A Changing Landscape

For the first three years of Bazaar's comeback, Hearst Magazines gave Liz Tilberis and her team carte blanche. But by 1995, the magazine world was getting leaner, and Liz was under pressure to cut costs and kick up newsstand sales. Her solution? Celebrity. And lots of it. Suddenly, actresses, rock stars, and royalty graced the cover almost as often as supermodels. Inside, you were as likely to see Pamela Anderson shot by Peter Lindbergh as Amber Valletta. But Liz's cleverest use of celebrity came when she co-chaired the Met Gala in 1996; she created a slightly surreal Christian Dior tribute (with his best dresses suspended mid-air) and invited the world's biggest celebrities. Her guest of honor was Princess Diana, whose much-photographed presence that night put the Met Gala on the map—and Bazaar at the center of the chat.  

In this episode, we discuss some great BTS moments with Linda Evangelista, former Bazaar editors Paul Cavaco and Richard Sinnott, Liz's former publicist Susan Magrino, and former assistant Stephanie Albertson. 

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Transcript

Paul Cavaco

Rumor had it that Bazaar was not doing exceedingly well.

Stephanie Albertson

We were way over budget.

Susan Magrino

There were so many things that suddenly we couldn't do.

Richard Sinnott

We just felt the inconvenience of it all.

Cynthia True

The seismic relaunch of Harper's Bazaar in 1992 was only possible, of course, because Hearst was willing to make a significant investment in a legacy title that had lost its way. 

Dennis Golonka

It was a risk, but it made sense in a growth industry. 

Cynthia True

But in 1995, after an era of extravagance, things changed at Harper's Bazaar. The party didn't end, but they turned up the lights. 

Dennis Golonka

I'm Dennis Golonka. 

Cynthia True

I'm Cynthia True. Back in 1992, we were brand new assistants at Harper's Bazaar and witnessed firsthand its remarkable return from newsstand oblivion to its former status as America's most innovative fashion magazine. 

Dennis Golonka

The Nineties were the era of celebrity designers and supermodels. Magazines were at their peak influence. And suddenly, no magazine mattered more than Bazaar, a hip alternative to Vogue. And no one was more celebrated than its effervescent editor, Liz Tilberis 

Cynthia True

This is Blow-Up: When Liz Tilberis Transformed Bazaar. ​

Dennis Golonka

You're listening to Episode Five: A Changing Landscape.

Cynthia True

If magazines were at their peak influence in the Nineties, by 1995, the specter of the digital revolution was just starting to creep into the consciousness, sort of like AI circa 2012. And competition was also getting tougher at the newsstand, particularly for fashion magazines. It was a category more crowded than ever before, with Elle, Mirabella, Marie Claire, and InStyle joining Vogue and Bazaar. And the newsstand was what mattered to Hearst, far more than the subscriber who paid less than fifteen dollars a year.

Dennis Golonka

So despite all the awards and the success at needling Vogue, Hearst was feeling the pressure. Former Bazaar fashion director, Paul Cavaco.

Paul Cavaco

We weren't privy to the numbers or anything of whether we were doing well or not, but rumor had it that Bazaar was not doing exceedingly well.

Dennis Golonka

On the same day that Liz went in for her bone marrow transplant, July 26th, 1995, Hearst held a meeting, which Liz attended before reporting to the hospital, to announce that they needed to cut costs dramatically.

Cynthia True

Claeys Bahrenburg had made a bold decision in this uncertain media environment, and it had been poorly received by advertisers. Susan Magrino, Liz's former publicist. 

Susan Magrino

I think, you know, the magazine world was really starting to change, which is why Claeys—Claeys, if you remember, he cut the rate base. And it ended up, sometimes you can play ball with that, but it ended up being a disaster. 

Cynthia True

The way Liz explained it, in a bid to address major increases in paper and postage that were affecting the company's bottom line, Hearst decided they would print fewer copies and at the same time raise ad rates and their newsstand price. They were willing to let go of subscribers, those discount readers who were considered less brand loyal anyway.

Dennis Golonka

The advertisers however, were undelighted about this new plan that involved them paying a higher rate for fewer eyeballs. Many of them pushed back. As Liz put it, the reaction was, Who the hell do you think you are? Kraft Foods walked away completely. Although Bazaar was not as directly affected as some other Hearst titles, it plunged the company into two years of damage control and changed its overall relationship with the ad community.

