It's OK for intellectual feminists to like fashion

January 31st 2013

In 1997 like today, from US Vogue editor Anna Wintour to the then New Yorker editor Tina Brown, successful female British magazine editors working in the US are cursed to rumours of ambassadorship the moment they get involved in political campaigns.

Judy Bachrach, Tina and Harry Come to America Tina Brown, Harry Evans and the Uses of Power (New York, 2001), p. 256

Posted at 8:36am and tagged with: Anna Wintour, Tina Brown, magazine, politics,.

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According to the tabloids, she [Tina Brown] was destined to become Blair’s ambassador to Washington. But these, alas, had even less substance [than the rumours about her husband Harry Evans joining the Blair government]. “I started that rumour. Absolutely,” Toby Young would later confess. “So they would look bad when it didn’t happen. I completely made it up”.

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December 27th 2012

Christine Lagarde’s career advice

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A middle-class teenager who’s raised to running one of the biggest law firms in the world before joining the French government and heading the IMF through hard work, dedication, rigour and talent, Christine Lagarde has long been one of my role models.

Reading through French journalists Cyrille Lachèvre and Marie Tisot’s biography Enquête sur la femme la plus puissante du monde in one sitting on Christmas day, it was impossible not to notice strong trends as to how she’s lead her career and life.

She sticks to form Lagarde was the Eurozone’s favourite Finance minister, not to mention the French government’s, when she ran for head of the IMF, yet she humbly sent the organisation a CV and cover letter.

She’s true to her style. When Lagarde started as French Finance minister, there was an uproar over the ostentatious jewellery she liked wearing. She gave in a few times, appearing on TV without them, but eventually decided against it since it made her feel naked. She’s always refused to dye her white hair. Lagarde’s tendency to include English words in French conversations annoyed politicians until Nicolas Sarkozy noticed having a Finance minister speaking fluent English was a decisive advantage.

She’s a meeting master. During one of the many all-nighters she had to pull to save Dexia, Lagarde kicked out of the room every person who didn’t hold decision power. When France ran the Ecofin, Lagarde sent the other European Finance ministers rules on how to behave during meetings, including “not reading the press while others speak”, “keeping speeches short” and “smiling”. Her time at Baker & McKenzie taught her to handle strong personalities and to always bring a back up to the negotiating table.

She’s generous. Lachèvre and Visot tell multiple anecdotes of collaborators who received gifts for no particular reason: she once bought her coworkers egg cups during a trip to the Netherlands because she liked them, purchased chocolate for everyone in Belgium and had a cake delivered to a journalist’s hotel room on his birthday. The meetings she runs always involve incredible food.

She has a very regimented lifestyle. Lagarde gets up before 6am everyday, usually to do some yoga, sometimes cycles to work. Photos of her discreetly exercising her abs during a meeting went viral in France. Lagarde doesn’t eat meat, hardly drinks any alcohol, doesn’t really go out late. Milk chocolate seems to be her only sin, sometimes eaten for lunch with litres of green tea.

She’s lead her career according to athletic principles. In her teens, Lagarde was part of the French synchronised swimming team, and you can find atheltic principles in her whole life, including eating carbs before a night of negotiations and believing in team work.

She doesn’t badmouth, nor does she spread gossip. Not about her collaborators, not about other politicians, not even about the Left when she was part of a right-wing government. This would go too much against her team-work ethic. Her loyalty lead her to introduce Red Bull in France, as per Prime Minister François Fillon’s wish and to never complain or comment when Sarkozy’s overcommunication tendency lead to additional financial difficulties for France.

She’s a relentless worker. Lagarde has a reputation for knowing her cases backwards, for turning up herself when others would send mere collaborators, for being able to ingest a large quantity of information really quickly and for making decisions even more quickly.

Posted at 11:01am and tagged with: career, france, politics,.

November 26th 2012

Magazine Writing: Asma al-Assad’s Vogue Profile Wasn’t the First

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When, in February 2011, American Vogue came under fire for its laudatory portrayal of Asma al-Assad, first lady of Syria, by Joan Juliet Buck, the magazine was reproducing a glossy tradition of obsessing over the Westernised wives of Middle Eastern and Persian dictators.

