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Emmanuelle Alt has one accessory she prizes above all others, and is currently utilizing it to full effect. “C’est urgent, urgent, urgent,” she commands into her BlackBerry Bold. What exactly is so urgent, who can say? As editor of French Vogue since February, she likely has a long list to choose from, juggling the demands of running the show and also contributing to the spectacle; Alt, who was fashion director of the magazine for a decade before her ascent after editor Carine Roitfeld departed, still styles sittings and covers. “I couldn’t only be an office girl; I’d die,” she says. “I did this”—she picks up a copy of her June/July issue, with Isabeli Fontana styled to look like Linda Evangelista circa 1991—“as I’d had this whole idea of the nineties, and the supermodels, and I knew it wouldn’t work out with anyone else doing it. I had it in my head exactly how it should look.”
Right now, though, it is the office that is calling her, so to speak. The 44-year-old Parisienne is returning from seeing Ralph Lauren’s latest fine-jewelry collection, where she’d been particularly taken with two rose-gold chain-link bracelets, one rather small and discreet, the other monumental in its scale and heft. “For life, this one, but for the picture, this one” had been her verdict, which, in its way, is as clear a delineation of the distinction that stylists make of the world as any. Sometimes things can exist in both realms, like the beaten-up, burnished tan leather Ralph Lauren pannier bag hanging from her shoulder, which appeared in the April issue. Alt is wearing it with a black suede fringed Isabel Marant dress, skinny black Topshop jeans (“The best in the world”), which, due to her height (a lankily androgyne six feet), are racing to cross the finishing line of her ankles, and “old” thick-strapped black suede Givenchy sandals. The effect is of a woman, says Ralph Lauren, who is clearly as enamored of her as she is of him, “who knows exactly who she is. Emmanuelle’s style is always original, part street, part romantic, very personal—and very French. She has a way of dressing that I love.”
It’s unlikely Lauren’s vision of the living embodiment of 1970s Americana-inflected Parisian garçon chic included a BlackBerry, but Alt is never without her smartphone (ringtone: “Je T’Aime . . . Moi Non Plus”); even when photographed some ten years ago as one of Roitfeld’s editrices by Mario Testino for this magazine, Alt was the one with a phone clamped to her ear. Nowadays it’s absolutely expected that she is so reliant on a piece of tech that allows her total freedom of movement, because everything in her life is in a state of flux. She is still moving into her new office, a spare black-and-white space six floors above 56A rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Thus far, she has transferred a silver skull, Sarah Lavoine candles, a framed photograph of herself with good friend Carla Bruni-Sarkozy at nineteen, and books (Moonage Daydream, Mick Rock and David Bowie’s record of the singer’s glam-rock years—Alt is a huge Bowie fan—and a Taschen box set of Playboy). She is also relocating her family—husband Franck Durand, an art director; son Antonin, fourteen; daughter Françoise, seven—to a new house (and it has to be a house, not an apartment; as someone who’s so grounded, she likes living at garden level, not in the sky: “I love nature. I like to see all the seasons”) in the same 16ème neighborhood. But greater than any of these ch-ch-ch-changes is her transformation into one of the preeminent figures of French fashion, at a time when it is going through major upheaval. Departures at some of the country’s most storied fashion houses (Dior, Balmain), the emergence of much-needed young blood (Bouchra Jarrar, Anthony Vaccarello), and the rise of the blogeuese generation against the ancien régime—all conspiring to breathe air into the grand, haughty Paris of old. The City of Light is seeing itself in a new light.
Alt knows she has her part to play, sensing that the shift in one of the most revered forms of cultural expression in France has to be signaled to the world via the pages of her Vogue. “It is really strange, editing the magazine; it’s like decorating an apartment you have lived in for ten years already,” she says. “I knew what I wanted to change about it. I wanted to see things with humor, to present ideas and pictures that will make people laugh or smile. I am a happy person,” she continues, “and I don’t think people want bad news. It’s not that everything we do is accessible—haute couture isn’t accessible, diamonds aren’t accessible—but I want the girl they are shown on to be real, identifiable, someone you’d like to know.” That is echoed by one of her long-term collaborators, the photographer Mario Sorrenti. “Emmanuelle is not a dark person,” he says. “She cares about expressing optimism and positivity.”
This, it would appear, extends to the magazine’s love of nudity; for a country that elevated the art of making clothes at its highest level, it’s equally happy taking them off, considering it an absolute civil right—liberté, égalité, nudité. But instead of the hypereroticized approach, Alt has placed an emphasis on nudity that is healthy and full of vitality, which is why she has given so much exposure to Swiss photographer Hans Feurer, whose glorious way with capturing the female form suggests a natural, athletic beauty. “It all depends on how it is done,” Alt says. “I respect women. These girls have parents who are looking at the magazine. A nude picture shouldn’t carry a message of sexual fantasy. But I love nudity. I am super French. It’s the body, it’s sexuality, it’s part of life.”
And what of reflecting how Frenchwomen feel when they have their clothes on? Alt herself prefers the low-key approach. Filming a P.S.A. for Paris’s Fashion’s Night Out outside the Gucci boutique on Avenue Montaigne, she takes precisely zero minutes to prepare. “No makeup! No hair! Punky style!” she says, laughing. “If I have to start getting ready, I get nervous. I prefer to do it as I am. That’s how I deal with things.” Carla Bruni-Sarkozy thinks Alt isn’t alone; that the extremely codified and elaborate approach Frenchwomen take to self-presentation is changing. “Emmanuelle has an unaffected way to be feminine,” Bruni-Sarkozy says. “She doesn’t wear makeup, wears little jewelry, hasn’t had surgery. She reflects how Frenchwomen are feeling—simplicity is the state we all want to be in. We are tired of useless sophistication.”
Bruni-Sarkozy goes on to say that when it comes to her friend, “there is still something of a teenager about her.” The first thing Alt installed in her office was an iPod sound system; she likes to have music on the whole time—Michael Jackson, disco, Bowie. “People say to me, ‘Oh, my God, your iPod!’ But I think a lot of us love the stuff of our teenage years.” Including ABBA. At one point, during a meeting with stylist Marie Chaix and art designer Germain Chauveau, “Dancing Queen” comes on, and before long Alt and Chauveau are singing along; it’s French Vogue–meets–Glee. “I love to dance, I love to sing,” she says, and while she demurs at the thought of ever wanting to get up onstage, she’s not averse to a more select audience. “After a shoot, I like to do karaoke. David [Sims, the photographer] likes it, too. And Kate [Moss]. In the studio, when you’ve been working hard all day, it’s such good energy to just play around.” While Sims, another Bowie fanatic, will usually cover the Thin White Duke, he’s also known to duet on “American Boy” with Alt. She also partners up with Kate for “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough),” by Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand. So which is she? Alt laughs. “Barbra.”