Cynthia True

The belt tightening was relative, however. The staff didn't feel a big change day-to-day. You could still stay at the Hotel Coste when you were in Paris, you could still order up champagne and caviar for your friends. Former Bazaar editors Richard Sinnott and Elissa Santisi.

Richard Sinnott

We just felt the inconvenience of it all, because instead of having a car wait for you for eight hours, you'd have to get dropped off and then call another one. 

Elissa Santisi

All of a sudden we couldn't fly business, but you know what? That was the most fun trip because she split everyone up. You didn't do Milan and Paris. And I remember it was Paul, Melanie, and I went to Milan and Paul [laughs] brought, like, a pitcher of vodka and cranberry, and I switched seats so I could sit next to him, and I remember he went to the bathroom and changed into pajamas, and I just laughed. We laughed the whole trip.

Dennis Golonka

But Liz felt the changes intensely. She was depleted by the bone-marrow transplant and the chemotherapy that followed. It was morale-busting to have Hearst turning up the pressure at the same time.

Cynthia True

Liz was a pragmatist. She understood it was business. But it was frustrating after the unparalleled quality they had delivered, to be left feeling that they needed to “do better” on less especially because Liz felt the company had been rather ham-fisted in its handling of the ad rate matter. But she really liked Claeys. Along with Veronica Hearst, he had been her unwavering champion all along. For Liz, the worst blow was his departure in 1996.

Dennis Golonka

Cathie Black, who would later, very briefly, be New York City Schools Chancellor, replaced Bahrenberg as president of Hearst. She came from a long magazine career as the first female publisher of New York magazine and then publisher and president of USA Today. Under Black's leadership, Hearst expanded, launching O, the Oprah Magazine, and the Food Network Magazine. But Liz and Cathie had an uneasy relationship from Day One. 

Susan Magrino

Liz didn't love her because, you know, life was so good for so long. I mean, who's gonna let, you know, it's like you work somewhere, you get a new boss, and they're not as nice as the last one. It was kind of a little bit of that, but it was obviously more serious because, you know, there were so many things that suddenly we couldn't do. 

Cynthia True

Liz's former assistant, Stephanie Albertson.

Stephanie Albertson

I know that there were photo shoots that—single shoots in an issue that cost upwards of two hundred to three-hundred thousand dollars. So imagine you have how many spreads in an issue? 

Dennis Golonka

And sometimes those shoots were killed and then reshot.

Stephanie Albertson

And then reshot. And so the budgets were huge numbers and Cathie was hired to cut those budgets. And so Liz would, you know, if I ever heard her angry, it was about that. They were trying to clip her creative—and I think she felt like if they kept doing that, she would be on the chopping block, too. And I think she had obviously very real concerns about having a job and having life insurance and health insurance for her children. And so I think, you know, keeping her job was really important to her, but also maintaining the creative caliber and her vision.

Cynthia True

The answer to pumping up newsstand sales, everyone felt, was to embrace celebrity. Bazaar, like most fashion magazines, featured almost exclusively models on the cover, save one or two special issues a year. But it was a new era, and it was time for a more commercial approach. Liz also thought fun, highly stylized celebrity shoots would help offset the distressing heroin chic accusations.

Dennis Golonka

Liz brought Vogue’s celebrity booker Maggie Buckley in as special projects editor. Maggie was Irish and ridiculously charming, and everyone just loved her. With Maggie on board, we booked five celebrity covers in ‘95 and then five in ‘96. We did Liz Hurley, Uma Thurman, Sharon Stone, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, and even Princess Diana. The uptick was an industry-wide thing, spurred by the huge success of Vanity Fair. Vogue, Bazaar, and others were competing for the biggest cover stars.

Cynthia True

But Liz wasn't thrilled about it. She loved her models. “I've had to acknowledge,” she said, “that celebrity sells in America. Even though an actress is not a professional model and we don't always get what we want.” Paul, who had not yet gone to Vogue, didn't love the idea either.

Paul Cavaco

I did not want to do celebrities. They come kind of with who they are, and you know, the whole job of a model is to sort of be a chameleon and then, you had someone at the time like Linda Evangelista, who you could just change a million times. 

Cynthia True

Paul, who loved film and used lots of cinematic references in his work, wasn't resistant to an actor in the right context. In 1992, long before there was any pressure to stunt cast anyone, he used the little-known Hugh Grant as a gorgeous supporting player for an ambitious Peter Lindbergh shoot starring Linda Evangelista. He had just seen Maurice, a British indie movie Grant starred in. 