Reading Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Shah of Shahs, his account of the fall of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, I was reminded of how I first became aware of the dynasty’s existence: through a 1998 coffee-table book on legendary princesses, amongst which was the Shah’s third wife, Farah Pahlavi.

That book by French journalist Henry-Jean Servat, like most features on Iranian imperial life you could read in magazines such as Paris Match in the 1970s, couldn’t have been further from Kapuscinski’s account of fear, terror and torture.

Much like Buck’s profile of al-Assad, it was all about fairy tale weddings and designer dresses, about a simple love story between a man and a woman and how good they were to their people and at modernising the country, about charity work and Western-educated women.

Western education is a key part of many dictators’ wives narrative, including for al-Assad and Pahlavi, who respectively studied in London and Paris. If they like our clothes and were educated in our universities, how can they not embrace our values and bring them back home? There is an underlying arrogance to these articles not dissimilar from the European empires determination to assimilate the world to their values over six centuries.

The Pahlavis might not have hired an American PR company to promote them in the West, but their oil money did the trick. Kapuscinski explains the frenzy governments got into the second they realised how much they could make of the Shah’s petrodollars. This focus on selling contracts to Iran might have been why foreign magazines chose to highlight the glossy, even though the state’s abuse of human right was already documented.

In her 2009 Sundance documentary The Queen and I, Nahid Persson Sarvestani touches upon the difficulty of remaining objective about her subject, something many biographers apparently struggle with. Sarvestani grew up in an impoverished Iranian family and, as part of a Communist group, took to the streets in 1979. Both her brothers were murdered by the Khomeini regime shortly after. Yet she waits until the last minute to ask Pahlavi about her husband’s regime abuse of human rights.

She acknowledges two reasons for this: a fear of her access to the Queen being cut short and her growing fondness for the Shahbanou.

When Sarvestani finally asks Pahlavi about human right abuses, the answer is a very nuanced acknowledgement

I’m not claiming that Iran was a democracy like in Europe. You have to take the conditions of the time into consideration. That was the period of the Soviet Union. It was the Cold War and it was the wish of the Soviet Union to make Iran communist and to have access to the Persian Gulf. So for the security of the country we needed a secret service. They did things that were wrong in comparison to the rest of the civilised world. If Savak was so powerful, how come they couldn’t identify the mullahs? All the leaders opposing the Shah in Iran and abroad are alive and well.

Knowing how much the wife of a tyrant is involved in his dealings can be difficult. Some, like Leila Trabelsi in Tunisia, are integral to their husbands’ reign of terror. Others, like al-Assad and Pahlavi, are seen as little more than arm candy focusing on charity and cultural work. How much can you ignore of what is going on in your own country and of what your spouse is doing? At what point does willing or self-imposed ignorance become tacit assent?

Posted at 5:32am and tagged with: magazine writing, Vogue, politics,.

November 12th 2012

The Stripy T-shirt As A Political Symbol Of The French Industry

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Can you imagine Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, innovation and skills posing for the cover of the Sunday Times magazine wearing a bowler hat and an umbrella in defence of the British industry? Arnaud Montebourg, the man with the slightly communist title of Ministre du Redressement Productif, minister of Industrial renewal, did just so for Le Parisien Magazine in the French equivalent of the clichéd British outfit: an Armor.Lux stripy t-shirt.

In the accompanying editorial, Montebourg wears other products of the French fashion industry such as Caulaincourt shoes and a Bérengère Claire shirt. His acknowledged aim is to prove the French industry is still going strong, producing quality products, and to encourage his fellow citizens to buy things made in France.

The French industry can’t bounce back without exports, including clothing ones, which accounted for 7.2 billion euros in 2011. Armor.Lux, Saint James and Petit Bateau are three of the French brands succeeding in France and abroad thanks to their high-quality nautical style.

It’s therefore fitting that, even though Montebourg’s cover t-shirt was French, the styling decision was anything but, adopting the codes of what is perceived as French outside the borders, rather than what the French people really wear.

