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- [00:00]
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- [00:31]
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- [01:09]
Bella
Hi, come in. Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Graydon Carter.
- [01:19]
Graydon Carter
Well, thank you, Bella.
- [01:21]
Bella
Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes?
- [01:26]
Graydon Carter
Okay. I have a work jacket that I designed about 20 years ago, and I have them made by a friend of mine on 39th street in New York. And this one's made out of sort of heavy linen. He makes my pants as well. I have a white, probably 20 year old Lacoste shirt that I have two dozen of them and I wear one each day. They're getting a bit threadbare and. And I have a pair of blue trainers on and blue socks.
- [02:02]
Bella
And in your memoir, when the Going Gets Good, you describe your first vision of glamour, watching your parents do the twist. What did you see happening when you witnessed that?
- [02:14]
Graydon Carter
Well, the twist was a new song at the time. And my parents would have another couple over the McLennans, and they would have cocktails and then they would have dinner and then they would play bridge. And the women sort of wore pearls and sweaters and skirts, and the men wore ties and jackets. And I thought, this is the most glamorous adult life. And I thought, unlike a lot of people who wanted to extend their adolescence into their 40s, I wanted to become an adult and I wanted to dressed like an adult as soon as I got to my 20s.
- [02:52]
Bella
Yeah, because you grew up in Ottawa, Canada, but not in an affluent household and you had no pocket money and worked at the railway shinning up telegraph poles, which was a fascinating job. It sounded so hard. And I remember reading the book, you describing looking into a passing train into the first class carriage and seeing these white tablecloths and this elegance and longing for that. And I wondered how you thought you were going to make the leap.
- [03:25]
Graydon Carter
Well, I had no idea. I mean, I could have stayed in Canada and become a part of the government, which everybody did in Ottawa, which is the capital city. But I was sort of. My whole gravitational pull came from New York City, a city that I only knew about in, and films and magazines and books. And so I. I had to figure out a way to get from there to New York. And it happened completely by accident. I was in. In college and I happened to. I went by this office that was filled with, you know, half dozen young people and there were typewriters and desks. And I went in to ask them what they were doing and they were starting to pay a political and literary magazine. And I asked them if I could be part of it. And they said, well, we're looking for an art director. And I told them that I could draw. And so they said, fine, you're the art director. And over the course of months, there's little. Magazines are famously like small sort of petri dishes of infighting and backbiting and bitterness. And one by one the other people left and I was left as the editor. It did nothing but lose money its entire life. And eventually it folded. But I sold the assets to our closest competitor, much more illustrious magazine, and it got me a job at Time magazine in New York. And. And so that's how I got to New York, through happenstance.
- [05:06]
Bella
It's an incredible story, I must say. I wondered, was there an item of clothing you were obsessed with as a child that you thought would sort of consolidate your identity, the identity that you envisioned for yourself?
- [05:20]
Graydon Carter
Well, first of all, clothes that were appropriate in Canada were completely different than clothes that were appropriate in New York. First of all, the temperatures are incredibly different. Ottawa was one of the coldest cities in the world, was the capital cities in the world back then. I think it's probably a little more moderate now. And some. The clothes that I wore to New York only had two jackets. I had a sort of a very heavy sort of wool blazer with a crest on it from my parents sailing club. And then I had a very thick tweed jacket. And on my first day in New York, I was getting off the plane and those days you went down the stairs onto the tarmac like the way you do in small airports now. And I. It was in July, and I was hit with a. A blast of heat, the likes of which I'd never, ever experienced before. And I had this very, very heavy woolen jacket on. So my clothes were. They just had to be the clothes I had rather than the clothes that meant that much to me.
- [06:26]
Bella
And was there something as a child. I just remember when I was a child that I got fixated on something that I thought if I could have this, it would just order me. It would take care of my internal feeling of disorder. And was there anything like that in your childhood? Like some fixed thing?
- [06:47]
Graydon Carter
Well, watching people like Cary Grant and Fred Astaire and. And the sort of. The way they moved to the clothes from. From the sort of the 30s and early 40s, I thought that when I did get a chance to get a suit, it would be something like that. And. But my first suit in New York was from a company called Paul Stuart, which is right next door to Brooks Brothers on Madison. And. But it was. And it was. It was like gabardine. So it was like a. A fabric I'd never had before. We had cotton and we had wool in Canada, and it was very little in between.
- [07:24]
Bella
Because I'm interested in your. Like, with your first paycheck, you got a suit and I think a coat from Anderson and Shepherd. And I'm interested, like, the difference in. When I grew up, we had very little money, and I just thought things were too expensive. I thought this black turtleneck that I was obsessed with must cost at least £2,000, because it was never, ever on the cards. But somehow you just assumed that you were going to have these things, and it seems a much better attitude. And then you got them and they worked for you.
- [08:03]
Graydon Carter
Well, my first suit was not for my first paycheck, but probably in the first month, just I had to look more like a Time Incorporated employee. So I got this one suit, and probably four years, five years later, I had my first Anderson shepherd suit made. And it was probably 2,500 or $3,000 back then, but I thought I could wear it every single day and amortize it over, you know, a number of years. And I, strange enough, I still have it, but I thought in those days you could get a decent suit made for $500. So this was. Maybe it was $2,500. So it's about five times as much as. But I thought it would fit better, I'd look better. And if I look successful, perhaps my employers would think I might become successful.
