[ Monday, November 26, 2001 ]

welcome to the dollhouse

Toby Young (right) with fellow Brits Tom Shone and Lucy Sykes. Photograph courtesy Dafydd Jones (dafjones.com).

Wherein our hero, on his first day at Vanity Fair, endures ritual humiliations and editor-in-chief Graydon Carter's infamous "seven rooms" pep talk.

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BY TOBY YOUNG

On July 5, 1995, I had to decide what to wear for my first day at work. At that time Vanity Fair was based at 350 Madison Avenue between 44th and 45th, a 23-story building a few blocks west of Grand Central station. "350," as everyone called it, was then the headquarters of Condé Nast, the company that publishes Vanity Fair along with over a dozen other glossy magazines including Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Architectural Digest, House & Garden, Condé Nast Traveler, Allure, Self, and Glamour. (Condé Nast has since moved to 4 Times Square.) Visitors to the building had to check in at the front desk and were either directed to the main elevators in the atrium or herded into the service elevator, a rickety contraption reserved for messengers, delivery boys, and the like. Security was tight after a group of animal-rights activists had staged a sit-in in the office of Vogue editor Anna Wintour on the 13th floor.

When I'd worked at The Times of London in 1986 I was told to dress as if I might be sent off to interview the Archbishop of Canterbury at any moment. The dress code at Vanity Fair, by contrast, had been described to me by Dana Brown, Graydon's secretary, as "real casual", which I took to mean jeans and a T-shirt. That suited me fine. After some deliberation I chose a pair of vintage 501s and an XL T-shirt that reproduced a Modern Review cover with a bare-chested Keanu Reeves and the tagline: "Young, Dumb and Full of Come." I'd already sent Graydon one of these and thought he might get a kick out of seeing me wearing one.

I was supposed to be in his office at 10 a.m., so at 9:55 a.m. I presented myself at the front desk of 350.

"Could you direct me to Vanity Fair, please?" I asked the security officer.

"Ninth floor," he barked. "Report to the supervisor."

Supervisor? Good God, I thought. They do take their security seriously.

The ninth floor turned out to be the Condé Nast "Messenger Center," a warren of corridors populated almost entirely by young Hispanic men. It was a fascinating glimpse into below-stairs life at Condé Nast, one I was never to have again. The degree of segregation between the classes at 350 was far greater than any I'd encountered on Fleet Street. Not only did they use different elevators, but once you were in the Messenger Center it was virtually impossible to get out of it other than by taking the service elevator back down to the lobby. When Condé Nast editorial assistants needed to dispatch a package they'd take one of the normal lifts to the ninth floor and literally pop the package through a hatch. That was the extent of their contact with the Messenger Center.

The "supervisor," the guy who received packages on the other end of the hatch, eyed me suspiciously — I was a little too casually dressed even by delivery boy standards — and told me to wait there while he called Graydon's office.

"They been lookin' for you," he said with a chuckle as he replaced the receiver. "They're sendin' somebody up to fetch you."

A few minutes later, a face appeared at the hatch.

"Dana Brown from Graydon Carter's office," he announced. "I believe you have a 'package' for me?"

Still chuckling, the supervisor took out a huge bunch of keys and unlocked a small door. Seconds later I found myself face-to-face with someone who looked like a male model. In addition to being extremely handsome he was dressed immaculately in the style known as "wise guy chic": a shiny, charcoal-gray shirt, a matching tie, black pleated trousers and black tasseled loafers. Needless to say, this was the same Dana Brown who'd told me the dress code at Vanity Fair was "real casual". Dana, I subsequently learned, had been "discovered" by Graydon while he was working as a busboy at 44, the restaurant on the ground floor of the Royalton Hotel known as "the Condé Nast canteen". "This kid was so beautiful it almost broke your heart to see him there," Graydon once confessed. Indeed, Graydon had such a high opinion of Dana's movie-star good looks that he often joked about putting him on the cover of the magazine. "Who'd know the difference, right?"

