Front Row (4 page)

N
ineteen sixty-three, the year Anna matriculated at North London Colle-, giate, an explosion of enormous proportions rocked Britain. It was dubbed a youth quake, a psychedelic nuclear blast of fashion, style, and music that quickly resounded around the world. And Anna came of age in that momentous time, infusing her with an extreme interest in fashion.

“That moment in time that Anna and I were growing up in London,” Vivienne Lasky reminisces, “was just not to be replicated.”

The hair—the sexy, sometimes fetishy but always timeless bob—became an integral part of
the
look in the swinging London scene. Always on top of trends, Anna rushed to get her lush, thick, straight brown hair cut and styled in the new fashion, which became a key component of her chic image, the cut she still wore in her mid-fifties, a cut that not so coincidentally has been favored and popularized by the British dominatrix, as Anna, the editrix, would later be described by some submissive and mistreated underlings.

The bob had been around for ages, first given public attention in the 1920s when the actress Louise Brooks wore it as the character Lulu. Also a model, Brooks appeared occasionally in fashion ads exposing the bob to the masses, which helped define the flapper look. Now it would define trendy London birds in the revolutionary and exuberant sixties.

Among those whose look inspired Anna to get the bob was Maureen Cleave, one of Charles Wintour’s talented favorites on the
Evening Standard
staff.

“Charles simply adored Maureen,” says journalist Valerie Grove, one of Cleave’s close friends and a colleague on the paper. “She was petite, dark, brisk, brilliant, clever, sharp, and very articulate—adorable in every way And Charles was absolutely enthralled with her. Maureen had the bob, and it became sort of her trademark. Everybody on the paper thought that Anna copied Maureen’s hairstyle and that is the origin of the Anna Wintour look. People thought Charles was expressing his adoration of Anna, and his ambitions for Anna, through his keenness for Maureen. It was really some kind of dynamic there.”

In fact, Alex Walker believes that Anna’s decision to copy Cleave’s hairstyle was, indeed, psychologically complex—more than just her desire to be in fashion. “Charles revered Maureen, Charles was Maureen’s mentor, and Anna desperately wanted Charles to cherish
her
, too,” he maintains. “It’s quite complicated, but I’m sure Anna wanted to be able to say, ‘Look at me, Daddy. I
look
like Maureen.’ Anna always desperately—
desperately
—sought Mr. Wintour’s love and attention, and he wasn’t always there to give it.”

Wintour wanted a hipper, younger readership, and twenty-three-year-old Cleave, an Oxford graduate with a degree in art, was given the youth page beat—the same with-it demographic that Anna later targeted, likely on her father’s advice, when she first became a fashion editor.

“Charles ran many of his ideas for me through Anna because she was keeping her eye on [trendy] things,” Cleave says, looking back. “She was a hip kid, so to speak. I got in trouble once for not knowing the difference between ‘hip’ and ‘hep.’ Anna obviously told her father about that. I’d written the wrong word and Charles said it should be the other word. I knew he’d gotten the correct one from Anna.”

Cleave had virtual free rein to cover the smashing rise of swinging London. The nonpareil Maureen Cleave interview became dinner table and cocktail party conversation.

Her biggest score came when she got a tip from a friend in Liverpool. “She said to me, ‘I hope you realize there’s a lot going on here. There’s this group called the Beatles.’” The quartet had recently cut their first single, “Love Me Do,” and had signed a five-year contract with a manager named Brian Epstein.

Cleave ran the Beatles story idea by Wintour, who asked Anna whether she had ever heard of them. Of course, she told her father, they’re fab. The next day Cleave headed north, thinking she had an exclusive, but was disappointed when she arrived to find a competitor on the scene from the
Daily Mail
, who had also gotten the word to check out John, Paul, George, and Ringo—known as “the Fab Four”—and this new Mersey Beat.

The gentleman from the
Mail
didn’t have a chance, though. Lennon preferred Cleave as their interviewer, which she attributes to her bob. “I had a fringe like the Beatles. They liked me from the start because of my hair. I guess they felt we could relate.”

Beginning on Thursday, October 17, 1963, and continuing for three days, the first major interview with the Beatles ran in Charles Wintour’s
Evening Standard
. That same day the Beatles were at the Abbey Road Studios recording what would quickly become their first American number one hit, “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

Cleave’s series, pushed by Anna’s highly competitive editor father, who ran the story idea by his with-it teenage daughter who kept her eye on who and what was in and out, had helped to catapult the most successful singing group in music history.

