Kirstie: I was a beauty editor in the sort of late 80s, early 90s when the first Paris slip came in and the first Restien and face lifts were very expensive, they were only for the very wealthy.

Kumi: Hi, I'm Kumi Taguchi and welcome to Insightful.

Kirstie: There seems to be an ideal that has been put forward now that is very samey, that it's more of an AI version of beauty.

Kumi: One of the things you said on our show, which has really stuck with me ever since I met you, was that you don't look in mirrors so much anymore.

Kirstie: Every time I look in the mirror, I see something I want to fix.

Kumi: Kirstie Clements had such an interesting career, starting out young in fashion magazines and becoming the editor in chief

Kirstie: for Vogue. I think there was an expectation that you'd be fabulous.

Kumi: I was struck by her strength and poise, and she'd lived in Paris for years, which is one of my favourite cities, so I had to chat to her again.

Kumi: Kirsty, it's so great to see you again. Nice to see you. Thanks for coming in, we're rocking the double denim. Here we are. You grew up in Sydney's Sutherland Shire around Cronulla Beach. What was that area like back then?

Kirstie: To be honest, pretty scary in the 70s. That's the Puberty Blues era. Gabrielle Carey and Cathy were at Sylvania High School. Same school. It was quite scary. It was very tribal, very misogynistic, you had to,

Kirstie: Be wearing the right clothes, you had to look a certain way, you had to have exactly the right bikini. You know, that whole thing of girls didn't surf girls sat there and waited for the boyfriends. That book were prescients.

Kumi: By the way, like just like right bikini, what was the right?

Kirstie: Oh, you know, I think it was probably crochet or something or like you had to have the right shorts, the puka. It was very, very and what would happen if you didn't? You were ousted out of groups.

Kirstie: weren't in the core group, so I couldn't wait to beat apart out.

Kumi: I was gonna say, the culture.

Kirstie: I don't have the right skin type, as you can see, I've very white skin and was probably a bit chubby, and I, I knew even when I was trying to fit in, why was I trying to fit in? Well, I knew, but you just try and, you know, ease your path, you kind of had to for a while. But by about the time I was 16, I'm like, I gotta go. And my my mother understood it was pretty relentlessly a one note culture.

Kumi: You left the Shire at 16 and moved to inner city Darlinghurst, what was life like?

Kirstie: Find anything more, you know, let me find the epicentre of the opposite of what the shire is. What was wonderful. I made a whole new group of friends and 16's young, I know, right? And so I had a good head on one of my friends from school, she moved to.

Kirstie: And we got this, I think we were sharing like a one bedroom flat in Kings Cross, you know, just made a like a barrier in it. But it was great that was you were all the, that was the punk scene and the music scene, and you could go out and see bands every night and go to art cinema, the Valhalla cinema, everybody will know in Glebe that you go and see the double bills. Like it was amazing and we were sneaking in obviously to the pubs when I come to think of it, no one was checking IDs, but we wore so much makeup you wouldn't know how old we were.

Kirstie: And it was just, that's what nourished me, I found that really nourishing, just that whole alternative scene.

Kumi: Did you feel like you could be more yourself?

Kirstie: I suppose you had to fit into that as well a little bit, but it attracted people from everywhere. So we had a common ethos, which was we loved the music, we love to dress like that.

Kirstie: It was different.

Kumi: Did you change how you looked? You've mentioned makeup a bit, but did you change sort of what you wore and how

Kirstie: you looked? Very much so. I never went in the sun again ever. I think I lived in Darling, I don't think I went to the beach for like 15 years or something. I never went to Bondi. Yeah, well tonnes of makeup, we bought all of our clothes at vintage stores or army disposal stores, so it was a bit of a cross between 150s and 60s vintage and punk.

Kirstie: And army disposal stuffs and really skinny jeans, peroxide hair, eyeliner, diamontes, stilettos, it's fabulous, and we, we had no money, so you had to run your jeans in because you didn't have 40,000 different options of jeans. You had to buy whatever was in my Miss Mya Miss or whatever, and then run them in on the sewing machine and dye things and cut the tops off t-shirts and creativity, yeah, it was, and yeah, it was like a club where you can sort of.

