Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

Copyright © Éditions des Arènes, Paris, 2016

English translation © Andy Bliss 2017

Cover photograph © Dan Kennedy

Victoire Dauxerre asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This edition published by arrangement with Éditions des Arènes in conjunction with their duly appointed agents The St Marks Agency, London.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008220525

Ebook Edition © February 2017 ISBN: 9780008220501

Version: 2018-01-22

Dedication

To my darling brothers, Alexis and Léopold

To my Granddaddy, whom I miss

And to every woman out there

Epigraph

It is the stars,

The stars above us govern our conditions.

Shakespeare, King Lear, Act IV, Scene III

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Flashback

Claudia Schiffer

Waiting for Sciences Po

Something Vintage, Something Classy

The Cathedral of Fashion

Playing With My Body

Learning How to Walk

33 23 34

Three Apples a Day

Yùki

The American Dream

The Little Voice

Stop Eating!

New York

Casting Hell

Russell Marsh

Three, Two, One, Go!

The Heart of Fashion Week

Home Sweet Home

Milan

At the End of My Tether

And Now for Paris

The Holy of Holies

Into the Light

The Photo Shoots

The Fat Cow

Life as a Clothes Hanger

Weightless

The Bitch

I Quit

Disappearing

Not Alone Any More

It’s a Wonderful Life

Picture Section

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Flashback

I didn’t want to think about it any more. I was feeling fine, or at any rate better. Normal life had resumed: I was studying again, I’d moved into a new place, I’d found a boyfriend, a job and a future of sorts, and my figure was now more or less acceptable. I was increasingly thinking about getting into acting seriously, because in the end it was the only thing that genuinely interested me.

And then Mum called. ‘Loutch, I’ve written an email to that MP who’s trying to get a law passed on anorexia.’ She wanted me to read it to see if I was OK with what she’d said and if I wanted her to include my contact details. I read it, and of course I was OK with it. And yes, I wanted her to include my contact details.

She sent it off, and then the journalists started calling with questions. So I told them my story, and everything started all over again.

The eating. Eating to fill myself up, to fill this void. Hating it, but doing it all the same. Seeing my body transform itself, even though I emptied it just as soon as I’d filled it. Not recognising it, and hating it. Not recognising myself, and hating me. Feeling so awful, so ugly and so empty. So like nothing at all.

And that’s when I decided to relive, one final time, those eight months of my life spent suspended in a vacuum. To write it all down. To write about that constant spinning sensation in my head, that savage and brutal fear that used to devour my body and, to the extent that I still had one, my soul.

About the loneliness I felt when surrounded by all those cynics, the bastards, the lost and the miserable. About the unspeakably disgusting, skeletal ugliness in the midst of all that beauty. And about death itself, adorned in bright lights, make-up, fur, silk, rhinestone, lace, satin, soft leather and 7-inch heels.

The death that was very nearly my own fate.

Claudia Schiffer

It was Sunday. Mum had practically dragged me out for a walk around the Marais district to take my mind off things. I didn’t feel like it; I didn’t feel like doing anything. I was revising for my Bac, the final year school exams in France, and the entrance exams for Sciences Po, France’s leading political studies college, and as they loomed, my anxiety levels were rocketing. But mainly, I was brooding over my heartbreak. It was the first time my heart had been broken – by Hugo, who had just left me for Juliette. Dumped. Cast off like a useless, worthless object. The few words he’d said were like a slap in the face, a blow to the soul. A failure. Since then, I’d been hurting a lot, and had felt a bit scared too. Of being dumped over and over again, of being alone. Of not knowing what to do with my life, let alone with whom. Scared of the unknown, of getting it wrong, of maybe losing my way.

All of a sudden everything had become really complicated. After a ‘problem-free’ time at primary school, changes in the timetable cut me off from all my friends when I started secondary school. I completely stopped working and then I decided that I’d never set foot in a school again – I would prepare for my Bac on my own, at home. I planned everything out before announcing my decision to my parents: the contact details for a school where I could study by correspondence; my timetable, planned out to the minute, so that they could see that I really had thought things through; and my promise to do what it took to be the best.