- [08:53]
Bella
Yeah, that's the usefulness of.
- [08:56]
Graydon Carter
I dress much better as a writer than I was as a writer in those days.
- [09:00]
Bella
Well, it's all part of the kind of disguise that you leap into, isn't it? And you talked about Mad magazine being a big, big influence on your adolescence and you say it explains how things in the adult world work. Darker, more sophisticated and vaguely anarchic. And I always loved the clothes, you know, him in that black suit on the COVID It was just somehow felt like it kind of narrowed the gap between a teenager that without power and an adult with some sort of power. And I wondered how you thought you would look when you were being influenced by Mad magazine.
- [09:45]
Graydon Carter
Well, Mad, it was produced strange enough on Madison Avenue. And it started in the early 1950s, which was the beginning of the sort of the satire boom in both Britain and in America. From Britain then In the late 50s and early 60s, you got that was the week this week, that was the week, that was the Frost Report, beyond the Fringe, you know, Cambridge Footlights. In America you had magazine called Monocle and any number of other things. But that's when sort of satire first took flower. And Mad magazine was and still exists. It was incredibly clever and it was funny, but it also told you about Madison Avenue and how Chicago worked and elements of adult life that you may not have known about. And did it in a very funny satirical way. And if you're like a 13 year old boy in Canada and those sort of frozen wasteland of Canada, you found it really entertaining and instructive.
- [10:51]
Bella
It was just one of those great things to chance upon. And it was quite punk rock in a way. And that was my kind of introduction into finding myself. And there was so much in there I didn't understand. I just knew it was onto something. And it's great to see that.
- [11:10]
Graydon Carter
Well, it was sort of. It was sort of private eye for adolescents.
- [11:13]
Bella
Right? Yeah, that's a good description. With your first successful magazine, Spy, you initiated the Spy Ball and you described not having any money for decor, but using the black tie outfits that you'd ask people to come in as decoration, which is such a brilliant idea. And how did you know that these clothes were going to be they. I mean, it's an inspired thought. How did you know that this was going to work?
- [11:51]
Graydon Carter
Well, the Spy magazine was started in the 1980s. New York was changing then and it was just coming out of its. Its bankruptcy. The city had come close to bankruptcy in the 1970s. Investment banks have been invented and therefore investment Bankers, you had the ladies who lunch and all of that. And there were a lot of characters with new money in New York and they were not afraid to parade it around. So we, we started. I'd worked at Time and then Life magazine and, and we started. My partner and I started Spy and the first issue came out in 1986 and we wanted to write do a. We borrowed heavily on Mad magazine and Private Eye and the very dense adjective filled writing style of Time. It was going to be fact based but satirical about the city and the people who made the city run. And so we had a ball. We were in the Park Building, which was the building where the very first humor magazine in America, Puck magazine was located in the late part of the 19th century. And it had a huge ballroom on the ground floor. And so we thought we'd kick things off with our first issue with a ball. And we had an all woman swing band, the Kit McClure Band. And we had no money for decorations, but I thought if we asked made it black tie, the people sort of. You sort of amortize the decorating cost among the guests. And as a room full of people in black tie looks a lot more festive or party filled than just people show up from work in the, in the clothes they, they spent the day in. And we had a number of these and they were hugely successful and people scrambled to get. Become part of that and a number of people would have, would change their clothes two or three times during the evening just to God to wear different outfits. And I'm talking about men here, not necessarily women.
- [13:53]
Bella
No. That's so good. Really?
- [13:55]
Graydon Carter
Yes.
- [13:56]
Bella
Do you remember anyone in particular?
- [13:58]
Graydon Carter
Yeah, I'm not going to mention him because he'd probably be embarrassed.
- [14:00]
Bella
Tell me what they.
- [14:01]
Graydon Carter
He was a former art director of Vanity Fair and he told me he, he, he had four separate outfits that he wore throughout one of the nights of our balls.
- [14:09]
Bella
Wow. Do you remember what they were?
- [14:12]
Graydon Carter
No, I don't remember seeing him there. I didn't know him at the time.
- [14:16]
Bella
I love that. God. I know. Because you've had this incredibly grand taste in spite of not growing up with stuff.
- [14:26]
Graydon Carter
I actually don't have grand taste. I have simple taste. I think when you're doing something, do it in the best way humanly possible professionally.
- [14:37]
Bella
Well, maybe grand taste doesn't sound like it's a compliment, but it's. You just have this discerning taste and you had all the things you talked about like later when you made, had things specially made for the Vanity Fair party And I mean, it's just genius to be able to think of these things. It's like they're innate in your DNA. And you know, when you described your suit from Anderson and Shepherd and how you were advised to wear it in a light rain so it would fit better, I wondered if you thought certain clothes made you a better editor.
