Finding Myself in Fashion (11 page)

As it turned out, my duties at
Fashion Television
didn't change at all. I continued to juggle my hosting and producing responsibilities in my own signature fashion, always getting the assigned work done, as well as maintaining the level of creative input I had been contributing to the show since its inception. Call me a workhorse, but this is something I prided myself in—always have, and always will. I've always found both the time and the energy for the projects I've undertaken. And I have never missed a deadline. The idea of finding a younger co-host to work with me was eventually abandoned, and I simply carried on, albeit at a fraction of my old salary. Happily, the opportunity to throw myself into this magazine venture made up for any bitterness I may have felt towards the powers that be at CHUM. Ironically, my own brand just grew stronger as my profile and credibility expanded. And then, in 2006, CHUM Television, which produced and aired my series, was taken over by Canada's major TV network, CTV. It seems that the folks who ran CTV appreciated me, believed in the strength of my personal brand, and understood what it could do for the network. My former salary was reinstated, and the new regime realized my value and got me involved in more of their programming. The old adage had come true for me once again: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I embraced my position with renewed optimism and passion, grateful to the gods for again helping me to find my way.

MATURATION DATE

I SOMETIMES CATCH MYSELF looking in hotel room mirrors, and I'm astounded by the fifty-eight-year-old face looking back at me. I can't believe how many lines I've earned, how tired I look, how the once-taught skin on my neck is now a bit crepe-like, how my eyelids aren't showing as much as I think they should, how bland I look with no makeup at all. “What do you expect?” I reason to myself. “You've had a big life, a ginormous life. You've put on a lot of mileage. You've lived and loved and lost and learned how to survive like a true pro.” Anyway, what choice do I have? Cosmetic surgery is always an option, I suppose, though one I'm constantly trying to talk myself out of. “You may have succumbed to pressure and had an eye-job way back, before you turned forty,” I reflect. “And yes, dear Dr. Trevor Born shoots you up with Botox a few times a year, just to ease the grooves a bit, to soften the furrows and relax those lines. But you've never gone all the way—never had a facelift. Hmm. Is it time?” I sometimes wonder.

Once in a while, I get carried away and playfully pull my face back a bit to see what I would look like sans the sagging. While I would certainly look more rested and refreshed, I usually end up laughing at myself. I'll never say never, but I just can't imagine doing something
as drastic at this point as taking a knife to my face. Still, as we all know, this is a bona fide crazy-making business that I'm in—a business that has an uncanny way of persuading people to subscribe to fantasies about the possibility of eternal youth. If only we work at it hard enough, exercise enough, diet enough, wear the right clothes, and use the right beauty products, no one will ever guess our real age! But honestly, I've never tried to hide my age. As long as I'm feeling good and have my health, I'm proud to be the age I am—grateful for what I've managed to accomplish and happy about the woman I've become, warts and all. Usually I feel like I'm still seventeen. But I certainly don't long to be seventeen again! Or twenty-seven or thirty-seven or forty-seven … or even fifty-seven, for that matter. I've got an amazing life to reflect on, and the optimist in me still believes the best is yet to come. Sure, I may need more of Dr. Born's help as I get a little further down the road. But right now—today—I'm totally at peace with how I've aged thus far.

Back in the early days of
Fashion Television
, around 1986, Anouk Aimée, the elegant French actress who had been the muse of Emanuel Ungaro for years, came to Toronto to help promote the designer's label at Creeds, the chic (now defunct) Bloor Street clothier. We cozied up on a couch at the store and talked about the meaning of style. I asked Anouk what she loved about fashion, and without hesitating, she told me that fashion and its ever-changing nature is the one thing that can keep you young and “plugged in.” I decided then and there that I would be forever young, since I was passionate about fashion and reporting on it was my new trade.