Kirstie: You would, you know, see people walking down the street and then I must know them because it was a particular style of dressing. And then it was all sort of, it was around Darlinghurst and Surrey Hills, particularly Forbes Street. There's quite a few squats in Forbes Street and there's a lot of bands lived there. And then the punks would come down from Brisbane and the punks would come up from Melbourne, and you'd always know if they were in town, like it was sort of,

Kirstie: A group that kind of all met together and ended up in the same gigs and stuff, you know, around town, the Hopetoun and Grand Hotel in Central and all that, so it was really fun, kind of exhilarating, a little bit scary just because it looked scary, but it wasn't. you get

Kumi: How did your first job?

Kumi: Vogue and what was it?

Kirstie: It was receptionist and I was working in a bookstore and I was reading the paper and it had the jobs for women and girls, men and boys, and it was the receptionist at Vogue, and I thought, oh, wouldn't that be a great way to maybe get in the door? And so I think I was the last person that was interviewed because I had to wait till the bookshop closed that night, go home, get changed and then go back for the interview. And uh I got the job on reception.

Kirstie: Yeah, that was that. I was in the door at 23, I was. Why do you think you got that job? I remember exactly what happened. The woman who was interviewing me, her name was Norma Mary Marshall, and she was

Kirstie: Probably in her 60s, really beautiful, like white blonde hair, red lipstick, just chic, you could see we were talking and then she said, look, I do have a girl, I'm gonna put her on, but if she doesn't work out, I'll call you. I don't know what came up for me, but I said, why don't you put me on first, because if I'm good.

Kirstie: Then you won't have to worry about that. And then she just looked at me and, and then she, she sort of said something like, you're very pretty, you've got lovely skin or something, which probably because I wasn't in the sun, and so she hired me, and I think she hired me because I said, why don't you just put me on first, little bit of sass, little bit, yeah, I was nervous, but a little bit. I, yeah, I remember that.

Kumi: You ended up resigning after your first stint, climbing that ladder at Vogue, you headed off for a new life in Paris. Why?

Kirstie: I'd been there a few times and I just fell in love with Paris and then I fell in love with a man in Paris, and so I thought, oh why don't I just go and try it, why not? You know, I was 30, and I went over and in retrospect it was probably a good thing to have done because I resigned from Vogue, but they kept me on as a foreign correspondent, and that's when you really started to learn.

Kirstie: Because I was there on the spot, I could go to the couture shows. I could interview Tom Ford, I could interview the nose of Chanel.

Kumi: So this is in the 90s. Must have been incredible to be part of Paris and that scene then. I feel like the 90s is that kind of supermodel. It was just like the peak of everything that you would have worked on. It was.

Kirstie: And so for me to be able to have that access to.

Kirstie: And that was the supermodel era, so Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell and the Versace shows at the Ritz on the over the swimming pool, Gultier Galliano, like all that, it was amazing.

Kumi: It's pretty young to be doing all of that.

Kirstie: Well, I was 30 at that point, I guess in the nightclub world as well, because my husband was in the nightclub world, that was a whole other.

Kirstie: So, that was incredible. He was at the Cas bar and that was like the coolest club to be in and you'd go down and it'd be Michael Hutchins and Bono and Philippe Starck and Claude Montana and yeah, it was amazing.

Kumi: You ended up coming back to Australia, moving your family back here. What brought you back here?

Kirstie: I was offered the deputy editorship of Vogue, and then I said to my husband, that's an important offer, so I, I think we should take that, and he'd had enough of the nightclub world at that point, so he was like, OK, it was time for me to come back and then also I think the boys at that age, I was just, it's so exhausting getting two twins dressed in combinations and cold weather clothing.

Kumi: My gosh, I can only imagine.

