Bill Cunningham Blues

29:44But it was very much like that. My wife was not particularly loving it, but we rescued a greyhound and we had this great dog that we kind of saved. And we embraced the life because we didn't feel like doing it from afar. Barry, on the other hand, would come in on a helicopter three or four times a week from New York and sort of arrive that way. I just thought, no, this is not the way to do it. But I knew I was not in Kansas anymore, so to speak, when I ordered an orchid for my wife for her birthday. and the woman that worked with me sent her an orchid like you wear to on your corsage. You kind of were in Kansas.

30:23I was. It wasn't that you weren't in Kansas, you were in Kansas. I was. And you can visualize the helicopter landing, Barry, and I was on it many times with him and other people and Diane coming over Amish country. And the Amish was right next door to Westchester. And you can almost see the Amish people holding their hats down as the helicopter goes. Wow. And, you know, everybody knew way ahead of time that Barry was coming to town.

31:27Hi, this is Jill Schlesinger, CBS News Business Analyst, certified financial planner and the host of the Jill on Money Podcast. With the new year upon us, there's no better time to take control of your financial life. and the Jill on Money podcast is here to help. It's your questions that make it possible for me to provide unconventional and I hope entertaining insights on your money and more importantly, on your life. Follow and listen to Jill on Money wherever you get your podcasts.

31:59So you learned the TV business. So you somehow got into the TV business and when you left there, what did you do? So we usually don't go through people's careers, but you're just so fascinating. Okay. I want to know everything. Thank you. So we did that for a couple of years and I ran the broadcasting group. I had nothing to do with sales. I didn't know what a P &L was. I knew what I had to deliver a good looking show, great graphics and all that stuff. That was important, super important in those days. And then in the midst of that, he had tried to buy Paramount and then he tried to buy CBS. And he also launched Q2.

32:34And Q2 at the time was going to be this upscale shopping channel from Silver Cup Studios, who was on the verge of bankruptcy. And we kind of saved them before Sex and the City and 30 Rock and The Sopranos made them much better and successful. And Q2 was going to be Ralph and Calvin, Donna Karan, and all these designers were going to sell their frocks on Q2. But in the middle of all of that, Ralph Lauren came over. There was this negotiation with CBS. CBS was going to buy QVC with Comcast. And David Letterman did his top 10 things of why it's a good idea between QVC and CBS. And then Comcast said no.

33:15At the end of the day, very famous story. They met him at Titovore Airport and Ralph and Brian Robertson said, no, we're not doing this. We're not going to be a small fish in a big pond. and so he left and q2 was a bomb nobody at that time was ever nor were they ever on tv although there's something else that might be happening there was going to sell you know 1200 frocks the only thing that sold were you know hot waxers that we used everybody in the company to do demos on to like rip the hair off different parts so he left and then he got a much bigger chunk and a much bigger say at home shopping network in tampa and you went there with him too I did.

33:54I went there initially almost within months, and then QVC sued me for non-compete purposes. I've never heard that actually happening. Wow. And they sued me because QVC is in the back, Comcast is in Philadelphia, and Comcast is the company of Philadelphia. So they sued me for non-compete purposes in a really ugly battle. And I knew I was in the middle of Barry Diller and Brian and Ralph Roberts. And it had as much or it had something to do with me. But boy, they check your phone records. They check your this and who's this. And I was like, what the hell? And a million and a half dollars later, funded by Mr.

34:36Diller, I lost. So I had to stay out of the company for a year. And the day I could go down there, he was very nice and sent me his G, whatever the number was at that time, plane. And by myself, I flew down to Tampa and arrived there at midnight the day I could officially start working. And I started working. I became head of broadcasting. And then one day, two years later, he called me from his yacht in Cuba on Thanksgiving morning and said, can you meet me at the studio? Not can you meet me at the studio tomorrow? They called it the campus because it was all these buildings in Tampa. And so I did.

35:14And we're walking. much like John Gotti and Sam the Bull Gravano are walking outside so nobody hears you. And he said, OK, now you're going to be the CEO. And I know you've never had P &L responsibility for anything. But you know, this is how I do stuff. I think you're going to do a great job. I'll surround you with much smarter people in areas where you're not. And I know who those areas are. And don't fuck it up. And so I did it. And I didn't fuck it up. I did it for four years. We were wildly successful. We did$5 billion in sales and about$2 billion in EBITDA when I was running the company.

