Very nice article in NY Times
For L’Wren Scott, Her Identity Was by Design
By JACOB BERNSTEIN, MATTHEW SCHNEIER and GUY TREBAYMARCH 19, 2014
It was a crowded cocktail party at the Cafe Royal in London on a balmy February night. As hundreds of people mingled in the ornate, recently renovated space, one of the attendees, an editor who had gone to L’Wren Scott’s fall 2013 fashion show that day, stood in a corner making small talk with Bobbi Brown, the cosmetics entrepreneur, and John Demsey, the president of Estée Lauder.
Then, suddenly, out of the scrum of partygoers, Ms. Scott emerged, a striking, impossibly tall beauty, trailed by a wizened but elegantly dressed man who barely came up to her shoulder blades. “Have you met Mick?” Ms. Scott said to the editor, flashing a warm smile as she introduced him to Mick Jagger, leaving the two to chat amiably about the Rolling Stones’ recent appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” his daughter Georgia May’s budding modeling career and the unseasonably warm weather, as she melted back into the crowd to continue her hostess duties.
“Mick Jagger’s girlfriend”: That was how L’Wren Scott was often identified by the news media (no more so than in the days after her death on Monday) before those mentions eventually turned to her increasingly respected work as a fashion designer, one with an appeal for both actresses who wanted a dramatic turn on the red carpet and socialites who wanted to look sexy but not vulgar.
And while Ms. Scott certainly understood the public relations value of having a famous boyfriend (his attendance at her shows all but guaranteed her coverage outside the pages of WWD), she also wore that association lightly, shutting down anyone who tried to pry too closely into the nature of their relationship or those who seemed too eager to use her as a way to meet the rock star.
In a 2008 profile in New York magazine, Ms. Scott said, “I just want to be known for what I do, not who I know,” a theme she repeated last year in an interview with The Sunday Times of London: “I’m a fashion designer,” she said. “I don’t want to be defined as someone’s girlfriend.”
And, in fact, over the last few years, Ms. Scott attracted a following among retailers and fashion editors. “She was in every way her own best model,” said Hamish Bowles, the international editor at large of Vogue. “She had a very strong personal aesthetic and was creating clothes in her own image, and she was so attractive and confident and glamorous and assured — in fact, the most potent and seductive role model for her clients.”
But all of that came to an end with what the police are treating as a suicide, Ms. Scott, 49, having apparently strangled herself with a scarf that had been tied to the handle of a door in her downtown Manhattan apartment. It came amid reports that she was distressed over the financial state of her company, which published accounts said was more than $6 million in debt. Associates said that she had planned to announce this week that she was shutting her eight-year-old business.
In February, Ms. Scott abruptly canceled her fall 2014 fashion show, citing what were described as production issues with the collection. But while that cancellation, with almost no further explanation, began to fuel rumors that her business was in trouble, no one close to her seemed to know how serious those financial problems were or how depressed she might have been.
“I’m dumbfounded,” said the actress Sarah Jessica Parker, a good friend of the designer’s and a frequent client, adding that she didn’t believe it when she and a friend she was traveling with heard the news on Monday. “We assumed it wasn’t true,” she said. “That it couldn’t possibly be true. And I wish it weren’t.”
Cristina Ehrlich, a celebrity stylist whose clients (among them Penélope Cruz, Tina Fey and Julianna Margulies) frequently wore Ms. Scott’s designs, said her reaction was “just total shock and disbelief,” adding that the two had been texting on a fairly regular basis in recent months. “She was really the person who would light up the room. She wasn’t somebody who I would have ever said was a tortured artist or a tortured designer.”
Bruce Weber, the photographer, who has known Ms. Scott since she started out as a model in the 1980s, said he had last seen her in 2013, when nothing seemed amiss.
“It was in London,” he said. “I was at some dinner party, and she came over. She was with Mick. They looked really happy and friendly with each other. It seemed like he loved her a lot. They made a really nice couple. He was more open than I’d ever seen him. Also she didn’t let him get into that ‘I’m a rock star’ attitude.”
There were published reports on the day after Ms. Scott’s death, and plenty of blind items before then, that she and Mr. Jagger had become estranged, which were immediately denied by Mr. Jagger’s publicist. (On Tuesday, Mr. Jagger’s website carried a statement that said, in part, “I am still struggling to understand how my lover and best friend could end her life in this tragic way.”)
If there was trouble in that relationship, friends of Ms. Scott’s said they were unaware of it. But then, that would be typical of Ms. Scott’s personality, they said: funny, outgoing, but with a certain reserve.
“She was incredibly, incredibly private,” Ms. Ehrlich said. “I never sensed from her a darkness or an unhappiness. But then again, you never really know.”
Before L’Wren Scott (née Luann Bambrough, the adopted daughter of a Mormon couple in Utah) became an acclaimed designer, she was a model, one with a distinctive look — and a height that reached to 6 feet 3 inches — that caught the attention of designers like Thierry Mugler and photographers like Mr. Weber.