A recent staple of the French wardrobe, first used by la Marine (the Navy) the stripy t-shirt was popularized over the past century by designers such as Coco Chanel and Jean Paul Gaultier. Fashion is one of France’s strongest soft powers, and the sailor jersey has become a symbol of Frenchness abroad. No French-inspired editorial is complete without it, and American magazine TIME used the item to cover its issue on The death of French culture.

The stripy t-shirt sells well because it sells the French way of life and the Gallic romanticism foreigners still buy into. Montebourg is not just wearing a t-shirt, he’s wearing the millions of tourists who come to Paris for the food and the philosophical conversations in cafés, for the nonchalant cigarette and l’amour libre. He’s wearing a garment which innovation, ignoring colour and cut versions, is stuck somewhere on a 1920s Deauville beach. Is this loop of heritage and cliché really what the French industry is condemned to?

Posted at 7:45pm and tagged with: france, petit bateau, politics, chanel, Stripe,.

October 14th 2012

The Inherent Sexism of the Valérie Trierweiler Debate

Yesterday, the Huffington Post asked whether Valérie Trierweiler was “France’s least popular First Lady ever”. The question stemmed from the latest unauthorised biography of François Hollande’s partner, La Frondeuse (The Troublemaker), which attributes her a string of concomitant lovers, while her marriage to journalist Denis Trierweiler was still ongoing.

Right-wing politician Patrick Devedjian and left-wing politician Hollande are named as the lovers (Spoiler: both Devedjian and Trierweiler are suing for slander, sorry Hollywood). A man in each camp! Clearly she wasn’t taking any chance! She obviously wanted power! She used her feminine wiles to get ahead!

Trierweiler is a classic case of the double standard society holds female sexuality to. No one has ever claimed Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who in between his three wives married into wealth and networks above his own, slept his way to the top, possibly because by now we know he’s fucked his way to the bottom (or what many people would consider a decent in-between), something it took France years to face. Little has been made of the fact the Trierweiler-Hollande affair allegedly started when he was still with Segolène Royale, while Royale was running for President, and that the Parti Socialiste he was leading likely didn’t support her as much as it should have as a consequence of their unraveling marriage, hindering her presidential hopes and propelling him towards his.

France’s position towards public figure mistresses, like so many things, is inherited from its monarchy days. Kings had (multiple) mistresses and popular psyche started considering infidelity as a proof of power, integrating it into culture. Le Roi a fait battre tambour, a 1750 song still on the French literary curriculum, tells the story of a king who gathers “all the ladies of his kingdom” and chooses a marquis’ wife for her beauty. As a reward, the sovereign names him “a handsome Marshall of France”. At the end of the song, the queen “has a bouquet made/Of beautiful lilies/And the scent of this bouquet/Causes the Marquise to die”.

A few regime changes on, we’re still judging women according to a homemaker or temptress dichotomy and Trierweiler has been cast as the latter. Yet nothing she’s done means she deserves to be called a skank or a harlot over dinner by people who have never met her and whose opinion is based on a few newspaper articles and the fact she isn’t married to Hollande. Poor morality by lack of marriage certificate seems to be her crime. In years of yore, the public opinion trial she’s been undergoing since May would have ended up at the stake.

I’ve written in the past about how stupid I thought Trierweiler supporting left-wing candidate Olivier Falorni over Royale during an election was. She’d chosen to express her opinion over a national issue on the most public of forums, Twitter, and I had no problem writing up my thoughts on the matter. I am however in no way entitled to judge her private life and what goes on in her bedroom. Magazines and dailies have been publishing articles on the subject under the self-fulfilling pretense that it is in the public interest and might affect the presidency (a similar argument was used to justify the publication of half-naked pictures of the duchess of Cambridge). If it does, it’s not Trierweiler’s sexuality that should be judged, but Hollande’s inability to separate the personal from the professional and the presidential.

France is facing its bigot demons at the moment, between an unmarried President and the possibility of a law allowing same-sex marriage. This is the 21st century in a country whose culture has been feasting over libertinage for centuries, yet for a still-too-significant and vocal part of the French population, when it comes to sex, we’ll stone the adulterous woman and take nothing less than a blessed union between a man and a woman, thank you very much.

Posted at 5:08pm and tagged with: france, politics,.

