Shalom Harlow’s Life in Looks—From Grunge to Glamour

I wasn't a blonde and I was on the cover of Vogue.

It was significant.

[upbeat music]

I'm Shalom Harlow and this is my life in looks.

[upbeat music]

Here I am at Marc Jacobs seminal runway show

for Perry Ellis.

This was an absolute affront to the fashion establishment

at the time.

This was very inspired by the grunge scene in Seattle

and this is how we were all dressing on the streets.

I looked like this in my off hours, layers on layers,

prints on prints, skirts over pants, lots of florals.

This was the early '90s,

the beginning of the grunge movement,

and us youth realized the world we were inheriting

was going to be multinational, corporate run

and we intentionally didn't wanna embrace labels

that had already been established,

and so we found our clothes on the streets

and vintage stores and made it our own

and this is where Marc got his inspiration.

Wow. It's quite an epic image.

Grace Cottington is off camera, right?

It's like cha genius stylist trick.

She's fluffing the train

so it'll have that incredible arch to it.

Okay. Look who it is.

It's Shalamber, that's what we call ourselves.

We started calling ourselves that then, Shalom and Amber.

It would be at least once a week that somebody would,

I mean, not it once a week,

multiple times a day during the shows

that somebody would call me Amber and her Shalom

which we were interchangeable at a certain point.

Those days also, you didn't get confirmed for a Vogue cover.

They would do cover tries and we would be booked to do a day

of just strictly cover shoot pictures

and you would shoot two or three possible cover tries

and then they would decide.

Oh, this is so special for me.

I love this series of photographs.

I shot this with Irving Penn, Mr. Penn as we called him.

We were in an atelier, an old artists studio in Paris.

The walls were crumbling down, as you can see

the texture behind the walls.

I mean, people pay money to make that happen

in their bathrooms now.

This was just legitimately there.

This was actually pretty scandalous, the story.

They revoked all these Vogues off of the supermarket stands

in the south because there's one photograph of me

from the side, you can see a little bit of side boob

and that was scandalous.

The feeling that I had with that photograph

was that I was a young bride to be

that was about to step into her wedding dress

and the innocence of that moment and that precious passage.

It was shocking to me when I heard the news

that it was being banned all throughout the south

because it really was so naive.

Mr. Penn was known for micromanaging his models

in terms of their body language and their movements.

And from what I understand,

he did that from the beginning of his career,

even in the 50s with those models, he would come up

and physically move them the way he wanted to position them.

After a couple of times of working with me,

he must have decided that my body language

was sufficient enough for his standards

so I did not get micromanaged, I got encouraged to move

and that was a privilege.

Oh, she is so sassy.

Now you have to realize, the Todd Oldham show,

it was like a New York scene.

I mean, this was mid 90s. It was just packed full.

And so the encouragement that you would get on that stage

to really let your inner freak flag fly was,

I mean, it was hot.

The music was pumping and I was definitely feeling it.

There's some video footage of me overtaking Amber

on the runway, which was,

everybody makes it into the sum like, ooh,

they must have had a little bit of a bitch moment.

It was not anything like that at all.

It's just I was, I had a fast clip.

I was just feeling the music and walking and I overtook her.

She was extra slouchy that day

and she was moving slower than usual.

And you can see as we're walking back,

I turned her and I say a few things.

The first thing I say is keep up with me.

And then when, and then you see me turn

and say something else to her, I was like, okay, now turn.

So we turned in unison.

There's a lot of stories, I really love this moment.

I love working with Todd.

My first American Vogue cover.

To have a brunette on the cover of Vogue

was actually semi revolutionary.

I wasn't a blonde and I was on the cover of Vogue.

It was significant. Mid 90s minimalist chic.

Well that's an iconic moment for sure.

I landed in London straight off the red eye,

was showing some rotating platform

and told I was gonna stand on it.

Well, I got sprayed in spray paint

and that was the download.

That's all the information I got.

There was no rehearsal. I didn't hear the music.

I did not know the amount of time,

sequence that would be involved.

This was purely spontaneously improvised,

every moment of it, so what you saw

was my first instinct responding to the moment.

I'm so good with jumping off a cliff into the unknown.

I really, I'm more comfortable like that

than having too much information.

Fashion obviously is a visual art.

The piece of music I think informed the moment incredibly,

the lighting design

and just the way that the space held this moment as well.