Anna’s bob had helped, too. If Cleave hadn’t been wearing it, the Beatles might not have been so friendly and open, and she might not have gotten their story. In any case, it didn’t hurt.

In its 1963 incarnation, the bob was the brainchild of Vidal Sassoon, who had a shop in posh and fashionable Mayfair that had catered for centuries to London’s upper classes and royalty. Sassoon’s guinea pig was the fashion designer and sometimes model Mary Quant, the epitome of the with-it, mini-skirted swinging London chick. She was thrilled with the cut and decided to have all of her models given the bob by Sassoon. A British
Vogue
editor, attending Quant’s show, was overwhelmed. “At last,” she wrote, “hair is going to look like hair again.”

Other trendy haircutters soon jumped on the bob bandwagon, such as Leonard of Mayfair, where Leslie Russell gave Anna her very first bob. “Anna was about fourteen, fifteen when she came in. She had hair way past her shoulders, like Jean Shrimpton’s. She said she saw photos in [British]
Vogue
of
some cuts that I did, and I remember she came in with a picture she’d torn from
Vogue
. And so I cut her hair, and it was
the
haircut of the time, which
everyone
was getting—the straight hair, the long fringe, the same bob she has today.”

Mainly, Anna chose Leonard of Mayfair over Sassoon because two of her idols got their bobs there—Maureen Cleave, and a kicky nineteen-year-old former ten-pound-a-week secretary named Cathy McGowan, who overnight jumped to the forefront of the British pop revolution as the trendy host of a top-rated music television program
Ready, Steady, Go!
, Britain’s version of
American Bandstand
. Virtually every teen from London to Liverpool—and Anna was no exception—tuned in early on Friday evenings, 6:07
P.M.,
to be precise, before they went out clubbing. The show’s energized motto was “The Weekend Starts Here!”

Teenage Anna adored Cathy McGowan, who wore the trendiest boutique fashions and the latest makeup styles, and featured the jargon, the attitude, and the sensibility of mid-sixties happening London. Anna would come away from the TV each week knowing what to buy, where to buy it, and how to wear it.

“Cathy was a client of mine,” Leslie Russell says. “She had the bob, and Anna had read in a magazine or a newspaper that I’d cut Cathy’s hair, and that was another reason for her coming to me. It suited Anna
perfectly
. And still does. She’s got those nice cheekbones, which looked perfect for that look of the time. Certainly in those days she had perfect, shiny, thick light brown hair, very good hair to hang straight, with a bit of blow drying to turn the hair under a bit. Anna was
very
sixties looking.”

Scores of super birds and dollies passed through Leonard of Mayfair in those days, but Russell never forgot Anna’s look: short,
short
miniskirts; low-heeled, pointed shoes; tight tank tops; and very little makeup—“some eye shadow and mascara, but that was about it. She was
not
red lips and caked up. She didn’t need it.”

Besides going to Leslie Russell to have her hair cut, Anna paid particular attention to the health of her tresses and began getting scalp treatments and buying special-formula hair products from a bespectacled man named Philip Kingsley, who took hair quite seriously. He originally planned to become a
doctor, but visits to his uncle’s hair salon got him interested in hair care. Instead of medical school, he became certified as a trichologist, an expert in hair and scalp problems. In the early sixties, he opened a one-man practice in London.

“Charles Wintour originally came to see me as a client because his hair was thinning,” Kingsley says. “And he saw me throughout his life. He told Anna, ‘You should start taking care of your hair when you’re young.’ When Anna first came to me as a teenager, she didn’t have very much wrong, but I started treating her, too. I get people’s hair in the best possible condition, and then they can do what they like with it. It’s
like
going to a doctor.”

Over the years, Anna dutifully used Kingsley’s shampoo, containing a formula based on the texture of her own hair, along with his exclusive hair tonics and conditioners. Kingsley also recommended that she take a lot of yeast tablets, but they caused constipation.