Paul Cavaco

Anna Sui and I got obsessed with how beautiful Hugh Grant is. She goes, “You should get Hugh Grant.” So I said, “Okay.” So they got us Hugh Grant! And we flew him in.

Dennis Golonka

The story was called “Sheer Nights,” and it was inspired by photographer Melvin Sokolski's work in the 1960s and also the 1942 film I Married a Witch, starring Veronica Lake. 

Paul Cavaco

Sokolsky had done these pictures in Bazaar of, like, girls flying across the page. You know, it's the girl in the bubble that people have copied so much. It was girls flying in Central Park, girls flying over dinner tables. So that was the nod to, you know, old Bazaar, but also I had just seen—the Metropolitan Museum had done a thing. It was called, uh Théâtre des Modes. And it was all the couturiers and people that made gloves and hats and shoes in Paris when the fashion industry closed down during the war had reopened. And the way that they were sort of selling their things was they had little mannequins. And they dressed the mannequins to promote the fact that Paris fashion was back. And all the mannequins were put into situations. Like little dioramas. And the dioramas were done by Cocteau, Barad, all these artists. The exhibition had traveled around the world and then suddenly got lost. It was discovered, just as we did Bazaar, at that same moment, in the basement of a museum somewhere in the Midwest, and they brought it to the Metropolitan. And one of the things was, I Married a Witch. So I thought this is the perfect thing, so we did Linda flying.

Dennis Golonka

It was not just Linda flying. It was Linda flying through the streets of New York City in a pre-Photoshop world.

Cynthia True

When Linda was first told about the shoot, they mentioned Hugh Grant. She wasn't familiar with him, but when she got to set, She found him handsome and very nice too. He was happy to play the part of a man in pursuit of an airborne Evangelista. 

Linda Evangelista

I came down to earth for him. You see?

Dennis Golonka

But what Linda was really into was the flying part. They'd had a harness specially made for her.

Linda Evangelista

Yes, I was harnessed, and they made the harness on my measurements. The harness is under the garments, and it comes out the back. 

Paul Cavaco

It was like denim cutoffs. They had gotten a pair of jeans, cut them off and lined them in shearling. The whole thing is lined in shearling, so she has to put the shorts on and there's two hooks on either side of her waist. Then there's two wires that lift her up.

Linda Evangelista

And the first time I went up, I was like, I was so excited. And as soon as they hoisted me up, I was like, Oh no, oh no, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, let me down. It was awful. I was like, how does Peter Pan do this every night on Broadway? 

Paul Cavaco

She was in pain the whole time and then she would be literally, there was one photograph where she is on top of a, uh, street sign. She is up there and she's standing there and literally she is bent over completely trying to like, like she was slumped so that she couldn't feel. 

Linda Evangelista

Oh my god, it was so painful to be in the air. I didn't realize how painful. So yes, when you see me on the sign, I’m resting. 

Cynthia True

That's amazing. 
 
 

Linda Evangelista

I'm taking the weight off while he changes the roll of film. And then he's like, “Oh, stay there, stay there,” you know? 

Paul Cavaco

And then Peter went, “Okay!” And then she just, like, literally in two seconds came up and modeled. And it was like anything that was on her face that was showing that she was upset or hurt or anything, gone. 

Cynthia True

You make it look so effortless. To know that you were actually— 

Linda Evangelista

I'm dying. 

Cynthia True

That's crazy. 

Linda Evangelista

I will do anything to get a good picture. 

Dennis Golonka

Sheer Nights is nothing but great pictures. Another one of those early Lindbergh fantasy shoots that raised the bar. But that was about an actor serving the story, not an actor replacing a model on a cover. From 1993, however, we were doing a couple of celebrity covers a year as a special thing. 

Paul Cavaco

I said we should only do specific celebrities like they used to do in—Vogue would do them. You know, Julie Christie or Cher or something. But it was always a reason for doing them, you know, and it was usually based on their chic and their beauty. So I said, we should only do it that way. And I don't really want to do it…so Tonne, you know, we did Daryl Hannah was the first, uh, cover that we did. And Tonne did it ‘cause I didn't want to do it. And then, of course, I met Daryl Hannah in the elevator with Tonne, and I thought, I'm an idiot. I should have done it. She's so fabulous looking and she's so nice. I should have done it.

