The conversation was of ambition, namely hers.
“I don’t know where it comes from,” she said. “I’m, like, turbocharged in a small package.”
If so, it is a very well-wrapped package. In May, Ms. Minogue, a
luminous-skinned 45, attended a “Gatsby” screening in New York (in a
floral Dolce & Gabbana pantsuit) and the Met gala (again in
Moschino) in quick succession.
Then there was Cannes, where she was outfitted almost exclusively in
Roberto Cavalli, including a striking ivory cutout gown. (That Ms.
Minogue does not appear in “Gatsby” nor had a film showing at Cannes
seems almost beside the point. The red carpet beckoned and she was
there.) In her home base, London, she has become a champion of
up-and-coming designers like Richard Nicoll, Gareth Pugh and David Koma,
visiting their studios and scooping up pieces early in their careers.
“She’s very happy to lend her body and name to emerging talent,” said
Mr. Nicoll, who began dressing Ms. Minogue from his first capsule
collection in 2003 after completing his master’s in fashion at Central
Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
Ms. Minogue may be a darling of designers, but as the lack of any
recognition from fellow diners at the St. Regis suggested, she is far
better known by the global paparazzi than by the American public. But
she is trying (one more time in a two-decade-plus career) to change
that, in part by reframing herself as a fashion icon.
Last week, Running Press released “Kylie: Fashion” ($40), an ode in
photographs to her sartorial high points as a performer. It was written
with her longtime stylist, William Baker, and has a rhapsodic foreword
by Jean Paul Gaultier (“who could forget the gold hot pants and the
white jumpsuit with the openings so deep that anyone could feel your
pale, delicate skin”).
Along with flamboyant costumes, like Mr. Gaultier’s anime-geisha tour
outfits from 2008, the book contains examples of Ms. Minogue’s cover
shoots for the influential fashion magazines i-D (March 1991) and The
Face (June 1994), which the stylist Katie Grand has said was the
best-selling issue during her time as fashion director there. Ms.
Minogue also has appeared on the cover of British Elle seven times, most
recently in January. (She has never appeared in Elle’s edition here.)
Ms. Minogue, who has sold more than 68 million records globally, admits
that she has never truly mastered the American market, despite her
widespread popularity in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. If she fails
to do it this time around, it will not be for lack of trying.
In February, it was announced that Ms. Minogue was parting with Terry
Blamey, her manager of 25 years, and signing with Roc Nation, Jay-Z’s
influential entertainment company, which has worked with Rihanna and
Rita Ora. Since then, she has been spending time in Los Angeles,
recording tracks with the Roc Nation producers Timbaland and Pharrell
Williams.
“I think they feel it’s an interesting challenge to take on someone who
has such a history that they had nothing to do with,” Ms. Minogue said,
though she added, “I don’t know if it’s about taking it to the next
level or just another level.”
Being on the Roc Nation roster also means shining up one’s presentation,
which Ms. Minogue should have no problem doing. Though Joe Zee,
creative director of Elle magazine, which publishes an annual music
issue, said he believes that over the years she has suffered by
comparison to Madonna’s “controlled, specific, thought-out image.”
“Kylie is very different,” he said, adding that he’s a fan. “From what I
see, her image is much more reflective of who she is. It’s about being
fun and sexy.”
Mr. Baker said: “She has a lightness about her. She’s like champagne bubbles — effervescent glamour.”
Ms. Minogue certainly has refused to be weighed down in her private
life, despite a series of high-profile relationships, including with the
French actor Olivier Martinez (currently dating Halle Berry) and Andrés
Velencoso, a model who is her boyfriend.
“I don’t like being boxed in, in any way, shape or form,” she said.
But she maintained that underneath this up-for-anything exterior lies a certain mystery.
“There’s so much more people don’t know than they do know about me,” she
said. “That contract is a good one between me and the public.” It’s a
self-protective wisdom she gained from growing up in the business, she
said. “I get it.”
Ms. Minogue was born in Melbourne, Australia, the oldest of three. Her
father, Ronald Minogue, is an accountant; her mother, Carol Ann, had
been a dancer. The family, Ms. Minogue said, “worked up to middle
class.”
She landed her first acting job at 11, on a short-lived Australian
television drama called “Skyways,” through a friend of the family who
worked in casting. After graduating from Camberwell High School (“I
passed by the skin of my teeth,” Ms. Minogue said), she landed her
breakthrough role, Charlene Mitchell, a schoolgirl turned garage
mechanic, on the hit soap opera “Neighbours.” She said she loved her two
and a half years on the show, driving to work in a “little white Datsun
1200 with a sport steering wheel,” though “I never had a clue what was
going on under the bonnet,” she said.