My parents were hardly over the moon, but they agreed to it because they knew what I was like. I was a good pupil, I could put my mind to studying and more than anything I would never have let myself fail at something to which I’d committed myself. Especially when I’d just forced them into a corner. And I would pass my Bac, with a top mark.

It gave some structure to my life. I like to work fast; as soon as things start to drag, I get bored. I got the whole year’s syllabus out of the way in six months so that I’d have time to do something else with the rest of the year. Like spending time with Granddaddy and Nan, my beloved grandparents. I learned how to dance the salsa and the tango and I also did a bit of acting. I hung out with my cousin Tom and his thirty-something friends, who used to take me out at night. And I spent time with my best friend Sophie, who I’d met at the dance classes. My life was very structured.

I’d get up at eight o’clock and at nine I’d settle down to work at my bedroom desk with Plume my cat for company, while Mum worked upstairs in her workshop. My mother is an artist – she paints, sculpts, makes collages and draws. She can put her hand to anything. And then it would be the lunch break, watching dumb serials on the box. Mum has never had much of an appetite and didn’t stop for lunch. But I often went up to her workshop in the afternoons to spend some time with her, or we would go off to an exhibition or go shopping until the boys got back from school.

I’ve got two brothers: Alexis, who’s a year and a half younger than me, and Léopold, who’s six years younger. I used to feel happy when they got home. We’d have tea together in the kitchen, and life was peaceful and safe.

‘No doubt about it – you’re the next Claudia Schiffer.’ We were window-shopping for watches in Rue des Francs-Bourgeois when a puny little guy accosted me. He hardly came up to my shoulders. I looked him up and down and he smiled at me. ‘Have you ever thought about being a model?’ Yeah, right, great chat-up technique. Thank you, and goodbye. But instead of ignoring him, Mum showed an interest. ‘Your daughter is extraordinarily beautiful. She has a great nose! It balances her face and would catch the light perfectly. Believe me – I know what I’m talking about.’

He knows what he’s talking about? When it comes to noses? I felt like laughing, because I know perfectly well what my nose is like. It’s got a little bump, which has been handed down the maternal line in my family for at least three generations and which I spent my whole childhood rubbing, trying to flatten it out and make it go away. So much so that it’s left a slight blue mark. Any true ‘connoisseur’ would know that what was not quite right about my face was my nose.

He addressed me informally as if we’d known each other for ever. ‘I promise you, I know what I’m talking about. I work for a modelling agency called Elite. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them? You were made for the profession, believe me. I could get you to New York for September fashion week, and you’d go down a storm. Here, take my card. Think about it, and call me. I promise you, you really are made for it. If you let me handle things, I can make you into a supermodel.’

I said thank you, but that I was revising for the Bac and for Sciences Po and none of this was on the cards.

‘Just call me,’ he said, and off he went.

Mum was looking at me with a big smile on her face. Once he was out of earshot, we burst out laughing. So they were true, then, these stories of scouts from modelling agencies accosting girls in the street and it all happening just like that, with a snap of the fingers in front of the window display of a jeweller’s shop! Supermodel? Whatever next?

Mind you, Elite was a pretty big name. I might not have been a fashion addict, but I did read some of the women’s magazines and I knew that Elite was one of the top agencies. A quick search on the internet that evening confirmed what I’d thought: Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista … Even though that Seb guy – the name Sébastien was on his business card – had gone over the top, it had still been nice of him to say that, just maybe, I could be part of that select band of the most beautiful girls on the planet!

It did me some good. I stored away Seb’s card in a corner of my desk, and his fine talk in a corner of my mind, and plunged back into my revision. Deep down, I was trying to control the anxiety that gripped my stomach whenever I thought about the exams. I knew perfectly well that I would pass my Bac, and yet I was terribly afraid of failing it. As for Sciences Po, that was the great unknown. Not even my consistently excellent school grades were enough to set my mind at ease, and the closer the entrance exams got, the more petrified I became. I wasn’t just fretting a bit – I was terrified of failing and proving that I just wasn’t up to it.