The audience was wrapped around in a semicircular arena

kind of feeling.

So he was conjuring a moment and creating it to be.

[laughing]

This is taken from the set of Head Over Heels,

a romantic comedy that I did in the late 90s.

My character, Jade, is one of three supermodels

that live in an apartment together

and a normal girl moves in with us

and we witness what we think is a murder

and it becomes like a comedic murder mystery.

Kind of like a Scooby-Doo episode though.

Originally they had a different stylist on set

creating the wardrobe for the looks and it,

I made a bit of noise.

It wasn't quite up to par,

so they hired a legitimate stylist to come in

and she got it right and she allowed me,

and all of us, to create our characters

knowing that it needed to be,

that the outfits had to communicate

a level of ridiculousness

in order for the comedy in it all to land.

This is How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.

This part was written for me last minute

as I got rearranged in the cast list

and they just made me an appendage

to Michael Michele's character.

We were the antagonists as usual because we were beautiful.

Ooh, this is the Met Ball. I loved getting ready for this.

Traditionally the Met, you're invited to it

by a design house and one year, a group of us women

decided that we were gonna buy our own table

so that we could dress ourselves the way we wanted to.

I found this gorgeous old Bob Mackie, a vintage cape,

slinked myself into a little Nina Ricci body suit

and draped myself in some fabulous diamonds and off I went.

There's a particular thing about presenting the look

that designer has and their particular aesthetic,

and then there's another thing

of how you want to show yourself.

And this year it was Model as Muse.

It felt particularly important that year

to be authentically representing

how we wanted to portray ourselves.

In terms of Model as Muse

and what our particular role is as contributors,

I don't know that it's something

that can really be articulated because it is so ephemeral

but there's definitely a talent and a craft to it.

And just being able to point a iPhone and take a selfie

doesn't make you a supermodel.

Sorry, not sorry.

Okay, well this became a moment

beyond the scope of what I could have ever imagined.

This was my return to modeling after 10 years

of an illness in which I recovered

from late stage Lyme and severe black mold poisoning.

And so I was not working for close to 10 years

and the first jobs that I did was for Donatella,

for Versace, I walked the runway

and then I did this ad campaign afterwards

with Steven and this was when I first understood

the power of the internet.

This is the video that broke the internet that week.

I was just doing what I do on set

and moving the way that I felt moved

by that particular outfit.

The bodysuit just made me do this particular dance

that then became everywhere.

I think most people thought that my smile

was responding to that stimuli of welcome

and that was some of it, but it really,

the smile was coming from an inner place of,

I am well enough

and I've achieved coming back to the place that I was

before this illness took my life away.

So that smile was for my own inner achievement.

What's next? What is next?

The Met Gala, the red bow of all red bows.

I think this red bows was 18 feet on both sides, 14 feet?

Maybe it started out as 18 and then they cut it back.

I said, this needs to come off,

and they all looked at me blankly and I said,

how am I gonna go to the loo?

I can't do that with this bow.

You make the bow detachable, rule number one.

Number two, you've gotta make friends everywhere you go

'cause somebody's gotta help untangle you

every third or fourth step.

I mean, you inevitably get wrapped

around strangers or pillars.

It's like Wonder Woman's lasso.

You can just wield them in.

Bow is a little unwieldy,

but it's looking fantastic in this photograph,

and I think at this point what's really reflected is,

I just really do feel a lot of inner joy

that I have my health recovered

and then to be able to walk the red carpet

in a gorgeous Ralph Lauren with that insanely elegant bow.

How can you not radiate happiness?

And what do we have next?

Oh, they made the streets of New York City the runway.

It was an incredible fanfare of athletes

and different performers and a lot of incredible energy.

And the finale of that whole extravaganza

was us models walking the the streets

and I got to lead the pack to Madonna's Vogue, Vogue, Vogue.

The video of this is really special

because the crescendo of the music building,

my body just took over

and my arms found themselves in the air

and I think you can see a real earnest moment

of feeling inspired and feeling the collective joy

and celebration on the streets.

It was really easy to embody that

and reflect it back to the audience.

I want this one to sit her down

and just give her a hug and tell her it's gonna be okay.

And if we can think of ourselves

as our sweet younger selves even in the now,

eventually my hair will be gray

and I'll even have more capacity for self empathy.

So I'm a sweet little me now too.

[gentle music]

And that was my life in looks.

[gentle music]