Dennis Golonka

I also have a story about Daryl Hannah and the elevator. First of all, I'm a huge fan. And in 1993, she was at peak fame after her movies like Splash and Wall Street. She was also dating John Kennedy Jr. And she didn't do much press, so it was kind of a coup that we got her. Anyway, one day Liz calls and asks me to come to her office. I was still an art department assistant, and it was rare for her to call me directly. So I jump up and go right over. And Liz explains that she's down an assistant and Daryl Hannah is coming up to her office. She says, “Dennis, I need you to go get a hundred dollars’ worth of pennies, please, right away.” She handed me the petty cash herself. So I run down the block to the bank, and I ask for a hundred dollars in pennies.

Cynthia True

That's ten thousand pennies, about fifty pounds.

Dennis Golonka

Yeah, but they go get them. And I lug these two bags of pennies down the block, as fast as I can, up to Liz's office. I'm dying, but you know, it's Daryl Hannah. Liz's one assistant is now back, so I drop the bags in front of her desk. I'm like, “Here, these are for Liz.” And she looks at me, she's like, “What are you doing? What is this?” And I'm like, “These are the pennies Liz asked for!” And she says, “No, no, no, no, not pennies. She wanted peonies!”

Paul Cavaco

That's hilarious.

Cynthia True

I can hear her saying peonies, and it sounding very close to pennies. These translation errors were not uncommon at Bazaar, because the green American assistants, like us, were not necessarily experienced with a mix of accents around the office. 

Dennis Golonka

Oh, I couldn't understand what anyone in that office was saying for the first three weeks I worked there. Anyway, so I have to haul all these pennies back to the bank as fast as I can, because the flower guy definitely isn't going to take a hundred dollars of pennies. But the bank teller doesn't want them either. He's pissed when he sees I'm back. He's like, “Oh, no, no, no, sorry. You're going to have to write your account number on each roll first.” So I'm panicking, and I start rambling, and I say, “Please, Daryl, Hannah's coming! This is for Harper's Bazaar! I work for Harper's Bazaar! And he's like, “You work for Harper's Bazaar? I love Harper's Bazaar. Here, give them to me. Go.” 

Cynthia True

The power of Bazaar in Nineties New York.

Dennis Golonka

So I've got my petty cash, I go running down the street to the flower guy, and I'm like, “Just give me all the peonies I can get for a hundred bucks, all white,” which was Liz's thing. I go running back to the office, I sprint across the lobby. I'm, like, pounding the elevator button. Daryl Hannah is going to be here any second. Finally, an elevator opens, I jump in, and at the last second, I see Daryl Hannah coming. So I hit door close, door close, door close! The elevator doors basically shut on her. She's like five feet away. But I got up to Liz's office, and by the time Daryl Hannah made it up there, we had those peonies in vases, and it looked perfect.

Cynthia True

Whatever the staff resistance to ramping up celebrity coverage, they all had to admit that celebrities generated the best inside stories. When Hugh Grant returned to Bazaar in ‘96 to grace the cover with his then partner Liz Hurley, and somewhat mysteriously a chimpanzee, it wasn't Bazaar's most inspired cover. But the shoot, done just weeks after Grant had been caught with a sex worker named Divine Brown, was legendary. The editors were barely able to contain themselves as Patrick Demarchelier kept innocently calling out, “Divine! Divine!” as he shot the couple.

Dennis Golonka

But our most epic celebrity shoot had to be in ‘96, when Peter Lindbergh did a big fashion story with Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. Not who you'd expect to see modeling in the pages of Bazaar. But again, it was a new era.

Paul Cavaco

And so it's Peter Lindbergh and we're shooting on 57th and Fifth.

Cynthia True

Oh my God.

Paul Cavaco

We end up in a lawsuit because Peter ends up—so we're walking in the street. It's Tommy and Pamela at the height of her beauty. She could not have been more beautiful at that moment. Very tan, you know, blonde, blonde hair. She looks glorious. And then she's given the treatment. Odile does her hair, you know. She looks so beautiful. And they're walking and people obviously know who they are. And we have five guards, but the people are coming up and touching them, and this paparazzi kept following them, and he would get in the middle of Peter's picture. And Peter would sometimes take it with the paparazzi because he thought it was funny, but he was kind of really too much there, and even if we asked him nicely he would—and he got into a thing with the head of security. You know, I think the camera broke and then Peter took us to the San Gennaro Festival so we went there. It was like the insanity factor! You know, they're eating like, you know, Sabretto—

Cynthia

[laughs] Right, right. 