35:52We launched Siri Skincare, which I did for Salone, Wolfgang Puck, Adrian Arpel, Diane Gilman. Suzanne Somers went from$20 million to$150 million. By the time she was done, she was selling air. It was insane. It was insane. But they were killing it. And Joy Magano, who sold more huggable hangers than McDonald's was selling at the time. hamburgers. Oh man. How did you like the movie Joy? This is going to be. What did you think? I've never seen it. I'll be honest. You're not going to believe this. Nobody lives. I've never seen it. And you know why? First of all, that's a little nuts that I haven't seen a movie that I've told thousands upon millions of people that Bradley Cooper played me in the movie Joy because he did because David Russell, we met a bunch of times when he was doing the research on the, on the, on the movie.

36:43So I haven't, but I've never seen it. I don't, I sort of don't want to burst the bubble that if he's playing me, if there's something negative about it, I just don't want that negative in it. But one day soon I'll watch the movie. Yeah, that's interesting. But wouldn't you say if, you know, if, I don't know, who would your favorite contemporary actress, the most, you know, coolest, smartest, beautiful actress played you in a movie? Wouldn't you tell everybody that you knew? For sure. I always have an answer when someone says who would play you in a movie. Who, who, who? I always say Catherine Hahn.

37:15Oh, yes. Fabulous. I think it's easy. You look like a little bit alike. Yes. Well, obviously, the Bradley Cooper, you can see the resemblance that we're - For sure. For sure. So how did you end up leaving there? Well, after, you know, four years, a little over four years of CEO and two years as the broadcasting guy, and we launched in Japan, we launched in China, we launched in - I was having a blast. But at some point, when you work for somebody like Barry for so long, you live under this shadow of if it's really successful, it's because of him. And if it's not so successful, it's because of you.

37:49There's nothing wrong with that. I support the whole notion of what that was. But after doing it for that long, I just burned out. And I said to him, my contract was up and I said, you know, I'm done. And I want to go back to New York and move there with Susan. And so I did. And however many years ago, that was in 2002, 22 years ago. And we're still great pals. He's super supportive, as is Diane. And I respect those very, very, very much, those kinds of important relationships that a lot of people left Barry Diller that didn't live particularly well. Yeah. But I feel really good about that. And my God, they are icons is not even the word to describe what they do and their effect and their compassion that they have for all that they focus on.

38:41So you leave that business and that was 22 years ago. And I know you because of this Bill Cunningham documentary and these books you've done. But what did you do from there and how did you end up doing this doc and getting into that world? so um i got when i got back to new york i'm we bought a house and i always say it's the house that tv shopping built and it's a nice house um and i bought a sleigh from the movie elf which is a whole nother podcast it was the sleigh that weighs one ton with the jet engine and the closet meter i bought it so it was really from the movie elf amazing like from the set like a set no and i thought it was a warner brothers did the auction that was early auction so i know Awesome.

39:28We ought to do it. So I bid$500. I was the winning bidder at the last hour of the second week that they did it of$12 ,000. And then it was at the Grove in Los Angeles. So I didn't know I was responsible for the shipping of the sleigh. So it cost me another$12 ,000 to ship it across the country to my front lawn, Long Island. And then I donated it to the local Hailside Fire Department at the end of our street. And they brought it out every year for 22 years. It had an amazing return to New York City last December in front of Bergdorf Goodman for eight hours and got$25 million worth of free publicity from every network on the planet that covered it.

40:05So I did that. And then I said, OK, now I had a little runway to really get back into the entertainment business. I bought the rights to a book called Cellavision, which Augustine Burroughs wrote. It was his first book before he wrote Running With Scissors. He wrote it in four weeks while it's getting sober. and chewing on nicotine gum. And he watched QVC primarily, and he wrote television. And somebody sent me the galleys before I left HSN. And I read the first line in the book was, you exposed your penis on national television. What do you expect me to do? And I thought, oh, I'm buying the rights to that.

