Born to Be Brad (15 page)

“The
Vogue
office was as much our playground as it was our slave master.”

The summer passed by in a New York minute, and I was creating my own little fashion universe with Danielle and Annabet Duvall, then an assistant at
Jane,
whom I met at a birthday party at Max Fish. I wore a velvet blazer and a white shirt unbuttoned to my chest, my hair slicked down. It was too hot for that evening and the wrong outfit for a party on the Lower East Side, but it made quite an impression on people there. Yet while my internship was nearly over I had yet to go on a single shoot. I refused to give up. I’d come too far to quit. And I was in the elevator one day when I saw my chance. I don’t know where the courage came from but there I was, riding the elevator with one of the
Vogue
editors, Jessica Diehl. I asked what she was doing for the weekend. She said she was stressing about a shoot she was styling for
Teen Vogue,
because she didn’t have an assistant.

“If you need some help,” I said, “let me know.” I barely knew this woman, but she took me up on the offer and the next day I was at my first shoot, on set organizing shoes. She was even asking me questions. She’d say, “Is this cute?” Finally, I had a voice. I must have done something right, because a few days later, Grace Coddington’s assistant, Michal Saad, asked me to assist on a Chanel shoot with the model Jessica Stam.

You’re not supposed to take photos in the
Vogue
lobby, but on the last day of my internship, I broke down. If they were going to fire me, fine! I wanted that photo.

It was an out-of-body experience. Jessica Stam is a supermodel who matured in the Steven Meisel school of modeling. For
Vogue,
she was being shot outside the new Chanel store on Fifty-seventh Street for a page in a fall issue. We were seated inside an RV parked outside the store, and Jessica was having her makeup done. She had flaming red hair at the time, tucked underneath a wig—a blunt, brown bob not unlike Anna Wintour’s own look. Jessica was Canadian, and while she was in hair and makeup, we laughed about Tim Hortons, a down-market Canadian coffee chain where Jessica was discovered at age fifteen. We laughed about the pig farm in Ontario where she was born. It was cold outside on the street, and when we stepped out of the RV, Jessica wrapped her body around me for warmth. I felt the weight of a thousand eyes on me. Jessica Stam wasn’t a household name yet, but people know when they are in the presence of extreme beauty. The boy inside me—the one who picked out clothing for his mother from the junk mail catalogs that came to the house—he could not believe that he was at a
Vogue
shoot with a supermodel on his arm, a supermodel who was dressed in a limited-edition, multicolored bouclé Chanel suit with a sheer ruffled blouse, an outfit designed specifically to mark the launch of this new store. (At the end of the shoot, the rep from Chanel gave her the suit as a gift. I thought, Holy fuck. I can’t believe they just gave her a $15,000 suit.)

Like a Virgin

OR HOW I MET MADONNA FOR THE FIRST TIME

When I was a kid, more than once I told my mom, “When I grow up, I’m going to meet Madonna.” And at age twenty-three, I did. Let me set the scene: It was early 2003. I’d been living in L.A. for two years. Gary was writing for NBC’s
Will & Grace
at the time, and Madge herself was scheduled to tape an appearance on the long-running sitcom. She hadn’t agreed to take any photos with the crew or any of the guests. But Gary was determined to make that happen for me.

Our best shot was at this little meet-and-greet scheduled on the set after the taping of the episode. Gary knew the NBC on-set photographer and asked him earlier in the day if there was any way that he could try to orchestrate a photo with Madonna and me. And he did. Gary—so brave—approached Madonna. “My boyfriend is a huge fan of yours,” he says. “Would you mind taking a photo with him?”

“If I take a photo with him, then I have to take a photo with everybody,” Madonna said.

Meanwhile, I’m shaking. That was some serious kindergarten logic, but whatever. I thought, This isn’t going to happen. Especially when Madonna’s longtime PR rep, Liz Rosenberg, shuffled over. “What’s going on here?” she said.

Suddenly the clouds parted, and Madonna—for reasons I’ll never understand—had a change of heart.

“I’ll take this one photo,” she said.

I stepped forward. I told her I’m a huge fan. There wasn’t much of a response, but I didn’t mind. We turned toward the camera; I put my arm around her waist and Gary did the same. The photographer clicked the camera. And then he said, “Wait, I’m out of film.”

I’m sure what happened next only lasted all of ten seconds. But in the moment, it felt like five minutes. My arm was still around Madonna’s waist as the photographer threaded a new roll of film into the camera.

Finally, he snapped the photo. I had blond hair at the time. And I’d actually had a blow-out that morning. I’m so glad I have the photo. But I’m not happy that I look like Dana Carvey in
Wayne’s World.

“I remember feeling this burning sense of possibility. That there was more to my future than folding Hermès scarves in the windowless accessories closet.”