Paul Cavaco

—things. So they're everywhere in the street. Peter's not paying attention, you know. The fact that Liz let us photograph them—we said, we HAVE to! She was willing, cause she understood popular culture, and what people were talking about. And do you remember when the tape came out? It's like the sex tape! That's all—the fact that they got married was insane! You know, so we were all dying. 

Dennis Golonka

After you left, it was felt. I mean, there was a change, obviously in the environment, but also in the look of the magazine, and that might have been timing because that's when, we were embracing celebrity more, so maybe it was a good time for you to go.

Paul Cavaco

Well, then I went to Vogue and did celebrities. [laughs] 

Cynthia True

In February 1996, six months after the bone-marrow transplant, Liz's cancer returned. She was starting to realize it wasn't going to go away, but she hoped it could be managed long term. She started chemotherapy once again, and continued until September when totally worn down, she had a conversation with Diana who told her, “It's your body. If you want to stop, stop. You have to have control.”

Dennis Golonka

There was just so much going on. She needed to put out the magazine, charm advertisers, and fundraise for ovarian cancer research.

Stephanie Albertson

She was pulled in so many different directions and she wanted to be very present for her kids and she wanted to be at all their events and I think that, as she got further along in her diagnosis and her treatment, she became very involved with the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund and there was that whole side. I think the biggest pressures really were all the events that we were doing. We had all kinds of things going on all the time and—

Dennis Golonka

Kids for Kids.

Stephanie Albertson

Kids for Kids, the creation of Super Saturday with Donna Karan, then all the Ovarian Cancer Research fund they did. They were doing, I think, like, educational seminars and then we had the hotline for all of their help calls coming to Liz's office. So we were screening calls from women who were calling in to get help. 

Cynthia True

On top of all that, Liz felt she had to defend her position at work. It had gotten back to her that months earlier, while she was in the hospital for the bone marrow transplant, a few editors had sent their resumes to Hearst, in case they needed a new editor-in-chief. She had heard that people were whispering about potential successors, and she appreciated how loyal Claeys had been, “never,” she wrote later, “even appointing a deputy editor during my absence.” But now that Claeys was gone, she didn't feel she could be as transparent with corporate. She worried about what they might do if they sensed that she was at all diminished.

Dennis Golonka

Against that backdrop, Liz was co-chairing the 1996 Met Gala. 

Stephanie Albertson

She did the Costume Institute Ball before Vogue owned that.

Dennis Golonka

Anna Wintour had chaired the Met Gala for the first time the previous year. And this year was Bazaar's turn. Christian Dior was sponsoring the gala to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, which was especially meaningful to Liz, as it was Bazaar's editor-in-chief, Carmel Snow, who had championed Dior in the late Forties. “It's quite a revolution, dear Christian,” Snow famously said. “Your dresses have such a new look.” A funny side note about Carmel Snow: Liz enjoyed that they were both descended from textile families and were both prematurely white-haired.

Stephanie Albertson

Springtime in Paris was the theme and, all these, you know, people from Dior were coming all the time for meetings with her leading up to that.

Cynthia True

Liz had a grand vision for the Met Gala. What she wanted more than anything was that people would walk in and feel surrounded by Dior's creations. She didn't want them encased in glass, at a remove, as they must be when the Costume Institute owns them. So she set out, working with Bazaar's European editor, Jane Catani, to borrow "dozens and dozens" of Dior's most exquisite dresses from private clients, including movie stars such as Sophia Loren, who lent her black-and-crepe dress from Arabesque and Isabella Rossellini, who lent her mother Ingrid Bergman's black-and-cream silk dress from Indiscreet. There was a floral organza from Tina Turner and a blue damask from Isabelle Adjani. Incredibly, they even got some of Eva Peron's favorite dresses, sent from Argentina by her niece. While those requests were flying across time zones, Liz asked Princess Diana if she would be her guest of honor. Diana said she'd be glad to. She would fly in for one night with her sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale.

Dennis Golonka

The logistics of collecting all of these priceless dresses from around the globe were overwhelming. That was to say nothing of planning the guest list, the very delicate seating arrangement, and every detail of the princess's quick trip. Also, they had just over 24 hours to set up the party in the Met's Great Hall. The museum would close Sunday at five, and the Gala was Monday night.

