Life after Vogue

FORMER VOGUE Paris editrix Carine Roitfeld is having it all, all over again.

She turned 58 last week and recently became a grandmother but if time is catching up with her, she’s not making it easy. If our cover portrait of a ballet-toned femme fatale, shot by a Pirelli calendar photographer, isn’t proof positive that she’s fabulous, consider that MAC is about to launch a make-up line based on her signature look. Check out her masterful styling in recent campaigns for Chanel, Givenchy and Barney’s New York. Flip through the Little Black Jacket book she co-created with Lagerfeld in homage to Chanel’s box-cut staple. Marvel that, less than two years after her break with the world’s most powerful fashion publishing stable, she has launched CR Fashion Book, a bi-annual magazine with 150-pages of advertising, contributions from Karl and Tom Ford, and her initials on the cover. Now on the verge of launching her own perfume and fielding offers to design her own clothing line, ‘Carine Roitfeld’ is becoming as covetable a brand as those that grace her pages.

Carine 2.0 is all the more impressive given her inauspicious beginnings. Roitfeld’s departure from Vogue Paris was mired in scandal. The December 2010 issue, edited by Tom Ford, included a Christmas gift guide that featured child models in adult evening wear and heavy make-up, lying on tiger-print bedding. The media reaction was outrage and extended far beyond Paris. Her resignation swiftly followed.