Front Row (12 page)

T
wenty-five-year-old Anna landed in New York City in the long, hot summer of 1975, just in time for the Big Apple’s era of decadence.

Anna’s world was Manhattan’s high life and nightlife: the trendy Upper East Side, where she again established a shaky live-in relationship with Bradshaw, whom she had followed to New York; the chic
Saturday Night Fever
scene at Studio 54, with its Andy Warhol–beautiful people set; the downtown scene where other recent British expatriates—journalists and fashion people—lived in funky artists’ lofts, ran trendy new boutiques, and opened exclusive boîtes. Though the city was almost bankrupt, there was nowhere in the world more hip and open than New York in the mid- to late seventies. It was a freewheeling era of artistic creativity.

Anna’s arrival in the far-out seventies, however, was greeted by a fashion scene that wasn’t very far-out, and fashion magazines of the day had little of her kind of pizzazz, which may have been part of her master plan for coming to America—even though she denied having one—or merely a stroke of luck.

Women’s wear was nowhere, with more focus on the personality of who was wearing the clothes than the clothes themselves. Men wore polyester leisure suits and loud shirts with big collars and gold chains around their necks à la Tony Manero. Women’s fashion was very laid back, relaxed, and chic because of its simplicity—spurred by designs from Calvin Klein, Bill
Blass, Diane von Furstenberg, and Ralph Lauren. Sparked by the feminist movement and sexual freedom, women were declaring their individuality.

The miniskirt and bell-bottoms from the sixties remained in vogue, but seventies skirts were in two other lengths, midi and maxi. Jeans paired with tight white T-shirts, which became a favorite of Anna’s—who also wore hot pants—was a chic and popular look. On the high end of the fashion food chain were designs by Givenchy, Norell, and Oscar de la Renta. And then came Woody Allen’s
Annie Hall
. Diane Keaton’s la-di-da look—a tie, a waistcoat, a man’s shirt, thirties-style wide pants, designed and styled by Ralph Lauren—became de rigueur overnight.

Anna felt that fashion, and especially fashion magazines, in midseventies America needed a major fix of direction and focus, and a creative eye—something she was confident she had plenty of, so she began job hunting. As she once stated, “It wasn’t until I came to the United States that I became more disciplined and more focused.”

By late 1975 she had caught the eye of Carrie Donovan, the flamboyant and eccentric fashion editor at
Harper’s Bazaar
, which was going through some rough times under editor in chief Tony Mazzola. Creative and managerial turmoil had become a way of life at the magazine. Donovan, a good two decades older than Anna, had come to
Bazaar
from
Vogue
, where her mentor, Diana Vreeland, once told her that in fashion she had “the common touch,” which was a compliment.

Donovan and Anna had much in common. Both had bobs and both had become fashionistas at a young age: When Donovan was ten, she sent Jane Wyman sketches for a wardrobe and received a treasured thank-you note. And like Anna, Donovan had her first taste of fashion in a low-level spot in a department store, Anna at Harrods, Donovan in the hat department at Saks Fifth Avenue under the wife of
Vogue’s
Alexander Liberman. Donovan, though, had a formal education, having graduated from the Parsons School of Design.

With a reputation for discovering and nurturing new talent, Donovan liked what she saw in Anna and hired her as a junior editor. The fact that Anna had worked for
Harpers & Queen
also helped—the two magazines had Hearst corporate ties; Mazzola, in New York, was on the masthead of
Harpers & Queen
as editorial director, a position having to do with
Bazaars
editions in countries around the world.

Anna started on the bottom rung again as a twelve-thousand-dollar-a-year junior fashion editor. She appeared for the first time on the masthead in January 1976. She didn’t have an easy go. Her British frost and in-your-face ambition turned off her American colleagues and bosses, and her edgy concepts didn’t go over in what then was a conservative and tumultuous environment. But Anna had become part of
Bazaars
grand tradition, America’s first fashion magazine, a graphics leader that debuted in 1867 and over the decades had the world’s most famous fashion editors at the top—Vreeland, Carmel Snow—and brilliant photographers like Avedon and Man Ray.

But when Anna was hired, the magazine was having severe problems because management wanted to keep the outdated look. As a result, advertisers and subscribers were abandoning the old girl in droves. One of the reasons Donovan hired Anna was that
Bazaar
needed an infusion of new blood, a younger approach, something kicky and contemporary that would appeal to advertisers and readers.

