grace Kelly.
It was a different generation,
it was a different time.
[woman] Who do I wanna be? Madonna.
She doesn't care what anyone thinks
and she's just herself.
Every girl in some way
wanted to be Madonna.
Strike a pose ♪
It's Madonna.
[woman] They're trying to find
a different way to dress
than how their parents want them to
and everything else and that.
It's a kind of rebellion.
[pop music playing,
Madonna "Vogue"]
Strike a pose ♪
We all love Madonna, let's say it.
-We love Madonna.
-We love Madonna.
Vogue, Vogue ♪
Look around ♪
Everywhere you turn is heartache ♪
It's everywhere that you go ♪
Look around ♪
You try everything you can to escape ♪
The pain of life that you know ♪
Life that you know ♪
She was not afraid to express herself
with her fashion,
express herself through her sexuality.
[announcer] Madonna!
[woman whooping]
Madonna was the ultimate in girl power.
So come on, Vogue ♪
Let your body move to the music ♪
Hey, hey, hey ♪
Come on, Vogue ♪
Vogue ♪
Let your body go with the flow ♪
-[chorus] Go with the flow ♪
-You know you can do it ♪
I was the biggest Madonna fan.
I was her dog walker
back in the day.
She was my neighbour
and so I was, like, eight years old.
Don't just stand there
Let's get to it ♪
Strike a pose
There's nothing to it, Vogue ♪
I remember waiting
for every Madonna video to come out.
You would just wait for it to see
what her look was gonna be,
what she was wearing.
It's like where you get
all your inspiration from.
Ooh, you've got to ♪
Vogue ♪
If you stay with the tried and true,
you're gonna get left behind,
so I didn't think about the risk.
You do what you think is right.
I landed, called everyone,
the shoot happened.
[beeps]
[Wintour] Okay, good.
And the colour print of Madonna.
It made perfect sense to me
because she had become so associated,
Madonna, with fashion.
She wore clothes,
took clothes, made them her own,
redefined them.
The idea of putting her on the cover,
it seemed rather clever
[laughing] to me.
[Wintour] I remember looking
at the images,
choosing the one of her coming
out of the pool.
I loved the informality of it.
[man] I just think
she looks so great here.
[Wintour] The printers did call us
to say, "Have you made a mistake?"
"And who's that pretty girl?"
They didn't even know that it was Madonna
because at the time,
there was such a defined image of her
being a lot more made up.
This is a great picture.
A T-shirt and jeans and a sailor cap.
You know, why not?
But this is what she really
loves to look like.
I think Anna has a definite mission.
We tried to approach Madonna
in a different way.
[Bowles] She was wearing
all the magnificent clothes,
but she was just wearing them at home
and devouring popcorn,
and there was something real about it
which was very new for Vogue.
[Parker] I think it was probably
around that time
that I started saving my March issues,
you know, I did that,
was it the March and September issues,
the big fat gorgeous ones, yeah.
One day I went over to walk Madonna's dog
and she brought down a shoebox
and gave it to me and Kourtney,
and we opened the box,
and it was all neon rubbery bracelets.
And she said, "Here, girls,
I'm so over this phase."
We went to school,
wearing all this neon stuff.
And everyone was like,
"Oh, my God, where did you get that?"
We were like, "Madonna gave it to me."
And they were like, "Yeah, right."
I'm like, "No, seriously,
Madonna gave it to me."
[Goodman] That cover was a huge success.
Having her plastered
all over the newsstands,
every corner you would see
this marriage of Vogue
and this pop culture star who was,
you know, as daring as Anna.
[Wintour] It felt new, it felt different.
It felt like the statement
that we were looking for.
-[man] Five, four, three, two, one!
-[crowd cheering]
[man] Happy New Year, everybody!
[fireworks exploding]
[Enninful] Right at the beginning
of the decade, I was 18,
I was a model and a stylist just
starting out in the fashion industry,
and I remember going to WHSmith,
January 1990,
and I saw five supermodels
on the cover of British Vogue.
I just loved it.
It was a black-and-white picture,
the girls looked like themselves.
It was like a direct
sort of break from the '80s.
Let's not forget those girls,
they hadn't become the phenomena
that they would become yet.
George Michael looked
at these girls and thought
[snaps finger]
"That's a moment, I'm going to put them
in, all in my video, Freedom! '90."
[contemporary music playing]
[Enninful] A popstar not appearing
in their own music video
happens all the time now.
But back then, we'd never heard of it.
[Campbell] I had been listening
to the album,
I was listening to it anyway.
I just thought, "Well, if anything,
it's gonna be a great memory
"for us to have this video."
I didn't know it would create
such an impact.
Oh, yeah ♪
[Enninful] I was a stylist at the time
with an agency
and I knew all our books went out,
every stylist in London wanted that job.
[Camilla Nickerson] I was just
a young sprite,
didn't know how to do much.
I was asked to go and have an interview
with this film director, David Fincher.
I had to go and meet him
out at a film studio
where he was storyboarding
the set for Alien.
I went on not to get the job
and she got the job,
and I was devastated.
[laughs]
I was just happy for Camilla
because Camilla and I go back a long way.
A lot of people say,
"I met you when you were younger,
"I met you" I said, "No,
there's a few people that met me
"when I was 14
and Camilla was one of them."
She was a real talent.
And I guess it was enough for me ♪
I was really nervous
because then you've gotta do it.
the game is not the same
No way ♪
Think I'm gonna get me some happy ♪
David had a very clear idea
to see the women being themselves.
I think there's something
you should know ♪
[Nickerson] One thing that he wanted
was an enormous,
long white sheet for Christy
made out of a very particular Irish linen.
And so all of my budget
[laughing] just went on the sheet.
I just hope you understand ♪
Sometimes the clothes
do not make the man ♪
I still had to find the clothes
for the rest of the cast
and then that pretty much
came from my wardrobe.
My boyfriend's boots ended up
on Naomi's feet.
Nev's boots? They were Nev's?
That doesn't surprise me.
And this lovely mohair sweater was the one
that Linda pulled over her head.
All we have to see ♪
My God, it must've been
all smelly when she got that sweater back.
That was a lot of hours in that sweater.
Freedom! ♪
It was in a huge hangar.
The girls were super nervous
and practising their lines.
Naomi and Linda were like trying
to get it just right.
This video was absolutely incredible.
You look at it
and you have the goose bumps.
I must've watched it
thousands and thousands of times
because the girls looked gorgeous,
he was incredible,
obviously, Linda in that video
was just like heaven.
Freedom! ♪
At the time, I was the face of Chanel
and the advice was
I could be jeopardising
my high-fashion position
by doing a pop video.
Then when I saw it I thought,
"Hmmm. I should've done this."
[chuckles]
[Nickerson] Later I got a phone call,
and I was very surprised
because it was Anna Wintour on the phone.
"Would you like a job at American Vogue?"
I just thought it was a bit of a joke.
Is somebody pretending to be Anna?
You know, I was like, "Sure."
[Enninful] That video was pretty much
in every household around the world.
All of a sudden you knew who they were.
Naomi, Linda, Christy, Cindy,
they didn't need second names.
[reporter] Supermodels, who are they?
Ask anybody in any shopping mall.
-[reporter] This woman?
-That's Christy Turlington.
Do you all know who this is?
Linda Evangelista.
Suddenly I felt famous.
Something I had never felt before.
I remember, in Milan,
when we woke up to read
what I had eaten for breakfast
the previous morning,
I was like, "No, why would they care?
This is a joke." [laughs]
And it just put us on another level,
that's for sure.
For me, I loved Linda.
I was completely Linda obsessed.
[reporter] Are there any drawbacks
to being so beautiful?
No.
No.
No.
She was the reason why I cut my hair,
she was the reason why I dyed my hair
lots of different colours.
I remember I was in New York
and I went to Garren
who was Linda's hairdresser,
so I was like,
"Oh, my God! This is Linda's hairdresser
touching my hair."
And he cut all my hair off.
I was channelling my inner Linda.
They attract almost
as much media attention as royalty.
Naomi Campbell.
They were giving interviews
and they were becoming personalities
in their own right.
It's nice to meet you.
I see you in all these magazines.
So they weren't these silent,
removed people that you couldn't touch.
They were the equivalent
of the biggest movie stars we have today.
They had the licence
to do almost anything.
The public became fascinated
by the supermodels.
