The Vogue Factor

March 3, 2014
Clements, former editor-in-chief of Vogue Australia and coauthor of In Vogue: 50 Years of Australian Style, delivers readers inside the rarefied world of luxury publishing in this memoir. From her start as the magazine’s receptionist, an exuberantly ambitious Clements quickly moved up the ranks, doing everything from scraping gum off a sidewalk for a photo shoot to reorganizing hosiery drawers. She meets impossibly chic senior staffers with valuable knowledge to impart and grueling taskmasters who demanded perfection from themselves and everyone around them. Indeed, writes Clements, “Nothing was ever good enough. A philosophy that could drive you mad or spur you to do better.” Clements held fast to that attitude throughout her ascent, and remained endearingly self-aware when other professional fashionistas may have—and did—fall prey to an exaggerated sense of self. Along the way she rubbed shoulders with fashion, beauty, and pop culture royalty (including Karl Lagerfeld, Giorgio Armani, Cate Blanchett, and American Vogue editrix Anna Wintour) and actual royalty (Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark). Clements’s journey is an enjoyable, dishy ride.