- [15:18]
Graydon Carter
First of all, in those days everybody wore jackets and tie, men wore jackets and ties to the office. So that was, so that was the uniform of the day. And it was up until roughly around the financial crash, crash of 2008. And you know, because you spent a good portion of your life at the office, we'd got in the early days of Vanity Fair, I would get in at 5:30 and I'd leave at 5:30. So that's, that's half the entire day. And, and so that was your uniform during the day and everybody dressed professionally and it was just the way it was. So I thought a well made suit's gonna fit far more comfortably than a badly made suit. An Anderson shepherd suit fits on your shoulders in a way that you can, it feels like you're not, you're just wearing a shirt and whereas a, a badly made suit can really drag you down. And yeah, I just thought, you know, if you're, if you look, if, if you look somewhat like you're somewhat successful, people might actually think you're successful even though you're not. And as for the details of the parties that, you know, we just sort of muddle through and, and, but I did anything, I always did things thinking of how I would feel if I was on the other side, if I was the guest. And as a guest you'd like, you know, decent food, decent wine, be treated well, be seated beside somebody interesting on either side, have something to take away from the table. Like we had, you know, we had Zippo lighters had in great sayings on them, different sayings on them each year. I mean they weren't expensive or fancy or anything like that, but. And Ashrae's, we had, we had our own specially made Ashrays, just like a lot of restaurants did in those days.
- [17:13]
Bella
And everyone stole them.
- [17:16]
Graydon Carter
Everything was stolen. Right, but that was the intention that they'd be stolen because once they wind up in somebody else's coffee table, it's a free ad for the magazine.
- [17:26]
Bella
It's so thoughtful though, but it's like extra thoughtfulness of your guests creating something for them to steal. I mean it's like the ultimate, I.
- [17:36]
Graydon Carter
Think it's what's like the Gift shop after you've been through a magazine when it's free.
- [17:40]
Bella
Yeah, I used to steal things from Annabelle's when my father took me.
- [17:45]
Graydon Carter
No, everybody has an Annabelle's or a Marks Club ashtray or something like that they pocketed at the end of a night.
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Bella
I used to steal cutlery because I didn't have any. So I had like a full fork and a spoon from animals or ba.
- [17:58]
Graydon Carter
Flights. Yeah.
- [17:59]
Bella
Way, way back. And you mentioned the phrase too rich and too thin and I wondered what that image conjures up for you.
- [18:10]
Graydon Carter
Well, I mean that's a famous expression in New York and at Spy magazine we did a story about, called too rich and too Thin. And it was based on the women who sort of ran New York. And it was a woman named Nan Kempner. There was a Pat Buckley, there was Jackie O. And they, you know, they. And the first sentence of the story, if I remember it says it's, there's, it seems slightly unfair that in New York City a woman who has a size 5, a size 14, lives in a two room apartment and a woman who's a size 2 gets a 14 room apartment. And it's just that was the style of the moment. And Tom Wolfe called them and Bonfire, the vanities, social X rays. And it's just. And these women were really thin, like abnormally thin.
- [19:03]
Bella
Yeah, it's really one of those phrases that's gone into folklore. Like nothing tastes like skinny feels.
- [19:09]
Graydon Carter
I think that's your friend Kate Moss, isn't it?
- [19:11]
Bella
Well, actually I think it might have been Steve Tyler. I remember reading him about him doing 200 sit ups every morning and telling Kate, but I don't know if it came from her or him. But a very good.
- [19:28]
Graydon Carter
She embodies it. Yes.
- [19:30]
Bella
Yeah. And I read that you love doing the ironing or you loved doing the ironing. And that's something I have an obsession with. And I, when I was a teenager I used to like get really out of it and get the ironing board out because it just calmed down my heart. And you, you were quoted as saying I might do an ironing tutorial. I can iron a shirt like a French laundry.
- [19:59]
Graydon Carter
I can. And when I back in the, you know, when I was working at time and I didn't have a ton of money so I would iron three or four shirts at the beginning of the week. And I, and you know, as I said I could do, I could do them almost perfectly. And I found it very therapeutic. It takes a little bit of brain work and a little bit of manual work. But you can either watch television, listen to music, you can almost read while you're doing it if you had a stand up stand to hold the book in front of you. But I found it, I found it a chore, but a very relaxing, therapeutic chore.
- [20:35]
Bella
Yeah, it's such a good thing. It's part mind and part, you know, activity.
- [20:41]
Graydon Carter
Yeah. And. Yeah. Keeps you on your feet and. And there's something very nice about wearing a shirt. You iron yourself.
- [20:48]
Bella
It's like it regulates your emotional sort of erraticness. I remember doing the ironing for my neighbour and she. When I was 12, she taught me how to iron and I still do the same thing. You start with the yoke.
- [21:05]
Graydon Carter
You start with the yoke.
- [21:06]
Bella
And the back of the neck.
- [21:07]
Graydon Carter
Yep.
- [21:08]
Bella
And the back of the collar get to the sleeve, front sides and then the backs at the end.
- [21:15]
Graydon Carter
Yeah, I do it the opposite way. I do the back and then the front, the last thing.
- [21:18]
Bella
And it does, it sort of, it's like, does something to your neural pathways because you come out feeling in control. And I get the same thing from making my bed. I. My grandmother taught me how to make beds. She had a bed and breakfast in Ireland. And however busy I like doing this thing, it creates this sort of order and it's. Even if you feel disordered now my.
- [21:44]
Graydon Carter
Wife and I make our beds.
- [21:46]
Bella
Really so cool.
- [21:48]
Graydon Carter
That's really try to get my kids to. But so far I failed in that mission.
- [21:52]
Bella
I failed in that I was forced to make my bed and I never forced my son to do any of those things.
- [21:58]
Graydon Carter
Oh, I forced them. It's just. They won't do it.
