I wrote the afterword for the book, Vanity Fair Oscar Night Sessions, with photographs by Mark Seliger. Here it is…
Glamour, Come Alive by Alan Cumming
I think there are certain words so misused or appropriated or hijacked that before discussing them it behooves us, for clarity, to redefine them.
Glamour is one such word. Nowadays we’re told glamour is a lifestyle, a brand, a metaphorical lip gloss we can smear all over our boring old selves and create a sparkly new reality in which we will all, of course, become stars. But to me, true glamour, the old-fashioned kind of glamour, is all about mystique and magic. True glamour is about finding your own authenticity and letting that shine. It’s about the one-off, not the mass-market copy.
Glamour is often pre-fixed with the word “effortless,” but it needn’t be. True glamour is always essentially, inherently, effortless. Although it took many people a lot of time to make the subjects of this book look the way they do in these portraits, all they really need to do themselves is to project their own individual spirit into the lens and we immediately connect with them. That is what being a star is all about. That is glamour.
As a Scotsman, I was delighted to discover that the word glamour is actually of Scottish origin! In the early 1700s we adapted the English word grammar and altered it to glamour meaning “a magic spell,” which just happens to be the perfect way to describe the Vanity Fair Oscar night bash, a bewitching reverie that can only happen but once a year. Like the magazine itself, the evening is fascinating, surprising, and, yes, glamourous. Like the magazine, you will see many familiar faces. Unlike the magazine though, they are not guaranteed to be on your bedstand the next morning.
The night is also unusual in that the normal posse of publicists and managers and agents that surround the talent at similarly swanky occasions are nowhere to be seen. It is a very levelling experience to be out of such a protective bubble. The normal mores and etiquette go out the window; we all have to speak to each other, and it is so refreshing. For example, usually when a photographer asks for permission to make a photograph there is a flurry of posse activity: lint is flicked from our suits, teeth are checked, dress trains are ruched outwards, and, most bizarrely, drinks are snatched out of our hands as though the public would somehow think less of us for actually having a tipple at a party. As someone who enjoys a drink and indeed generally has two on the go at once (one vodka-based and one a sparkling water – always hydrate, kids, always hydrate!), and perhaps because I am Scottish and therefore more primally connected to alcohol (drinking and over-sentimentality are two of our national pastimes after all), I always make a point of wrenching my drink back from the hapless publicist or sundry posse-member’s cold hands and brandish it in the photo with pride, which perhaps has led members of the public to regard me as a naughty party boy lush and you know what? They wouldn’t be wrong. See authenticity above!
Yes, I love a party, and I also love to throw a party. I love to see people unwind and decompress and lose their inhibitions or prejudices. And I have put many tips from my Vanity Fair party experiences into practice at Club Cumming, my cabaret bar in the East Village of New York City. I learned to keep it simple: the lighting is low and the drinks are strong. I learned to be adaptable: watching tables being swept away and the dining room walls spookily evaporating and a dance floor magically appearing before our eyes is one of the highlights of VF Oscar night for me. Nothing quite as elaborate happens at Club Cumming, but you can be watching a burlesque show on our tiny stage one moment and the next find you’re in the middle of the dance floor and a DJ has appeared from behind a curtain and the night has taken a completely new turn! Most of all, I gleaned that a great party needs a diverse and eclectic guest list. Club Cumming’s motto is “All ages, all genders, all colors, all sexualities. Everyone is welcome and anything could happen!” The latter has certainly been the case on VF’s Oscar night.
Over the years, I have had many memorable moments. In pre-cannabis-legalization days, Bill Maher taught me that the best place to sneak a doobie was in the corridor to the ladies’ loo. It was a safe haven and I saw that the world’s most powerful and gorgeous women not only have a soft spot for naughty-boy stoners but several of them took us up on the offer of a purely medicinal puff. Another year I got the inside scoop from Kate Winslet about how to avoid the agony that trotting around on precipitous heels invokes: before you go out for the evening, put your high heels in the ice box! Then, when you hit the red carpet and begin answering the litany of banal questions, your bunions will be numbed and your feet will never swell. On returning home there is, of course, the slight risk that reaching into said ice box for a nightcap will result in impalement by a pair of forgotten Manolo Blahnik’s, but I think it is worth it, don’t you?
Being invited into Mark Seliger’s photo studio is the apotheosis of the evening. Mark is one of that rare breed of photographers who makes you feel utterly comfortable, works incredibly quickly, and knows when he’s got the perfect image. The result of the trust and confidence he infuses and engenders is palpable in these beautiful portraits. They are intimate yet showy; posed yet candid; celebratory, witty, and moving all at once. All of life is here. If only it could always be this way, this fun. If only every photo shoot was devoid of the posse and replete with cocktails and the person brandishing the electric fan or blow dryer to make you look windswept for the camera was the gorgeous and funny Olivia Munn! If only our shoes were forever in the ice box and glamour did not return to grammar. If only every night was the Vanity Fair Oscar Party!