Kirstie: Can we just go back and I could just put them in a nappy and they can just go down the beach.

Kirstie: Yeah, but it was a work decision, a career decision.

Kumi: You've worked in the fashion industry for decades, including as editor in chief of Vogue for 13 years. Was there an expectation that you looked the part?

Kirstie: Very much so. And I think at the beginning, you know, when I started at Vogue, I started in the 80s and it was very much about being pulled together with your clothing and that sense of style, the having the right shoe, the right handbag, but as digital media came in and red carpet came in.

Kirstie: And the camera got trained on you as a journalist because I went in as a journalist and that was never about what you looked like, that that all shifted with the camera phone. So all of a sudden it was who was at the shows, who's front row at the shows, are you thin enough, are you beautiful enough, does your hair look good enough? But before, it didn't matter. We were working journalists who rocked up with a notepad and a pen.

Kirstie: And then the camera phone turned it on its head and you were front and centre, and I hated that. I used to go to red carpet events and I'd try to slide around the back of them, you know.

Kirstie: And they'd be like, the PRs would be like, come, come, get, get out, come back from behind that pot plant and stand here because it was part of your job was to be photographed at the launch at the red carpet, what have you and I loathed it and it became very much about observing what the other people were doing in the front row. It wasn't just the runway anymore, because when I, I was living in Paris in the 90s, I think it came back late 97, 98.

Kirstie: And I'd go to the Chanel shows in the Ritz, and I'd be there with a monore bag because I'd been to the supermarket and had to get dinner and with an umbrella cos it was wet and with my metro ticket, and no one was looking at you, no one could care less. You just, you went in there, you sat down, you filed your story with the umbrella dripping on the, on the carpet at the Ritz, but no one was looking at you and then.

Kirstie: So when that shifted, it was quite painful and really bitchy, um, because it was about how you were dressed and did you have the latest thing and all that pressure. a

Kumi: And in way, not necessarily doing the journalism that you're there to do, right?

Kirstie: No. You know, I remember I was thinking, you really need, if you want to get into this job, you do need to be someone who wants to be looked at. It appeared to me that that was taking over whether you were actually a journalist or not, or whether you're a business person or not. It was actually, did you wanna play the game and wear the clothes and.

Kirstie: That definitely shifted.

Kumi: Were your looks ever judged by others commented on?

Kirstie: Of course. I think there was an expectation that you'd be fabulous, and that's not my personality, nor is it my look. So you were judged definitely by what you had on, but I ended up having a bit of a uniform really where I think it was in the early 2000s, I had 2.

Kirstie: Helmet lay pantsuits, one black, one beige, great shoe, great handbag. I just packed blouses and black pants for evening events, and that was that like, you know, I mean, I couldn't think of having to pack 10 different outfits and 10 different ways to be photographed. That's a whole other job. That's an influencer's job.

Kumi: It sounds exhausting, yeah, that's not what your job was, no.

Kumi: What about comments about your leadership, like a woman running this significant fashion publication, did you get comments around that?

Kirstie: When I started at Vogue in the 80s, it was run by women, the managing director was a woman, of course, they were always very senior.

Kirstie: Everybody was, I think there were some men in the art department, but pretty much it was very female dominated. And I think that was one of the areas that, that's why I liked being in magazines and I, I liked magazines rather than, say, going to the newspapers because it was very female dominated. And I had some great female leadership during my tenure at Vogue to look up to as well. So, I'd also been there for 13 years before I got that role, so it wasn't like I jumped into the role from somewhere else. I'd actually learned from the ground up and I,

Kirstie: Sort of felt, I know that I felt when I got it that I deserved it and then I could probably do it. We all have a bit of an imposter syndrome, but I was like, well, I can wrap my head around this. But I don't think my leadership was under question until, you know, until the end when there were new, new management came in, but

Kumi: when there was criticism, I mean we all get it in our jobs, don't we? How did you handle criticism?