Whenever I start feeling a bit long in the tooth, I flash back to that cozy chat and think how lucky I am to be working in this arena. And even though I often have to dance as fast as I can just to keep up, I wholeheartedly believe that this is a business that keeps you young, socially informed, and “with it,” no matter what your age. As a matter of fact, the people who have been in fashion the longest are often the ones who garner the most respect. They're the ones with the broadest frames of reference, the most savvy, and the most experience in general. And in a business like fashion, which owes so much to history and mentorship,
those who have been around a long time are revered, celebrated, and applauded for both hanging in and keeping up.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), it was at an Ungaro show in Paris in 2004, nearly two decades after that chat with Anouk Aimée, that the problem of ageism really struck me for the first time. There I was, as fit and feisty as ever at fifty-two, backstage at a grand salon of the Carrousel du Louvre, waiting to speak with the talented young Italian who had taken over from Emanuel Ungaro when the master retired. Giambattista Valli, a class act and true gentleman (to say nothing of his extraordinary design abilities), was conducting interviews with a small number of camera crews, and everyone was patiently waiting their turn. Suddenly, a haughty young redhead, probably no more than twenty-two, came into view, and I saw her telling the PR woman that she wanted to go next.

“Excuse me,” I piped up, “but I believe we're next.”

The redhead was from a rival fashion program,
FTV Paris
—or
Fashion Television Paris
. This is a fashion channel that was started in 1997, twelve years after our Toronto-based
Fashion Television
had been established. (The similarity between their name and ours initially caused some confusion in the industry.) And here was this young
FTV
reporter trying to butt in, and I wasn't having any of it.

“Everybody's waiting,” she told me.

“But there's an order,” I replied.

“But I've been here for a while,” she insisted, venom in her eyes.

I was incensed by the challenge. “You haven't been here for twenty years,” I told her, which was just about how long our show had been on the air.

“Hopefully, not. Maybe that's why I have better skin,” she said sarcastically, playfully stroking her face. I was aghast. “You know,” she continued, “there are some young people coming up.”

I couldn't believe my ears, and turned to my cameraman, who was diligently and wisely rolling on the whole ugly exchange. At that moment, Giambattista wrapped with the person he was talking to and immediately acknowledged me. We launched into our brief interview, but I was shaking with anger throughout.

When my chat with Giambattista ended, I thanked him and turned to the camera. “Could you actually believe all that?” I asked, wide-eyed. I needed some kind of reassurance that this bizarre encounter with the
FTV
reporter was, as I felt, nothing short of lunacy. Actually, it was such a rude and tactless bit of behaviour that it was almost funny. But I wasn't laughing. My field producer and cameraman, both as shocked as I was, tried to comfort me. They dismissed the young reporter as an arrogant and ignorant two-bit amateur, but I had been bitterly stung. What kind of mother brought up this young woman? I thought. What disrespect! I tried to pull myself together and stoically went out front to take my seat. But for whatever reason—call it thin skin, a sense of injustice, or maybe just overtiredness—the tears started to roll down my cheeks. And I just couldn't stop crying.

I thought of all the years I'd spent in these trenches, working my butt off, going where no TV reporter had gone before, carving out a niche that would appeal to a whole generation of fashion lovers. And then the insecurity set in. Did I actually look horrible and wrinkly and dumpy and grotesque? Despite how hard I'd tried to look attractive, maybe I was really a hoary old bag who was hanging on to an illusion. Was it time to give up and make way for a new generation? Had Anouk Aimée been wrong all those years ago? Was fashion no longer keeping me young, relevant, and vital?

The lights went down, and the presentation began. The beauty of Giambattista's romantic garments soothed me, and I slowly began to take heart. The rudeness of the young reporter was deplorable, but I began to see that it was based on nothing but ignorance and blind jealousy. Shame on her! I made up my mind to turn this negative into a positive: I would make sure this hideous instance of ageism would be exposed as part of our coverage of the Ungaro collection. Thankfully, our camera had captured all the nastiness. This would make for great television, even as it revealed an enlightening, if unsavoury, slice of human behaviour.