[Van Meter] It was in the summer of 1990,
Anna sent me to write
about Linda and Christy.
And at the time, I had written, like,
one other piece for Vogue.
Linda was an hour late.
And she was wearing, like
kind of like a pale green miniskirt
that was just as short
as it could possibly be.
We drank vodka,
she smoked Marlboro Reds the whole time.
She ordered two pieces of chocolate cake,
didn't eat any dinner.
[laughs]
I remember thinking, "Of course,
like, this is perfect.
"You're a supermodel.
This is how they are, right?"
I think I basically said,
"How much money do you make?"
And she said, "We won't get out of bed
for less than $10,000 a day."
One of those moments
where you slowly lean in
to make sure the tape recorder's running.
I knew right away
that's, like, the last line.
I remember getting a call saying,
"Anna doesn't like the ending.
"She thinks it makes them sound mean."
I was embarrassed for her,
that it would not reflect well on Linda
who was so much a part of,
you know, our being,
our world, our family.
And I just put up a fight, I was like,
"You cannot cut this line."
I just knew instinctively that it would
be the quote heard round the world.
I had no idea that
so much attention would've been
brought to it.
[Enninful] The world thought,
"My God. We were in a recession."
I remember every day leaving the house
and being so thankful
that I could at least earn £9,000 a year.
Fellow models, such as Linda Evangelista
made some pretty shocking comments,
"I won't get out of bed
for less than $10,000 a day."
I think she said it to be funny,
but in print, it didn't read as funny.
I think poor Linda
has regretted ever saying that.
I don't wanna be known for that.
I've done so much more
than just that quote,
you know, and it's really sticking.
She certainly got out of bed
for less than $10,000 for Vogue.
[people chattering indistinctly]
I think that the stories that fashion
had been telling
had lost touch
with what people were feeling
and that they were seeing,
that they were living.
[Enninful] We weren't rich.
We weren't going
into Sloane Street buying outfits,
we were just trawling the markets.
We really wanted magazines
to reflect the world we lived in.
[Moss] I remember the photographer
Corinne Day kind of saying,
"We're gonna change the world."
And I was just like,
"With a fashion picture?"
But they kind of did.
[Enninful] Corinne Day's
Third Summer of Love shoot
with Kate Moss on the cover of The Face,
with that huge smile, the wrinkled nose,
that felt real to us.
I remember seeing Kate in that picture
and I was just like
blown away.
[Goodman] The Face magazine
was this small British magazine,
but everybody noticed that cover
within the fashion industry.
There was such authenticity
in Corinne's pictures that you felt
these have to be the real deal.
With the clothes
that we knew from the markets,
with the fashion that we understood,
the little daisies in the hair,
little leather strings,
that headdress,
I mean, you wouldn't get away with it now.
The reason I think that story
is such a strong, pivotal story
is because it's not about fashion.
You're watching a girl,
you're not looking at the clothes
and that's a real change of direction.
[Enninful] It was a rejection of fashion.
Anti-fashion became fashion.
[Moss] I didn't like
some of the pictures
because that's not how I wanted to
like at, you know, 15,
I wanted to be glamorous
and what they were showing
in the magazines at the time.
The first Face shoot, horrible,
really awful.
To me, fashion magazines
are all about unattainable flavour.
It wasn't fashion.
I mean, I think this was very difficult
for a lot of women.
There was this kind of woman
with a certain shape,
whose hair was done,
whose makeup was done,
whose nails were done.
And then all of a sudden comes Kate
saying, like, "You know what?
"It's, like, a slip and no makeup,"
and it's, like, people were lost.
Not young people,
but certainly those women
who were used to going
to the beauty parlour
and opening Vogue, they were lost.
You know [scoffs] as a New York girl,
that grew up on the Upper East Side
and, you know, for me,
it was very shocking.
When I saw Kate in those photographs,
I had no idea what she would become.
[pleasant music playing]
The first time I met Kate,
I walked into The Face magazine
and Kate was sort of walking towards me
and it was really
I'm saying this without exaggeration,
it was really like one of those
cheesy scenes in a film
where everything just went
into slow motion
and angels came out and spoke to me.
I'd never seen anyone
so staggeringly beautiful before.
It literally, like, silenced me.
It's the only time I've ever had that,
which is surprising considering
the amount of actors and actresses
and celebrities that I've photographed
over the years.
It's interesting because Kate Moss
on the cover of The Face magazine
did not turn her into a supermodel
right away.
The fashion industry actually
wasn't ready for her.
[Luchford] I took some Polaroids of her
and I started taking them
to show designers in London
and I couldn't get anyone interested.
They still wanted to work with people
that had more of a sort of '80s aesthetic.
At that point, I'd become friends with her
and she was still travelling
back and forth from Croydon
and she would borrow money
to get the train home, completely broke,
picking up the odd editorial here
which you never got paid for
or little advertising job there.
And I remember her saying,
"I'm going to New York this weekend."
-[engine whirring]
-[car horn beeping]
Calvin Klein called me up, he said like,
"Can we meet?"
At the time, Calvin Klein had struggled
during the recession
and it needed a rebrand.
He said like, "I have like these jeans
that I've been doing for years.
"Now I really want to change
and I need a logo.
"Can you come up with something?"
And then I went on to do the CK logo,
as you know.
And then Calvin asked me to
do the jeans campaign,
the Calvin Klein Jeans
and he put a picture on the table,
he said like, "I want pictures like that."
The girl was sitting down
and she was wearing a pair of jeans.
It was Vanessa Paradis
and he said, "I wanna do a campaign
with Vanessa Paradis, but topless."
I mean, there's something in me
that I don't mind provoking a little bit.
Right, I mean, I'm French,
so provocation is part of the game.
[chuckles] Uh
So anything a little bit controversial,
I was like, "Yeah, let's do it."
So we start, contact Vanessa Paradis.
Blah, blah, blah.
"No, don't want to do it."
She didn't wanna do it.
She just didn't want to do it.
She didn't want to do Calvin Klein
because she was Chanel.
Nevertheless, we need to find someone
that is like that and like
there I said like, "Well, Kate Moss.
"You should meet that girl Kate Moss,
it'd be perfect."
And Kate Moss, she looked very cute,
but she didn't look like a model.
She was a bit short,
a little bit crooked legs,
teeth were like a little bit eh,
like, not perfect.
But you put her in front of a camera
and
[mimicking explosion] it explodes.
So we organise a meeting
with Kate and Calvin.
We're sitting in his office.
And Kate Moss comes in,
and she starts talking
with her English like, "Oh, no."
Like lowering her face,
like super cute, like adorable.
We sat her on the carpet,
just like the picture
and Calvin was like, "Oh, my God!
"It's perfect, it's perfect,
it's perfect."
That was it. Kate Moss became
the new Calvin Klein girl.
[Moss] I remember hearing
that Vanessa Paradis didn't wanna do it.
Oh. Okay, well, I'll have it.
[chuckles]
Calvin Klein signed her to a contract
and she flew home on Concorde
with three million bucks in her pocket
and it was like, "Fuck, this is awesome."
[chuckles]
So it was really like a sort of
transformation that took place in a week.
Calvin was the one
that saw the power of Kate
before anybody else,
certainly before any
Maybe others, people at Vogue,
but I certainly didn't see it.
[Moss] The timing was everything.
A year before or a year later,
it wouldn't have happened.
The first shoot was a lot of singles
with the photographer,
Patrick Demarchelier,
but then I did my first big commercial.
I was really nervous.
It brought together this unknown model
with this notoriously famous rap star.
[reporter] Do you know this face?
Okay, forget about the face,
do you know the rest of him?
[photographer] This is perfect.
[reporter] It's Marky Mark.
Marky Mark at the time, Mark Wahlberg,
he's an Oscar-nominated actor these days,
but back then
was one of the biggest hip-hop stars
and he was sort of loved by men, women.
And he was famous
for having his pants on show.
Shout goes out to my man Calvin Klein.
Good lookin' out for the drawers.
When I saw that advertising,
his remarkable body was certainly awesome.
[Enninful] You caught them at a moment.
It was the first time a hip-hop star,
or pretty much any music star
had fronted a high-fashion campaign.
Ooh. She got freckles.
[mimicking motorcycle]
Next question.
[Moss] It was quite overwhelming.
I was 18, you know,
he was a big superstar rapper
and I still felt like a, you know,
just a girl from Croydon.
They asked me to be topless,
it was just a lot of people on set,
a lot of men.