- [22:01]
Bella
Oh, God. Well, I'm glad it doesn't always work when you use force. Well, famously it never works.
- [22:07]
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- [22:39]
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- [23:09]
Bella
And you just talked about when you were at Vanity Fair, how attending fashion shows was one of your duties as the editor. And it was the era of the supermodels. And you describe freezing in the presence of extreme beauty. And I wondered when that first happened that you recognized that.
- [23:32]
Graydon Carter
Well, it just. I mean, first of all, there. There are supermodels, and they're supermodels. And the ones that I. I liked and I met them outside of the actual fashion industry were two very different women. One, Dale Haddon, the Canadian supermodel who died last year or the year before. And she was. She didn't look like a traditional supermodel. She just looked like the prettiest woman you'd ever meet in a neighborhood. And. And I liked her. And she was an activist for various women's causes. And Elaine Irwin, who was sort of. Who pulled herself away from the supermodelary business and moved to Indiana with her husband, John Mellencamp. And she was, like, looking into the sun. But they were both smart and they were both engaging. And, I mean, a lot of the supermodels, I think they're used to not. I think they're used to not having to talk because the beauty does all the talking for them. But Lane and Dale were engaging on all fronts.
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Bella
I think sometimes people talk to supermodels in a stupid way because they just can't imagine that.
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Graydon Carter
They're, like, thinking to a small dog or something.
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Bella
Yeah. I mean, they're all so intelligent and they're so experienced and know so much, and. And there's some sort of weird attitude that you can only be beautiful or intelligent. You can't. But they're so. I mean, they're so amazing.
- [25:06]
Graydon Carter
And I mean, they're mo. Yeah. I mean. Yeah. I don't think. Yes. I think that in my. For the. You know, I'm only interested in interesting people. If there happened to be someone attractive, that makes it better. But at a certain point in your life, interesting is my. Is much better than beautiful.
- [25:26]
Bella
Yeah. Both is great. I agree. And anyway, interesting is beautiful.
- [25:30]
Graydon Carter
So it is.
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Bella
It's true. And if you fancy someone and you don't like what they're wearing, does it kill your attraction to them?
- [25:40]
Graydon Carter
No, but it. I mean, I don't Think I couldn't fall in love with somebody who dressed like a Kardashian or something. I'd just be. It would just be too mortifying both in the house and outside the house. I think as long as people style is a really funny thing. My boss, I knew House used to dress in the. Basically the same outfit every day. And he had khaki pants, car shoes, a polo shirt and a sweatshirt. And he was very fit and he looked good every day. I mean, he didn't look fancy, but he didn't. There was nobody. He was a billionaire. He didn't have to impress anybody. And that style. And I remember Edie Wasserman, whose husband was Lou Wasserman, who for decades was the most powerful man in Hollywood. And Edie, she wasn't beautiful, but she had a style. She had sort of a Louise Brooks sort of haircut, but her hair had gone gray and she left her gray. And she wore black dresses with white Peter Pan collars. And that was her look. And she was. She just looked sort of. She had a look, she had a style and she just kept with it every day. And to me that's sort of real style.
- [27:00]
Bella
And do you like quite like pearls in a twin set?
- [27:04]
Graydon Carter
I'm old fashioned. And yeah.
- [27:06]
Bella
And yeah, yeah, I read about that in your book. I love it when people are drawn towards something because it is suggestive and that's always an allure, isn't it?
- [27:20]
Graydon Carter
Well, the hidden is much more sort of attractive and sexy than the overt. If it's overt, there's no mystery there.
- [27:28]
Bella
Right, right.
- [27:29]
Graydon Carter
You've seen it all.
- [27:30]
Bella
Yeah. And you started working with Annie Leibovitz making these huge photographic spreads and amazing covers which we all waited for. And did you have a favorite one.
- [27:45]
Graydon Carter
That'S like saying my favorite child? No, but I do remember it was hard to get her to do it at first because I think she thought we had. In our first Hollywood issue, I thought that one. There wasn't one actor. And this is 1993 or 1994? 1994. And I didn't think there was a movie star that could carry the idea of what we wanted to get across of just the. The enormity of Hollywood and its history and its future and its present. And so I wanted a three panel cover. So there would be three separate panels and all sort of come in one long photograph. And Annie at first was resistant to do it. She thought it was sort of a. I think she thought it was a cheap trick at the beginning. But I love Group shots that become. In time they come. Become quite historical. There's a famous photograph by Art Kane, who did it for Esquire in 1958. It's called a Great Day in Harlem. And there's probably a hundred of the greats of jazz all in front of a building, and they spill out onto the sidewalk. And so I. So I got Andy to shoot the first cover this way. And we made a billboard of it over Sunset Boulevard. But Annie would. There were. We also had shots in the same issue where the photographers would put the. Like a high school photograph, put the tall people in the back row, the short people in the front row. And Annie would. She would craft her covers. She got better and better at it. So by year four, she would have this whole cover all plotted out. We knew exactly where everybody was going to go. And she would have models stepping in for the. For the people before the. Before the movie star showed up. So she would have it all lit and have the clothing figured out and everything figured out before the people came. So she composed them well in advance, and so then she can make slight adjustments once the real people got there. And she turned it into an art form.
- [29:57]
Bella
That's incredible.