I remember feeling this burning sense of possibility. That there was more to my future than folding Hermès scarves in the windowless accessories closet. This was only the beginning. This was only the first step. If I worked hard, I saw, if I was patient, good things would happen.

5

Fake it till you make it. Yes, really.

IN FASHION CIRCLES, THE
piece of advice thrown around most often is probably “Fake it till you make it.” You know, pretend to know what you’re doing and if you’ve got the goods, you’ll figure it all out. This is also the only way to explain how, as a sophomore in college, I styled a newly famous Eva Longoria for the cover of
Life
magazine.

I had interned at
Vogue.
But in no way was I qualified—on paper or in the flesh—to style a cover shoot with a major star. However, through an unlikely turn of events, my childhood friend Tracy Doyle was now the photo director at the just-relaunched
Life
magazine. It was the fall of 2004, and
Life
was doing a yoga issue.

Desperate Housewives
was an out-of-the-box hit for ABC, and while Eva Longoria was hot, she wasn’t quite famous enough yet to demand her own stylist. Tracy vouched for me, and suddenly there I was, leaving class to pull looks from Juicy Couture and Lululemon and Bloomingdale’s for a cover story with a legitimate magazine.

We’d be shooting at a house in Malibu Canyon, and before I left that morning, Gary said to me, “Remember, it’s pronounced
Ee
-va, not
A-
va.”

I repeated it back to him. “
Ee
-va,” I said. “I know.”

Of course the minute Ms. Longoria walked on set, I blurted out, “Hi,
A-
va, it’s so nice to meet you.”

“I was on the outside, scratching my way in. I was styling a major shoot, but it was jogging suits. There was definitely no Dior there.”

She smiled at me, saying, “It’s
Ee-
va.” I winced and apologized. She said, “That’s OK,” and we walked back to look at the clothes together. We were shooting in the backyard, but because there were a couple of long-lens paparazzi hanging outside in the grass across the street, I had to set up the wardrobe racks inside the garage. Eva (not Ava!) perused the looks and more or less liked what I brought. I wasn’t patting myself on the back. It was workout clothing, not couture gowns. Yet again, I was on the outside, scratching my way in. I was styling a major shoot, but it was jogging suits. There was definitely no Dior there.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing. Eva Longoria is a petite five foot two, and so the pants were all too long. At a
Vogue
shoot there would have been an on-set seamstress ready to work miracles. Here, we had Brad Goreski, college student, on his hands and knees trying to hem a starlet’s velvet pants with duct tape.

Once we had the cover done and some inside looks shot, I tried to push the envelope, to bring a little glamour to this yoga story. For the final shot of the day, I dressed Eva in a metal, beaded gypsy skirt with a shirt tied and knotted at the waist to show off her taut stomach. She was lying down on a bunch of pillows. At the time it felt very cool. But I found a Polaroid of the shot recently (the image never ran in the magazine) and it looked like a catalog page from some Anthropologie knockoff. That fashion nightmare aside, the shoot was a success. We had a yoga specialist on set to assist with the poses, to make sure we didn’t offend any actual yogis. I had to laugh six months later when I watched
The Comeback
on HBO. There was a similar scene with Valerie Cherish posing for the cover of
Be Yoga
magazine that hit a little too close to home.

The cover ran in January 2005 under the headline “Dogs do it, kids do it, even Desperate Housewives do it. Why we’ve become a Yoga Nation.” Everyone at
Life
seemed pretty happy with it. Emboldened by my one bit of success, I sent that clip to every styling agency in L.A. the minute I got it, hoping to secure representation. (Celestine offered to put me on their list—of people to
assist
real stylists. Wah-wah.)

“It was a ballsy move on my part. But I was a desperate housewife myself, desperate for a U.S. visa.”

It was a ballsy move on my part. But I was a desperate housewife myself, desperate for a U.S. visa. The voices of Barbie and Marilyn and Claudia Schiffer were calling me. The
Vogue
internship only confirmed that I belonged in fashion. And yet, according to the U.S. government, I belonged in Canada.

I didn’t have a green card. On my very first trip to Los Angeles straight from Greece, Gary and I had gone to see an immigration lawyer. This was not the kind of L.A. immigration lawyer that advertises in free Spanish-language newspapers. The office wasn’t in Tijuana. We were in Beverly Hills, in a beautiful waiting room. Yet the law was pretty clear: As long as I was a student, I could stay in the country. After that, I’d need a full-time job and a company willing to sponsor my visa. This was no joke, and it was on my mind often and at odd times. In October of 2002, Gary and I went to a Human Rights Campaign event honoring Bill Clinton. When we took a picture with him—both Gary and I in Gucci suits—I swear I thought about leaning over and asking Clinton to help me get a visa. I wasn’t just fighting for employment. I was fighting for my life in Los Angeles. My life with Gary. Because, for the first time, I believed my life was worth fighting for. That
I
was worth fighting for.