I did feel vulnerable.
Now that could definitely
come between me and my Calvins.
Do you have Calvin Klein underwear on?
That advert premiered
on the music channel MTV
in every household,
pretty much all over the world.
Calvin's clever.
He had an instinct
about what young people wanted to see.
-[sirens wailing in the distance]
-[car horn beeping]
[Parker] I remember Calvin Klein ads
all over the buses,
all over Times Square.
You know, I lined up
for my Calvin Klein underwear
at Bloomingdales like everybody else.
The minute they dropped,
I was there 7:00 in the morning
at Bloomingdales on 59th and Lex.
You know,
these people were influencing us.
That campaign turned around the fortunes
for Calvin Klein.
It went crazy.
People went crazy for Marky Mark
and crazy for Kate Moss.
All the photographers wanted Kate,
Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate.
They all wanted to work with her.
She was anti-supermodel, anti-fashion
and she was 100% real,
and 100% the '90s.
[John Galliano] She was is gorgeous.
We didn't really worry
that she wasn't maybe as tall
as the other girls
or maybe not this or that.
Kate was Kate,
you booked Kate because it was Kate.
She had a very different kind of beauty
and it altered our perception
of what was beautiful.
Models did not look like Kate Moss
before Kate Moss.
[Enninful] I remember thinking,
"My God, fashion's really changed."
Kate ushered in a whole new body shape
and a new kind of beauty.
[reporter] Among the new names is Shalom,
Kristen McMenamy
and there's 19-year-old Amber Valletta.
We represented raw beauty,
you know, edgy and different.
There was something sort of a little off.
[laughs]
Me, I've got a giant forehead.
Kate's got the wide-set eyes.
She had crooked teeth, quite fangy really.
Sorry, Kate.
Before Kate, I was sick of trying
to be a pretty girl
because I felt almost like a fake.
And then the hair got chopped,
I shaved my eyebrows off.
That's when it started to really take off.
The change came like a train
coming out of nowhere in the dark.
All of the supermodels
and all of the supermodels of tomorrow
I was of tomorrow,
we weren't getting booked any more.
Some blamed Kate, you know,
for sort of changing essentially
what modelling was.
The other girls could feel that Kate
was the new thing.
Um
For sure.
Some expressed their feelings too,
but I'll let Kate tell you those stories.
[laughs]
Oh, no.
[laughs]
I'm mentioning no names.
Yeah, there was definitely a bit of like,
"She's come along,
what's gonna happen to us?"
They knew.
I remember being backstage
at a fashion show in New York City
and all the supers were like,
"Oh, my God, Calvin didn't book any of us.
Calvin didn't book any of us."
I remember the panic
on all of those supermodels' faces.
If you have a hockey team,
you don't retire the whole team
all at once.
You bring in rookies one at a time.
I mean, I'm
It's really nice to see these new girls.
My first season at the shows,
I was intimidated.
Not now, please.
They just seemed giants to me
and I was like scrawny
and, you know, quite shy.
They're just more sophisticated.
They're women and I'm not really
a woman yet, I don't think.
But then Christy and Naomi
took me under their wing,
so from that moment on, I was fine.
[people chattering indistinctly]
What was kind of clever actually
was how Christy Turlington
and Linda Evangelista decided
they didn't wanna be left out of it,
and changed their haircut,
and changed their look,
and suddenly boom,
they were being photographed by Dave Sims
and Corinne Day,
and they were in it.
[people chattering indistinctly]
I remember thinking
it was a very kind of exciting time,
seeing those new faces
coming into the scene,
but in those very early '90s,
we were losing a lot of people too.
[melancholy music playing]
[Wintour] The fashion community
was one of the hardest hit,
so many people that we cared deeply about
were being affected.
You'd be at a dinner party,
the light would catch a friend's face
just a certain way.
[gasps]
And you knew.
It's hard to think about this now,
but there really was trepidation
about talking about HIV
or the illness itself.
It was just not discussed.
I become very inarticulate
when this subject comes up,
but, um, Robert, who was my partner,
we were together
for nine and a half years,
he died of AIDS.
My boyfriend died of AIDS.
You know,
out of my ten best college friends,
only seven, well, seven died,
three are alive.
I had a, you know, a really close friend
called Alan Buxbaum whom I
Was one of the first people I met
when I first moved to New York.
We spent a lot of time with him.
I had just had my first child
and he told my husband,
"My biggest regret
is I won't see him grow up."
I mean, it's just
I just don't even have words to describe
how horribly sad and terrifying it was.
We'd lost so many friends at that point,
and people still weren't talking about it.
I think that Anna felt
the fashion industry
hadn't done enough, honestly.
The most urgent need at the time,
beyond raising the money,
was to make people aware
that the whole world
was being affected by this.
So it was not a question
of should we do this,
it's just a question
of how should we do it, how quickly,
how can we make a statement
that will reach
not only our community but the world?
It may be one of the largest
single charity events ever,
Seventh Avenue is going on sale tonight,
selling $20 million worth
of retail designer goods
that will go for a fraction of that price,
all the money will go
towards the battle to fight AIDS.
Listen, when Anna wants to do something,
Anna does it
and Anna does it probably in the biggest,
most important, creative way.
And it was amazing.
[reporter] Over 100 designers
raided their showrooms,
pouring forth a cornucopia of couture
at below wholesale prices.
The idea was to create a street fair
where designers all came
and manned their booths.
This looks great,
but we don't have more variety.
So if you were at the Calvin Klein booth,
Calvin was there
or if you were at the Vogue booth,
I and many other editors were there.
She had this idea
to get everybody together.
You don't say no to Anna.
[laughing]
The word "no" does not exist
in Anna's vocabulary.
There are 148 American designers
here represented.
It's very important to the whole industry
and I'm part of it, so I wanna do my part.
This is really exciting
and I just hope
everyone's going to shop like crazy.
[Michael Kors] The lines were huge,
clothes were flying everywhere.
There was just this buzz.
[Enninful] Seventh on Sale,
it was such a statement
and it really started
to shine a light on HIV.
And then people thought
maybe it's okay to talk about it.
You know, if sometimes in fashion,
you feel what you do
can feel light or frothy
And in this instance,
we thought, "Wow."
What we do actually can make a difference.
We've already raised well over $1 million
and we haven't sold one frock yet,
so you should ask us again
on Monday morning,
but we're hoping for a big figure.
Seventh on Sale, as small as it was,
really changed the conversation.
I think when I look back at my career,
honestly, I have to say, it's
it's the initiative
that I am the proudest of.
She had not actually been on the scene
that long at Vogue,
but we all realised what a huge force
Anna and Vogue could be.
-[sirens wailing in distance]
-[car horn beeping]
I tell you what I loved in February was
I remember sitting
in lots of meetings saying,
"Where is the next generation
of new designers
"that Vogue should be supporting?"
We need people to inspire us,
not just people that are churning it out.
Vogue had this enormous power
with the designers
because, essentially,
Vogue could make or break them.
I mean, more often than not,
they made them.
[machine whirring]
[Ferguson] Before the Internet
or social media,
that is where
you'd get your information from.
If the leader was telling you
that this is good,
it got everybody looking at you.
[machine whirring]
Vogue was very important
for the designers, you know,
because Vogue was like a dictator.
If you were not in Vogue,
meaning you were like
[mimicking snarls]
That was the power of Vogue,
which of course was Anna Wintour.
We were at a moment where everybody
was walking up and down,
very uniform, kind of boring.
I mean it was
Those were the moments that I was happiest
to have my dark glasses
because, you know, it was just dull.
[Wintour] I think André,
our creative director,
and Hamish kept saying to me,
"You really need to get to know
"and watch what John Galliano
is doing in Paris."
[people chattering indistinctly]
[Wintour] You could already see
that theatricality and that storytelling.
[Galliano] Yes, Kate! Go, go, yes!
Wicked! Wicked!
[Wintour] There was always a story there.
A fleeing heiress running
from a vengeful suitor
and you felt that emotion
and that magic
on the runway and in the clothes.
I intrinsically understood
that John was one of those designers
that was just gonna change everything.
[Bowles] Those dresses were exquisite,
but they weren't wearable
and they were so expensive to make,
he didn't have any money left
to make another collection.
And I think lots of people felt
he wasn't going to survive.