- [29:59]
Graydon Carter
Kicking and screaming, but turning it into an art form. Yes.
- [30:01]
Bella
But you won her round.
- [30:03]
Graydon Carter
Well, there were a ton of work to get these things done, arranging. First of all, if you have a few of three panels of movie stars, obviously the people on the first panel would be a lot happier than people in the second panel, and the people in the second panel are gonna be happier than the people on the third panel. So keeping everybody happy. And everybody. By the time they showed up at the photo studio, they knew exactly what panel that they were going to be on. All the negotiating had already been done. So she. But. So she. It was just. But it was a. You know, each one of these things would take, you know, five months to plan, and you had to get. Bring people in, and everybody had their own hair and makeup and whatever, and. And. And, you know, thousands of pieces of clothing for a cover shoot.
- [30:50]
Bella
Yeah, they were real groundbreakers, those. Because I remember buying the magazine and then looking at the front and then it was like. Then reading the book. You'd go into the second page and then the third and just absorb it all and delve in. It was amazing.
- [31:10]
Graydon Carter
Well, the COVID got it off the newsstand, and then once you're inside, we tried to fill it with, you know, big sort of fascinating works of journalism that told stories.
- [31:22]
Bella
And Because I love the Kate Moss.
- [31:24]
Graydon Carter
Cover one with the Top Hat. Or that one.
- [31:27]
Bella
I like the one with her as Marilyn.
- [31:29]
Graydon Carter
Yes.
- [31:30]
Bella
I think James wrote the p. Or maybe A.A. gill. Yeah, James wrote the Pillar.
- [31:37]
Graydon Carter
The noted author James Fox. Yes.
- [31:39]
Bella
And I love her here. They were just so glamorous.
- [31:46]
Graydon Carter
Well, she's made for the camera.
- [31:47]
Bella
Yeah. Well, she's the best at it. And you're also a champion of writers and you're famous for paying better than any other publication, which is unheard of now. And you're very good at describing competitiveness between people. Like the stories about Dominic Dunn and his brother, John Gregory Dunn, who was married to Joan Didion. And I wondered how you handle competition.
- [32:18]
Graydon Carter
I was pretty collegial with much of most of my competitors. The golden age of magazines, which probably you could stretch from the 1970s through the arts of this century. One thing that made it the golden age was because magazines were great, because there were great editors, great writers, great photographers. The golden age of Hollywood. If you, if you think of it, in the 1930s and into the 40s, it was a golden age because, you know, Paramount and Columbia and MGM and 20th Century Fox, and they were at the absolute tops of the games run by people who had great vision for movies and had great passion for movies. So it's a collective more than any single individual. So I appreciated the fact that the competition certainly made Vanity Fair better than if there had been no competition.
- [33:17]
Bella
Do you find it at all demoralizing when there's competition, or does it stimulate you?
- [33:24]
Graydon Carter
Well, first of all, anytime this happened, all the time, when another magazine would have a story that I wish I had ordered up and had in, in, in Vanity Fair, I both feel, you know, frustration that I didn't have it and admiration for them that they did.
- [33:43]
Bella
Yeah, yeah. I, I such a weird. I, I think particularly for women, it's so you're not supposed to feel competitive, only kind of generosity and love towards other women. But I remember my therapist saying to.
- [34:01]
Graydon Carter
Me, think of it as your therapist.
- [34:03]
Bella
I've got a couple. I remember him saying to me, think of it as a game. And it just changed my morale completely. Instead of thinking fail, I thought, okay, you know, maybe I can get something out of this. If I. I don't mean out of their success, but just some sort of, you know, little bit of raising up of the spirits.
- [34:30]
Graydon Carter
Yeah, you play better tennis with a better tennis player. And I think the same thing goes in your professional life. I mean, there are a lot of businesses where it's a zero sum game that, you know, for you to gain 100 somebody else has to lose 100. Yeah, but the magazine business isn't that. And Nor and Norman any creative industries. The film business isn't really that. The television business used to be that. But it, you know, you can have five great best selling books out at the same time and actually it does better for the entire book industry because if there are five great bestsellers out there that everybody's talking about, other books get sold as well. So in the creative field, I think that competition is an elixir and it can be frustrating at times, but it's a very healthy element in a professional life.
- [35:25]
Bella
Yeah, it's so true. Because if one person's doing well, anyone can do well, as long as somebody's doing well.
- [35:31]
Graydon Carter
Yes.
- [35:33]
Bella
And you said you like to have a partner and a co conspirator and you had one at Spy. And was it Johnny Pigottzzi you worked with at Spy?
- [35:43]
Graydon Carter
No, my partner was Kurt Anderson and we met at Time magazine and we plotted Spy out from my office at Life magazine.
- [35:51]
Bella
Oh yeah.
- [35:52]
Graydon Carter
But I just love having a partner. I have a partner in my restaurants. I had a partner Johnny Pagazzi and Charles Saatchi bought Spy from us.
- [36:01]
Bella
Right, right.
- [36:02]
Graydon Carter
And I didn't have a partner Vanity Fair because it's just the way the job is constructed. But I had sort of colleagues who I worked with there at 20 for 25 years that I, you know, I trusted their judgment. I trusted them to like not be yes people because most of them were women. But they had no compunction in telling me I was an idiot from time to time. But that was very helpful. And so I think you need, I think a partner can both balance things. I have a partner at Airmail, Alessandra Stanley, who I worked with at Time magazine. And you sort of share whatever glory there is, but you also share the day to day pain and minor failures that all these jobs entail.