It was at a “Neighbours” charity concert that she performed “The
Loco-Motion,” which was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King and had
been a hit in 1963. In 1987, the song was included in her debut album,
“Kylie,” which went gold in the United States and seven times platinum
in Britain. Throughout, she was marketed as the girl next door.
“I didn’t know who I was,” Ms. Minogue said, pointing out that she was
only about 19 when she signed her first recording contract. “I got my
lines, I read my lines, performed my lines and then moved on to the next
thing. I didn’t make many of the decisions back then.”
While the success of “The Loco-Motion” faded in this country, the rest
of the world “was going nuts,” she said, referring to the commercial
success of her follow-up albums like “Enjoy Yourself.” In 1991, she
moved to London and entered a period of self-discovery, spending time in
Paris, rebelling against the pop machine and taking more control of her
image.
“I got into the club scene, I met all the designers, the ones I still
wear today,” she said, citing Azzedine Alaïa, trips to the Clignancourt
market and the hot-pants phase to which Mr. Gaultier so affectionately
alludes. She also met her best friend, the artist Katerina Jebb, in
Paris.
“I felt, and still feel, so inspired and liberated there,” Ms. Minogue
said, adding with a laugh: “I speak enough French to get me into trouble
and out of trouble.”
With Ms. Jebb behind the camera and Ms. Minogue in front, they toyed
with fashion photography. When Ms. Minogue met Mr. Baker, then just 20,
at the Vivienne Westwood shop in London, where he was working as a sales
assistant, he offered to supply clothes for their impromptu shoots.
“I always saw her as kind of iconic,” said Mr. Baker, now 39. When
styling Ms. Minogue, he was initially inspired by the decadent
supermodel era and Steven Meisel’s images for Italian Vogue. Ms. Minogue
particularly credits Mr. Baker for introducing her to London’s young
designers.
“These were people I socialized and mixed with,” Mr. Baker said,
pointing out that ties between the city’s “youth culture” and fashion
are “really strong.”
In 2001, for the “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” music video, Mr. Baker
put Ms. Minogue in the flimsy white jumpsuit that Mr. Gaultier cites in
the foreword, designed by the underground London label Mrs Jones. Mr.
Baker said, “it was pure but kind of slutty at the same time.” The
neckline was certainly memorable: it plunged below the pop star’s navel.
The single would go on to become Ms. Minogue’s biggest hit. Along with
the corresponding album “Fever,” which made its debut on the Billboard
200 chart at No. 3, it was the last time she made waves in the United
States.
Overseas, though, she might as well be Aphrodite on the half shell.
“It was quite a big moment for me,” Mr. Koma, a 2009 Central Saint
Martins graduate, said of the black and silver chain dress Ms. Minogue
wore in her “Get Outta My Way”
video. “She has worn a piece from each collection since then. For me,
this is one of the most important things in fashion: relationships and
loyalty.”
There has also been an impressive roster of household names. John
Galliano designed plumed showgirl costumes for her 2005 tour; Ms. Grand
introduced Ms. Minogue to Alexander McQueen; and Dolce & Gabbana
created a leopard-print catsuit and a black patent corseted dress with a
feather mohawk for her. And perhaps some of these signs have been too
scrambled for American audiences to process.
“Kylie has a much more European sensibility,” said Mr. Zee, adding that
her look has been less focused than the next generation of pop singers
like Rihanna, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. “In America, it’s a little more
planned,” he said.
Youth, too, tends to be worshiped here more than overseas. But Ms.
Minogue has reason to feel as if she’s been given a second lease on
life. In 2005 she received a diagnosis of breast cancer. After
undergoing chemotherapy, she was back on stage the next year. Though she
handled press inquiries with an initial terseness (“Cancer is not a
sound bite,” she said), she eventually became a spokeswoman for
awareness of the disease.
Jay Brown, president of Roc Nation, called Ms. Minogue a “hot ticket”
with “true fans, who’ll go to all three or four shows in a certain
area.” He does not see her age as a hurdle.
“I don’t know how you can put an expiration date on an artist — that’s
up to them,” he said. “When you start getting older, you start enjoying
yourself in a different way.”
Ms. Minogue pointed to her still-gyrating contemporaries Jennifer Lopez and Gwen Stefani.
“I certainly don’t feel it,” she said of her age. And you wouldn’t see it from her “Timebomb” video, released in 2012 with some 14 million views on YouTube. “Smoke and mirrors baby,” she said.
“You constantly see these stories ‘look 10 years younger’; ‘40 is the
new 50’; ‘50 is the new 60,’ ” she said. “Who knows. We can’t stop time,
so you’ve just got to make the most of what you have.”
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