[enthralling music playing]
[car horn beeping]
[Galliano] I was living hand to mouth,
eating baked beans off
little Bunsen burners,
living on friends' floors
and, you know,
whoever would be kind enough to feed us.
[Wintour] I mean, I was very focused
on trying to help him,
lending John or rather giving John money
just so he could eat
or have a cab ride home.
Anna had said,
"You just can't miss another season, John,
"you've gotta get your act together,
you can't, you know, you can't."
And this was like, I don't know,
four or five weeks
before Paris Fashion Week,
but I had no money,
I had no way of producing stuff.
So then Anna and André kicked in.
It was kind of extraordinary.
Anna published a 12-page spread
featuring his last collection
shot by the fabulous Steven Meisel
and Ellen von Unwerth.
Even though it wasn't available
to buy anywhere.
I mean, I didn't have a business.
I didn't have an atelier,
but I had 12 pages in that Vogue.
[Bowles] And that was really
a turning point.
From then on,
John's future was made in fact.
I just wanted to help the wider world
to understand his genius.
[Bowles] And then
Anna's creative director,
André Leon Talley, took it out to
a meeting with a potential investor.
And then I just remember André
pulled out the American Vogue.
"This is what American Vogue thinks
of John Galliano. What are you doing?"
[laughs]
I mean, I must say it's rather clever,
with Vogue's seal of approval,
he had just enough money
to stage his show.
But I think it was like three weeks
before the Paris Fashion Week deadline.
How am I gonna pull this off?
I threw myself into someone's kitchen
and kitchen table
and started, you know,
cutting bias things
and the only fabric we could buy
had to be off the shelf.
And it was black, satin black crepe.
How do I make that look like more?
So I started using the wrong side
and the right side,
and putting the bias together
like a jigsaw,
calling in the favours of the girls.
I wanted to be part of that show.
I knew this man one day,
when he could afford to pay us, he would.
-Hey.
-Hello.
[Moss] I wanted to do it,
it was the make-or-break show.
We all had just one outfit.
Before you went on,
he would give you your character.
You would arrive and you'd be like,
"Okay, let's hear it." Right?
[Moss] It really revs up everything.
Many directions were given to Kate.
"I dunno that I can say it,
but you're a girl from Croydon
"and you haven't had a shag for ages,
and you really wanna get fucked."
Boom!
[opera music playing]
I remember being there, and oh, my God.
It was just such excitement.
[Moss] Each and every girl
felt so amazing.
[Campbell] I don't know how to describe
this feeling to you,
but the high that I felt.
Like, it was just so beautifully done.
[Galliano] Because you'd seen those girls,
Kate, Linda and Naomi,
all of them on print,
but you were able to see them
walking past you,
and you could hear the rustle
of the silks and the taffetas
and smell the scent of the gin
on their breath.
And it was the first time.
[Wintour] I remember sitting there
watching,
it was probably 25 looks.
Very few looks, all in black
because that's all he could afford.
That is a show I will always remember.
This is a moment that was going
to change how we all dressed.
He brought a level of creativity
and imagination
and theatricality
that we hadn't seen before.
I mean,
many people have copied that since,
but he was certainly the first.
[clapping]
[Galliano] I think, on that day,
I proved my mettle
and I proved that I could do it
and I was a couturier.
[clapping]
And I think the word spread in Paris
that, you know,
this punk in the Bastille was, you know,
getting a lot of clients.
[laughs]
[Bowles] Within a year, John had become
the head at Givenchy,
the first British person
to lead a French couture house.
And I think it was a lot to do
with Anna's backing of him, I am sure.
Listen, we've placed some bets,
they haven't always been right.
But I always think of Vogue as having
a deep responsibility
to raise the profile of whatever
the talent of a generation may be.
[Enninful] The '90s were underway
and Vogue was at the heart of everything.
It was really amazing to watch.
But some of the new generation
were about to shock the establishment.
We definitely had like this attitude,
messy hair and baggy pants.
Anna was appalled, frankly.
[cheering]
All of our parents were like,
"What are you guys doing?"
I remember being completely stunned.
[Goodman] This is gonna become a trend,
this is gonna be something
that we're gonna endorse?
It was awful.
It was like, "Jesus, what has happened?"
All of a sudden,
we were seen as careless,
we were seen as radical.
"No sex, we are British."
It's not the reality, you know.
London was alive.
We were all just in the same room
at the same time.
[Enninful] Stella McCartney, Lee McQueen.
I've always been a bit of a rebel
with a cause.
[man] We are packed wall to wall!
I say to him,
"Lee, Anna Wintour's outside the door
"with André Leon Talley and
Grace Coddington and she can't get in."
And he was like, "Oh, fuck 'em."
[theme music playing]
-[car horn beeping]
-[sirens wailing in distance]
-Okay, so we'll try to take as much off.
-[Anna Wintour] Yeah.
-As quick as possible.
-[Wintour] Yeah, that'd be great.
Ooh.
Sorry.
[phone ringing]
Hi, so it went well?
Yes, it was good.
-Yeah?
-Yeah.
It was romantic and cinematic.
-[Wintour] You look great, right?
-He cannot take a bad picture.
-[Wintour] Good. Hiya.
-Hello.
Vogue has always been the defining
magazine publication about fashion.
[woman] Stop it.
[Edward Enninful] Fresh!
[woman] O-M-G.
-Wow!
-There's only one, look at that face.
-Look at that body, look at it.
-The body!
-I mean
-[exclaims]
[Enninful] There's no one
like Naomi Campbell,
there isn't.
No wonder she gets away with murder.
-Okay, that's not here yet?
-No, it's there.
[Wintour] So three in, three out
and the cover.
You never forget your Vogue covers.
The dream ultimately
was to be on the cover of Vogue.
When Anna put me on the cover,
it was like, "What?"
Where's that blue one
we were looking at the other day?
[woman] I think we have that one.
When you think of Anna Wintour,
you think of just this like,
chic, strong, boss woman.
I mean, that seems
to be more in the palette.
She is this Warholian enigma,
like a famous haircut,
kind of like a living legend.
[Tonne Goodman]
There's no two ways about it.
Vogue is Anna Wintour
and Anna Wintour is Vogue.
-[Wintour] So you want me to sit here?
-Yes please, Anna.
-Okay.
-[woman] Anna, I'm sorry to ask you,
would you mind awfully
taking your sunglasses off?
No, I'm gonna wear them.
-[Naomi Campbell] Right, are we ready?
-[man] Sound's rolling.
[sighs] Wow,
what does the '90s mean to me?
God, the '90s just changed everything.
Way too much fun, way too messy.
But I'll let Kate tell you those stories.
[laughs]
Oh, no. [laughs]
[Enninful] It was the decade that turned
the fashion industry upside down.
-It was a whirlwind.
-If you made movies,
you didn't hang out
with the fashion people.
If you did fashion,
you didn't hang out with music people.
[Amber Valletta] There was a huge change
that kind of happened with fashion,
film, music
all of these creative industries
were starting to converge.
It wasn't just about music,
it became about the clothes too.
It was a great time to be alive.
[Enninful] It really felt
like a revolution was underway.
Every corner you would see this image,
it was inescapable.
You have to anticipate what they want
before they know they want it.
Oh. But we need to talk about the fact
that I was the only Black person too.
They weren't treating us the way
they treat us now. Absolutely not.
The public was fascinated by fashion.
When I saw the Tom Ford Gucci,
it was like, "Oh, my God."
You're like, "Yeah, I wanna turn heads,
why not?"
[laughs]
-Is everyone happy?
-[Gwyneth Paltrow] Define happy.
[laughs]
[electronic music playing]
That decade changed everything.
Okay.
-Okay.
-Okay.
-All right.
-So I'm looking at you?
[man] Yes, please.
[radio host] No place like New York today.
What a day.
Right now in Central Park,
the present temperature
is still pleasant, 49 degrees,
humidity 44%, the wind's starting
Ever since Anna Wintour,
the editor of British Vogue,
was brought to New York by Condé Nast,
there have been rumours
that Miss Wintour would become
the editor of American Vogue.
Now the hot publishing story
is that this probably will happen
on September 1st.
It was a big deal
when Anna went to American Vogue.
I remember it very well.
[Jonathan Van Meter] There was
a picture in some publication
and then I, like,
leaned in to look at her,
and it was just like a whole new character
in the universe
was introduced at the moment.
I was like instantly fascinated.
I'm actually concerned
about those bathing suits.
I'm not sure we should
be doing them anyway.