Kirstie: Depending on what the criticism was, like, if I'd made a mistake in the work, if I'd misjudged something with an advertiser, if I'd misjudged something with what the readers thought, of course I would take that personally. But if it was just that sort of general criticism about that comes with running Vogue, there was a bit of misogyny around it and a bit of devil wears priory thing around it, so that, that I didn't, I had to develop a very thick skin.

Kirstie: Not to let that affect me. There's also when social media came in, when everybody had an opinion, so you've done a cover, you've absolutely bust your chops trying to get Cate Blanchett illustrated by David Downton and Find the Money, and you, you know, you've done this whole gone on this whole journey and then some key.

Kirstie: Warrior gets on and said, well I would have done and you have to develop a thick skin to criticism and because it's pointless, it becomes pointless. If it's just opinion, it's like don't read the comments section, don't Google yourself, don't because it's just opinion and it's just people.

Kirstie: Showing off. I'm sure it would be so easy to doubt what we do. Yes,

Kirstie: yes, and you, you can't be full of doubt. You, you, you, I had to sort of have it in the sanctum with my art director, my deputy, my fashion director, the opinions that I took into consideration, and I kind of had to leave it there, because if you keep asking everybody, as you know,

Kirstie: All colours become brown. Everybody's got to be, oh, she looks like somebody I didn't like at school, that looks like my mean cousin. I hate pink. You can't make any sort of valid results, so you do have to sort of get your people around you.

Kirstie: And have a bit of gut instinct.

Kumi: I was just gonna say, how would you make choices ultimately? Was it a gut instinct? Would you kind of separate yourself from all the noise, close your eyes and just go, hang on, why did I want to do this thing in the first place?

Kirstie: Yes, and I think when I look back, I was quite a commercial editor, so I definitely probably to some people's, you know, not to some people's taste would want it to have been a bit more edgy, but I always wanted,

Kirstie: The reader to find something in there that she or he would like, like there would be something, it wasn't just one relentless note, it was a little bit of a mix, so that was, I did er towards commerciality, but that's because you want to sell copies, you want your staff to keep their jobs, you want management not to be at your on your case all the time, so constantly redrawing the line in the sand and then adding some gut instinct, you know, not to sound, you know, too worthy, but I did,

Kirstie: Try to put up a fight to say I don't, I don't think, I don't think they want to read that, or I think they will notice if you take out a 16 page section of editorial and they still have to pay the same cover price like you have to fight for the, for the, you have to fight for the reader.

Kumi: You've had such a long career observing trends, as women, I feel like we like to think that we've made so much progress. But are young women really freer today than in the past?

Kirstie: I think it's probably the same. I think there's a certain person who likes to follow trends, who likes to follow fashion, who wants to.

Kirstie: Look like part of a particular group. And then there's those brave souls that just do whatever they want. I think there's more of them now, to be honest. I do, where they're just rocking whatever they feel like. I think there's a lot more of that, which I really like.

Kumi: And what about sort of lifestyles, like the lifestyles you see young women.

Kumi: Having or embracing today as opposed to that influence the thing is very strong, isn't it? You talk to students because I do a bit of lecturing at fashion college, they seem quite anti-influencer, but they still tend to follow them. They're hard to get away from. And I don't think it's so much the trend of clothing and and fashion is not probably the worrying part, it's the probably the surgery and the way that everybody wants to look the same. That's become fashion, the ability to be able to just change your face this afternoon.

Kirstie: At a price point that is attainable, that's what's really changed.

Kumi: The taboo nature of it, I feel like has shifted so quickly. There seems to be just an exponential acceptance of that.

Kumi: So why even,even pressure, so what's worrying about it from your perspective?

Kirstie: Well, I just, we always preface it with whatever anybody wants to do. Yes, exactly 100% you do, you do you.

Kirstie: But it's the sameness and the fact that there is real beauty in, in different sorts of beauty and beauty and even if you want to call it imperfection, it's not imperfection, it's just individuality and.