Waiting for Sciences Po

I passed every single one of my exams, with a warrior-like determination. I was quite the little trouper when it came down to it. The Bac was a cinch, but Sciences Po was another matter altogether. I stressed out crazily about not knowing a thing, about getting the one subject that I hadn’t swotted up on. I’d prepared as best I could, but it just wasn’t possible to revise the whole curriculum. I felt confident, as if I were in control of the situation, and yet at the same time I felt fragile and at the mercy of random chance, which could completely upset all my plans. The exam took place in a room without air conditioning where the temperature hit 40°C – it was an ordeal as much as an exam. And I wouldn’t know if I’d passed it, or the other entrance exams I’d taken, until the end of July.

In the meantime, I decided to call Seb, just to see. When I asked him, ‘Do you remember me?’ he replied, ‘I was hardly likely to forget you!’ I know it was daft of me, but I liked hearing him say that. And after all, it was an option: if I wasn’t smart enough to succeed with my brain – in journalism, theatre, politics or something like that – then perhaps I could use my ‘dream body’ to get on in life?

We set up a meeting and Mum dropped me off at his door near Saint-Michel. She must have said at least a dozen times: ‘If there’s the slightest problem, you leave, promise? And you call me. You call me and I’ll come and get you.’ Don’t worry, Mum. I just wanted to talk about what the job entailed, find out how things worked and see what he had to offer me. Then if I didn’t get into Sciences Po or one of the other colleges, there was still a chance of finding myself in New York for fashion week. I’d been dreaming of New York ever since Friends and Sex and the City and perhaps I’d take to fashion week really well.

This guy really talked nineteen to the dozen. He didn’t stop talking from the moment I entered the room, going on about my nose, my blue eyes, my endless legs – ‘How tall are you? Looking at you, I’d say 5 foot 10, right? Bang on, I knew it! You’re just perfect, my angel. Perfect!’ – as well as the agencies, the fashion shows, the castings, the photo shoots, the sublime clothes of the top designers, the ad campaigns worth hundreds of thousands of euros, the fantastic hotels all around the globe and all the top-flight models he’d personally discovered and coached to the summit of their profession. I politely listened to him taking me for an idiot. If he was so successful, what was he doing in this shabby little studio, which didn’t even belong to him but to his girlfriend Clémentine, a pretty, slightly plump girl who wanted to become an actress and who he was ‘coaching’ too?

Being an actress was my own dream. I’d known it since I saw Romy Schneider in Sissi when I was 8. I’d taken the Sciences Po entrance exam because I was a conscientious pupil and my father had advised me to get some qualifications first, but my goal had always been to become an actress. ‘You’re mad, Victoire, don’t even consider it!’ Seb declared. ‘You’ve got the physique of a model, not an actress. When I saw Marion Cotillard in Taxi, I knew straight away, before anyone else, that she would become a film star. She’s got that something extra. You don’t. You’re a supermodel. You don’t have a Hollywood face.’

He was increasingly getting on my nerves – all this talk about himself and the constant name-dropping. It smacked of lies, his whole spiel about being the African diplomat’s son who’d wanted to study at Sciences Po (what a coincidence!) but had ultimately decided to ‘coach his girls’ instead. A pathetic mixture of fake bling, dreams and drudgery. But we were talking about Elite, after all, and he was saying he could get me in with them!

We did some photos, or rather ‘Polaroids’, as they’re called – it used to be the only way they had of creating instant snaps. Nowadays, they’re digital photos of course, but without any retouching or make-up or anything else, and he was going to use them to present me to Elite. In the Vogue magazines scattered on the coffee table, he showed me the basics of a pose: hair tied back to show off the face, head slightly inclined and looking straight ahead. ‘Show intent in your gaze. We need to get the impression that you’re thinking. And half open your lips, so that you don’t look withdrawn.’ One side of me wanted to take the piss out of him, while the other was concentrating like mad on trying to follow all his instructions at once. Seb was right: posing is a professional art. But did I really want it to be my profession?

When the time came to leave, I told him I would think about it.