I grew up in England back in the '60s.
I was interested in the world of fashion
because it was such an explosive time
in London then.
My dad was a London Fleet Street
newspaper editor.
He also had a reputation
for being a little bit tough.
I first started working in journalism
when I was in my late teens.
And like so many things in life,
it just unfolded.
[woman] These are the colours.
What do you think?
-[Wintour] Fabulous.
-[man] It's great.
It's gonna be a wonderful sitting.
Condé Nast asked me to join Vogue
as Editor-in-Chief
because they felt
it was time for change.
Under the previous leadership,
every cover of Vogue looked all the same,
very close up, airbrushed,
big hair, big makeup, big earrings.
Everything was very ornate.
[in French accent] Before Anna arrived,
the magazine was extremely boring,
boring, boring, beige, boring, boring.
Sometimes you just need
to tear everything up and start over.
-[beep]
-[people chattering indistinctly]
[Wintour] I had no plan, but I knew
I had to have really creative,
brilliant people working with me.
She's very demanding,
she's very demanding.
You have to give a lot of your time,
but if she feels
you have a talent for a thing,
she totally supports it.
[Wintour] Hamish, I actually interviewed,
and I could see my assistant
looking a bit pale.
I'd been wearing my latest clobber
and one of Anna's right-hand women
looked at me aghast.
He walked into my office
and he and I were wearing the same jacket.
[laughs]
The same jacket.
[Wintour] So I knew
he was the person for me.
But I think
when you surround yourself with people
that agree with you, it's a disaster.
-Okay, I'd better see Jo. Thanks, Trudy.
-[Trudy] Thanks, Grace.
[Grace Coddington] I worked with her first
at British Vogue in the mid-'80s,
but I found it difficult, to be honest,
and she knew it.
Grace actually quit British Vogue
because she didn't like what she called
I was doing to Americanise British Vogue
and she went to work for Calvin Klein.
It was just a timing thing
that I thought was perfect
and she didn't, obviously,
but we didn't lose contact.
When I was given the editorship,
the very first phone call I had,
sitting at this desk, was from Grace.
She said,
"I'm starting on Monday, officially
"and so why don't you start with me?"
More, more, more. More, more.
At this point in time,
I really was on a different trajectory.
First Calvin and then Harper's Bazaar,
but Anna is very forthright.
[Wintour] It took me a while
to persuade her to join us,
but I succeeded.
I think we all need people
that challenge the way you think,
and that challenge the way
you have done things
and, you know why, for so many years
I worked so well with Grace or Tonne
or Carlyne, of course, Hamish,
because they looked at the world
through different eyes.
[Carlynne Cerf De Dudzeele]
It was a good team, I must say.
You know, when you are looking
at the row, it was like,
"Oh là là. The Vogue team is arriving."
I mean, it was fun! It was power!
[pilot] I'd like to welcome you aboard
this British Airways Concorde
and I hope that we'll
have a very special flight today.
[engine whirring]
I remember I was on a plane,
coming back from London
and a very conservative gentleman
sat next to me and we started to talk.
He asked me what I did,
and I said I worked at Vogue,
and he said, "I love Vogue,
it makes me think of Audrey Hepburn.
"Grace Kelly and I think about
all these amazing icons."
And then he said to me,
"And of course Vogue
could never be Madonna."
And that was like a light bulb going off
because I thought, "Well, of course,
Vogue should be Madonna."
[male reporter] Nudity,
suggestions of bisexuality,
sadomasochism, multiple partners.
I like to provoke people,
but I don't think about the danger of it,
and if there is a dangerous element,
that's exciting to me.
Madonna was controversial,
but she represented
such a shift in who was creating fashion,
who are young women,
young men looking up to
in terms of who their style icons were
and with all respect
to the very, very nice gentleman
I sat next to on the plane,
it wasn't Audrey Hepburn
and it wasn't Grace Kelly.
It was a different generation,
it was a different time.
[woman] Who do I wanna be? Madonna.
She doesn't care what anyone thinks
and she's just herself.
Every girl in some way
wanted to be Madonna.
Strike a pose ♪
It's Madonna.
[woman] They're trying to find
a different way to dress
than how their parents want them to
and everything else and that.
It's a kind of rebellion.
[pop music playing,
Madonna "Vogue"]
Strike a pose ♪
We all love Madonna, let's say it.
-We love Madonna.
-We love Madonna.
Vogue, Vogue ♪
Look around ♪
Everywhere you turn is heartache ♪
It's everywhere that you go ♪
Look around ♪
You try everything you can to escape ♪
The pain of life that you know ♪
Life that you know ♪
She was not afraid to express herself
with her fashion,
express herself through her sexuality.
[announcer] Madonna!
[woman whooping]
Madonna was the ultimate in girl power.
So come on, Vogue ♪
Let your body move to the music ♪
Hey, hey, hey ♪
Come on, Vogue ♪
Vogue ♪
Let your body go with the flow ♪
-[chorus] Go with the flow ♪
-You know you can do it ♪
I was the biggest Madonna fan.
I was her dog walker
back in the day.
She was my neighbour
and so I was, like, eight years old.
Don't just stand there
Let's get to it ♪
Strike a pose
There's nothing to it, Vogue ♪
I remember waiting
for every Madonna video to come out.
You would just wait for it to see
what her look was gonna be,
what she was wearing.
It's like where you get
all your inspiration from.
Ooh, you've got to ♪
Vogue ♪
If you stay with the tried and true,
you're gonna get left behind,
so I didn't think about the risk.
You do what you think is right.
I landed, called everyone,
the shoot happened.
[beeps]
[Wintour] Okay, good.
And the colour print of Madonna.
It made perfect sense to me
because she had become so associated,
Madonna, with fashion.
She wore clothes,
took clothes, made them her own,
redefined them.
The idea of putting her on the cover,
it seemed rather clever
[laughing] to me.
[Wintour] I remember looking
at the images,
choosing the one of her coming
out of the pool.
I loved the informality of it.
[man] I just think
she looks so great here.
[Wintour] The printers did call us
to say, "Have you made a mistake?"
"And who's that pretty girl?"
They didn't even know that it was Madonna
because at the time,
there was such a defined image of her
being a lot more made up.
This is a great picture.
A T-shirt and jeans and a sailor cap.
You know, why not?
But this is what she really
loves to look like.
I think Anna has a definite mission.
We tried to approach Madonna
in a different way.
[Bowles] She was wearing
all the magnificent clothes,
but she was just wearing them at home
and devouring popcorn,
and there was something real about it
which was very new for Vogue.
[Parker] I think it was probably
around that time
that I started saving my March issues,
you know, I did that,
was it the March and September issues,
the big fat gorgeous ones, yeah.
One day I went over to walk Madonna's dog
and she brought down a shoebox
and gave it to me and Kourtney,
and we opened the box,
and it was all neon rubbery bracelets.
And she said, "Here, girls,
I'm so over this phase."
We went to school,
wearing all this neon stuff.
And everyone was like,
"Oh, my God, where did you get that?"
We were like, "Madonna gave it to me."
And they were like, "Yeah, right."
I'm like, "No, seriously,
Madonna gave it to me."
[Goodman] That cover was a huge success.
Having her plastered
all over the newsstands,
every corner you would see
this marriage of Vogue
and this pop culture star who was,
you know, as daring as Anna.
[Wintour] It felt new, it felt different.
It felt like the statement
that we were looking for.
-[man] Five, four, three, two, one!
-[crowd cheering]
[man] Happy New Year, everybody!
[fireworks exploding]
[Enninful] Right at the beginning
of the decade, I was 18,
I was a model and a stylist just
starting out in the fashion industry,
and I remember going to WHSmith,
January 1990,
and I saw five supermodels
on the cover of British Vogue.
I just loved it.
It was a black-and-white picture,
the girls looked like themselves.
It was like a direct
sort of break from the '80s.
Let's not forget those girls,
they hadn't become the phenomena
that they would become yet.
George Michael looked
at these girls and thought
[snaps finger]
"That's a moment, I'm going to put them
in, all in my video, Freedom! '90."
[contemporary music playing]
[Enninful] A popstar not appearing
in their own music video
happens all the time now.
But back then, we'd never heard of it.
[Campbell] I had been listening
to the album,
I was listening to it anyway.
I just thought, "Well, if anything,
it's gonna be a great memory
"for us to have this video."
I didn't know it would create
such an impact.