Anna, one of four young fashion editors under Donovan, was assigned to a tiny office that she shared with another chic and engaging editor, Alida Morgan, who had previously worked under Vreeland and had been at
Bazaar
for little more than a year. Morgan, a society girl, was immediately impressed with the new hire’s demeanor—very dry, kind of deadpan—and her style. Unlike the other girls who came to work looking like “slobs,” surprising at a fashion magazine, Anna was usually wrapped in designer clothing and wore very little makeup, and every hair was perfectly in place, though she changed the length and direction of the fringe slightly from time to time.

Marilyn Kirschner, another glamorous and with-it fashion editor, who had been at the magazine for five years and whose name was above Anna’s on the masthead, believes the only thing that stood out about Anna was the Missoni and Kenzo that she wore and her upper-class British accent. “Otherwise, she was very aloof.”

Morgan was of interest to Anna. Besides being striking, she had a blue-ribbon pedigree—she was a granddaughter of Averell Harriman, a presidential adviser and multimillionaire, which appealed to Anna’s elitist side. Morgan perceived Anna as risqué and mischievous. “One night,” she recalls, “I was having dinner with my dad and Anna was in the same restaurant and
she sent over a bottle of expensive champagne, and my father said, ‘Uh-oh, she’s trouble, schoolgirl trouble.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, she is.’”

It wasn’t long, though, before Morgan and others in the office saw through Anna’s schoolgirl guise, always a great come-on to men, and became aware of her enormous ambition and incredible discipline, her marvelous visual sense, and her intense interest in
everything
to do with fashion and style. And Morgan suddenly realized that
Harper’s Bazaar
was just a way station.

“Anna
always
wanted
Vogue,”
she states. “I knew that from the jump.
Everybody
knew it. She wanted to run
Vogue
, and the
Vogue
to run is American
Vogue
. That was the plan. She absolutely knew from the jump that that’s what she wanted, and that’s why she came to America. Her plan was to come here, get a better job, and start moving up.”

To prove it, staffers remember Anna’s unconscious doodling on
Bazaar
scratch pads—the word she kept writing over and over was “Vogue.”

Not long after Anna got down to business, the magazine promoted some of its chic and glamorous staff in a two-page spread in the March 1976 issue, headlined
“Bazaars
SINGLE WOMEN,” with the caption “The new young spirit of
Harper’s Bazaar
. Here are some of
Bazaars
single women who help keep that spirit going in every issue.” The layout was part of a special issue devoted to America’s bachelorettes. Photographed by Bill King, the double truck showed eleven coiffed and gorgeous staffers.

“Bill was making us all jump up and down to get into the spirit,” recalls Kirschner. “He wanted us to look very happy.”

In King’s shot, Anna is where she would always be in the fashion mag world—front row center. She’s wearing a modified bob, her fringe boyishly brushed to the side. The other staffers appear officious and career-girlish, smiling broadly, sporting long-sleeved black T-shirts emblazoned with the word “BAZAAR” in white.

Except, that is, for Anna.

While the others have their hands planted on their hips or behind their backs, Anna’s are crossed, blocking the word “BAZAAR,” and she’s the only one wearing something over the company T-shirt—a chic Kenzo vest.

Looking back years later, and knowing the heights to which Anna subsequently rose, Kirschner believes the photograph is telling. “Completely covering
the
Bazaar
T-shirt with a Kenzo vest is so symbolic,” she observes, armchair analyst–like. “It was Anna clearly asserting herself.”

As another member of the fashion team, Zazel Loven, notes, “Anna was a little bit disdainful of the lack of sophistication in the American fashion magazine scene, and she didn’t fit in with Hearst corporate. That was her attitude. She certainly wasn’t staring down her nose at everyone—she was one of the players—but she just had a stronger vision, a stronger personality. She was very independent and had her own sense of taste, had her own way of doing things, and that didn’t jibe with Tony Mazzola’s way.”

Anna quickly butted heads with Mazzola, who colleagues assert had major problems with Anna’s independence, ego, ambition, and edgy fashion point of view. At the same time, Anna felt that he didn’t understand her creativity, particularly the very stylized photographs that were coming back from the shoots she was assigned. She was ordered by Mazzola on a number of occasions to go back to reshoot.

