The Bag Lady Papers by Alexandra Penney Page B

“there is no such word as ‘no’” school. They approached my table with long lists of meetings to attend and people to interview. My editor in chief, the fabled Ruth Whitney, had left me with the advice, “You’ll learn by doing and I have complete faith in you.” I didn’t have the foggiest idea where her trust came from. Maybe my Vogue memo had been passed on to her to convince her that at least I had some fresh ideas.
    My first face-to-face was with the Viennese art director, Mrs. D. The bosom buddy of the previous beauty editor, Mrs. D clearly didn’t think I had the goods to replace her friend. I wasn’t sure I did, either.
    â€œWe need to do a bath story,” she stated the minute I entered her office. Like Miss G, she never absented her space except to okay layouts. Unlike Miss G’s leopard lair, Mrs. D’s office had a sterile air with its centrally placed long work-table and its single drawing pad. An overhead spotlight was aimed at the pad and two highly sharpened pencils in a chrome holder lay nestled next to it. It reminded me of an operating room.
    We need to do a story? Hmmm, wasn’t it the beauty editor’s job to come up with story ideas? At least that’s what they did at Vogue .
    â€œI would like to see a ravishing nude in a beautiful bathtub in an even more beautiful bathroom,” she continued in a heavy Austrian accent, not leaving me a second to utter a word. She focused on the pad in front of her and pencil-sketched—poorly—her vision.
    â€œThe photographer is Gianni Luttini,” she finished, handing me her sketch and placing the pad to one side of her desk. I knew I was dismissed when she started sorting other papers into perfect piles. I had my marching orders. I almost clicked my heels together before making an obedient second lieutenant’s turn out of her office.
    I’d been on several shoots for Vogue, so I had at least some inkling of how to proceed. When I called Luttini, who was famous for being difficult, to schedule the shoot, Mrs. D had already done it—for the next day.
    He informed me that he needed “the most perfect bathroom in New York,” and “a model with a perfect body.” He spokemostly in Italian, but I recognized the gist of a command when I heard one.
    I was to organize the entire shoot within the next twenty hours.
    There is no such word as “no.”
    I found the perfect bathroom. A friend of mine’s rich grandmother had an amazing one with a Pissarro on the wall opposite the sink. (I was told it was authentic but didn’t they understand—or care—that the humidity would completely ruin the painting?) My assistants located the perfect model. Little did I know that under no condition would she take off her clothes. I was also unaware that Glamour magazine didn’t countenance nudes in its pages. The Viennese Viper had set me up!
    My first shoot at Glamour was, of course, a disaster. Although she didn’t let on, the editor in chief knew full well that Mrs. D had a history as a troublemaker. She was kind enough never to ask to see Luttini’s pictures. I think he probably didn’t have film in his camera anyway.
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    Over the course of my four years at Glamour, I endured several more of the Viennese Viper’s ideas for stories. One of them involved a trip to the Caribbean with a famous French photographer whom the VV had flown over first class on the Concorde from Paris the week before. He was a tall, overweight, distinctively ugly man with a kind of Nixon-like demeanor with wobbly, just-forming jowls. He neverlooked me straight in the face while making demands in his heavy French accent.
    Three models; a hairdresser; his assistant; a makeup artist and her assistant; the photographer and his assistants; my assistant, P; and I trooped down to St. Maarten to shoot a major bathing suit portfolio for the March issue. I had scheduled five days,