My parents and I had a long discussion at home that evening. Dad was really into the idea: ‘Do you realise what an opportunity this is, Victoire? You’re going to be travelling around the world to the most beautiful places and earning loads of money for doing not very much. You won’t get another opportunity like this. You’re young, so you can afford to give it a go for a year.’

He was right: what if it was the chance of a lifetime?

But Mum was more hesitant: if I got into Sciences Po or one of the other colleges, was it really a good idea to turn them down? Of course what Seb was offering me was an amazing experience, but wouldn’t I get tired of it very quickly, as I did with everything else? Wouldn’t I regret it? Or, worse still, would I hold it against her and Dad for allowing me to make such a bad choice?

I went to bed with Seb’s words whirling around in my head – all the magazine images he’d foisted on me, all the professional jargon he’d spouted and all the illustrious names he’d dropped into the conversation: New York, Tokyo, London; Polaroids, photo shoots, ‘books’, castings; Dior, Galliano, Céline, Castelbajac; Claudia, Natalia, Kate … If I didn’t give it a go, would I spend the rest of my life regretting it?

The following morning, I called him: yes, I did want to meet Elite. Just to see.

Something Vintage, Something Classy

From that moment on, everything happened very quickly. It was already the end of June. At the start of August, I was off with Alexis, Léopold and my parents for a grand trip along the western seaboard of the United States to celebrate my parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary, and the fashion week castings started at the beginning of September in New York. So I had barely a month in which to: get myself ready for meeting Elite, meet Elite, think it over, negotiate and sign a contract (or not), learn the techniques and the primary rules of the profession and get used to the idea.

Seb arranged an appointment for just three days later. ‘I’d already spoken to them about you. When they saw the Polaroids, they said, “Bring her here immediately!”’

Immediately, fair enough, but not before I’d found my ‘model’s outfit’: ultra-tight skinny black jeans to show off my legs to best effect; a black Petit Bateau tank top to flatter my top half, and then ‘something vintage and something classy, that’s what creates the magic balance, baby’. And so off I went with Seb to the Marais for a shopping spree. He picked me out a disgusting khaki jacket, which reeked of second-hand, but which he found ‘subliiiime, exactly what we’re looking for’. So what ‘we’ were looking for was this shapeless and nauseating potato sack to hide my curves? ‘Trust me, it’s what I do for a living. Just wait until we find the shoes – you’ll see.’

For the shoes, we got the metro to Franklin D. Roosevelt on the Champs-Élysées and he led me directly to Balmain – it was the end of the sales, and we’d be able to find some ‘bargains’ for ‘barely’ €400. I’d never spent such a sum of money on shoes! I started browsing around the shop, thinking that he must have some faith in me if he was prepared to spend that much on a pair of shoes. He rejected all my choices and then triumphantly held aloft a faintly absurd pair of black patent leather sandals, featuring a complex jumble of zips and 7-inch heels. They were divine, but doubtless completely unwearable. I decided to give them a go nevertheless. It took a while to figure out how to get into them, but when I finally stood up to walk around, they turned out to be a thing of luxurious wonder! Contrary to all my expectations, they were actually quite comfortable. And even if I’d have to get used to it, I was acquitting myself quite well at these vertiginous heights. After all, I’d spent years playing the little princess in shoes borrowed from Mum, who’s always been very feminine and unafraid to wear high heels in the presence of my father, who is 6 foot 4. I’d never have believed it before trying them on, but Seb was right: these shoes were the touch of class and glamour that perfectly complemented my horrible military jacket. ‘Shall I pay half, and your mother makes up the rest?’ So nice of you, Seb, to get me just the one shoe! I only hoped my parents would be willing to chip in for this beautiful gift.

We got the metro again, me with my incredible sandals wrapped in silk paper and nestling in an understated little bag featuring the Balmain logo, and Seb in a growing state of excitement and issuing an incessant stream of instructions and advice about my appointment in two days’ time at Elite. In a nutshell, I had to be smiley and relaxed and give the impression that I was pleased to be there. And above all, I had to let him do the talking and I had to make an amazing impression, because he’d spent days and days banging on about me and had managed to convince them that I was the supermodel of tomorrow. And the proof that he had managed to convince them was that a certain Flo, who only worked with the top-flight models, would be taking care of me and not Solène, who was in charge of the new faces. ‘I want you to set off like a rocket, do you understand? I want you to get the best castings and the best fashion shows right away, without going through the “beginner” phase.’

