Electrifying photos Diana told me would ‘disarm her enemies’ in royal family
As the man who gave her the allure and sheen of a supermodel dies at 78, inside story of how Patrick Demarchelier’s stellar career was shot down by #MeToo claims
FOR the most photographed woman on the planet, it was just another routine assignment in front of the camera. But by the time Diana left the anonymous East End studio on that summer’s day in 1990, the way the world saw the Princess was set to change — and change utterly.
The frozen formality and aloofness of royal portraiture had been ripped up, replaced by a glamour and sensuality that oozed sex appeal.
And if the black and white pictures that were shot that day of a laughing Diana in a tiara with her bare arms wrapped around her knees were electrifying for the Princess, they were transformative for the man behind the lens.
Patrick Demarchelier, who has died aged 78, was already a leading fashion photographer but the turbo-effect of his collaboration with Diana turned him into the most sought-after in the world.
Hollywood divas, leading men and rock’n’roll stars competed to be snapped by the craggy Frenchman who had given Diana the allure and sheen of a supermodel.
He was in demand from a multitude of top magazines including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Rolling Stone, as well as from many high-end fashion brands. He helped shoot advertisement campaigns for Dior, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Tommy Hilfiger and Carolina Herrera.
Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez and Madonna all modelled for him and he was name-checked in the film The Devil Wears Prada, the biting satire on the fashion industry starring Meryl Streep.
But four years ago the dark side of his fame threatened to destroy this glittering, hardwon reputation. Demarchelier was among 25 photographers, agents, stylists, casting directors and other industry professionals accused in the wake of the #MeToo movement of sexual misconduct.
The charge sheet against him was particularly explicit, including from his former assistant who said she had been the subject of ‘relentless’ advances from when she was a 19-year old intern. In the end she claimed she had given in to his sexual demands fearing she could lose her job if she turned him down.
Six other women complained of unwanted sexual exploitation including him ‘thrusting a model’s hands on to her genitals and grabbing another model’s breasts, as well as making vulgar propositions’.
On an earlier occasion a teenage model claimed he had asked her if he could perform a sex act on her and indicated that if she agreed he could make her famous.
Patrick Demarchelier angrily refuted all the allegations insisting the claims were ‘ridiculous’ and ‘pure lying’. As a happily married father of three sons, he said he had ‘never, never, never’ touched a model inappropriately.
But for all his denials the magazine publisher Conde Nast, owners of Vogue, Glamour and GQ, suspended its work with him.
This must have been the cruellest repudiation of all. For it was with Vogue that Demarchelier’s formidable relationship with Diana began.
No foreign photographer had ever been invited to take an official portrait of a British royal before. And none would have presumed to photograph the Princess of Wales smirking, chin on hands in a black roll-neck sweater or coyly seductive with damp, swept-back hair in a daringly revealing crossover halterneck dress.
The pictures were not just iconic images, of course, but also a vital element of Diana’s effort to fight back as her marriage to Prince Charles unravelled. From her gaze to her expression of resolute confidence, they were, as she told me, designed to ‘disarm my enemies’.
Who were they, I asked. Diana rolled her eyes: ‘Those in my husband’s family who want me to simply disappear.’
Never had she used the power of the camera as she did through her partnership with Patrick Demarchelier. Only very rarely does a photograph capture something far greater than simply the subject in front of the camera. He and she both instinctively knew that the story their shots encapsulated were, on almost every occasion, far bigger than what we could immediately see.
This was the image Diana wanted to project in the five years of their working relationship to show that she was dealing with the crises that might have overwhelmed her. They were not just challengingly defiant with no sign of self-pity, they also possessed a radiance that said ‘Here I am’.
Over the years, Demarchelier shot a whole raft of Hollywood A-listers and nearly every top model, sports personality, rock god and celebrity. A book of his portraits taken from the mid-1980s to the late-1990s include a reflective Gianni Versace, Cameron Diaz kissing actor Matt Dillon, a bikini shot of Kate Moss and a close-up of the sculpted body of the boxer Evander Holyfield.
Other commissions included actors Robert De Niro and Warren Beatty — both close friends — Meg Ryan, and Sting and his wife Trudie Styler. But the ones that we remember, the ones that really stood out, were of Diana.
The Princess had asked to meet Patrick Demarchelier after admiring his portfolio of a windswept laughing model cuddling a child in Vogue, whose then deputy editor Anna Harvey, was a close friend.
One day in the summer of 1990, Harvey arranged for Diana to join a shoot at a studio in Hackney, East London. The timing was intriguing.
It was around the time that Prince Charles had broken his arm playing polo and when Diana felt she was being discarded by her husband. As he recovered in hospital from the complicated fractures, it was the company of Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles, rather than his wife, that the prince preferred.
Even so, it was two years before the couple were to separate
formally and to the outside world, at least, they remained apparently
happily married. But Diana was already embarking on a new, independent phase to her life. What better, she thought, than a
set of photographs that would illustrate this and set her apart from the rest of the British royal family.
In a way Demarchelier was just the man to show this new liberation. Brought up ‘poor’ in the port city of Le Havre, northern France,
he was one of five boys of divorced parents. At 18 his stepfather gave him a Kodak camera and he was hooked. His first job was at a small lab in the area printing passport pictures.
Eventually, after moving to Paris, he began photographing budding models for their ‘look books’ to show agents. Soon, he was working for French Elle and Marie Claire and was quickly part of what was known as ‘the French mob’, a group of young fashion photographers known for their ‘heterosexuality’ and their ‘happy snaps’.
When he was in his 20s he moved to New York. With only a few words of English but a stunning portfolio, he arrived in 1975 to a disappointing reception. American fashion editors found his work ‘too European’. With little or no work, he
spent his nights learning English at evening classes.
Slowly, the commissions did start to trickle in but it wasn’t until 1979, when the legendary editorial director of Conde Nast in New York, Alexander Liberman, spotted his potential, that Demarchelier finally got his big break and he was on his way to joining fashion royalty.
When the request for a meeting came from Diana, however, he was flattered. ‘I didn’t look on it as a job,’ he later recalled. ‘It was a pleasure, an honour.’
Much of the shoot involving other models had already been completed when Diana, dressed in a business suit and polka-dot blouse walked in. As well as the photographer and his subject, there was
one other key figure, a young Scottish hairdresser called Sam McKnight. It was the first time he
had ever had to put a tiara on a ‘model’, but before doing so he made a suggestion that was to kickstart Diana’s metamorphosis. He cut her hair short, shorter, in fact, than it had ever been before.
The resulting picture first appeared in the December 1990 issue of Vogue — and it caused a
sensation. It remained one of Diana’s all-time favourites. Close friends would receive signed copies, and a framed version occupied pride of place in her Kensington Palace sitting room.
From then, not only did Demarchelier become the Princess’s personal photographer,
‘ The Princess is like the sun, she shines from the inside PATRICK DEMARCHELIER