Bernadette briefly takes the Wintour helm
Carin Robinson
Having read Marina Hyde’s harrowing article (The Guardian) on Anna Wintour’s resignation and Lauren Sanchez’s wedding, Bernadette realised that the world of fashion is at sea until Wintour’s replacement at Vogue. She knew instantly and with unwavering conviction that the only thing for it was to put herself at the helm.
It was thus that she arrived, bedecked in vintage Westwood and awash in No. 5, at the doors of the World Trade Centre in New York. No one was expecting her there, but Bernadette was not deterred. Her mother, the great scholar and feminist martyr, did not teach Bernadette the stoic philosophy of Epictetus for no reason. And, therefore, precisely in moments like the one in the grand foyer of Condé Nast, Bernadette could channel her deepest reserves and simply refuse to be refused. But when the very crisp young lady guarding the entrance to the lift would not be swayed by Bernadette’s relentless lines of rational argumentation, Bernadette yet again had to turn to the wisdom of her father – the most constant of constant socialites and most fickle of fickle parents. Bernadette’s father could fix any impasse with a bottle of French champagne…
Once locked into the office of Wintour (she would let her team in later, when she had properly orientated herself) she could look through the developing draft of the next issue of British Vogue. She could spread out the pages of all twenty-nine Vogue drafts side by side on the great expanse of carpet. There Bernadette, freeing herself of her tartan overcoat, knelt beside the mock-ups and pored over the pages and pages beauty. But, she could not tell right from wrong. She could not tell which garments, which styles, which couture cultures should be rejected and which accepted. She did not know whether the blue on her fingernails put her into the wrong tribe from looking at any of the books. She did not know if the books themselves were rule books, artifacts, gatekeepers, social contracts or political treatises. She certainly did not know what, hypothetically, she should buy or wear tomorrow. But she somehow felt this was not the fault of the mock-ups themselves, but was rather a function of her education – one of too many brittle scrolls in dark towers and too many sunny G&Ts on the sides of cricket ovals. Nothing could prepare Bernadette for the endless variation paired with unyielding constraint of choice. Nothing could prepare her for the beauty paired with horror. Nothing could prepare her for the raging feminism paired with complete submission. Nothing could prepare her for the….prices! It was at this point, the point of reading the small print next to the photos, that Bernadette decided to consider morality briefly again. Not for too long, of course.
Just long enough to get her out of there. She unlocked the door and let them all in and let herself slip out noiselessly, heels in hand, through the Wintour gangs, down in the lift, past the not so crisp young lady sleeping at her desk and into the back of one of those very yellow taxis. Follow that chef! she said, and lived happily ever after.