Kirstie: I was in Paris like last month and I would sit sometimes in the cafe, which I love to do my favourite thing, just people watch. And I really noticed that even something like they had really great haircuts that suited their hair, you know, if they had curly hair, it was really short and tonnes of curls, and then somebody else had a different haircut and short bangs and da da. And you don't really even see that very much and that's a particular culture here in Sydney anyway. I don't know where it's all just really long hair pulled back in a bun or.

Kirstie: What have you, whereas people were really in Paris really stepping into their, how they looked and kind of dining themselves in that way if that makes sense, like owning what that is. And I wish I'd like to see more of that.

Kumi: When I travel, what I love doing is looking at other women and how other women are embracing their femininity or not or whatever, their individuality and different.

Kumi: Cultures, you know, Japan, which I go to so much, it's so different.

Kirstie: So the best dressed people in the world, they're Japanese men. Oh my god, the boys in the, oh my god, incredible.

Kumi: So, so out there, so fun. I do feel like there's something Parisian women don't wear a lot of makeup. No, there's a kind of, yeah, that individuality and style. I found myself actually dressing differently when I was there and going, oh, actually I don't need to.

Kumi: I can be who I am.

Kirstie:Yeah, definitely. I mean there's definitely trends like if you had a pair of skinny or straight jeans in Paris, I think they would have taken you sent you home. I was like, I, I was like thank God I have my wide leg jeans with me, even if I look like a telephone box, but there was definitely a trend, but.

Kirstie: Yeah, no, not so much makeup, not so much surgery it seemed like not like that sort of, and particularly a lot of the guys, I would like to be walking down the street, you would stop in your tracks the way they put clothes together and their hair and their accessories and what have you, just like incredible. It's really, it's great to have that injection of style when you.

Kirstie: I think I do think Paris has got it. Everybody tells me Berlin is very stylish. I haven't been there, but yeah, that's the next one, you know, yes, yeah, like pushing the envelope away, but yeah,

Kumi: interesting. One of the things you said on our show, which has really stuck with me ever since I met you was that you don't look in mirrors so much anymore, and it actually made me feel so sad because you are such a beautiful woman.

Kumi: I just felt like it's not a good thing when we don't look in the mirror. Why don't you feel that way?

Kirstie: Oh, I suppose because every time I look in the mirror I see something I want to fix, you know, I was travelling for 7 weeks and I came back, my hair was really grey because I hadn't had time to go to the hairdressers and then you'd see, I don't know, your eyebrows, and then you're like,

Kirstie: There's just something I want to fix, so I'm like, the less time spent looking in the mirror, the better I think. It's just when I, you know, I always put makeup on in the morning and and do all that sort of stuff, but it's just something that is less interesting to me as I get older, actually spend too much time. I it's not self loathing, I don't, I hope. I wanted

Kumi: to tell you a story about my attitude towards ageing and my grandmother, so when I was about mid-twenties, I looked at my granny, grey hair in a bun.

Kumi: The perfect granny, and I remember thinking, I wanna be like her when I'm old. And so what choices do I need to make? I sort of thought, look, I'm not gonna make that choice at 70, I need to start making choices now. So when it comes to do I dye my hair, do I do X, do I do Y? And I was adamant, adamant that in order to become my granny at 70 with the white hair and a bun, I need to not do XYZ when I'm gonna be tempted to, when I'm 30, 40, 45, whatever.

Kumi: However, that's all good and well in theory. The reality is, I work in an industry where I'm on camera, at least at this stage. You can have the theory in your mind, like, let's not do the surgery and let's do this, but the reality is very different. Have you fought

Kirstie: against that? 100%. And you always have to say you, you reserved the right to change your mind. Yes, um, for example, I went to my hairdresser the other day and I hadn't seen him for 7 weeks.

