4:00 pm in the Vogue Room, alongside Anna Wintour
Chapter three of "Core Curriculum: Everything You Need to Know I learned at Vogue."
SUCCESS CAN BE SUPER SCARY. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!
Do you worry that you have your sights set impossibly high within the industry in which you wish to work, and that you might be interviewing out of your league?
Or, does it feel like you are scraping the bottom of the barrel of “opportunities,” when it comes to the job posts that you answer, and the positions for which you pretend to express interest?
We have all lived these frustrations, more often than we dare to admit.
But for me, in landing this dream job, it was the former that struck a nerve.
Because when I set my sights on Vogue — the gatekeeper at the time in fashion, media, and cultural influence — I wanted in. To see for myself, and up-close, how exactly they made the magic happen.
But when I finally (finally!) arrived on the job, I looked around at the chic, shiny, and supremely confident staffers who graced its halls- and decided I had been certifiably insane for thinking I might ever belong there.
From the beginning, my career at Vogue brought me tears, sleepless nights, and nausea — and that was on a good day.
I walked into the place day one, privately panicked, and asked myself: Are the people who work at Vogue simply born ready to work there?
I now counted as my colleagues people who had known “Oscar” (de la Renta) since birth, had spent summers in college assisting photographer Bruce Webber on fashion shoots, and for whom “Mark and James” (Badgley Mischka) just insisted on custom creating their wedding dress.
This time treasure was taken inside The (real) Vogue Closet, on Condé Nast’s 13th floor. I promise you this image is real, and there are more photos from this spread, which I will share in an upcoming chapter of Core Curriculum.
Inside this insanely exclusive of inner circles, I suddenly felt like an outsider, and my imagination ran wild with all of the ways that I might (VERY publicly) fail in front of everyone at Vogue. To include, of all people, Anna Wintour.
Looking back on this trying time, I want to tell my young self that I was hired because I possessed substance and grit. And in that moment, I should have spent more time channeling the very confidence that Vogue — rather ironically — already had in me.
The Lesson:
Part 1. Are the shiny chic Vogue staffers who possess that air of confidence really just one of us- but a new and improved variety?
They are.
[Please now shameless cue in your head to KT Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See”, the theme song for The Devil Wears Prada.]
Part 2. Each of us has within us the power to become someone who stands out in the room. Because elegance, grace, and refinement are qualities that are learned.
When in Rome
During my first week at Vogue, I was invited to join in the first of many intimate intra-office celebrations to come.
At that time, the powers that be made a habit of gathering us together internally, to celebrate each other’s birthdays, upcoming weddings, and pending arrivals: new babies, promotions, or new jobs, with champagne and cupcakes.
These events always took place at 4:00 pm sharp in “The Vogue Room” on Condé Nast’s 12th floor at 350 Madison Avenue, with on average thirty-something or so of us in attendance.
So in my first week at Condé Nast, I found myself as the new girl in the room attending one of these small-scale celebrations, with Anna Wintour, as fellow reveler.
Stick thin, and startlingly striking in person, Anna achieved a unique physical presentation that was perplexingly perfect, uniquely all her own, and obviously unattainable for the rest of us.
Her sinewy physique, rod straight posture, and razor sharp intellect made her appear larger than life, plus her steely calm always threw everyone around her completely off center. She had an aura all her own, and to witness up close the details of her physical presentation had a distracting and simultaneously mesmerizing effect. It was artful, dazzling perfection.
My instincts told me not to eat a cupcake in front of Anna Wintour. Week one, or ever.
And I learned that day that while fabulous fashion people keep champagne on hand for its celebratory sensibilities, they don’t actually drink it.
So, I put a cupcake on my plate, didn’t take a bite, and took the smallest sip of champagne as we toasted the birthday boy. (In this instance the “birthday boy” was Edward Menicheschi, Vogue’s then Associate Publisher for Europe).
And fortunately, I had just passed my first important test at Vogue.
The Lesson: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When you find yourself dropped into an unfamiliar environment, mirror the actions of those around you. And do so until you find your own footing within the organization, and earn the credibility to do things your own way.
Stay tuned for the next chapter of Core Curriculum, coming your way next Sunday!
“Inside The Emerald City”, a unique in all the world glimpse into Condé Nast in the 90s.
Subscribe so you do not miss!
Maria Devaney graduated from Georgetown University in the 1990s, and would like to thank fellow alum Condé Montrose Nast who graduated in the 1890s from the same institution. Maria would also like to thank Franny Nast, Condé’s aunt, for funding his college education when his parents could not. Condé went on to become President of Georgetown’s student body, the same position for which (former U.S. President) Bill Clinton campaigned in the late 1960s- and lost.
After Georgetown, Condé worked for a college classmate’s father in magazine publishing, then broke off on his own in 1909 to acquire an obscure society publication called Vogue- which Condé built into the media empire we know today.
“Everything You Need to Know I Learned at Vogue” began as a private letter to Maria’s (then small) daughter Margaux, and evolved into a four-year, on-campus workshop for students of The Georgetown Scholars Program (GSP) at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.