- [36:53]
Bella
And in your memoir, when the Going Was Good, you chose James Fox as your co author.
- [36:59]
Graydon Carter
What a fool I was. What a fool. No, in fact, I wouldn't have done the book without James. We had had lunch nearby over in Sloane Square and this is about seven years ago, and he said that if you. I think I just left Vanity Fair. He said, if you ever write a memoir, I'd love to help you through it. And so I, it was the first time I'd ever thought of that and. But I thought I'd be very fortunate, you know, and I thought if a boob like me could, could sort of do well in the Magazine business, there's a decent story to tell. And James was invaluable. And first of all, he talked to a lot of my colleagues because I couldn't talk to them. I couldn't go to a colleague and say, let's talk about me for a while. So I couldn't do that, but James could do that or talk about. And he brought us some things that I'd forgotten along the way that the other my colleagues remembered. And then he helped organize it because you can't tell a memoir in a pure chronological way. And also he has a better work ethic than I do. So he kept sort of the engine stoked for the next. We worked on it for four years. We worked on it in New York, we worked on it in London, in Connecticut and in France and we had a ball. And I'm not a solitary sort of person. I'm not a people person necessarily either, but I'm not a solitary person who can stay and work by themselves all day long with no outside oxygen.
- [38:34]
Bella
Yeah.
- [38:34]
Graydon Carter
And anyway, James provided that. And then. And I also had another editor who came in after Colin Murphy, who I'd worked with at vanity fair for 15 years. And he was my editor when I wrote at Vanity Fair and he'd been at the Atlantic magazine and he's back at the Atlantic now.
- [38:53]
Bella
Right.
- [38:53]
Graydon Carter
And he, he gave. He was instrumental in the whole thing as well. So this is a combination of me with a lot of help.
- [39:04]
Bella
Well, your brilliance at the center of it. And as you know, James is my ex husband.
- [39:09]
Graydon Carter
Oh God, is he? I totally forgot that.
- [39:12]
Bella
And I think his investigative journalism background makes him such a sleuther when it comes to, you know, any detail. And you know, I remember when he was working on Keith's book, Keith Richards book. And it was so exciting when he said he was going to be working with you. And you know, all the stories of.
- [39:37]
Graydon Carter
Not as much fun as Keith.
- [39:39]
Bella
Obviously when you started at Vanity Fair, you banned certain words which I thought was fantastic. And you said language was. The language was baroque and Florida and which were your most hated words?
- [39:53]
Graydon Carter
Well, everything was just slightly overwritten. So when I got there, I first wanted to make the staff. The staff had been pitted against each other a lot. And I don't like office drama. I think there's enough drama outside the office. And this might be partly from being Canadian. I like people to get along, to respect others talents and their work, to say please and thank you and that. So the first two years there was a lot of that. And also then sort of eradicating the. The magazine of this. This house. Writing style. I don't think it was a formal writing style, but, you know, a book wasn't a book. It was a tome. Restaurant wasn't a restaurant. It was an eatery. It's. It's sort of the. It's a. It's a. It's a sort of the Vanity Fair school of bad writing. And it's just, you know, looking up in a thin. To, you know, see a word. So I don't use the, you know, and people didn't say things that were funny. They chortled. And I just all grated to my nerves and I wore out, you know, pencil after pencil because I used to edit with a. I edited by 25 years there with it with a pencil and a paper manuscript. I just, you know, someone that would just be gray on the sides with comments that, that. Because I. I just. It was just a certain type of writing that drove me crazy. And it's a certain type of writing we made fun of at Spy for five years before I got to Vanity Fair. So I wasn't. I both wasn't the most popular person to arrive on their doorstep, and I was probably one of the most unlikely people to arrive on their doorstep.
- [41:31]
Bella
Yeah, that sounded like a tense. Tense initiation period.
- [41:35]
Graydon Carter
It was very tense.
- [41:37]
Bella
But you seem like as much as an. Of an art director, as an editor. And the notes you wrote to advertisers on paper from a special shop in Paris and how the look and feel of them were. And I remember getting one of those from you. I'd done a questionnaire or something, and I have an obsession with envelopes. I literally drool over them. Fancy envelopes. And I wondered where you got those. Got that stationery?
- [42:09]
Graydon Carter
Well, I. First of all, I thought, you know, the. I mean, stationary is a one. I never had stationary until I was probably in my. My 30s, because I never had a. In New York, you sort of move around a lot because most people had rentals up until they were 40. So there's no point in having stationary with an address on it because it'd be out of date by the time they were printed. And so by the time I got there to Vanity Fair, I had found the stationery shop in Paris and had them made their very thick stock. And it's the kind of note you'd like to receive. And I sort of designed the way the type went on the stock. There was the address on the left and my name on the right and some details on the right and I was shocked at how many people copied these cards. After that, I've got at least a half dozen or a dozen of other people who have had cards made that are almost identical. But I thought I was very appreciative of the advertising, which sort of paid for the journalism, kept the lights on, paid my salary. And I was appreciative of the work of the writers and photographers and illustrators because they were the franchise of the banks and it wasn't me and the editors on staff, they were the franchise. And I was appreciative of their. They, they made the magazine, they made the magazine successful and then they brought readers back month after month. And so I wrote them thank you notes every month. And sometimes it would take the better part of a day to, to do all of this. There'd be, in a big issue, there'd be sometimes 450thank you notes to write because we had a lot of advertising. And I just thought if I was an advertiser, yes, I'm going to get a letter from the publisher who sold me the ad. But I thought it'd be much more gratifying and appreciative if you got one from the editor of the magazine. And I think I was the only editor to do this. And it paid off in spades. We never, we were all thick right up into the last issue that I edited at the magazine. Thick with advertising.