August 12th 2012

Vogue UK is catching up on the London French community

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If Vogue is talking about it, it’s definitely a trend. In its August issue, the magazine is picking up on the growing size of the French community in London and its possible growth following François Hollande’s election.

This type of article comes back cyclically, supported by a combination of anti-European feeling, fascination for French ways and any French news affecting Britain in some way (unless you’re the Daily Mail, in which case the threat of a French invasion always sells).

As writer Kathleen Baird-Murray points out, the strength of the London French community is nothing knew. On my second day in London as a scared, 17 year-old coming to a big city and a big school, I was immediately told by the French lycée headmaster that South Kensington was dubbed “the frog valley” because of the number of French citizens living there.

Hollande’s elections and his threat of higher taxes, is the first reason Baird-Murray gives for the number of French people living in the UK, followed by professional relocation (diplomats, French companies executives), appreciating London’s “more tolerant environment”, the British attitude to success and failure and the entrepreneurial opportunities.

Baird-Murray doesn’t mention the most recent advantage: with the current exchange rate, if you’re paid in pounds, your euros go further. With the Eurostar, and direct flights to most big French cities available at decent prices, the French go back often to stock up on food, pharmaceuticals and clothes, especially during the sales periods. Why wouldn’t they? A £160 Maje skirt costs £125 in Paris, a £69.50 Petit Bateau jumper £55. Even with bank charges, you win.

Posted at 10:12am and tagged with: france, politics, Vogue,.

June 17th 2012

Valérie Trierweiler: Sometimes, shutting up is the real freedom of speech

I happened to be online to read live the outpouring of reactions following Valérie Trierweiler, French President François Hollande current partner, tweeting her support to Olivier Falorni, the man opposing Hollande’s ex-partner Ségolène Royal in local député, or MP, elections. Ever since, French media, new and traditional, have been rife with reactions, mostly negative, to the First Lady taking on the public scene a very private affair. Did she really believe, along with what polls suggest is a majority of local voters, that Falorni is the best candidate? Was it just spite towards Royal? Questioned psychologists and couple counselors argued jealousy was the main motivation for the Tweet, humorists pointed out jealousy was more often a first wife attribute, and some Twitter users complained this was once again reducing women down to basic prejudices of emotion over reason.

Trierweiler’s tweet did a disservice to everyone: to women, because she’s given anyone who wants to argue women are little more than emotional beings with no place in the political sphere ammunition they didn’t need; to her husband’s government, whose ministers and spokespeople have been asked to comment on little else for the past 24 days and therefore seems focused on trivial matters rather than state affairs; to France, which didn’t need more added to its reputation for liberal love; and to herself, all that for a Tweet which actual political weight to voters has yet to be proven.

Most of all, Trierweiler comes out looking tactless, clumsy and selfish. True, she had the courage of owning up to her tweet, rather than claiming hacking and didn’t close her Twitter account. Throughout the campaign and since her partner’s election, she’s made it known she wanted to retain her freedom of speech and has kept her journalist job at Paris Match. Tweeting isn’t like misspeaking in the middle of a press conference, especially for someone using the medium as rarely as Trierweiler: you can assume it to be a thought-through act. As a seasoned political journalist, credited with the brilliant “monsieur normal” spin on Hollande’s campaign and communication events such as a staged kiss, it’s difficult to argue she was blind to the likely reactions to her tweet. Yet, she seemed so set on asserting her freedom of speech and behaviour she chose to go ahead, ignoring the most basic Internet rules every Twitter user knows and which make most of us think twice before tweeting something negative about the company we work for or someone we really dislike, for instance. Whether you want it or not, being the live-in partner of a President comes with strings and public opinion on your every move, which Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama learnt at their expense.

Many French people listening to the news at the moment don’t fully understand what Twitter is. What they do understand is that the President’s partner took his mind and energy off state affairs, that the Presidency, a month in, doesn’t look that far off the gossip circus Nicolas Sarkozy’s term was, and which the left heavily criticised during the campaign. I can already hear my grandmother reusing the argument she barred my defense of Cécilia Attias walking out on her President husband Sarkozy with: “Madame de Gaulle did it, her, and she never complained”. France and women have come a long way since Mrs de Gaulle, and the days of suffering in silence are thankfully gone. But there are times when the real freedom is to shut up after careful considerations of possibilities and outcomes and this week, Trierweiler forgot it. In the process, she likely diminished her political standing and lost some of that dear freedom of speech. I can’t imagine the Elysée or Parti Socialiste comms teams trusting her with public communication any time soon.