Oh, yeah ♪
[Enninful] I was a stylist at the time
with an agency
and I knew all our books went out,
every stylist in London wanted that job.
[Camilla Nickerson] I was just
a young sprite,
didn't know how to do much.
I was asked to go and have an interview
with this film director, David Fincher.
I had to go and meet him
out at a film studio
where he was storyboarding
the set for Alien.
I went on not to get the job
and she got the job,
and I was devastated.
[laughs]
I was just happy for Camilla
because Camilla and I go back a long way.
A lot of people say,
"I met you when you were younger,
"I met you" I said, "No,
there's a few people that met me
"when I was 14
and Camilla was one of them."
She was a real talent.
And I guess it was enough for me ♪
I was really nervous
because then you've gotta do it.
the game is not the same
No way ♪
Think I'm gonna get me some happy ♪
David had a very clear idea
to see the women being themselves.
I think there's something
you should know ♪
[Nickerson] One thing that he wanted
was an enormous,
long white sheet for Christy
made out of a very particular Irish linen.
And so all of my budget
[laughing] just went on the sheet.
I just hope you understand ♪
Sometimes the clothes
do not make the man ♪
I still had to find the clothes
for the rest of the cast
and then that pretty much
came from my wardrobe.
My boyfriend's boots ended up
on Naomi's feet.
Nev's boots? They were Nev's?
That doesn't surprise me.
And this lovely mohair sweater was the one
that Linda pulled over her head.
All we have to see ♪
My God, it must've been
all smelly when she got that sweater back.
That was a lot of hours in that sweater.
Freedom! ♪
It was in a huge hangar.
The girls were super nervous
and practising their lines.
Naomi and Linda were like trying
to get it just right.
This video was absolutely incredible.
You look at it
and you have the goose bumps.
I must've watched it
thousands and thousands of times
because the girls looked gorgeous,
he was incredible,
obviously, Linda in that video
was just like heaven.
Freedom! ♪
At the time, I was the face of Chanel
and the advice was
I could be jeopardising
my high-fashion position
by doing a pop video.
Then when I saw it I thought,
"Hmmm. I should've done this."
[chuckles]
[Nickerson] Later I got a phone call,
and I was very surprised
because it was Anna Wintour on the phone.
"Would you like a job at American Vogue?"
I just thought it was a bit of a joke.
Is somebody pretending to be Anna?
You know, I was like, "Sure."
[Enninful] That video was pretty much
in every household around the world.
All of a sudden you knew who they were.
Naomi, Linda, Christy, Cindy,
they didn't need second names.
[reporter] Supermodels, who are they?
Ask anybody in any shopping mall.
-[reporter] This woman?
-That's Christy Turlington.
Do you all know who this is?
Linda Evangelista.
Suddenly I felt famous.
Something I had never felt before.
I remember, in Milan,
when we woke up to read
what I had eaten for breakfast
the previous morning,
I was like, "No, why would they care?
This is a joke." [laughs]
And it just put us on another level,
that's for sure.
For me, I loved Linda.
I was completely Linda obsessed.
[reporter] Are there any drawbacks
to being so beautiful?
No.
No.
No.
She was the reason why I cut my hair,
she was the reason why I dyed my hair
lots of different colours.
I remember I was in New York
and I went to Garren
who was Linda's hairdresser,
so I was like,
"Oh, my God! This is Linda's hairdresser
touching my hair."
And he cut all my hair off.
I was channelling my inner Linda.
They attract almost
as much media attention as royalty.
Naomi Campbell.
They were giving interviews
and they were becoming personalities
in their own right.
It's nice to meet you.
I see you in all these magazines.
So they weren't these silent,
removed people that you couldn't touch.
They were the equivalent
of the biggest movie stars we have today.
They had the licence
to do almost anything.
The public became fascinated
by the supermodels.
[Van Meter] It was in the summer of 1990,
Anna sent me to write
about Linda and Christy.
And at the time, I had written, like,
one other piece for Vogue.
Linda was an hour late.
And she was wearing, like
kind of like a pale green miniskirt
that was just as short
as it could possibly be.
We drank vodka,
she smoked Marlboro Reds the whole time.
She ordered two pieces of chocolate cake,
didn't eat any dinner.
[laughs]
I remember thinking, "Of course,
like, this is perfect.
"You're a supermodel.
This is how they are, right?"
I think I basically said,
"How much money do you make?"
And she said, "We won't get out of bed
for less than $10,000 a day."
One of those moments
where you slowly lean in
to make sure the tape recorder's running.
I knew right away
that's, like, the last line.
I remember getting a call saying,
"Anna doesn't like the ending.
"She thinks it makes them sound mean."
I was embarrassed for her,
that it would not reflect well on Linda
who was so much a part of,
you know, our being,
our world, our family.
And I just put up a fight, I was like,
"You cannot cut this line."
I just knew instinctively that it would
be the quote heard round the world.
I had no idea that
so much attention would've been
brought to it.
[Enninful] The world thought,
"My God. We were in a recession."
I remember every day leaving the house
and being so thankful
that I could at least earn £9,000 a year.
Fellow models, such as Linda Evangelista
made some pretty shocking comments,
"I won't get out of bed
for less than $10,000 a day."
I think she said it to be funny,
but in print, it didn't read as funny.
I think poor Linda
has regretted ever saying that.
I don't wanna be known for that.
I've done so much more
than just that quote,
you know, and it's really sticking.
She certainly got out of bed
for less than $10,000 for Vogue.
[people chattering indistinctly]
I think that the stories that fashion
had been telling
had lost touch
with what people were feeling
and that they were seeing,
that they were living.
[Enninful] We weren't rich.
We weren't going
into Sloane Street buying outfits,
we were just trawling the markets.
We really wanted magazines
to reflect the world we lived in.
[Moss] I remember the photographer
Corinne Day kind of saying,
"We're gonna change the world."
And I was just like,
"With a fashion picture?"
But they kind of did.
[Enninful] Corinne Day's
Third Summer of Love shoot
with Kate Moss on the cover of The Face,
with that huge smile, the wrinkled nose,
that felt real to us.
I remember seeing Kate in that picture
and I was just like
blown away.
[Goodman] The Face magazine
was this small British magazine,
but everybody noticed that cover
within the fashion industry.
There was such authenticity
in Corinne's pictures that you felt
these have to be the real deal.
With the clothes
that we knew from the markets,
with the fashion that we understood,
the little daisies in the hair,
little leather strings,
that headdress,
I mean, you wouldn't get away with it now.
The reason I think that story
is such a strong, pivotal story
is because it's not about fashion.
You're watching a girl,
you're not looking at the clothes
and that's a real change of direction.
[Enninful] It was a rejection of fashion.
Anti-fashion became fashion.
[Moss] I didn't like
some of the pictures
because that's not how I wanted to
like at, you know, 15,
I wanted to be glamorous
and what they were showing
in the magazines at the time.
The first Face shoot, horrible,
really awful.
To me, fashion magazines
are all about unattainable flavour.
It wasn't fashion.
I mean, I think this was very difficult
for a lot of women.
There was this kind of woman
with a certain shape,
whose hair was done,
whose makeup was done,
whose nails were done.
And then all of a sudden comes Kate
saying, like, "You know what?
"It's, like, a slip and no makeup,"
and it's, like, people were lost.
Not young people,
but certainly those women
who were used to going
to the beauty parlour
and opening Vogue, they were lost.
You know [scoffs] as a New York girl,
that grew up on the Upper East Side
and, you know, for me,
it was very shocking.
When I saw Kate in those photographs,
I had no idea what she would become.
[pleasant music playing]
The first time I met Kate,
I walked into The Face magazine
and Kate was sort of walking towards me
and it was really
I'm saying this without exaggeration,
it was really like one of those
cheesy scenes in a film
where everything just went
into slow motion
and angels came out and spoke to me.
I'd never seen anyone
so staggeringly beautiful before.
It literally, like, silenced me.
It's the only time I've ever had that,
which is surprising considering
the amount of actors and actresses
and celebrities that I've photographed
over the years.
It's interesting because Kate Moss
on the cover of The Face magazine
did not turn her into a supermodel
right away.
The fashion industry actually
wasn't ready for her.
[Luchford] I took some Polaroids of her
and I started taking them
to show designers in London
and I couldn't get anyone interested.
They still wanted to work with people
that had more of a sort of '80s aesthetic.