- [44:21]
Bella
Yeah. God, I mean, there's nothing like writing on that kind of blissful paper. It's like putting a cherry on cream or something.
- [44:29]
Graydon Carter
It is.
- [44:30]
Bella
It's so sensitive.
- [44:31]
Graydon Carter
It's also quite therapeutic.
- [44:32]
Bella
It is, it's true. I mean, there's that great moment in American Psycho when they're showing each other their cards and one of them has embossed gold or something. And then this surge of demented jealousy he has about. Do you remember that scene?
- [44:47]
Graydon Carter
No, I've forgotten the movie completely, but my son reminded me. One of. My sons reminded me of the scene.
- [44:53]
Bella
It's very good moment. And when you hired Henry Porter as the editor of the UK Vanity Fair, you describe him as having a Beethoven head of hair. And how would you describe your hairstyle, which has always been quite distinctive?
- [45:09]
Graydon Carter
Well, now just disappearing. I mean, the. And I wish I'd gone to Turkey during the, during the, the lockdown, during the pandemic and had one of those treatments done. No, it's just, it's, it's just trying to maintain the same relative look with, with fewer and fewer materials and, and no, Henry was our London editor. He was the editor of the London edition. Because the London edition, strange enough, was edited in New York. It was the same edition that we had in the United States. They're just slightly different advertising. But Henry would help out all the writers who came to do stories in Europe.
- [45:47]
Bella
In fact, there was an amazing cover that I always remember, which was Patsy Kensett and one of the Gallaghers, Liam Gallagher.
- [45:55]
Graydon Carter
Yes.
- [45:56]
Bella
God, that was glamorous. It was like such a sort of exciting moment generally in, In London.
- [46:03]
Graydon Carter
London was back. Yeah, I remember. Yes.
- [46:06]
Bella
Them like lying in bed looking.
- [46:08]
Graydon Carter
It was like a Union Jack bedspread. Yes.
- [46:11]
Bella
Yeah, that was.
- [46:12]
Graydon Carter
No, that was good. And it was a. That there was a big portfolio in there and it was. Yeah. When London sort of had come out of its doldrums and was back. And I think we had a big dinner at the River Cafe for that issue.
- [46:25]
Bella
That was so cool. It was amazing. And now you're the editor of Airmel, which is an online work weekly magazine named after that particular exquisite translucent paper that we both love. And do you still love hold the front page?
- [46:45]
Graydon Carter
Meaning what?
- [46:46]
Bella
Well, just the kind of electricity. It seems like you haven't given up that quest for a second.
- [46:53]
Graydon Carter
Well, any, any editor in America, they're sort of the model for the. There's two models for the editor. One a real person, one a fictional person. The real person is Ben Bradlee, who was the editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate investigations by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. And the other is Walter Burns in the movie the Front Page and the remake, His Girl Friday. And his Girl Friday is played by Cary Grant. So those are the two iconic editors for most editors. And there's something. I'm doing the same job for 50, gosh, 53 years, 52 years now. And it's not appreciably different than it was 53 years ago. It's a little easier, you get a little better at it. But the excitement of reading something great that's going to be in your next issue, whether it's a weekly or monthly, is the. That's everything.
- [47:52]
Bella
Yeah.
- [47:53]
Graydon Carter
Also, I feel that as an editor, you're in the service business. So my feeling is, what I want to do is say an Airmail is every Saturday morning deliver a wonderful package of articles that are beautifully art directed, fact checked, they've gone through and copy edited and with beautiful advertising around them so that on Saturday morning you can sort of break away from the grim news of the previous week and sort of appreciate the, the, the things in life that don't involve politics and, and world affairs. It's. And although we love, do love a lot of scandal stories and so there's probably one or two of those in each issue. And so it. But to me it's a service injury. The same way a chef in a restaurant.
- [48:45]
Bella
Yeah.
- [48:45]
Graydon Carter
Puts together the elements for a great meal to put on your, your table tonight.
- [48:51]
Bella
It's incredibly effective. There's so many. Whenever I get the, you know, the notification and it's like going through a department store and every.
- [49:02]
Graydon Carter
That's a nice way of putting it.
- [49:03]
Bella
It's like every kind of appetite is.
- [49:08]
Graydon Carter
It's like Harvey Nicks in the olden days.
- [49:10]
Bella
I know. It was great that everything, everything you could wish for is kind of satisfied in, in that journey. It's the most wonderful.
- [49:20]
Graydon Carter
And every once in a while I'm lucky to get James Fox in there.
- [49:23]
Bella
Yeah. He's a pretty good writer, isn't he?
- [49:26]
Graydon Carter
Wonderful writer.
- [49:27]
Bella
Yeah.