Posted at 7:59am and tagged with: Twitter, france, politics,.

May 14th 2012

Could Valérie Trierweiler be on a Paris Vogue cover? Should she be?

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From Hillary Clinton to Michelle Obama, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing American First Ladies pose for US Vogue. No French President spouse however has ever graced the cover of the Paris edition of the magazine, while her husband held the job. Could Valérie Trierweiler, President-elect François Hollande’s partner, be the first to do so?

The First Lady/Partner/Girlfriend status in France is a grey area. The term doesn’t even exist in French, beyond the Première Dame translation coined from the American. Even though presidential spouses under the Fifth Republic have traditionally overseen charities and Elysée entertaining in a similar manner to their American counterparts, they don’t have any official standing à la East Wing. Nothing stops them from working, even though Trierweiler’s plan to keep her job as a journalist has already been questioned. Bernadette Chirac had an easier time with it, since she was a local elected official. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy released a single album while at the Elysée.

Until Nicolas Sarkozy’s election, French presidential spouses were women who, by their philosophy, age and fashion sense, didn’t often fit with the Vogue cover standards. Cécilia Attias could have been a strong contender, but she left too early, awarding her first interview and cover, post-divorce, to ELLE. Bruni-Sarkozy also bagged a few ELLE covers, mostly through stock pictures, and a Vanity Fair one. But no ParisVogue. ELLE France is perceived as a more intellectual, committed magazine than Vogue. Whether or not the offer was ever on the table, Bruni-Sarkozy was too aware of the luxury lifestyle raised against her husband to consider it.

The non-existant political stance of French Vogue could also explain its lack of First Lady coverdom. You couldn’t imagine Emmanuelle Alt, or Carine Roitfeld before her, fundraise for any candidate the way Anna Wintour did for Barack Obama. Whereas the American fashion industry has widely embraced the Democrat candidate, the French fashion industry is keeping mum on the subject, leaving fashion to fashion and politics to politics.

In The Obamas, a Mission, a Marriage, Jodi Kantor recounts White House staff worrying at how a Vogue cover, with its frivolity and luxury subtext, would be perceived by American Joe and Jane. Hollande campaigned on being a normal President, in contrast with Sarkozy’s perceived luxury lifestyle, and Trierweiler grounded him throughout her interviews with anecdotes of his shopping at the local supermarket. This doesn’t make her an ideal candidate for a Vogue cover. Yet her husband also campaigned on the importance of France factories and jobs and fashion represents a significant part of the country’s economy and heritage

So yes, Trierweiler should do a Vogue cover, but she should do it on her own terms. Just like Obama partly agreed to Vogue “because so few black women appeared on the covers of the major fashion magazines” (1) she should do it because we have been deprived of an ambitious career woman at the Elysee for a while, of a woman who succeeded because of her skills and craft and refused to live in the shadow of her husband. She should do it in her usual “trench-coat or blazer, simple shirt, ample trousers and small heels […] accessorized by a Gérard Darel handbag and a colorful silk scarf”, in high-street if she feels like it. Female role models are everywhere, if you can be bothered to look, but being on the cover of Vogue would make it that bit easier for girls everywhere to see, and to remember smarts can get you far.

(1) Kantor, Jodi The Obamas, a Mission, a Marriage (London, 2012) p.91

Posted at 5:50am and tagged with: france, politics, Vogue, Vogue Paris, Anna Wintour,.

April 28th 2012

Does France need its own Birgitte Nyborg?

Eighteen percent, nearly one in five French woman voted for far right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen at the first round of last Sunday’s French presidential elections.

Trying to explain this number, many a political pundit suggested women chose Le Pen because she’s a woman. Said sociologist Sylvain Crépon on radio Europe 1*: “Marine Le Pen is a busy woman, a divorced lawyer with a modern image. That she’s living in a blended family anchors her in her time, and it might have contributed to the female vote.”

