A French editor seeks redemption online

MANILA, Philippines - The disgraceful departure of Carine Roitfeld from French Vogue last year sent shockwaves all over the world. While American Vogue may be the biggest cash cow for Condé Nast Publishing, the soul of the Vogue franchise resided in Roitfeld’s French Vogue.

Roitfeld restructured French Vogue when it was on life support. She was a model then a stylist, a peculiar choice for an editor of an esteemed albeit unstable brand such as French Vogue. It’s like those super stylists who suddenly become fashion designers. God flips a coin every time such a project occurs; it can go north or south very fast. All doubts were put aside as Carine transformed the magazine into an edgy, sexy and yet still accessible magazine. Her fingerprints were all over the pages of French Vogue for the last 10 years.

Model Kate Upton shot by Bruce Weber for CR

Suddenly, like an unexpected earthquake, Carine left the magazine. Or did Vogue kick Carine out? There had been rumors that Carine passed on Balenciaga prototypes to Max Azaria of BCBG for him to copy. This rumor took on a life of its own when Carine, one of the most important figures in the world of fashion, was banned at Balenciaga’s show. Actually, the entire staff was banned. It was a dark unicorn moment, simply unbelievable.

Then the worms came out of the woodwork. Talk of her massive X-deals and side projects that conflicted with her position at Vogue circled the watercoolers from Condé Nast to VIP events in every major city in the country. Then it landed in the democratic and sometimes errant sphere of the Internet. Boom.

You would think she was a dead woman walking. Instead she dyed her hair back to dark brown (after a dirty blonde phase) and cashed in her intimate relationships with some of the world’s greatest designers such as Tom Ford and Karl Lagerfeld. Aside from her two ardent supporters, a league of tastemakers have congregated and contributed to her ultimate comeback. The biannual CR Fashion Book is slated to launch this month (The online channel is already live.)

Carine is clever enough to create edgy images without surrendering to repetitively blatant sexual themes. Time has softened her and perhaps may be influenced by yet another new role, being grandmother to her daughter Julia’s child (Julia was the face of Tom Ford’s Black Orchid fragrance).

She also has a MAC line that sells itself by paying homage to her watery and smoky eyes. She has done a multitude of interviews (one in which she was wearing an outfit by Balenciaga) that covered her version of the departure from Vogue to which she answers with lyrical and vague French-English statements down to the inception of her new baby CR Fashion Book. It seems like Carine is here to stay, for this moment at least. As she says in a New York Times interview, “I am the winner.”

Carine has escaped fashion Siberia thanks to her savvy friends at the top and her throng of fans. Say what you may about Carine, she has always stood out from the Voguettes who are infamous for looking like mannequins from Bergdorf Goodman. Carine’s style is effortless; she’s like a magnificent swan among the peacocks. She’s not better but different. It is her singularity that makes her indispensable to the fashion world.

Carine’s story is the kind of cautionary tale that sends everyone in the fashion industry quivering in their heels. Working in YStyle, we know we’re no Vogue, but it seems like the fashion industry experience, with its unique moral code and ethics, told with such pathos, is no different for us.

The backstabbing, theft of intellectual property, snobbery, pretension and air kisses are the same. If you have been here long enough you may have already felt the searing and Pyrrhic pain of some kind of betrayal. There is the crippling crab mentality that keeps everyone from moving on to greener pastures. Then you get the surprising loyalties and having those hands to hold on to when things get complicated. In fashion everything can get dramatic — farcical, even.

In the west, couture or high-end fashion is a billion-dollar game. Here, we are — at best — surviving. Most independent designers hardly get by. Only a handful have found financial stability as fashion designers. Fold in this uneven pie chart of success all the bad habits of catty people. It’s enough to make the most talented of designers roll up their fabric and send it back to Divisoria.

My pet peeve is that they just don’t give a shit when it comes to tailoring and patternmaking. Some don’t even line the dresses. I have experienced, time and time again, ordering a dress only to see it die after one use. Then there’s the copying, which just makes me feel so much embarrassment for the designer. Fashion designing should be fun, so why resort to copying?

The world is filled with inspiration. Art, nature, colorful personalities are everywhere. Why resort to style.com?

Carine’s story is also very common to a lot of people working in media. It has been a very gray place. It’s inevitable to form alliances and friendships with designers and other brands. I count two designers, Rhett Eala and Dennis Lustico, as my close friends (our friendship has nothing to do with fashion at all) and both have never proposed anything umbrageous. Despite the notion that fashion can be shallow and Macbethish, fashion friends can be real friends. I have shown my support on my own accord and continue to patronize designers I believe in even if we have no personal relationship with one another. There’s the question as to how you can support your friends without being biased. It is something that I’m extra particular with. The ethics can turn very dim. If you start feeling weird about it, it probably is weird. Any editor will know the difference.

That’s why we started YStyle: it’s a place where designers, makeup artists, models and graphic designers can show their work even if they have zero connections. Bea Ledesma, the current editor of YStyle, has been known to discover amazing talent through Tumblr. Everyone gets a chance, something Carine regrets as she usually featured the big guys.

The last thing about fashion is that it is actually at its best when it is very feral. It’s all about instincts. It is a place of adventure, you are able to push trends or alternately enhance personal style. Fashion is all about giving people ideas that they would have never thought of. Carine’s magazine is all about that. The extortionate themes that run throughout its pages are either sexy or gamey. She has said that in French Vogue she felt that her hands were tied. In her magazine she has free reign, thanks to her open-minded publishers (the same people who handle V and Visionaire).

Roitfeld’s story exposes the estimable and uncollectible sides of the fashion industry all at the same time. It can be both cruel and wonderful. You need to work at it. To succeed in this industry one must not be tarred with the same brush as the ordinary.

Let’s make fashion a place where one can dream, not a place where nightmares never end. It’s time to believe in the industry once again.