Super-Stylist Katie Grand Dishes on Late Pre-Show Nights with Marc Jacobs
BY DEREK BLASBERG
All this fashion week, Vanity Fair’s man on the street, Derek Blasberg, is interviewing fashion’s biggest behind-the-scenes movers and shakers. Today: super-stylist Katie Grand (Instagram @kegrand).
Katie Grand is a London-based super-stylist. She rose in the ranks of London’s notorious 90s fashion scene, working with magazines like The Face and Dazed & Confused, before becoming one of the most in-demand styling talents in the industry. She launched the Condé Nast-published Love magazine in 2009. Her greatest collaborator has been Marc Jacobs, whom she worked closely with to create many of his most memorable shows with Louis Vuitton. This is her sixth season working with Jacobs on his eponymous label, which debuts on Thursday. I caught up with her to talk about what it’s like being behind the scenes of one of New York’s most anticipated shows.
VF.com: Let’s talk about Marc. When did you first meet and how long have you been working together?
Katie Grand: We met around 2000. I gate-crashed a dinner in his honor in Paris. It was at the Hotel Costes and it was a post-show dinner for one of his Louis Vuitton shows [where he had been creative director since 1997]. I thought it was a big party, but it was a dinner for about 12 people. That became 20 when me and [fellow Brit stylist] Charlotte Stockdale rocked up and pulled up some chairs. Then it became tradition that I’d actually be invited to his Vuitton post-show parties, and I would inevitably end up on the sofa talking to him about the show that just happened, and how fabulous it was and what I thought of everything. Then I started working with him on the Vuitton advertising campaigns, then styling the menswear shows, and finally I started doing the women’s shows in 2005.
That makes this your 10-year anniversary together.
I hadn’t thought about that. ****.
When did you start working with Marc on the Marc Jacobs line here in New York?
Three years ago.
I of course know what you do, but how would you explain it to someone else?
What I do with Marc is quite different than what I do with other designers. Traditionally, what a stylist does is put together the looks, like pairing the right shoes and accessories with tops and skirts. With Marc, I work on designing the clothes and choosing the fabrics and working on shoes and bags and accessories. Basically, all aspects of clothing. We work pretty solidly through the season. Marc is a really brilliant stylist, which means, to be honest, I tend to just sit there and D.J. for the last week before the show.
I know you two are in constant communication. I’ve seen the texts, I’ve seen the e-mails.
Ha, yes, there’s a lot of back and forth. We work on the look and the design and the proportion together throughout the season. But we work so specifically on the clothes they’re almost designed as finished outfits, which is why there isn’t much traditional styling. I work on the casting, too. I make sure that when the dress turns up at four A.M. before the show, it will look great on whatever girl we’ve decided it will go on. That way, we don’t have a load of headaches with no sleep.
Let’s talk about the hours you keep before a show.
Since we’re older now, it’s much better. When we first met, the first time I worked on a women’s Vuitton show, I think I got about eight hours of sleep. Total. The entire time I worked on the show. It’s nothing now compared to how it used to be.
I sometimes get e-mails from you at three A.M. when you’re still in the studio.
The last three days are very intense, and you’re here till three or four every morning, but that’s similar to most studios I work at.
What are you doing till three A.M.? Adding ruffles, redesigning the clothes?
The problem is that the more tired you get, the less logic your brain has. So you’re kind of staring at pictures and sketches and trying to figure it out. Toward the end, you’ll have the atelier saying, “We can’t physically finish all of these things, what’s most important?” So you’ll agree that we can’t live without the lace dress section, but maybe we can have two instead of four of those tweed-suit day looks. Those are the decisions you’re making at four in the morning. No one wants to make them, but that’s how it is. It’s like this: we just throw everything up in the air and hope it lands nicely.
What’s your call time at the show?
The night before we’ll work till five or six in the morning, and then come back in at about 9:30 A.M. I try and come in a half an hour before Marc, but he’s always there before me. I get to the venue three hours before the show.
Then it’s hair and makeup, and finally show time. What are you thinking during the show?
When it’s a really intense show, it’s a blur. Like the last Vuitton show that Marc did: I have no memory of actually being at the show. I held [show opener] Edie [Campbell]’s chain outfit up because it was too heavy to carry on her own, and then remember looking for the last girl in the show because she got lost at the finale—between that it is all a blur, like it never happened. You’re running on no sleep, no food, and only adrenaline, and you can’t believe that it all finally came together.
What do you do immediately after Marc’s show in New York? I normally race backstage to find you, but you’re already on your way to the airport.
Yep. I jump straight on a plane and take the red eye to London to work on Jonathan Saunders’s and Giles’s shows in London. You just carry on going. I get a bit jealous of Marc because he has two days off.
What about Milan and Paris?
I go to Milan for Bottega [Veneta], and then the last two seasons in Paris I’ve gone to just watch shows, which has been really nice.
Now, I don’t want to ask you for a spoiler alert, but can you tell me what to expect this season?
I think the last show was very personal for Marc. And I think he was pulling quite a lot of his own memories from pervious collections. This season, he’s looking at where resort and last fall finished off. Let’s just say it’s going to be similar but different.
So maybe less nostalgic?
I think the woman is going to be very pulled together again. She’s cool, and pulled together. But to be honest, I couldn’t tell you more than that. He’s literally still sketching right now, and I’m sitting next to him looking at silly things on YouTube.