I won’t dignify the suggestion that women are so void of political sense they cast their ballot based on sex, ideas be damned, but this highlights the absence of strong female candidates amongst the 10 politicians running. Aside from Le Pen, the other two women in the race, Eva Joly for the green party Europe Ecologie Les Verts and Nathalie Arthaud for Lutte Ouvrière, a party so left of the political spectrum it nearly falls off it, never stood a chance. They respectively got 2.31% and 0.56% of votes.

Women weren’t absent from the campaign, but they stuck to more “traditional” female roles of support and communication. Nathalie Kociusko-Morizet, who, no matter what you think of her boss Sarkozy, is one of the brainiest and smartest women in politics, was spokesperson for the Président-candidat. Clémentine Autain was on every TV station throughout the campaign defending Front de Gauche candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Nadjat Vallaud-Belkacem was François Hollande’s spokesperson. All these women are smart, locally elected politicians who have sometimes held ministerial jobs. Yet as things stand, I can’t imagine any of them running for president, and winning.

Denmark, despite having a Queen never had a female Prime Minister before Borgen was broadcast on TV. Now Hell Thorning-Schmidt has been in power since October 2011. The West Wing dreamt Obama, as Matthew Santos, before he happened. To change mentalities and finally elect a woman at its highest office, does France also need its own (quality) TV series proving fictionally, week in, week out, that yes, a woman can do it too?

* Sylvain Crépon quoted in “Qui sont les nouveaux électeurs du FN ?”, Europe 1 24 April 2012, “Le fait que Marine Le Pen soit une femme, qu’elle ait une image assez moderne, de femme active, avocate, divorcée, qui vit dans une famille recomposée, c’est un peu la femme de son temps, ça a pu contribuer à un vote féminin” (Translation my own)

Still from Borgen, Season 1 episode 1, Link TV Borgen Press Room

Posted at 2:53pm and tagged with: france, politics, TV series, Borgen, The West Wing,.

April 21st 2012

Three reasons why France shouldn’t raise VAT on luxury products

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Rich bashing is à la mode, and nowhere more than in France in the run-up to tomorrow’s presidential elections.

Asked about raising VAT on luxury products to 33%, as it was before 1992, front runner Parti Socialiste candidate François Hollande, answered: “I’ll look into it to know whether it is compatible with EU laws but it does make sense”.

EU law says no, it’s not compatible. All EU countries have to align their VAT between 15 and 21%. Exceptions, such as for French catering, are granted on on a case by case basis.

Hollande’s interest in the idea was, by all accounts, hypothetical, theoretical and above all political. He has since announced on another radio station that a higher VAT on luxury products wouldn’t be allowed.

There are at least three reasons, beyond EU laws, why he should never have entertained the possibility in the first place:

1- The luxury industry is an integral part of the French economy. When lingerie company Lejaby went into administration, it was bought by Sofama, a leather goods specialist working for LVMH, a group which has just published Q1 results up 25.4%. At the other end of the spectrum, a 33% tax would hit car manufacturers, an industry already in difficulties: in March alone, the number of Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroën cars sold was down 20%.

2- The financial gain of a higher VAT would be more symbol than solution. A significant percentage of luxury buys in France is made by high-net worth individuals traveling from abroad, especially China and the Middle-East. These people can claim back VAT the moment they leave the French territory. Furthermore, for economist and president of Les Cahiers Verts de l’Economie Jean-Pierre Petit French, French luxury conglomerates, including LVMH and PPR, do most of their business abroad.

3- A higher VAT would encourage fakes. Luxury industry customers are split into two uneven categories: high-net worth individuals, who can afford to buy regularly, and aspirational customers, who save up and buy from time to time. As laid out by Dana Thomas in Deluxe How Luxury Lost its Lustre, the latter would be worse hit by a higher VAT, and could be tempted to buy fakes, which have been linked to everything from drug cartels to terrorism.

Photo from Pouvoir Politique

Posted at 7:10pm and tagged with: politics, Luxury brand, france,.