At a certain point, Anna adamantly refused to turn in all of the film as required, editing it with the photographers and turning in only the shots she thought should be used. Mazzola had never encountered such a stubborn and independent neophyte editor, so Anna quickly rose to the top of his shit list. (Years later, as head of
Vogue
, Anna would do a one-eighty and make life a living hell for staffers and photographers who didn’t turn in every single frame of a shoot.)

At the same time, Anna was hiring photographers like James Moore, who was considered more experimental, which also infuriated Mazzola. In fact, Moore’s highly sexual and erotic work was inspired by
Bazaars
legendary art director Alexei Brodovitch, who ran the magazine at its creative height, from the thirties to the end of the fifties with fashion editor Carmel Snow. Moore began shooting for
Bazaar
in the early sixties under Marvin Israel, Brodovitch’s remarkable successor. But after Mazzola came on board, Moore was being used less, until Anna, who loved his work and working with him, began giving him assignments.

“Mazzola made Anna reshoot with Jimmy four times on a couple of assignments,” recalls Morgan. “Anna would pick five shots and say, ‘This is it.’ She picked three and gave him two backups.”

Anna had begun handling beauty stories, along with fashion, with Moore.
They worked so closely, and spent so much time together, that rumors began to fly at the magazine.

“Anna was a little naughty with the men,” observes Morgan. “She had a flirty quality about her. Bradshaw was the love of her life, but she was tempted by a lot of other things, and she was saying he was getting too possessive and too demanding. His life took him away a great deal, and her life was taking her away a great deal, on shooting trips, and that’s difficult. It was a tempting world out there, and Anna’s a very physical and passionate woman.”

Anna began asking girls in the office to cover for her. “She was always hysterical about that,” says Morgan. “She’d call up from wherever and say, ‘God, if Bradshaw calls, you’ve got to say . . . ’ She had that bad-girl component.”

Years later, nervously laughing when asked about the gossip, Moore says, “I’m taking the Fifth,” refusing to confirm or deny an intimate relationship with Anna. “We had a working relationship, and we had a friendship,” he concedes. “It wasn’t love. We weren’t living with each other. Anna and I worked together very well. When people have romances, after the romance they’re out of each other’s life, but Anna and I worked together for a long while.”

But Morgan, Anna’s closest acquaintance at
Bazaar
, says, “If she had a flirtation, it was usually because of something like that extraordinary thing of having been stuck with Jimmy Moore in the studio for months. That was whom we lied to Bradshaw about. When she picked someone it would be on the side, very discreet, and it was passion—and it was usually a photographer in those days. Like with Jimmy, they spent so much time together in the studio. He’s very bright and their sensibilities locked so well. We covered for her like mad. We lied through our teeth to Bradshaw.

“Bradshaw, who was very macho and very jealous, was wildly suspicious. He was very obsessive and used to call all the time, which is why we all had to invent cover stories for her. But Anna invented them for us, too: ‘She’s working late at the studio,’ ‘They’re on location and can’t be reached,’ ‘We’re all going out to dinner.’ It would have been hard to explain to Bradshaw what happened when you’re in that creative setting—so intense, minds merging, senses merging. If you find each other at all attractive, it’s pretty difficult not to, at some point, let it happen. It’s almost a step in the creative process. They were so tightly put together, exposed together because there’s
a lot of trust in a photo shoot. They [the magazine] kept Anna working with Jimmy, and then they got pissed off when the pictures started looking a little more erotic. Well, what did they expect?”

While Anna was seemingly playing the field, she and Bradshaw were living together in a small, lovely apartment in a brownstone on the Upper East Side in the seventies, according to Vivienne Lasky, who was working on another graduate degree, this time at Columbia University, and living in upper Manhattan with the man who would become her husband.

During this period, Anna and Lasky had pleasant lunches and shopped. During one of those excursions, as they breezed through Henri Bendel, Anna made a prediction about the future of the American woman that she firmly believed would materialize. “She felt that the ‘new woman’ was going to be so career oriented and busy that this leisurely shopping we were doing would become a thing of the past. Anna truly believed that these new career women, women like herself, would have personal shoppers working for them.”