At that point, I'd become friends with her
and she was still travelling
back and forth from Croydon
and she would borrow money
to get the train home, completely broke,
picking up the odd editorial here
which you never got paid for
or little advertising job there.
And I remember her saying,
"I'm going to New York this weekend."
-[engine whirring]
-[car horn beeping]
Calvin Klein called me up, he said like,
"Can we meet?"
At the time, Calvin Klein had struggled
during the recession
and it needed a rebrand.
He said like, "I have like these jeans
that I've been doing for years.
"Now I really want to change
and I need a logo.
"Can you come up with something?"
And then I went on to do the CK logo,
as you know.
And then Calvin asked me to
do the jeans campaign,
the Calvin Klein Jeans
and he put a picture on the table,
he said like, "I want pictures like that."
The girl was sitting down
and she was wearing a pair of jeans.
It was Vanessa Paradis
and he said, "I wanna do a campaign
with Vanessa Paradis, but topless."
I mean, there's something in me
that I don't mind provoking a little bit.
Right, I mean, I'm French,
so provocation is part of the game.
[chuckles] Uh
So anything a little bit controversial,
I was like, "Yeah, let's do it."
So we start, contact Vanessa Paradis.
Blah, blah, blah.
"No, don't want to do it."
She didn't wanna do it.
She just didn't want to do it.
She didn't want to do Calvin Klein
because she was Chanel.
Nevertheless, we need to find someone
that is like that and like
there I said like, "Well, Kate Moss.
"You should meet that girl Kate Moss,
it'd be perfect."
And Kate Moss, she looked very cute,
but she didn't look like a model.
She was a bit short,
a little bit crooked legs,
teeth were like a little bit eh,
like, not perfect.
But you put her in front of a camera
and
[mimicking explosion] it explodes.
So we organise a meeting
with Kate and Calvin.
We're sitting in his office.
And Kate Moss comes in,
and she starts talking
with her English like, "Oh, no."
Like lowering her face,
like super cute, like adorable.
We sat her on the carpet,
just like the picture
and Calvin was like, "Oh, my God!
"It's perfect, it's perfect,
it's perfect."
That was it. Kate Moss became
the new Calvin Klein girl.
[Moss] I remember hearing
that Vanessa Paradis didn't wanna do it.
Oh. Okay, well, I'll have it.
[chuckles]
Calvin Klein signed her to a contract
and she flew home on Concorde
with three million bucks in her pocket
and it was like, "Fuck, this is awesome."
[chuckles]
So it was really like a sort of
transformation that took place in a week.
Calvin was the one
that saw the power of Kate
before anybody else,
certainly before any
Maybe others, people at Vogue,
but I certainly didn't see it.
[Moss] The timing was everything.
A year before or a year later,
it wouldn't have happened.
The first shoot was a lot of singles
with the photographer,
Patrick Demarchelier,
but then I did my first big commercial.
I was really nervous.
It brought together this unknown model
with this notoriously famous rap star.
[reporter] Do you know this face?
Okay, forget about the face,
do you know the rest of him?
[photographer] This is perfect.
[reporter] It's Marky Mark.
Marky Mark at the time, Mark Wahlberg,
he's an Oscar-nominated actor these days,
but back then
was one of the biggest hip-hop stars
and he was sort of loved by men, women.
And he was famous
for having his pants on show.
Shout goes out to my man Calvin Klein.
Good lookin' out for the drawers.
When I saw that advertising,
his remarkable body was certainly awesome.
[Enninful] You caught them at a moment.
It was the first time a hip-hop star,
or pretty much any music star
had fronted a high-fashion campaign.
Ooh. She got freckles.
[mimicking motorcycle]
Next question.
[Moss] It was quite overwhelming.
I was 18, you know,
he was a big superstar rapper
and I still felt like a, you know,
just a girl from Croydon.
They asked me to be topless,
it was just a lot of people on set,
a lot of men.
I did feel vulnerable.
Now that could definitely
come between me and my Calvins.
Do you have Calvin Klein underwear on?
That advert premiered
on the music channel MTV
in every household,
pretty much all over the world.
Calvin's clever.
He had an instinct
about what young people wanted to see.
-[sirens wailing in the distance]
-[car horn beeping]
[Parker] I remember Calvin Klein ads
all over the buses,
all over Times Square.
You know, I lined up
for my Calvin Klein underwear
at Bloomingdales like everybody else.
The minute they dropped,
I was there 7:00 in the morning
at Bloomingdales on 59th and Lex.
You know,
these people were influencing us.
That campaign turned around the fortunes
for Calvin Klein.
It went crazy.
People went crazy for Marky Mark
and crazy for Kate Moss.
All the photographers wanted Kate,
Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate.
They all wanted to work with her.
She was anti-supermodel, anti-fashion
and she was 100% real,
and 100% the '90s.
[John Galliano] She was is gorgeous.
We didn't really worry
that she wasn't maybe as tall
as the other girls
or maybe not this or that.
Kate was Kate,
you booked Kate because it was Kate.
She had a very different kind of beauty
and it altered our perception
of what was beautiful.
Models did not look like Kate Moss
before Kate Moss.
[Enninful] I remember thinking,
"My God, fashion's really changed."
Kate ushered in a whole new body shape
and a new kind of beauty.
[reporter] Among the new names is Shalom,
Kristen McMenamy
and there's 19-year-old Amber Valletta.
We represented raw beauty,
you know, edgy and different.
There was something sort of a little off.
[laughs]
Me, I've got a giant forehead.
Kate's got the wide-set eyes.
She had crooked teeth, quite fangy really.
Sorry, Kate.
Before Kate, I was sick of trying
to be a pretty girl
because I felt almost like a fake.
And then the hair got chopped,
I shaved my eyebrows off.
That's when it started to really take off.
The change came like a train
coming out of nowhere in the dark.
All of the supermodels
and all of the supermodels of tomorrow
I was of tomorrow,
we weren't getting booked any more.
Some blamed Kate, you know,
for sort of changing essentially
what modelling was.
The other girls could feel that Kate
was the new thing.
Um
For sure.
Some expressed their feelings too,
but I'll let Kate tell you those stories.
[laughs]
Oh, no.
[laughs]
I'm mentioning no names.
Yeah, there was definitely a bit of like,
"She's come along,
what's gonna happen to us?"
They knew.
I remember being backstage
at a fashion show in New York City
and all the supers were like,
"Oh, my God, Calvin didn't book any of us.
Calvin didn't book any of us."
I remember the panic
on all of those supermodels' faces.
If you have a hockey team,
you don't retire the whole team
all at once.
You bring in rookies one at a time.
I mean, I'm
It's really nice to see these new girls.
My first season at the shows,
I was intimidated.
Not now, please.
They just seemed giants to me
and I was like scrawny
and, you know, quite shy.
They're just more sophisticated.
They're women and I'm not really
a woman yet, I don't think.
But then Christy and Naomi
took me under their wing,
so from that moment on, I was fine.
[people chattering indistinctly]
What was kind of clever actually
was how Christy Turlington
and Linda Evangelista decided
they didn't wanna be left out of it,
and changed their haircut,
and changed their look,
and suddenly boom,
they were being photographed by Dave Sims
and Corinne Day,
and they were in it.
[people chattering indistinctly]
I remember thinking
it was a very kind of exciting time,
seeing those new faces
coming into the scene,
but in those very early '90s,
we were losing a lot of people too.
[melancholy music playing]
[Wintour] The fashion community
was one of the hardest hit,
so many people that we cared deeply about
were being affected.
You'd be at a dinner party,
the light would catch a friend's face
just a certain way.
[gasps]
And you knew.
It's hard to think about this now,
but there really was trepidation
about talking about HIV
or the illness itself.
It was just not discussed.
I become very inarticulate
when this subject comes up,
but, um, Robert, who was my partner,
we were together
for nine and a half years,
he died of AIDS.
My boyfriend died of AIDS.
You know,
out of my ten best college friends,
only seven, well, seven died,
three are alive.
I had a, you know, a really close friend
called Alan Buxbaum whom I
Was one of the first people I met
when I first moved to New York.
We spent a lot of time with him.
I had just had my first child
and he told my husband,
"My biggest regret
is I won't see him grow up."
I mean, it's just
I just don't even have words to describe
how horribly sad and terrifying it was.
We'd lost so many friends at that point,
and people still weren't talking about it.
