The December issue is hereand for the first time inVogueUSs history, it has a guest editor.
Listen to the full thing hereand read excerpts from the conversation below.
Chloe Malle:This is a big week at AmericanVogue.
True or false, this is the first guest editor ever?
Virginia Smith:That would be true, Chloe.
Malle:Whose idea was this, and why?
But AmericanVogue’s never had a guest editor.
And you asked whose idea was it?
It was Anna Wintour’s idea.
Smith:I don’t know if anyone really knows what prompted her.
Malle:Over his chicken paillard.
So she came fully prepared.
So there was really no way around that.
There was no way to know what was going to happen and meet the moment afterwards.
Nothing to do with politics whatsoeverjust a really creative issue.
He didn’t want to do anything with the news or with politics.
It really was meant to be a bit of a creative escape, I would say.
Malle:Were there second and third choices for guest editors or was it Marc or bust?
Antrim:It was Marc or Bust.
Marc was the only one.
So Anna and Marc have a long relationship and they’re really quite close.
Malle:So what were those early meetings like?
Forget the fact that she’s actually bringing in a guest editor.
She had all of these ideas and really a timetable that was quite accelerated.
She wanted decisions to be made right away.
At times I thought to myself thathewas desperate to escape.
Smith:Marc is someone who I think his creative process is different from Anna’s.
Marc Jacobs likes to think about things.
He likes to mull things over.
He likes to have more time, he likes to reconsider them, come back to them.
It’s just how he works.
That is the antithesis of how we are used to working at Vogue.
Antrim:He’s not an editor, and he was first to say that.
I had the feeling that he was thinking more of a single point of view running through it.
Maybe one photographer does the whole thing.
That was an idea he had.
That really does run counter to what we often do though.
It was interesting to watch these ideas take shape.
Marc was like, I love flowers.
Literacy is very important to me.
I love Steven Meisel, the photographer.
Smith:That’s true.
We were so lucky to have Steven Meisel do the cover shoot.
And Marc was very much hoping he would do that, and it was one of his favorite photographers.
So that did come out very early on in that first meeting.
So that was good to hear.
And that was the end of that.
Malle:But you did geta pretty iconic image of Annain the issue.
So Anna’s hairstyle, Marc’s hairstyle, uncannily similar, needed to be shot from behind.
So we have these two bobs, and indeed we did create that picture and it’s really great.
Malle:So Anna did not want herself to be on the cover.
Did Marc immediately have his next idea, or was that a evolving conversation?
Smith:I think Kaia came up very early on in the conversation.
Antrim:Really early.
Smith:Kaia was really discussed because he loves her and has a longstanding relationship with her.
So she was settled on early on.
We actually did that shoot really early.
We did it this summer and Grace Coddington did that story with us.
We spent a very fun Friday afternoon in theVoguecloset with a very good-natured Kaia.
Marc’s clothes are these magical creations, but they take a lot to get on and off.
Antrim:All the clothes in that shoot were Marc.
Smith:Yes, exactly.
That was a unique thing.
We felt we wanted to celebrate Marc in that way.
It was actually so fun.
It was great to be working with Grace again.
It really felt like coming back home, in a way.
Malle:And there’s another cover.
Antrim:That’s right.
So he wanted Anna Weyant to paint Kaia.
Then she went away and did this amazing painting.
Malle:There’s some incredible images in this issue.
I’m curious about the dance shoot, which seemed like a Herculean undertaking, I have to say.
When I looked at it, I was thrilled I wasn’t a part of this.
Antrim:Some 20, 22 pages, something like that.
Smith:Yeah, and about 45 trunks of clothes leaving the building.
It was quite something.
It was amazing to be able to work with him.
Marc really was so gung ho about that idea.
Anyway, he’d done all these sort of mood boards about dance and it looked amazing.
So that was sort of where it started.
Antrim:You’ve been hearing about this house for forever.
But these were justVoguepeople saying this.
None of this was coming from Marc.
Raul was really important here.
Smith:Because Marc kept insisting it wasn’t ready.
Anna was hearing none of that.Somethingwas going to be ready.
Antrim:It was never a 1000% clear to me that it was going to happen.
Gregory Crewdson, his work is very cinematic.
It mixes sort of realism and the uncanny.
His pictures are really just legendary, but he does not work on a small scale.
He arrived with some 40 people.
Malle:Oh, wow.
Antrim:It was an all-day shoot.
It’s like filming a movie to get one picture.
And the other thing is Crewdson’s pictures are quite unsettling.
But our boss, Anna Wintour doesn’t
Malle:She doesn’t love spook.
Antrim:She’s not inclined in that direction, I would say.
Malle:What was the reaction?
Antrim:Oh, she loved it.
This picture is undeniable.
Smith:It is.
Antrim:And Marc wanted to write his own piece about his house.
This was truly something that he labored over.
Malle:I loved the nails feature.
Alastair McKimm also oversaw that.
Antrim:Everybody knows about Marc’s nails, so he really wanted to celebrate nails.
Malle:It was sort of over-the-top nails and eyelashes.
And Jeremy O. Harris wrote a piece that accompanies the pictures.
Antrim:It’s great, full of his personality.
Working with Marc on the feature side of things was fascinating.
I remember for this one, he seemed to be explaining it for the 15th time.
So can you just find me a piece like that?
I was like, yes, sir.
Anyway, Jeremy is known for some corsets that he’s strapped himself into for the Tonys and things.
So he was really on the same wavelength about suffering for your fashion and your beauty.
And he wrote a great little piece.
Malle:I want to hear about how you guys felt like children of divorced parents.
Smith:There was a particularly tense sort of release meeting.
Antrim:And let me just explain what a release meeting is.
It’s really a moment to ensure all your ducks are in a row.
So there were a lot of options.
So at that point we had reached an impasse.
Smith:We were mortified.
We had to take the book to Spring Street.
I felt like we were kids in trouble.
Malle:Was there a compromise?
Antrim:It was all the dance portfolio.
Marc was really focused on the dance portfolio being the way he was seeing it.
They were not the pictures that Anna wanted to be in the dance portfolio.
The issue was really different from the issues ofVoguethat Virginia and I work on month after month after month.
Those differences are really wonderful, and they come out of Marc’s sensibility.
There were a lot of things that went his way.
But these two pictures that he wanted in the dance portfolio, they did get worked out on camera.
There’s this great making-of-the-issue video; you could see them talking about these pictures that he wanted.
Smith:I don’t think one person was the clear winner, to be honest.
Malle:Everyone wins.
Antrim:Guys, Anna won.
Smith:Well, on those particular pictures.
Smith:But on other things in that portfolio, Marc did win too.
The dog, whose name was Carl with a Ctell me about casting the dog, Virginia.
She goes, “I defer to Marc.”
Antrim:Marc had a dog in mind he’d seen on Instagram, I think.
But finally we found a New York dog named Carl.
The expression on Carl makes me smile every time I see it.
Antrim:And wearing Chanel.
I do also want to shout out the novelist Dana Spiotta who wrote the cover story.
Dana Spiotta has never done a magazine cover story like this before.
She was so game, and it’s a really great piece.
Kaia loved meeting her and really felt like she was seen and taken seriously.
So that was a real success.
Well, thank you guys so much.