I listened without saying a word, because that was what he seemed to expect of me. I was too well brought up to tell him that I was perfectly capable of taking all these instructions on board without him having to repeat them endlessly. I’d understood the basic deal, and even the finer detail, even though he had overlooked one crucial point that didn’t even seem to have occurred to him: I hadn’t yet decided if I would sign or not. Contrary to what he seemed to think, it wasn’t a done deal. For a start, Elite had to be interested in me. And I had to be interested in them too.

Before I returned home to show off my combat outfit to the whole family, we stopped off at a café to see Olympe and Madeleine, two other ‘Seb girls’ he’d talent-spotted a few months previously and who I would be sharing an apartment with if I went to New York in September. I listened distractedly to the ramblings of our mentor, who was intending to turn us into the ‘Galactic’ (sic) superstars: three supermodels who would take the upcoming fashion weeks by storm. I listened a bit more attentively, but without really following everything, to his convoluted explanations about why he had decided (and what about me, when did I get to decide?) that in New York I would be represented by a small agency called Silent (‘much more efficient and better organised’) and in Milan by D’ Management (‘much better established than Elite in Italy’).

The girls seemed nice. While Seb tucked into a huge croque-monsieur and downed Coca-Cola, I sipped on a freshly squeezed orange juice. My two (potential) flatmates were drinking Diet Coke. Seb was ribbing the girls about the lack of visible progress they were making with their respective diets: ‘New York is in two months, girls. And by the looks of it, you’re still a long way from a size 6.’* I was a long way from that too. Not quite as far away as they were, to look at them, but even so. What with splitting with Hugo and revising for my exams, I’d lost weight – I could feel it when I put on my clothes. My size 8s were becoming a bit loose, but I’d never worn size 6! I was going to have to knuckle down …

That evening at home I told them about my ‘Pretty Woman’ day. I paraded in front of my parents and brothers in my Balmain sandals and my camouflage jacket, which I then washed in the machine several times to try to get rid of the mouldy second-hand smell. I almost forgot about my Bac results, which had come through that day: I missed the top grade by just 0.3 points due to a marking error in the sports exam. I was going to have to appeal, because without that top grade I wouldn’t be eligible for the oral entrance exam for Sciences Po (which would give me a second chance to get in if I failed the written exam). I started to cry from fatigue, shame and anger. My father was certain that I would be given the top grade after my appeal and wanted to celebrate my results with a bottle of champagne which he had put on ice for the occasion, but I refused any kind of celebration. I was terribly disappointed and annoyed, and I wanted to forget all about it.

Before he went to bed, Alex came into my bedroom and we had a long chat. He never expresses his emotions, but I could sense that he was both very proud and very worried. Just like I was.

The following day, Seb paid for me to get my hair cut by ‘his’ hairdresser. This was a novelty for me, because from the year dot I’d always cut my own hair. And it was with this new look – which wasn’t so very different from the old one, in truth – that I went to visit Granddaddy and Nan, who were not exactly over the moon about the adventure that was opening up before me. And yet my grandmother should have been happy for me – she had always been so elegant and when she was young she used to draw such pretty fashion sketches! She’d always loved fashion and even worked as a fashion designer before deciding to pack it in and look after her four children instead. But she was a lover of literature too, and she couldn’t understand why I’d choose New York over trying to get into college. Granddaddy, for his part, was simply worried: his little Victorinette all alone in New York, surrounded by the sharks? Was it really a sensible thing to do? I reassured them as best I could before going home.

We were all very excited. Dad suggested eating out to celebrate. But if I wanted to become a model, I was going to have to forget about eating out. Seb said I was ‘perfect’, but the girls had made a point of saying that a size 8 was still much too much.

So we didn’t go out to eat. I spent a sleepless night, and the next day I headed off to Elite.

* Sizes given throughout are UK sizes.

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