Stephanie Albertson

We were way over budget. I remember being on the phone with Liz, it was late at night and it was, you know, we were going to have to spend another, I don't know, fifty thousand dollars to get this event pulled off the way that—she was like, “Oh fuck it, Steph, just spend the fucking money, you know, get it done. Get it done!” 

Cynthia True

In a way, though, it was nice to lose herself in the many visual details of the event.

Dennis Golonka

Liz planned to display the dresses on invisible structures so they appeared to be suspended mid-air in the Great Hall, almost like a canopy of dresses. Underneath were overstuffed sofas covered in Dior's signature grey-and-white stripes.

Cynthia True

Meanwhile, Liz made sure Diana's suite at the Carlisle was just so, enlisting a small team to make it feel as charming as possible. She even bought t-shirts and skateboarding magazines for Diana's sons since the Princess wouldn't have time to shop.

Stephanie Albertson

I'll tell you a funny story, um, prior to the Princess arriving for the Costume Institute Ball, Liz wanted her hotel room at the Carlyle decked out, like ready for her arrival. Liz and I had gotten to know Thomas O'Brien, the interior designer, quite well, and his partner, and so we hired them to do that. And so the three of us, you know, they were so excited. I mean, they found chocolate princess cutout—you know, chocolates for her bathroom. I mean, they were so into it but we were all like, we walked in, like, to do a last check. We had been given access by the hotel for two days prior to get it ready. But our final check we got there and on the bed—on the pillow—was a gift from Barbara Walters and we were like, How did that get here? [laughs]

Cynthia True

Liz met the Princess and her sister at the airport, where a helicopter flew them into Manhattan. She escorted them to their hotel and rushed home to dress. Liz was wearing the last dress Gianfranco Ferré made for Dior, and the Princess was wearing the first John Galliano. Both navy blue. By the time Liz went back to the Carlyle to collect Diana, a huge crowd had gathered, encouraged no doubt by the waiting photographers. Liz and Andrew were shocked to see one man actually bang on the window and chase the car. He had a photo he wanted the Princess to sign, But that was nothing compared to the controlled chaos when they arrived at the Met. Liz remembered being blinded by the lights as the cameras clicked away, everyone shouting, “Diana, Diana, Diana!” No pause. She couldn't believe Diana went through that every day. 

Dennis Golonka

I'll never forget arriving that night. The fashion department called me in a Prada suit to wear for the event. I was feeling very fancy walking up those stairs until someone accidentally brushed their lit cigarette against the sleeve of my suit jacket. It didn't burn a hole, but it did leave a mark. When my friend Robin Raskin and I arrived, we were surrounded by these incredible dresses. It was surreal, and so beautiful, we decided to search around to see if we could get a peek of Princess Diana. It was a quick moment, but from afar we did see her and Liz.

Cynthia True

Liz said later that Diana looked so stunning in her Galliano that many of the guests were too intimidated to say hello. Liz wished she'd organized a small reception area off to the side, where people could meet her a few at a time. The dinner itself was stunning with a caterer flown in from Paris and tables covered in green-and-white organza tablecloths, matching embroidered napkins, and set with china stamped with Dior's signature flower, lily of the valley. Liz swore she saw several guests stuffing napkins into their bags. 

Dennis Golonka

It was one of those larger-than-life New York nights. I mean, for one thing, you're in the Met. Then Liz had created this fantasy Dior world, which was filled with every celebrity you could imagine. All the supermodels, rock stars, movie stars, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Martha Stewart, and of course, the princess, who out-celebed everybody. She just glowed. We were so happy for Liz. And the next day, the footage of them arriving together just exploded. It was everywhere. Suddenly, the whole country knew about the Met Gala.

Cynthia True

The next morning, Liz got a call from her doctor's office. Test results showed that she was very sick again. They were shocked that she'd had the stamina to be out drinking champagne and dancing. But of course, they'd seen her on TV with Diana.

Dennis Golonka

1997 meant more chemotherapy for Liz. It was kind of a mainstay at this point, with her tumor marker up and down. Like a rollercoaster, she said. Nothing about that year was easy. She was working on her memoir, No Time to Die, with the help of writer Aimee Lee Ball. It was a moving account of enduring the best and worst life had to offer at the same time.