Kirstie: And he was like, oh there's so much grey in your hair and what you, and I was like, Should I need to stop me in my tracks? and I went, no, no, no, absolutely, you're never going grey, it wouldn't suit you. You suit dark hair. And I was like, right then, OK, I'll be dying, I'll be getting that boxed I will I have to, you know, for the rest of my life. He's like, yes, you will. So he and my friends made this absolutely unilateral decision that I would look terrible with grey hair and so I'm like, OK, sure, so that won't be happening. But of course we're pushed and pulled all the time and look at the,

Kirstie: What we're shown all the time, you know, Nicole Kidman and Demi Moore and, you know, who are probably sort of my age groupish, where you're like, Oh, should I be looking like that? And then I was watching Kristen Scott Thomas on Slow Horses and I was like, look at her ageing like a normal woman does. Like look how fabulous she is. So I think it's about how much more of that we see reflect.

Kirstie: back at us.

Kumi: It's so interesting and I, and I hate doing the male-female comparison, but I do feel like there is such a difference in a visual industry when a man ages, gets grey hair, is distinguished and a gentleman and actually looks better as he ages. And there's very few women with grey hair.

Kumi: Apart from it, what's it, Maggie,

Kirstie: oh Helen Helen. Mirren and Judy Dench, we do this thing where you either look like perpetually.

Kirstie: Frozen in time like uh some of the actresses, and there isn't that bit in the middle. That's so true, you know, where sort of Nordic beauty or that like Italian, those women who are fabulous they got long, all masses of grey hair, lines on their face, tanned, big beautiful earrings, no makeup, gorgeous, great manicure, gorgeous, nothing done, that's very Nordic as well, beautiful silver hair pulled back and a ponytail, red lip, nothing.

Kirstie: And then we just sort of have perpetually frozen and then old, right, there's not the in the in between bit where you're like, can't you just look cool and wear denim and just we have silver hair, but.

Kirstie: Wear your favourite grandmother's jewelry and and some lipstick, but not the whole scenario. I guess it's not, we don't see it reflected back at us. And women who age like that are called brave. George, what's his name? George Clooney and Brad Pitt, you know, doing their thing on them. They're so self-satisfied, honestly, and you watch them and you're not. Oh God, and I watch them on the red carpet with their beautiful girlfriends who are 30 years younger all over and you're just like.

Kirstie: They haven't been brave, have they? It's all just getting thrown at them. Yeah, there's no standards we have to

Kumi: self-satisfy it's actually the best word I've heard described, there's a look,

Kirstie: there's in the movies, like they chew their way through movies, but Brad eats his way through films, it's like,

Kirstie: Could you take this seriously?

Kumi: What drives you in this chapter of your life? Like, travel's obviously a huge thing.

Kirstie: I think to me it's that sort of having a rich internal life because it's, it's less and less external, isn't it? I I I it seems to me that it would probably becomes more internal and um,

Kirstie: Stay and still stay open and stay optimistic.

Kumi: What are you most proud of that you've done in your life so far? I feel like there's so much life still to go.

Kirstie: I'm proud, I just, I guess.

Kirstie: that I um proud.

Kirstie: You know how we, I think it's that thing that, you know, young women were always were coming to me and saying, how do you have it all? And the answer is you can, but not all at the same time. And I feel like I've got beautiful children, I have great friendships. I spent a lot of time with my mother and I feel like I was good. Like, I feel like I've done what I, I hoped I would do, and, but of course it didn't all happen at the same time. And I still, I guess I'm proud that I still feel a little bit curious because I think corporate life and,

Kirstie: Everything can really knock it out of you. I think as long as I still feel like slightly optimistic and curious about things, then I, I'm like, well, good, I'm still functioning, you know, yeah, but I don't, there's nothing I tick we're like, oh, I had a great career or I did this or whatever, it's not, that's not it, it's that.

Kirstie: You sort of did your best and I got to taste a little bit of everything and taste a little, a lot of the world.

Kumi: And long may that last. Kirstie, it's so lovely to see you again. I can't tell you how great it is to see you. Thank you. It's been so lovely looking at your gorgeous face.

Kirstie: It was lovely to talk to you. I was like thrilled to be invited here. Thank you so much. Thank you.