"You must be Toby Young," said Dana, flashing his dazzling white teeth and pumping my hand. "Don't worry, this happens all the time. A few years back Norman Mailer got completely lost when he took the service elevator. We had to dispatch an extraction team to rescue him from the basement. Luckily, he didn't punch anyone out."

Dana ushered me into an elevator and together we glided down to the fourth floor. He explained that certain lifts in the atrium only went to floors three and 11, but the rest were fine. "You'll figure it out," he said.

Vanity Fair has been described as "the house organ of the Eurotrash" but at first sight the magazine's offices, at least the ones in 350, were nothing special. When Graydon had taken over from Tina Brown he'd complained that the offices had looked like "a fucking Dynasty set", but three years into his reign they resembled those of any other magazine. As you approached them from the lift area, the first thing you saw were the words "VANITY FAIR" in big, bold letters and, beneath them, a kindly-looking old lady behind a desk. This was Bernice Ellis, the magazine's receptionist. The contrast couldn't have been greater. It was as if she'd been put there to remind the staff of exactly who the readers were. When the magazine was originally re-launched in 1983, a press release described it as "a 'fun' magazine for the very, very highbrow", but that's not strictly accurate. As one former employee told The Independent: "The biggest misunderstanding about Vanity Fair is that it's read by celebrities like Claus von Bülow who sit in book-lined rooms wearing monogrammed velvet slippers. In fact, it's read by women while they have their nails manicured in shopping malls across Illinois." (According to a 1990 article in Spy, only 33% of Vanity Fair's readers had graduated from college, with another 34.4% never having attended one.)

Graydon's office, though, was something else. It was enormous, the second largest in the building after that of Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, and Graydon surveyed his kingdom from behind a large, custom-made desk. There were two huge picture windows — it was a corner office, naturally — and, to the left of his desk, a conference table surrounded by wooden chairs. Graydon was smoking a Camel Light and talking on the phone when I was shown in and he motioned for me to sit down. It was 10:15 a.m. by this time, not a good start.

When he eventually hung up his first words to me were: "What the fuck are you wearing? You look like you're in a grunge band or something."

"Your secretary told me that the dress-code was casual," I protested.

Graydon came out from behind his desk and shut the door of his office. He was wearing a white, Jermyn Street shirt, a black tie with white polka dots and a pair of tan suit trousers. He looked anything but casual.

"First of all, we don't call 'em 'secretaries' over here," he said. "The correct term is 'personal assistant'. And secondly, 'casual' doesn't mean this —" He gestured at what I was wearing. "It's a code word. It means khakis and a polo shirt. Get Dana to take you shopping at The Gap."

"The Gap?" I repeated, incredulously. "Can I put the clothes on expenses?"

Graydon laughed.

"How was your flight?"

I took this as a cue. "Thanks for sending me a business class ticket," I said, almost tugging my forelock. "Much appreciated."

"I did?" he replied, genuinely surprised. "That was a mistake."

"Well, if it's any consolation, I got downgraded."

He laughed again. "Well look, it's good to have you here," he said, sitting back down behind his desk. "Hang out for a month, come to a few meetings, see how you like it. If it works out, great, if not, no big deal." Rather ominously, there was no mention of the fact that Si Newhouse, the owner of Condé Nast, wanted to meet me — something Graydon had mentioned when we'd last spoken. Still, this didn't seem like the right time to bring it up.

"Listen, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity," I said, trying to sound sincere. "I really, really appreciate it. I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be."

Graydon narrowed his eyes at me.

"You think you've arrived, doncha?" he said. "I hate to break it to you but you're only in the first room." He paused. "It's not nothing — don't get me wrong — but it's not that great either. Believe me, there are plenty of people in this town who got to the first room and then didn't get any further. After a year or so, maybe longer, you'll discover a secret doorway at the back of the first room that leads to the second room. In time, if you're lucky, you'll discover a doorway in the back of the second room that leads to the third. There are seven rooms in total and you're in the first. Doncha forget it."