Cynthia True

Liz was also having to put up a brave front at work: maintain the notion that she was perfectly stable, if chronically ill. Things only got more difficult when her good friend Gianni Versace died that summer.

Dennis Golonka

Liz heard about his murder the same day that she started a new chemotherapy drug. She was heartbroken. She had just seen Gianni a week earlier. They were at a big dinner at the Ritz in Paris. They squeezed onto a chair together and gabbed and gabbed. Gianni had recently survived a rare cancer and they talked about what it was like to face your own mortality.

Cynthia True

A few weeks later, in the final stages of her book, Liz asked Princess Diana if she would write the foreword. On Friday, August 29th, Diana's assistant called to say that she'd be delighted to do it and that Diana would call Liz when she got back to England. She was on vacation in France. 

Dennis Golonka

Twenty-four hours later, Diana was in a car accident in Paris. When Liz heard, she stayed glued to the TV like everyone else, until she got the horrible final word.

Stephanie Albertson

Her grief was very real. She just cloistered herself for a few days, just didn't want to talk to anyone. The phone was ringing off the hook with people wanting to talk to Liz about her.

Dennis Golonka

There were more than sixty interview requests. But Liz refused to talk to anyone, except for a brief early conversation with Barbara Walters while she was still in shock.

Cynthia True

Liz flew with Patrick Demarchelier to London for the funeral. She picked up an enormous bunch of white lilies and took them to a private garden in Kensington Palace near Diana's apartment. Later, Sam McKnight joined them at San Lorenzo for dinner. Liz couldn't stop thinking about Diana's boys. Or her own. 

Dennis Golonka

Instead of a Foreword to her book, Liz honored her friend with an Absence of a Foreword. “I could imagine no one else fulfilling this favor,” Liz wrote. “And this page pays tribute to her, my friend Diana, Princess of Wales.”

Cynthia True

Moving into 1998 and 1999, Liz became markedly weaker. She was a realist, but in her positive moments, she envisioned herself as someone who would live with ovarian cancer long term, maybe even managing it long enough for a cure to be found. She was certainly doing everything she could to help fund research and talk about ovarian cancer whenever called upon. 

Stephanie Albertson

She always was pretty quick to say yes, but there were a few times, I think, where she just felt like, you know what, I need to draw the line. And she was pretty good about signaling to me when that was, and as she got further on, we all just, the three of us, Louisa and she and I, just kind of kept everybody at bay.

Dennis Golonka

Liz was spending a lot of time at home, something that Stephanie and her other assistant, Louisa, kept quiet. If somebody from corporate wanted to see her, they would say she was out at a meeting. At one point, Cathie Black called Stephanie into her office.

Stephanie Albertson

Suddenly she wanted to have me in her office for a meeting. You know, like she was prying. She wanted to know what was really going on with Liz. “How is it really here?”

Dennis Golonka

Fortunately, corporate was in a different building. We were all protective of Liz. We knew not to say a word.

Susan Magrino

There was a cover-up going on at the office, you're absolutely right. Cathie was at 959 Eighth Avenue and so it wasn't like you could get up and down and it's easy: “Oh, I'm at a fashion show. Oh, I'm here. Oh, I'm there.”  

Cynthia True

By late 1998, Liz was too ill to take her turn hosting the Met Gala again. Vogue stepped in. They were having their best year ever at the newsstand. But those things were not much on Liz's mind. She was focused on her beloved family. In early 1999, Liz began to gently say a few goodbyes around the office. 

Dennis Golonka

Stephanie, you wrote in the tribute book that we all had done, the staff, about your last lunch with her at Petrossian.

Stephanie Albertson

I thought I was being fired. I really did. In five years, we had never gone out to lunch together just the two of us. But anyway, it must've been in January because she came into the office and she was holding her coat. She had a big heavy coat and she stood in front of my desk and she said, “I want a lunch on the calendar with you.” And I, and I looked at her kind of funny, like, What is this about? And she said, “Don't worry, you're not being fired,” or something like that. [laughter] And I thought, she's going to fire me, [laughter] like, you know, like, and I, so I put the lunch on the calendar. It was like two weeks out. And so we sat at lunch and she just wanted to know all about my creative pursuits and aspirations and what I wanted to do and we talked about my family and her family and her kids and I mean we just, we just shot the breeze for two hours over caviar and champagne and whatever. And then we got in the car to go back to the office. And I remember looking out the back window of the town car. And I, I think I just knew, I knew that that was her way of saying goodbye to me. Like, that was just her way of thanking me and saying goodbye.