- [49:27]
Graydon Carter
Also, James is a friend of mine and when we were working on the book, it was just. We had a great time. It was not an arduous journey at all. It was a ball.
- [49:40]
Bella
Yeah. Well, you talk in your book about, and being an editor about wanting to be a kind person and James is a very kind person.
- [49:48]
Graydon Carter
Very kind person.
- [49:49]
Bella
It just reminds you that that's really what matters about, you know, your core value. If you can be, you know, look out for other people, then you can go on an adventure and have that sort of drive to get the best story and everything and there's no need to trash anybody along the way.
- [50:09]
Graydon Carter
Well, kind of it's sort of a trite word the way the word nice is a trite word, but it's core to somebody you want to spend your life with or somebody you want to be friends with or somebody want to travel with or work with. And it's completely antithetical to sort of the way of leadership is in many parts of the world, especially my own country right now, which is turning its back on America's core values and, and kindness to strangers has been a major part of America's identity over the last, you know, 250 odd years. And you know, Statue of Liberty says it all that, you know, bring me your, your, your unwashed. And so it, America's, it's hopefully it's temporary but, but kindness in the micro level matters a lot. It'd be nicer if we had it on the macro level as well. That may take a while.
- [51:12]
Bella
I suppose all you can do is invest in your own bits of kindness.
- [51:16]
Graydon Carter
You can't control the macro.
- [51:18]
Bella
Yeah.
- [51:19]
Graydon Carter
Except once every four years at the voting booth. But you can control the micro.
- [51:23]
Bella
And you used to have a cultural test quiz, and I wondered what the codes are that you still use.
- [51:29]
Graydon Carter
What do you mean, a cultural test quiz?
- [51:31]
Bella
Well, I was going to ask you that. I think when you were on it was when you were at Vanity Fair, and you would have a, like a quiz to find out if, you know, you were kind of aligned with somebody.
- [51:45]
Graydon Carter
Well, we, for interns at Spy magazine and Vanity Fair, we sort of developed a sort of a sort of just to find out where their brains were. Like, you want to find out what kind of magazines they read, what was the last book they read. You give them a few elements, questions that to test their sort of pop cultural and cultural knowledge. It could be anything from, you know, who wrote a certain symphony to like, what was the name of the dog in the movie series, the Thin Man? And so it jumped all over the thing and you didn't actually, you didn't check off a box, but you sort of got a picture of this unformed person. They were just out of college and if they were going to be a great asset to the magazine and by and large it worked. And you sort of people who hadn't read anything that we'd read, say at Spy magazine or watched the same movies, we thought they probably just aren't going to be a proper fit because to me, offices are very much like jigsaw puzzles and you. All the pieces have to fit together. And it could take one bad element in an office to sort of change the tenor of the entire office. And so I avoided that as much as possible.
- [53:10]
Bella
Yeah. Is there one thing that you would use now, like if you chose one of those questions, what would it be?
- [53:18]
Graydon Carter
Well, I mean, who did you vote for in the last election?
- [53:22]
Bella
And I think that's too kind of.
- [53:24]
Graydon Carter
That'S a, that's adversarial. That's the most disqualified qualifying thing if you, if you answer that incorrectly.
- [53:31]
Bella
But if you chose something more benign to have, like to be less device.
- [53:37]
Graydon Carter
I mean, who do you prefer, the Arquette sisters or the Kardashian sisters? If the answer is Arquettes, we'd move on to the next question. We have a good chance of moving in the next question. If you said Kardashians, the chancery would say, very nice to meet you. And there's the door over there.
- [53:59]
Bella
I like the Kardashian system.
- [54:01]
Graydon Carter
I'm sure you do. I'm sure they're fine people.
- [54:05]
Bella
Yeah. I think you have to give people the benefit of what you don't know. You know. Well, you don't have to, but it's more interesting if you do.
- [54:19]
Graydon Carter
Well, other than the fact, I do think that in this era of way over sharing, here I am on a podcast, lying on my back, talking to you. But in this era of oversharing, I think that in five years, the greatest asset a young person, the gen. Whatever, it's going to be, the greatest asset they will have is the lack of any social media. I think that privacy, because the pendulum swings, and right now everything's out there, from the dinner you had last night to the breakfast muffin you had and photographs of that and girlfriends and who you follow and all the rest of this, in five years or whatever the period is going to be, that privacy will be considered a great asset and an attractive part of a person's overall makeup.
- [55:12]
Bella
Yeah.
- [55:14]
Graydon Carter
Yeah, that's a. I have five kids, no social media presence at all. And so I take great pride in that. And. And, you know, actually, none of my friends have a social media presence that I know of.
- [55:29]
Bella
Oh, I'm sorry.
- [55:30]
Graydon Carter
I've never been on Twitter and I've never been on Facebook. I've never even looked on Twitter or Facebook.
- [55:35]
Bella
God, that's impressive.
- [55:38]
Graydon Carter
It frees you up to iron your own shirts, you know.
- [55:40]
Bella
It does. That's much more productive in the end. Well, thank you so much for being on Fashion Neurosis.
- [55:47]
Graydon Carter
A great pleasure. I get to lie down while I'm doing.
- [55:51]
Bella
Was lovely to have you here and talk to you and. So interesting.
- [55:55]
Graydon Carter
Bella, thank you.
- [55:56]
Bella
Thank.