I think that Anna felt
the fashion industry
hadn't done enough, honestly.
The most urgent need at the time,
beyond raising the money,
was to make people aware
that the whole world
was being affected by this.
So it was not a question
of should we do this,
it's just a question
of how should we do it, how quickly,
how can we make a statement
that will reach
not only our community but the world?
It may be one of the largest
single charity events ever,
Seventh Avenue is going on sale tonight,
selling $20 million worth
of retail designer goods
that will go for a fraction of that price,
all the money will go
towards the battle to fight AIDS.
Listen, when Anna wants to do something,
Anna does it
and Anna does it probably in the biggest,
most important, creative way.
And it was amazing.
[reporter] Over 100 designers
raided their showrooms,
pouring forth a cornucopia of couture
at below wholesale prices.
The idea was to create a street fair
where designers all came
and manned their booths.
This looks great,
but we don't have more variety.
So if you were at the Calvin Klein booth,
Calvin was there
or if you were at the Vogue booth,
I and many other editors were there.
She had this idea
to get everybody together.
You don't say no to Anna.
[laughing]
The word "no" does not exist
in Anna's vocabulary.
There are 148 American designers
here represented.
It's very important to the whole industry
and I'm part of it, so I wanna do my part.
This is really exciting
and I just hope
everyone's going to shop like crazy.
[Michael Kors] The lines were huge,
clothes were flying everywhere.
There was just this buzz.
[Enninful] Seventh on Sale,
it was such a statement
and it really started
to shine a light on HIV.
And then people thought
maybe it's okay to talk about it.
You know, if sometimes in fashion,
you feel what you do
can feel light or frothy
And in this instance,
we thought, "Wow."
What we do actually can make a difference.
We've already raised well over $1 million
and we haven't sold one frock yet,
so you should ask us again
on Monday morning,
but we're hoping for a big figure.
Seventh on Sale, as small as it was,
really changed the conversation.
I think when I look back at my career,
honestly, I have to say, it's
it's the initiative
that I am the proudest of.
She had not actually been on the scene
that long at Vogue,
but we all realised what a huge force
Anna and Vogue could be.
-[sirens wailing in distance]
-[car horn beeping]
I tell you what I loved in February was
I remember sitting
in lots of meetings saying,
"Where is the next generation
of new designers
"that Vogue should be supporting?"
We need people to inspire us,
not just people that are churning it out.
Vogue had this enormous power
with the designers
because, essentially,
Vogue could make or break them.
I mean, more often than not,
they made them.
[machine whirring]
[Ferguson] Before the Internet
or social media,
that is where
you'd get your information from.
If the leader was telling you
that this is good,
it got everybody looking at you.
[machine whirring]
Vogue was very important
for the designers, you know,
because Vogue was like a dictator.
If you were not in Vogue,
meaning you were like
[mimicking snarls]
That was the power of Vogue,
which of course was Anna Wintour.
We were at a moment where everybody
was walking up and down,
very uniform, kind of boring.
I mean it was
Those were the moments that I was happiest
to have my dark glasses
because, you know, it was just dull.
[Wintour] I think André,
our creative director,
and Hamish kept saying to me,
"You really need to get to know
"and watch what John Galliano
is doing in Paris."
[people chattering indistinctly]
[Wintour] You could already see
that theatricality and that storytelling.
[Galliano] Yes, Kate! Go, go, yes!
Wicked! Wicked!
[Wintour] There was always a story there.
A fleeing heiress running
from a vengeful suitor
and you felt that emotion
and that magic
on the runway and in the clothes.
I intrinsically understood
that John was one of those designers
that was just gonna change everything.
[Bowles] Those dresses were exquisite,
but they weren't wearable
and they were so expensive to make,
he didn't have any money left
to make another collection.
And I think lots of people felt
he wasn't going to survive.
[enthralling music playing]
[car horn beeping]
[Galliano] I was living hand to mouth,
eating baked beans off
little Bunsen burners,
living on friends' floors
and, you know,
whoever would be kind enough to feed us.
[Wintour] I mean, I was very focused
on trying to help him,
lending John or rather giving John money
just so he could eat
or have a cab ride home.
Anna had said,
"You just can't miss another season, John,
"you've gotta get your act together,
you can't, you know, you can't."
And this was like, I don't know,
four or five weeks
before Paris Fashion Week,
but I had no money,
I had no way of producing stuff.
So then Anna and André kicked in.
It was kind of extraordinary.
Anna published a 12-page spread
featuring his last collection
shot by the fabulous Steven Meisel
and Ellen von Unwerth.
Even though it wasn't available
to buy anywhere.
I mean, I didn't have a business.
I didn't have an atelier,
but I had 12 pages in that Vogue.
[Bowles] And that was really
a turning point.
From then on,
John's future was made in fact.
I just wanted to help the wider world
to understand his genius.
[Bowles] And then
Anna's creative director,
André Leon Talley, took it out to
a meeting with a potential investor.
And then I just remember André
pulled out the American Vogue.
"This is what American Vogue thinks
of John Galliano. What are you doing?"
[laughs]
I mean, I must say it's rather clever,
with Vogue's seal of approval,
he had just enough money
to stage his show.
But I think it was like three weeks
before the Paris Fashion Week deadline.
How am I gonna pull this off?
I threw myself into someone's kitchen
and kitchen table
and started, you know,
cutting bias things
and the only fabric we could buy
had to be off the shelf.
And it was black, satin black crepe.
How do I make that look like more?
So I started using the wrong side
and the right side,
and putting the bias together
like a jigsaw,
calling in the favours of the girls.
I wanted to be part of that show.
I knew this man one day,
when he could afford to pay us, he would.
-Hey.
-Hello.
[Moss] I wanted to do it,
it was the make-or-break show.
We all had just one outfit.
Before you went on,
he would give you your character.
You would arrive and you'd be like,
"Okay, let's hear it." Right?
[Moss] It really revs up everything.
Many directions were given to Kate.
"I dunno that I can say it,
but you're a girl from Croydon
"and you haven't had a shag for ages,
and you really wanna get fucked."
Boom!
[opera music playing]
I remember being there, and oh, my God.
It was just such excitement.
[Moss] Each and every girl
felt so amazing.
[Campbell] I don't know how to describe
this feeling to you,
but the high that I felt.
Like, it was just so beautifully done.
[Galliano] Because you'd seen those girls,
Kate, Linda and Naomi,
all of them on print,
but you were able to see them
walking past you,
and you could hear the rustle
of the silks and the taffetas
and smell the scent of the gin
on their breath.
And it was the first time.
[Wintour] I remember sitting there
watching,
it was probably 25 looks.
Very few looks, all in black
because that's all he could afford.
That is a show I will always remember.
This is a moment that was going
to change how we all dressed.
He brought a level of creativity
and imagination
and theatricality
that we hadn't seen before.
I mean,
many people have copied that since,
but he was certainly the first.
[clapping]
[Galliano] I think, on that day,
I proved my mettle
and I proved that I could do it
and I was a couturier.
[clapping]
And I think the word spread in Paris
that, you know,
this punk in the Bastille was, you know,
getting a lot of clients.
[laughs]
[Bowles] Within a year, John had become
the head at Givenchy,
the first British person
to lead a French couture house.
And I think it was a lot to do
with Anna's backing of him, I am sure.
Listen, we've placed some bets,
they haven't always been right.
But I always think of Vogue as having
a deep responsibility
to raise the profile of whatever
the talent of a generation may be.
[Enninful] The '90s were underway
and Vogue was at the heart of everything.
It was really amazing to watch.
But some of the new generation
were about to shock the establishment.
We definitely had like this attitude,
messy hair and baggy pants.
Anna was appalled, frankly.
[cheering]
All of our parents were like,
"What are you guys doing?"
I remember being completely stunned.
[Goodman] This is gonna become a trend,
this is gonna be something
that we're gonna endorse?
It was awful.
It was like, "Jesus, what has happened?"
All of a sudden,
we were seen as careless,
we were seen as radical.
"No sex, we are British."
It's not the reality, you know.
London was alive.
We were all just in the same room
at the same time.
[Enninful] Stella McCartney, Lee McQueen.
I've always been a bit of a rebel
with a cause.
[man] We are packed wall to wall!
I say to him,
"Lee, Anna Wintour's outside the door
"with André Leon Talley and
Grace Coddington and she can't get in."
And he was like, "Oh, fuck 'em."
[theme music playing]