Dennis Golonka

February 23rd, 1999 was Liz’s last official day at Bazaar. They called the whole staff into her office. I actually thought they were going to remind us not to talk to the press. Because New York magazine had misquoted me saying that Courtney Love was wearing real fur in our previous issue. And I had gotten in a lot of trouble over it. The Managing Editor was like, “What were you thinking? Liz is not going to be happy with you.” So I was late to the meeting, and I tried to blend into the back of the room. But then she told us she was going to be out of the office for a while. The way I took it was, “Oh, she's hit a rough patch, but she'll beat it.” I didn't realize just how bad it was. Because even then, she kept it light. At the end, she said, “Okay guys, no talking to the press—Dennis!”

Susan Magrino

I think that's what was wonderful about Liz is that she had this sparkle in her eye, you know, but she—she knew she was gonna die. 

Paul Cavaco

The fear of losing Liz, the idea that this person who everyone so loved, the fact that we were, you know, going to lose her, I think it was very scary for the staff.

Richard Sinnott

I didn't want to think about it because it was too sad. Not just the Harper's Bazaar staff was solemn and sad. The fashion world felt it.

Dennis Golonka

Liz died on April 21st, 1999. It happened to be my birthday. The Managing Editor came into the art department, said happy birthday to me, and then told us. Even if we kind of knew it was coming, we were all shell shocked. What I remember most about the day was the phones ringing off the hook with questions. We had to keep working because we still had an issue to put out. It was just sad and quiet. People didn't know what to say. 

Richard Sinnott

It was devastating. It was just like, it's gone. How many people would have excelled, under those circumstances? Let alone, I mean, some of them don't even show up, but how many of them would have spun gold? 

Dennis Golonka

Fabien finished the last issue that Liz worked on and then he resigned. He explained to Hearst that he couldn't do Bazaar without Liz. Tonne went to Vogue and briefly worked alongside Paul Cavaco again. Elissa Santisi was at Vogue now, too. She had left Bazaar a few months earlier, in ‘98. Peter Lindbergh, Mario Testino, Mario Sorrenti, and David Sims also went to Vogue. But Patrick Demarchelier continued to work for Bazaar with the new editor in chief, Kate Betts. He went to Vogue in 2004. Richard Sinnott also stayed at Bazaar for just over a year and then went to Michael Kors as Creative Director, he's been ever since, most recently, as a consultant. Annemarie Iverson became editor-in-chief of YM Magazine and then Seventeen. As for me, I stayed through the summer of ‘99, and then left to start my career as a photographer. It was like leaving home a second time. 

Cynthia True

I had long since left Bazaar, but I still felt somewhat a part of things as Dennis's good friend and roommate. I had also written a couple of pieces for the magazine. By 1999, though, I was living in Austin, Texas, writing a book about the comedian Bill Hicks, who had also died young from cancer. When Dennis called to tell me the news, we didn't really say that much. We just sat on the phone together, feeling deeply sad for Liz, for her family, and for an era that was officially over.

Dennis Golonka

But we were also keenly aware of how lucky we were to have found ourselves in proximity to this wonderful editor, who not only gave us our first jobs but access to magical lives in the best city in the world. It made our ‘20s. We like to think of Liz as having driven away in that dark green Frankencar her father built having endless adventures with the music turned up, yelling out the window: “Heaven!” Thank you for listening. Join us next week for our special final episode. It's a Nineties Bazaar reunion with Fabien Baron, Paul Cavaco, Tonne Goodman, and Richard Sinnott.

Cynthia True

Blow Up is independently produced and ad-free. If you'd like to support us, please visit our Buy Me A Coffee page. The link is in our show notes. 

Dennis Golonka 

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, rate and review us. Wondering what some of the images discussed in the episode look like? Follow us on Instagram or TikTok @blowuppod. 

Cynthia True

Blow-Up is hosted and produced by Dennis Golonka and me, Cynthia True. It was written and edited by me, Cynthia True. Original theme song is by Stephen Phillips. Sound design and mix, Erik Wiese. Sound and music editing, Tiger Lily Biskup. The episode was recorded at VoiceTrax West, The Cutting Room, and Digital Arts New York. Special thanks to Clay Morrow and Matthew Saver.