This, I later discovered, was Graydon's "seven rooms" speech, a pep talk he gives to all new recruits. It's the nightclub theory of career advancement. I was the wannabe in Studio 54 who'd somehow managed to get past Steve Rubell at the door but was a long way from snorting coke off Margaret Trudeau's cleavage in the VIP room.

Graydon's own progress through the seven rooms had been swift. Born in 1949, the son of a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, he was brought up in the suburbs of Ottawa and got his first magazine job editing The Canadian Review in 1974. He arrived in New York in 1978 and landed a job at Time where he stayed for seven years. He left in 1985 to set up Spy with Kurt Andersen, edited that for six years, then became the editor of The New York Observer. Finally, in 1992, he landed the top job at Vanity Fair.

After I'd been dismissed, Dana took me along to meet Matt Tyrnauer and Aimée Bell, the two editors who'd be my "rabbis" on the magazine. Matt and Aimée — or "Mattandaimée", as everyone calls them, since they're completely inseparable — have been with Graydon since his Spy days and are closer to him than anyone else at Vanity Fair. They aren't a couple but they've been working together for so long they can complete each other's sentences. Like all members of Graydon's inner circle, they give the impression that they regard the Ab Fab atmosphere of the Condé Nast magazine world as completely absurd, a source of constant scorn and ridicule, and yet they stop short of developing this into a full-blown critique. It's more of a defense mechanism, a way of letting people know that they don't take life at Condé Nast too seriously. It's as if they're stuck in an episode of The Twilight Zone and they want you to know that, unlike most of the other cast members, they realize things are a little weird.

At that time, Matt and Aimée were the editors of a section called "Vanities" and shared an office on the side of the building that overlooked Madison Avenue. Aimée took it upon herself to introduce me to the rest of the magazine's staff, starting with Wayne Lawson who had the rather long-winded title of "Executive Literary Editor." Later, Graydon confided in me that if you stick the word "executive" or "senior" in front of a person's job title you can give them the impression they've been promoted without having to grant them any more power. Next up was Elise O'Shaughnessy, the "Executive Editor," followed by George Hodgman and Douglas Stumpf, the "Senior Articles Editors." Finally, we arrived at the office of Elizabeth Saltzman, Vanity Fair's legendary "Fashion Director." Elizabeth doesn't need a fancy job title to convince her of her own importance. After Aimée had introduced us, Elizabeth indicated a photograph on her desk of Si Newhouse cradling an infant in his arms and asked me to guess who the baby was. I studied the picture for several seconds, imagining it was some celebrity, but drew a blank.

"D'you give up?" she asked.

"Yes."

"It's me!" she screamed, then burst out laughing. The subtext of this apparently innocent exchange was of course: "Don't fuck with me."

Next door to Elizabeth's office was a walk-in wardrobe known as "the fashion closet". Aimée explained that this had been cleared, apparently in my honor, but for the time being I'd have to share it with someone called Chris Lawrence. I couldn't believe how well I was being treated.

"Is that a standard Condé Nast perk?" I asked, awestruck.

"What?"

"Being given your own personal changing room."

"I don't think you understand," she replied. "This is going to be your office."

Duh!

After Aimée had gone, I gingerly poked my head around the door. Good God! It wasn't the closet's size that surprised me, though it was scarcely any bigger than a broom cupboard, but the fact that it was occupied by an exact replica of Graydon Carter in miniature, right down to the black tie with white polka dots.

"Hi," said the apparition, standing up and extending his hand. "I'm Chris Lawrence."

Chris was a 25-year-old researcher who'd been brought in by Matt and Aimée to help reduce their workload. He was a self-confessed "East Coast preppy frat boy" and, to my delight, a complete Anglophile. "Dress British, think Yiddish," he replied when I complemented him on his outfit. He peppered me with questions about Manchester bands I'd never heard of and asked me what my favorite Bond film was. When I said From Russia With Love, we clicked immediately.