Back in Toronto, my creative and crafty producer, Howard Brull, a man who adores the absurd and unexpected, had a field day with our story. Happy to let the
FTV
reporter “really have it,” he cut the video
in a way that made this heartless young woman look like a little witch, padding the audio track with cat yowls as she dissed me. He even had whiskers and a pair of cat ears drawn on the girl's head! It was a little over the top, but still hysterically funny. I'd got my revenge.

The segment aired to much fanfare, and the reaction from our viewers was extremely heartening. Everyone agreed that the young reporter was a creep, and no one could believe that I'd been subjected to such mean rubbish. To this day, people still talk about the segment. I only wish the reporter had seen herself acting so crassly, and being so rightfully condemned. Actually, since our show airs in close to one hundred countries, maybe she did eventually see it. If so, I wonder what she thought. Or more important, I wonder what her mother thought. Still, while her rudeness initially threw me, it ended up reminding me of how pleased I am to be my age. Happily, aging has made me better, not bitter. And like Anouk Aimée, I credit fashion with keeping me stylishly poised on my fifty-something-year-old toes.

EXOTICA

FOR YEARS, I had heard people say how their trip to India had transformed them, raised their consciousness, and resulted in a profound spiritual experience. I knew that one day, I'd make it my business to get to India. But that would be in the far-off future. For the time being, the country was not at the top of my must-visit list. Maybe I was scared of what it would be like to witness all that squalor and gut-wrenching poverty I'd heard about, scared of how it all might affect me.

Then, in the spring of 2006, Michael King struck up a connection with the Indian tourist board and began making plans for both
FQ
and
SIR
, our new men's magazine, to produce two fashion spreads in Jaipur. The trip would begin with half our team—Michael; Abel Muñoz, the associate art director; Hayley Atkin, now the associate fashion editor; and me—journeying to the northeastern Assam region, to Kaziranga National Park, for a two-day elephant safari. Evidently, my time had come to travel to these most exotic places. Suddenly, I was enthralled by the idea. And while I was a bit apprehensive at the prospect of seeing the kind of impoverished living conditions I'd heard so much about, I knew I was ready for some life-transforming experiences.

It was night when we entered the gates of Kaziranga National Park, and though the long drive from Guwahati had been exhausting, our excitement was mounting. We continued on to the remote Bonhabi Resort, a modest hotel with fourteen unremarkable guest rooms. A few minutes after I was shown to my room, the electricity went down. I panicked and screamed in the pitch darkness. I'd never felt more vulnerable. It was as though this mini blackout was some kind of signal of the beginning of my spiritual journey. Moments later, the lights came on again as the generator kicked in. I noticed a small painting of the Arc de Triomphe hanging over one of the beds and marvelled at what a world away I was from my beloved Paris. As I unpacked my things, I started worrying that my mother and the girls wouldn't know how to reach me—cellphones had no reception out here, in the middle of nowhere. The fact that no one would be able to find me was at once scary and liberating.

At 4:30 the next morning, there was a knock at my door: time for our elephant safari. My excitement mounted as I donned my cherished Ganesh pendant, which I had bought at a St. Germain boutique the season John Galliano riffed on Bollywood. Ganesh, the Hindu god of protection, has an elephant's head. I figured that since I was going to be riding an elephant in search of white rhinos and a Bengal tiger (for which the park is famous), I'd need all the protection I could get.

The mist was surreal, and the sun was barely up when we arrived at the departure area in the park. I was filled with wonder as a dozen large elephants came into view, all saddled up and ready to go. Most could accommodate three passengers, but some of the larger ones would carry up to five, with some people riding sidesaddle. There were three adorable baby elephants milling around beneath their mothers, some nursing from time to time as we set out across the misty plain. Soon we were seeing deer, wild boar, and many of the mighty white rhinos, which looked prehistoric with their leathery, armour-like skin. All the while, I was enchanted by the three baby elephants obediently walking beside their working mums, scooping bunches of tall grass as they made their way through the sunny fields. The light was ethereal, and everyone was stone silent as we watched
for the next amazing beast. The next couple of hours felt like a totally mystical experience.