40:40I met Augustine. I got the rights, started developing this movie. Bradley Cooper, believe it or not, auditioned to play the lead in the movie after Wedding Crashers. And I still have the tape of that. And so I started doing that. I had the money and the producer thought Bradley Cooper was not going to be a big star. Classic Hollywood story. Nothing unique about that. Then I developed it at NBC, et cetera. And then money was running out. And I had this opportunity to do what I hope to never do, an activist shareholder takeover of the third shopping channel called Shop NBC. It was a messy, messy company that used to be called Value Vision.

41:15And Shop NBC made an investment in it. It's like a$400 million company. He took it over, rebranded it as Evine Live, and it lasted like a year and a half. In public, messy, any company is messy. You write about them all the time, Lauren. But public ones are messier, and messier ones that have been that way for a long time are even harder. So you have to have a board that really supports you, and I didn't. But I did launch Beekman 1802. Josh and Brent, the guys from Sharon Springs, New York. If you ever watch Schitt's Creek and the Apothecary, it's based on Josh and Brent. They launched from zero on Evine, and now they're a$250 million business, and they're in a great brand.

41:56I left that, came back to Long Island. A week later, Bill Cunningham died. And Kim Hostreiter, my dear friend forever from Paper Magazine, posted on Facebook, I think, in those days that he died. And I think I, like everybody else, was sad. Anybody that had anything to do from near or far with Bill Cunningham felt very sad that they lost a friend. I said to my son Jude at the time he was 8, I said let's go in the basement and find the beta tapes of the interview that I did with Bill Cunningham 1994 that was supposed to be a 10 minute interview for him to play or turn into a one minute video to play at the CFDA Awards for him to accept an award he did not want to accept but the Times made him on the stage of Lincoln Center so ironically he called me to do this interview while I was at QVC and Richard Simmons was on the air and I thought it was a scam call.

42:50Bill Cunningham, first of all, how did he get my number or even know who I was? But somebody knew had seen my piece. He doesn't have a TV, didn't see it. And he called me and so I went to his place at Carnegie Hall and 10 minutes turned into about 4 hours. And for whatever reason, he told me his entire life story. Like stuff that nobody had seen. So I did the one minute video, I put it in my basement, went back to my eating job, and then he died And six months later, I rented the screening room at Soho House, invited a bunch of people that I hadn't seen in 30 years, and a bunch of the viper pit of people at the New York Times, ruthlessly protective of Bill, some too much so, that sort of were vicariously living through him.

43:35And I played the raw tape because if I didn't do that, I would have, they were all like, who the fuck is this? The CEO of Home Shopping Network is going to make a movie about our Bill Cunningham? Is he kidding? But I played it. And three hours later, literally half the people were weeping. Because they, as much as some of them, like Ruben Toledo, who did this poster, and Isabel Toledo, who's passed, who I dedicate the movie to, they had never even heard Bill talk like this. And I learned half an hour into the interview with him to just shut up. I had gotten the sound bites I needed, but at some point he was just going off.

44:15And I didn't know what Shaney Noan was. And that's my next book about Jackie Kennedy and Shaney Noan and Bill Cunningham. But I didn't know. But Ruben and Isabel, of all the people there, just stayed in my corner. And when some people, you know, typical in these stories, some people aren't. They just pushed and pushed. And so I made this documentary. I taught myself how to edit on this computer on Final Cut Pro. I dumped all the footage to a digital file. I didn't want to go and interview a bunch of other famous people that liked Bill because the other documentary that had come out called Bill Cunningham, New York, did that already.

44:50So I thought, well, who's Tom Ford B and Anna Wintour C? So I said, you know what? This is pretty good this way. As long as I could get access to his archive, which will become, mark my words, the most important archive in the history of New York City. It's three million images and documents that he saved on purpose, even though he said he didn't. He would just like to document things. It was very, very well curated. I got into the archive. Just me and the Times have been in there. And I picked all these images. I made the movie. It came out February of 2020 with Andrea Liantali as my sort of opening night guest.

45:27It was a big hit at the Angelica, a big hit in Uptown in L.A., which every filmmaker wants their first opening weekend to be. And it was going to open in 150 theaters on March the 13th of 2020, which is the same week the Willie Smith exhibit, 85 % of which came from my basement, by the way, because I saved stuff. Clothed, didn't open. and my film didn't open around the world way worse things happen to people more than my movie not opening but um it was it was hard it was hard i was on this world tour and and getting all this sort of adulation and re-relevancy and all these things that everybody craves most of the time and so it went away um i launched a thing called live rocket which was going to be like a tv shopping for millennials live rocket studio that I had down at the seaport a block from where you did your McNally book signing when you launched your amazing book by the way it is amazing and I haven't read a lot in the last six months because of everything I'm doing but I did read that for but it's really great I hope it's doing it seems like it's doing amazing it's good yeah yeah yeah yeah it's good that's really it's great it's a lot of work to promote this stuff Oh, and how much support do you get from your publishing group?

46:43Just out of curiosity. Okay. So a lot of support. No, I mean, look like what, what I will say is, um, I'm really lucky. I also have a, where I work, my day job has been incredibly supportive and done a lot. They, they threw me a book party. They have their, our internal PR team has helped out with stuff. So I'm really lucky. Also, I get to promote the book in every single thing I write. And also the company at large has, my boss has written stuff about the book. So like, I'm really lucky. I have a lot of promotion. And also internally, I mean, the publishers, it's a very, I was at hold and it's a very commercially driven imprint.

47:26So they did support and helped us. Like they booked us Good Morning America. We got a ton of, we've had a ton of coverage in the New York Times. We had an amazing review. We've been recommended best book of the year so far, all that stuff. So very good. I would say that like the thing that, and you know, this a lot of what is important with, with book promotion now is like book, book, Twitter, book, um, book talk and book talk, really like TikTok stuff. And that I think we would have had to hire someone else to do that part of it. And I don't, we, you know, I don't know if I'm going to come out of this profitable.

48:08So, um, so it's, so that's a good company, Lauren, in terms of coming out of any of these books profitably, unless you're speaking, it's just the way it is, but you know, this for sure. And I see it obviously, we know everything that you've just described. And I have a similar, although different experience that knowing ahead of time that publishers do amazing jobs and they dive in creatively with you and they create all this process but by the time your book comes out, it's not the only book that they're publishing at that particular time. And so, you work it.

48:48Refresh your good vibes mit Tic Tac. Mit den richtigen Vibes wird Oh man!

49:08to

49:20So what did you do? So this was supposed to you're supposed to be on this grand tour you're supposed to have all this stuff and also the the willie smith thing got stalled so it did end up going but that's interesting i didn't realize it was supposed to to launch it yeah that very same week it was it was supposed to happen so you know look covet has caused lots of drama for for the world in personal life and business and self mental health and all of these different kinds of things. And I certainly wasn't immune to it. I lost a member of my family. My father died. And, you know, it's really, really tough to tough and really tough this past summer.

50:04Okay. You know, specifics aren't really necessary, but all of a sudden some angels flew into my life, some that you know that I can't tell you, but there's some that you know of and saved me. And so instead of being where I was supposed to be on Wednesday of the first week of December in a place that wasn't fun. I was at Bergdorf Goodman. And thanks to Linda Fargo and connecting me with Shatose Abe, where I think I first met you in person. Paris. Yes. Oh, yes. At the Sakai show. The incredible show where everything, was it that everything looked like a dress, but nothing was a dress or something like that.

50:42Yeah, that goes one more layer deeper into your world that I never quite understand what that even means, but I sort of get it. And all of a sudden, I'm at this opening of Bergdorf Goodman and I'm in the freaking window where Bill Cunningham used to hang out, you know, on 57th and 5th and David Hoey did the window and we invited 150 people, 300 people showed up and I worked it, right? You work it, Vogue. Vanity Fair, a lot of people just did endless, endless, endless. Because you did a collaboration with Chitosi on a work jacket. It started out as her just wanting to use a quote of Bill's, fashion is the armor is to survive everyday life.

51:24And then when I started talking to them before Paris that time, I said, look, by the way, do you know I did this documentary about Bill Cunningham? And by the way, I'm doing this book. Is there something we could consider doing deeper? And I went to Paris. She wore the shirt. We had a meeting there. And the deeper became that she created an inspirational blue jacket, 50 of them for Bergdorf's that sold out within like three days for$1 ,200. and a bunch of shirts and sayings and hoodies that all went like hotcakes. But what those things do, and this is where you take the book and knowing that the financial gain is not necessarily great, but boy, when you do it and CAA comes with you to the book opening at Bergdorf, which they did, and then they sign you to a pretty amazing kind of representation.

52:11And I'm doing five more books now. and amazing people circling the notion of making my book, The Battle of Versailles, into a movie, my documentary into a series. And we talked about this before, Lauren, about with so many documentaries or so many series and streaming things about all the famous designers, you have to really pick and choose totally subjectively about what you like and what you don't like. and so many of them end up being these stories about drugs and sex and all the things that quote-unquote sell, and you sort of lose the perspective about what was this designer all about. And you know which ones they are.

52:54We don't need to name them necessarily, but here's a guy like Bill who had an amazing life and never, it doesn't matter, they never smoked, he never drank, and there's so much more to him as a character and me as a filmmaker his, you know, persickety-ness and his edginess came through in the book. He had a five-page diary that's in my book that no one's ever seen and pictures that no one's ever seen. Yeah. That make it really, you know, exciting. So as someone who understands the entertainment industry better than most people in the fashion industry, and you understand the fashion industry better than pretty much every person in the entertainment industry.

53:35Why do you think it has been so hard to get the fashion industry right on screen? You know, there are amazing sports movies. There's amazing, like no one's like, oh, they just can't really nail sports. They didn't really nail baseball and Field of Dreams. Like people it's you and maybe I mean, fashion is just as universal. And yet, like, I can think of very few films or television shows about the industry that feel like connected to the way it actually is. It's not even about like being realistic. It's about it, like having the right feeling of what the industry makes you feel. Why do you think it's been so hard to nail it?

54:18Well, I've lately been using this analogy that even Hannibal Lecter, you felt something for him. Yeah. You had something in his portrayal, writing and the directing of that. You felt something for them. What happens is these characters become so unlikable and the fashion industry becomes such a place of unlikableness. yeah um it's not the only industry but sure is right up there near the top in terms of people's perception of it and and the challenges that one has working within that thing when you put yourself in the line of fire for better or worse and i think that hollywood comes in and the most successful i guess of the last 15 years you could say is devil wears prada which was fun really successful etc but when you get into like some of the others yeah and i want just be careful with them because I'm talking to a bunch of them right now.

55:08Totally. Yeah. And there's no reason to miss the essence of, of the character. And in some cases, the designers had no essence that was aimable. They were nasty and they were, you know, they were ruthless and, and, and ways that were personal business in all kinds of ways that I think doesn't enable you to. And then I look at Bill Cunningham and boy, do I look at Willie Smith and there wasn't an ounce of that in either of those two guys. And it's not that they were saints, but boy, are they characters to delve into and tell amazing stories about. Yeah. It's interesting. So, so you ended up signing this deal with Rizzoli, right?

55:49So you're going to do five books and your first book was the bill book. And then you did the Versailles book and then the bill book. So tell me a bit about the Versailles book and what, because obviously Robin Gavon had done that like big, big book reported book on that but that is a story that so many people still don't know i was at the cfda's last night and donna karen and todd oldham who obsessed it was such a dream to see him in person um he they presented to stephen burroughs speaking of you know the first like major black fashion designer in in america and they and donna was talking about when she went to versailles for and Klein and he was, Stephen was there for his own brand and how they beat the French and all that stuff.

56:38But, um, what do you think is so important about that time? And like, it has been, if you, I mean, if you work in fashion, you know about it, but it's, it has been mined quite a bit, but like, what did you feel like was new? Sure. So, and being mindful of that, you dive into a project, you do as much research as, as you can. You certainly do it, you know, as well as anybody does. And you just, you know, and you, you, so I watched the first documentary. Then there was another one on that M2M did that was kind of like a reenactment that wasn't so particularly great. Of course, I read Robin's book with very little pictures to be noted on purpose.

57:20And then during a year and a half ago, sort of, you know, post trying to recover from COVID, I read all the stories about the 50th anniversary of Versailles that had happened a year and a half ago. And different people were doing different things. Anne Klein was doing something. I think the Met did something. And then I thought, I got up on Sunday morning, I was looking at my scanned files from Bill's archiver, which I had 25 ,000 scanned images of the 3 million that I chose. And in my documentary, he talks about Versailles as being the most incredible show he's ever seen. And he's seen them all.

57:53And then I started looking at all these pictures and I said, you know what? I've never seen these before. No one has ever seen these before. And then I found his eight page diary and I definitely know no one's ever read this before. So I reached out to Ivan Shaw, my great friend at Condé Nast. I said, Ivan, I want to try to do a book. What do I do? Oh, you got to write a PDF. And he gave me, sent me some samples. And I just, I don't work well in two dimensional sort of writing of, on, first of all, I hate PDFs, period. So I said, you know, I'm going to make a a seven minute sizzle reel, a bill from the book, images that I had that no one's ever seen before.

58:28And I sent it to Rizzoli and they said, yes, two days later. And that kind of began that relationship. And now I have these other projects that are exciting as hell, but I'm doing them as launching pads for everything else because coffee table books, I have much more appreciation for them now, now that I have a book that's on the coffee table, but they often indicate passion projects, Lauren. And we know what those mean. That's like documentary or passion projects, but they don't, you know, help you eat. Yeah. So what are you doing to help you eat? Well, um, consulting. Well, no, no, to piss on consulting because it's a great thing, but no, I, this relationship that I now have with CA has exploded in a really good way, even as of like the last month.

59:17And so while in LA for LA Fashion Week, where I'm showing the movie, the documentary and selling my book with Pat Cleveland and some other people that I'll tell you about offline because I can't say their names yet are going to do it. But there's one in particular that wants to make this movie like really badly as a scripted feature movie with a really, really big named actress that starts with Z and it ain't Liza. So that's, that's what's exciting. That's where the real potential, if you're going to put all this work into something, that the real potential reward, if it's good, works. Yeah. What a life.

59:58Yeah. Okay. Two questions for you. This, usually we only do an hour. So we're, we're going to have a little extra. Diane was also longer because you've done more cool stuff than, than most people. but um one one question like quick fire round what do you think of the transformation of like um video shopping i don't that's not the right word but i i've written a lot about that company network that is backed by jimmy iovine um ivine iovine yeah and i've written a bit about And Aaron, who runs that eStory at Complex. And that's like drops a lot of like merch-y type stuff. I don't, I think it's doing well.

1:00:47I don't know. And then also just like YouTube itself is like a shopping platform. Where do you see that? Because the thing that never really happened was it never did become high fashion. The way that Q2 inspired. And I remember, I know M2M. I don't think they had any commerce to start, but I, I knew all the folks. I did a bunch of stories about M2M when, when they, WME tried to do that or whatever Endeavor or IMG, whoever was actually the, the part of that company running it. But, um, and Susan and, and all those people. But, um, what do you think like the future of that type of shopping is? Is it just the like shoppers selling to Chinese consumers via TikTok or what do you, what do you think?

1:01:36Yeah, you know, that will always exist, whether it's fast fashion, just ordering from them, or where they're going to do live selling and all that. You know, I've followed this live selling business because I got thrust into it at a young age for a long time. And every first two things I'll answer. Hollywood has tried forever to incorporate selling into live, into scripted content, reality shows, et cetera. And there is not one that you can name that has ever done any scalable thing that you'd want to write about in a positive kind of way. You can't mix entertainment with selling. I will watch something, but you can't do both.

1:02:15I'm not going to point and click and Jennifer Aniston's sweater is going to come flying off the screen from Friends. Then you take all these new guys, new people, companies, brands like the ones that you mentioned and a bunch of others, including my live rocket two years ago. And they forget a bunch of basic things that Greg Renker, who you happen to know, who created Guthy Renker, understands still to this day because he still has Cindy Crawford's brand and Jailo's brand. And they understand what exclusivity is. They understand all of those things. Instagram is not the place to scale your business to someone.

1:02:51It's just not. And if you don't have distribution, when I ran HSN, we had 100 million homes. Right? And we did 3 billion a year. QVC did$8 billion a year. So find another scenario where you have 100 million homes, and I kind of have, and then you can get upscaleness and scale upscaleness and create an environment and a platform where everybody's going to want to go. And I'm as excited about that, if I can say, with my CEO hat back on, as I am about anything, because so many people are circling it. And I know, not all of them, but I know a lot of them. And I just think that You have to understand the basics.

1:03:30Is it exclusive? Is there an impulsive reason to be live? There has to be an impulsive reason to be live. That's why Amazon Live doesn't work. Yeah. It's not impulsive and they never sell out. There's no reason to buy during that period. yeah that's a great answer and that I agree with you with the content to commerce I think people just don't understand that that's the case in a bunch of different mediums of the content to commerce conversion and they don't understand how that actually works and the second question is what designers are you excited about that are around now we've talked about Sakai is is there anyone who you just think is doing a really interesting job i just came from the cfda's where like a lot of really young cool designers loire willie chavaria diotima like all these people are really like coming up and and take you know brand marquee names that didn't exist five years ago in in at retail yeah so my opinion would be different than yours because you are you are a, you know, a historian, incredibly smart about that perspective of it.

1:04:45And, you know, you're right, you're wrong, but you have a point of view on it. Mine is never a point of view about who's the next up and coming this person, but the ones that get me excited or interesting, having just to Paris for the first time in my life, covering fashion week, where I covered a bunch of shows and all the Japanese companies that showed in that day, Comte de Garçon and joked on wantanabe and blah blah blah japanese day yeah it was definitely japanese i had such a an incredible time really but i think if you look at just people that get me excited is is um todd's nephew presley oldham i agree i'm a huge fan that to me i i just want to like go and have a meeting with people like that and make sure they don't fuck it up in terms of being so creative because those days are gone.

1:05:32And people like that that I get really, really excited about. And some of the collaborations I think that exist right now, and one in particular is a certain DJ that has a mustard in his name that wants to do something related to Willie. And I didn't even know this person is Honey Dijon. I didn't know. Oh, yeah, who works with the Comb people. Yeah, I had no idea who Honey Dijon was, But this guy, a friend of mine texted me and said, oh, you know, Honey Diesel wants to connect with you. And I said, what the fuck is Honey Diesel? I thought it was pastrami. Isn't there like a swear word in the name?

1:06:09Oh, I don't know that one. Yeah, I think that like the middle name is in quotes. And it's like, because I wrote about when they first started working with the Comb group and Comb started funding. well now it doesn't have one but it used to have a she used to have like a name something some curse word in her name oh i have no idea coming up it seems to have been i met her in paris she came to paris and we had a whole great discussion in paris about the book and and all kind of exciting things but i i like those kinds of things and you know the the revolving door that you write about all the time that happens you like you can't help but write about it because that's what your job is.

1:06:52But that's where I think it gets lost in translation so much. But it's generational. It's up and down trends. It's all the things that are never, ever, ever going to go away. But I think the young people, that if you can embrace them, and I really do, I have this sort of fatherly desire, not necessarily the time, but desire to say, hey, don't do this. Don't do that. Because I did it and I screwed it up. And I think that that's where I get excited about it. I can't really speak to Philo, whatever you call it. I don't, I don't really follow them like that, but I get, I get excited about cool things like that.

1:07:25Yeah. I agree about Presley. I saw his stuff at, um, there's a vintage store that has a James Valoria that's in a China, I'm sure you've been to the China, it's like in a Chinatown mall. And I started going there very early, like before they had the New York times shopping story, which I'm usually not that early to stuff but and then they I think they're open permanently and I love I love the two who started that but they were carrying Presley's jewelry really early and um yeah I'm a big fan and you know what it was honey so honey Dijon the line of merch is called honey fucking Dijon oh there you go okay I knew it I knew that there was a swear in there yeah exactly um yeah it's very cute but yeah i get it and i think you're right i think like the way you judge that's what i wanted to know what you're excited about not about like i have to evaluate these people and these like as businesses and as creative pursuits in like this very clinical way almost and it's not it all often you know i'm a big fan of phoebe philo's but like I try not to let that influence how I write about her, even though I would just love to be like, she's the best ever.

1:08:49I, I try to be interrogate what she's doing because she deserves it. But yeah, I get what you mean. Like, and I think that's why it's fun because you are drawn to people with like a lot of energy and magic. And so I was curious, like who, who interests you? That really is at the end of the day. And I'll leave you with this. I think that one of the things that I say all the time to younger people, if they're in the room and want to hear or if I happen to be doing something or speaking about it, I love it in a big kind of way. It's that if you're going to work with and you can guess where I came up with this phrase or this feeling that if you're going to be an asshole, then you better be really, really, really good.

1:09:33Otherwise, you're just an asshole. That's how I felt then. today I feel like even if you're an asshole even if you're really talented and you're an asshole I don't know I hope I don't have to work with you it's true it's it's true because I've been thinking about that a lot because I've been writing a lot about Abercrombie and Fitch and Mike Jeffries and mostly trying to write about his leadership skills and like how he built that business because that business was remarkable it was incredible and the reality of it is like you can't act like the way he acted and it's not even like yes all the like really bad stuff that he's been charged allegedly did yeah of course but like even just the way there I had an anecdote in a story the other day about how he yelled at these people for an hour and a half because a shirt's thread was too thick and he wanted it was supposed to be sheer the earlier version was sheer and he was mad how it looked on the mannequin you can't behave that way anymore And it's an interesting thing because what do you lose?

1:10:39Like, do you lose something by not giving someone permission to do anything? I don't think so. Look, they've recovered quite well. True. But is it as exciting? Is it as cool and fun and interesting of a brand as it was in 1997? I don't think so. It's great. And I'm happy for them. What matters at the end? I can guarantee it's a public company that they're much that those kinds of things don't matter to them. It's the, it's, you know, how many, uh, whatever the share price is, but it has resurrected. And like, just like Victoria's secret is desperately trying to. So final question on that. Do you think that the way the world works now where you can't be a jerk, do you think the world is better now than it was 20 years ago in that way for creative people?

1:11:33Like, do you think that there's more freedom or less freedom? And so I think there is as much free, as much creativity as there was then, as there was in the sixties and all those sort of generational periods of, of super creativity. The world is insane right now and it's upside down. And I think today, and Bill says it in the movie, today's is just as exciting as it was, you know, in the fifties, in the forties. that's what gets me all excited and i it's in my blood in in terms of that but i don't think that you have to be that and at the end of the day finally for sure don't ever be referred to lauren as the first thing you can never be referred to is nice and here's my story if someone says what do you think that lauren sherman person and if they say oh she's nice there's always a but right after that.

1:12:25You can be nice second. Oh my God. She's so talented. She knows everybody. And she's a nice person. Second is great. If you're first, I guarantee for the rest of your life, you're going to hear these stories from people talk about somebody else and they'll say, and if nice is first, you're fucked. If it's second or third, it's really good. So that's how I look at life in that sort of way and personally in business. Well, Mark, you're very nice, but also a lot of other things. Not nice first, I would say. Okay. I would say you have ingenuity. Listen, I've been doing this for a while. I'm grateful.

1:12:58I'm honored, Lauren, that you wanted to do this. And I am not making up or blowing smoke that exists in Los Angeles in a big way. But I'll be out there in a couple of weeks. I'm sure I'll get a lot of smoke blown. I look forward to seeing you and the feeling is mutual. Thank you for taking the time. Cheers. Thank you all very much. fashion people is a presentation of odyssey in partnership with puck hosted by lauren sherman that's me our executive producers are john kelly co-founder of puck ben landy executive editor of puck gabi grossman director of editorial operations at puck and bob tabador executive producer at odyssey edited mixed and mastered by molly nugent special thanks to the team at odyssey including J.D.

1:13:43Crowley, Jenna Weiss-Berman, Maddie Sprung-Kaiser, Josephina Francis, Hilary Schupf, and Kurt Courtney.