Mr. Weber remembered the first time she came to meet him at his studio. “I was working for Calvin Klein,” he said. “We were photographing all these girls in pantyhose, and she was taller than anybody in the studio and yet she seemed small. She didn’t act like a tall person. Tall people generally don’t act like they want to shrink themselves. She was like a baby giraffe, beautiful and sweet and really vulnerable.”
Soon after, Ms. Scott moved to Paris and Mr. Weber didn’t see her until she had become a stylist several years later. “I was working with her at Paul Morrissey’s house in Montauk, for Interview with Nicole Kidman,” he said. “And we had a great time, she was so easygoing and confident, really different than when I first met her. She made Nicole look beautiful. She had a real sensitivity about the people she worked with.”
As a stylist, Ms. Scott quickly gained the reputation as someone with a keen eye and a can-do attitude.
“She was focused and driven about her work,” said Mark McKenna, director of the Herb Ritts Foundation and the former photography assistant to Mr. Ritts, an early mentor to Ms. Scott. “When I say driven, I mean driven. She would prep for things weeks in advance. She came with her homework done.
Mr. McKenna recalled, with admiration, a Vanity Fair cover shoot of Matthew McConaughey that Ms. Scott styled in 1996, when the young actor was just beginning to emerge as a star. “The shoot revisited what it was like when Paul Newman was coming on the scene in the 1950s,” Mr. McKenna said. “Herb executed it, creating that feeling, bringing out that whole Texas country-boy thing. But L’Wren drove the concept. She also understood that, when it came time for the shoot to happen, she didn’t need to be the overbearing presence. She knew how to step back. She understood that need for discretion that is so important in Hollywood, where discretion equals confidence in you.”
In the 1990s, Ms. Scott had a brief marriage to Anthony Blake Brand, a property entrepreneur, that few of her later friends ever knew about and that was recalled as a slightly odd match by those who knew her early days in California.
“Our sons and daughters were marrying cute little sweet things, and suddenly Tony appeared with this creature,” recalled Dale Engelson Sessa, an author and the former owner of a commercial production company in Los Angeles who was close to the Brand family. “Somebody said she was a model. Somebody said she was a stylist. Somebody said she was helping people shop for clothes. Everyone paid attention because she was so exotic, though the family was disappointed at who he had chosen. There was no way they could get close to her. It was never going to be that warm, cozy relationship.”
Her look certainly created an indelible memory. “Even in those days, she dressed in a way that we all thought was, perhaps, funky,” Ms. Sessa said. “She wrapped herself in a lot of silk scarves. When I read about this horrible, horrible way she killed herself, that was the first thing I thought of, how she was always wrapped up in silk scarves.”
Marilyn Gauthier, Ms. Scott’s modeling agent and a friend for more than 20 years, said she was not surprised her friend remained stoic, whether it was about her romantic life or her financial situation.
“She was proud,” Ms. Gauthier said. “Maybe she told other people” about her financial problems, “but I’m sure she thought she was going to solve it herself. She didn’t want the rumor to spread that she was in trouble. But I don’t know. She never told me.”
Ikram Goldman, the influential Chicago retailer who has been a longtime supporter of Ms. Scott’s designs, said that she, too, was unaware that Ms. Scott might have been depressed. “We were emailing each other up to about a week and a half ago,” she said. “I was making introductions, people for her to meet. We were doing stuff.”
And as for any inkling that her business might in trouble? “Nothing,” Ms. Goldman said. “Nothing, nothing. She wasn’t that kind of person. Is someone that elegant going to go flailing their emotions on her sleeve? She’s going to hold on to it.”
Mr. Bowles recalled going to see Ms. Scott in her Kings Road studio in London last year for a look at what turned out to be her second-to-last collection. The studio, he said, “was covered in all her inspirational images, these wonderful turn-of-the-century photographs of geishas and Japanese woodcuts and incredible detailing of wisteria.”
He added: “She seemed her usual glamorous, droll, upbeat self. It’s fair to say that nothing might have suggested this turn of events. On the contrary, L’Wren always seemed so vivacious and fun and self-confident and glamorous and assured.”
A close friend who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation said she saw Ms. Scott about two weeks ago and said that the designer was “very depressed” about the state of the business, and that it was becoming clearer that she might have to shut it down.
“But,” this person added, “she could still do a lot of different things. You could be hired as a designer for some company. There’s always another way. It’s just so sad. It’s so unnecessary. She had a lot of friends that loved her, and it’s always sad when someone doesn’t get to see that.”
John Demsey, the Estée Lauder executive who was at that party at the Cafe Royal and is a longtime observer of the fashion world, suggested that many people confused the glamour of that world with the harsh reality of its business side.
“What’s the difference between her and Charles James?” he said, referring to the legendary 20th-century designer who is about to be celebrated at the Met. “The guy died penniless in the Chelsea Hotel. He didn’t kill himself, but the life of a designer or a creative person isn’t necessarily paved with gold, even if one is talented, which most everyone agrees she was.”
Stuart Emmrich contributed reporting.
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