After Anna moved to New York in the mid-1970s to begin her climb to the summit, she continued seeing Kingsley, who had opened a practice there. Kingsley believes that stress is bad for hair, and as Anna rose in the high-pressure fashion magazine field, jumping from one anxiety-ridden fashion editor’s job to another, her stress built up and she required his help.

“How often I saw her depended on how stressed she became,” Kingsley reveals. “Her hair didn’t behave as it ought to have done when she was under stress, and sometimes Anna was under more stress than others.” Kingsley made a chart for Anna’s good and bad hair days, and every so often reassessed the health of her hair, depending on the highs and lows of her anxiety.

Anna was among Kingsley’s first clients—a celebrity list that grew to include Cher, Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger, Ivana Trump, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Candice Bergen, and Barbra Streisand, among others.

Besides her hair, teenaged Anna worked hard at maintaining her skin. She read voraciously about ways to fight pimples, acne, and blotches—and how to deal with other teenage girl problems—in her gospel, the American magazine
Seventeen
, copies of which she borrowed from Vivienne Lasky, who had a subscription. Convinced she was going to have bad skin, and obsessed with keeping it clear, she went weekly to an exclusive salon on Baker Street, fancier than Elizabeth Arden, to get facials and was no doubt their youngest client.

“Her skin was fine,” Lasky points out, “but she went to the salon every week
for prevention.”

W
hile Anna was sleek and chic, she was harshly critical and sarcastic, and spiritedly made fun of people who weren’t. “Anna
really
cared about appearance. She would point out another girl and say, ‘My God, look how fat
she
is . . . look at
her
face . . . look at
thatgi
rl’
s
horrible, curly hair,’” recalls Lasky, who had curly hair and became at times the target of her best friend’s biting tongue. Although both wore glasses—Anna’s were expensive tortoiseshell granny glasses—she ridiculed Lasky’s poor eyesight. “Anna didn’t wear her glasses all the time,” Lasky says. “She could manage very well without them, although sometimes she’d ask me who somebody was across a crowded room. But she’d be very critical of me and bitchy when we’d go horseback riding or play tennis because my eyesight was so bad. I had trouble seeing the ball. I couldn’t ride as fast as her. She could be mean like that.”

From the time she was a teen, Anna was brusque and snarky—traits she inherited mostly from her father but also from her mother, who was known for her critical and sarcastic manner.

Anna’s nastiness appeared calculated and was offensive, which made Lasky and others who were her targets feel terrible.

“If I disliked anything about Anna when we were kids,” Lasky offers, “it was her rudeness on the telephone. Her entire family did it—they never said good-bye. They’d just hang up on you. With Anna, I knew it was coming. ‘Well, I’ll see you.’ Click. No good-byes.

“My mother would say, ‘It’s the rudest thing, no civility’ And my mother
loved
Anna. I confronted her. ‘What is it with this not saying good-bye?’ And she said, ‘Well, there’s no point, is there, really? We’re finished talking. How can you feel bad about that?’ And I said, ‘Nobody else does that. If you want to make friends with people, they’re going to think it’s odd. You’re the
only
person I know who does that.’ She didn’t care.”

There were even worse slights that left Lasky hurt and with a sour taste, both about herself and their friendship. Unlike Anna, Lasky was an eater, and Anna gloated over the fact that she always stayed thin. For instance, Anna bought little gifts of clothing for Lasky. But there was always one major hitch. Everything was thoughtlessly too small, including a custom-made
Regency ball gown with lavender and white stripes that Lasky could barely squeeze into.

“My mother noticed these things. She always used to say, ‘How could your best friend buy you something and it’s always a size too small?’ That dress Anna bought me, I couldn’t get into the damn thing because the arms were so tight.” Another time, Anna bought Vivienne an expensive patchwork quilt skirt at Liberty’s, one of the grandes dames of London department stores. “Like everything else, it didn’t fit,” she says, “I think I squeezed into it once.”

Lasky’s mother was a Prussian former ballet dancer and model, an exotic cross, according to her daughter, between Audrey Hepburn and Greta Garbo. Brigitte Lasky, who converted to Judaism for her Jewish husband and became a U.S. citizen, was a fashion plate with whom Anna bonded, spending almost more time with Mrs. Lasky than with her own plain-Jane mother, who was preoccupied with her social work. “Anna was especially crazy about my mother,” offers Lasky. “She thought she was the cat’s meow and saw her as a role model.”