"The gypsy catfight scene!" he exclaimed.

"My first masturbatory fantasy," I sighed.

After we'd finished comparing notes on the other great catfight scenes in the Bond oeuvre and I'd offered to lend him my copy of Kingley Amis's James Bond Companion, he asked how I was settling in. Had Graydon given me his "seven rooms" speech yet? I told him he had, and started pumping him for more information. What other initiation rituals could I look forward to?

"Have you tried browsing through a magazine at the concession stand?"

"No. Why?"

"Go ahead and try it," he chuckled. "You'll see."

At around 6.30 p.m. I left the offices with Chris to do just that. Among editors of small magazines this stand was legendary. If you wanted to get your publication noticed in the New York media it had to be on sale here. Unfortunately, the stand was privately owned by a hard-nosed German couple named Margit and Helmut Larsen and they weren't impressed by titles like The Modern Review, the magazine I'd co-founded and edited back in London. I'd done everything I could to get them to stock it, including sending Helmut a box of cigars, all to no avail.

When I set eyes on them behind the counter I immediately realized my mistake. Helmut was a thin, slightly-stooped figure with a pained expression on his face whereas Margit was built like a sumo wrestler. I'd schmoozed the wrong Larsen. Clearly, Margit was the one who wore the trousers — or, rather, the giant underpants.

I gingerly picked up a copy of The New Yorker and turned to the contents page.

"Excuse me," said Margit in a thick German accent, "but are you going to buy dat magazine?"

"I'm not sure," I replied, winking at Chris. "I want to see what's in it first."

"IF YOU VONT TO SEE VOT'S IN IT, LOOK AT DE COVER," she bellowed. "DIS IS NOT A LIBRARY."

I couldn't believe the ferocity of her response. I heard laughter coming from behind me and turned to see Chris wagging his finger.

"Jesus Christ," I said to him, putting The New Yorker back on the rack. "I see what you mean."

"Welcome to Condé Nast," he replied.

wait, there's more! bonus excerpt

The words you can't use in Vanity Fair.

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V.F.'s Vanities section is supposed to be a guide to whatever's hip and happening in New York, Los Angeles, and London but it's used by the rest of the magazine's staff as a kind of all-purpose dumping ground for stuff they've promised to stick in the magazine in return for services rendered. For instance, if Jane Sarkin, Vanity Fair's chief celebrity wrangler, wants to get an A-list star to pose for the cover, she might say to that star's publicist: "Look, if you can persuade Tom/Brad/Russell to do this, I'll make sure we give some coverage to one of your up-and-comers in Vanities." Some months later a picture of some unknown starlet will appear on the front page of the section, a slot referred to by those forced to write about these no-hopers as "blonde bimbos on the horizon." My first "assignment" was to write 175 words to accompany a picture of Wade Dominguez, a 29-year-old actor with a small part in Dangerous Minds. To my astonishment, before I set to work on this I was given a list of words and terms that Graydon had banned from appearing in the magazine. They were:

aka
bed-sitter (for apartment)
boasted (as in had or featured)
bôite (for restaurant)
chortled (for said)
chuckled (for said)
cough up (as in to spend)
doff
donned (as in put on)
eatery (for restaurant)
executive-produced and such like
flat (for apartment)
flick
freebie
freeloader
fuck (OK for exclamation, not for having sex)
funky
garner
glitz
golfer
graduate (v)
honcho
hooker
joked (for said)
moniker
opine (in any form)
paucity
pen (used as a verb)
plethora
quipped
row (meaning to fight)
sleaze
titles of books, movies, plays, etc.: no diminutives — i.e., not Prince for The Prince of Tides
tome (for book)
wanna
weird

Toby Young is a theater critic for The Spectator. Visit his website at tobyyoung.co.uk. From the book, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, by Toby Young. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by arrangement with Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved.