SEIJO IMAZAKI FOR RODEO MAGAZINE COVER

NEW YORK SAME SEX MARRIAGE IS A HOT ISSUE.

FROM CNN.COM

Christine Quinn, speaker of the New York City Council, and her partner, Kim Catullo, talk to John King.
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NEW YORK (CNN) -- As she lobbies members of the New York Senate these days, the politician in Christine Quinn can understand what the gay rights activist in her sometimes cannot.

"The fear of the unknown," is how she describes it. "This is a vote they've never cast before. And they don't know how people are going to react. You are in a position where people's reaction to you is the key to your success. And the unknown creates fear and fear often creates paralysis."

Quinn is the openly gay speaker of the New York City Council, and a proponent of legalizing same sex marriage in New York state.

"It is really encouraging to see what's happening around the country in places where you really wouldn't expect it, like Iowa," says Quinn's longtime partner, Kim Catullo. "To be in a place like New York and not have it just doesn't seem to make sense."

The New York Assembly passed legislation allowing same-sex marriages earlier this month, and the question now is whether there are enough votes in the state Senate to pass the legislation before the legislature adjourns for the year. Go behind the scenes with John King as he discusses his report from New York

Quinn, who spent time in Albany this past week meeting with undecided senators, is cautiously optimistic.

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"It was amazing how much openness there was," she said of private meetings with lawmakers who are undecided and even a few who have said they are likely to oppose the legislation. "We just all have to create a moment for them to step forward. So I really think it is going to happen this month, before the legislative session is over."

Maggie Gallagher sees the Senate math quite differently.

"We are now working in 24 Senate districts," says Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriages. "We know we have generated thousands of phone calls to legislators. I don't think they will be passing a gay marriage bill this session."

The New York legislation is part of a growing national debate, and one which will gain even more attention because of the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy and the nomination of federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill it.

"Not tomorrow. Not likely in the coming year unless the courts move dramatically faster than we are used to seeing them move," is how Columbia Law School Professor Suzanne Goldberg answers when asked when the issue of same-sex marriage is likely to make the Supreme Court docket. "But certainly some time in the next couple of years we're likely to see the Supreme Court issue a position or two on this issue."

Goldberg knows Sotomayer well; the judge is also a lecturer at Columbia.

"We've never spoken about the issue," Goldberg told us. "I have no inside information about her views. What I would say is that she is both a wise person and a thoughtful person and being wise and thoughtful are the right ingredients for reaching what to me is the right answer on this issue, which to me is that equality applies to all people."

The likelihood of the issue reaching the Supreme Court in the next year or two raises the stakes in the state battles.


'State of the Union'

John King reinvents Sunday talk: more time for more politics.
Sunday, 9 a.m. ET

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Opponents of California's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage vow to try again in 2010 in hopes of a different result. A new federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 was filed this week and could well be among the cases that make it to the Supreme Court eventually.

Five states now allow same-sex marriage: Maine, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts and Vermont, and the states with active debates include California, New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire.

In an interview in their apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York, Quinn and Catullo agreed the ideal solution for them would be federal recognition of the right of same-sex couples to marry.

But the federal Defense of Marriage Act signed by President Clinton defines marriage as between a man and a woman. And President Obama says he supports civil unions and other benefits for same-sex couples but opposes marriage.

"He's not perfect on this issue and I want him to be perfect," Quinn said of Obama. "And I'm fairly certain that pretty soon he will be perfect on this issue and what we just have to do is keep talking to him and keep educating him and keep working on him."

"It doesn't help," Catullo says of Obama's opposition. Still, like Quinn, she hopes eventually, "he can evolve."

Gallagher, of the National Organization for Marriage, is worried more about the high court than any pressure on Obama from gay rights activists.

"Well I don't believe David Souter was on our side on the gay marriage issue although we don't know for sure," Gallagher said. So in her line of speculating, swapping Sotomayor for Souter isn't likely to swing the court in any major way. Her major worry is if one of the more conservative judges decided to retire in the near future.

"I don't think this one is going to tip the balance," Gallagher said. "But we're very close. We're probably only one Supreme Court justice away from a nationally imposed right to same-sex marriage whether we like it or not. That is the ultimate game plan of the gay marriage forces."



Catullo would prefer a conversation less political.

"I really do believe that if someone lived next to us or really knew us, it wouldn't be an issue at all," she said. "I mean we are good people. We're law-abiding. We're taxpayers. We're just an eight-year couple that's been together a long time and we do a lot of the things that a normal couple does. There's a lot more things in the world to worry about than the fact that we want to be married."

WHO I IS AND WHERE I BE (HE IS I AND I AM HIM)

I FEEL GOOD, IN FACT I FEEL GREAT..BETTER THEN I HAVE IN YEARS. GROUNDED, AND FEARLESS. IM FALLING IN LIKE WITH MYSELF, MAYBE IT WILL TURN INTO LOVE,LOL. IM DOING THINGS FOR MYSELF AND NOT FEELING GUILTY FOR IT. IM NOT OBSESSING ABOUT THINGS THAT REALLY ARENT MY PROBLEM..USING THEM AS DISTRACTIONS WHAT PEOPLE THINK OF ME IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS. FIRE ISLAND PINES IS MAGICAL. IM PUSHING 40 AND FEEL AGELESS..I FEEL YOUNGER THEN I HAVE IN 25 YEARS. I SEEM TO HAVE WON THE BATTLE AGAINIST MYSELF AND WON "ME" BACK. BABY STEPS, WITH BIG LEAPS IN BETWEEN. VERY CONNECTED TO MY FEELINGS. WORKING FROM A PLACE OF SOUL..ALWAYS HAVE, BUT NOW FEEL AMAZING ABOUT IT. HAVE MADE SOME GREAT NEW FRIENDS, AND CEMENTED OLD ONES. PROUD OF MY FAMILY ( GO SAM!) ..PROUD OF MY PEOPLES.

I USED TO WORRY, SO MUCH. AND I WORRIED ABOUT THE WRONG THINGS. WHAT PEOPLE WHISPERED..HOW THEY VIEWED ME..AND IT SHAPED ME..PUT ME INTO A BOX,UNCOMFORTABLY. I CANT BE CATEGORIZED OR MARGINALIZED BY ANYONE OR ANYTHING . INSTEAD IM EMBRACING THE LOVE, THE CHEERING ME ON, THE PROPS I GET (AND NOW GIVE MYSELF) FOR BEING WHAT I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ..FLAWED BUT PERFECT. AND I CAN LIVE WITH THAT.

IM SURE ILL TAKE TWO STEPS FOWARDS, A COUPLE OF STEPS BACK..HERE AND THERE..BUT I WONT LET IT KEEP ME OUT OF THE LIGHT. IM FULLY CONNECTED THERE. I FEEL THE LIGHT KISSING AND NUDGING ME CLOSER TO IT..MORE THEN EVER.

I WISH THAT FOR ANYONE WHO LOVES OR HATES ME. BUT CERTAINLY MORE FOR THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE.

PEACE AND BLESSINGS

J

JASON MORGAN BY GREGORY VAUGHAN

TWO OF MY DEAREST FRIENDS..BEN AND ABI

MORE ANTHONY GALLO

KERRY DEGMAN RUGBY

Meet the Models: Kerry Degman


By now you surely know his face: Kerry Degman has been one of Rugby’s main-stays since practically the beginning. Hankering to know more about what lurks behind that tough-guy façade? Yeah, we figured. After the jump, get some up-close and personal anecdotes on Kerry’s life and times, culled from our Fashion Editor’s day with him on set for our Summer 2009 shoot.


Though he looks like the ultimate East Coast guy, Kerry actually hails from the Midwest — if not straight from the cornfields, then close enough, calling Iowa home. He was recruited to play college baseball, and while a knee injury might have halted a career in sports, it helped motivate him to get into modeling. He’s no longer getting dirty on the baseball diamond, but he hasn’t lost his sporty side: The skateboard you sometimes see with Kerry in his shots? Not a prop. “My mom made me promise to never ride one,” he told us, “But I have been since the 3rd grade. It’s a good way to keep a kid with ADD busy.”


The other main focus of Kerry’s attention is his adorable beabull puppy (that’s half beagle, half English bulldog, for those of you not in the know), Jackson (above). “It’s like having a child,” Kerry says of the 10-month old pup. “I have had Jackson his entire life and he is the best thing that ever happened to me. I never like being anywhere without him. And he was born in Iowa, just like me.” Midwesterners like to stick together, clearly.


And when it comes to Rugby style, Kerry takes things very personally: “Why do people call Rugby “preppy”? This isn’t preppy! I mean, there’s a skull and crossbones on almost everything! It’s funky prep!”

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

MICHELE GRAGLIA BY JOE LALLY

SUMMER

I LOVE THE HEAT, BUT I HATE NY SUMMER.
THE CITY SMELLS, AND IT JUST LOOKS LIKE A SWEATY ARMPIT.

PEOPLE'S HYGIENE, ADDS TO THE GENERAL ODOR.

ITS WHY I LOVE MIAMI BEACH SO MUCH...ITS HOT, BUT YOU HAVE THE OCEAN AND EVEN WHEN ITS STEAMING YOU GET A BIT OF A BREEZE.

ITS BEEN A WHILE SINCE IVE BLOGGED..I HAVE REALLY NOTHING TO SAY. MY LIFE HAS BEEN PRETTY BORING. IM JUMP STARTING THE GYM AGAIN(I KNOW) AND FINALLY HAVE AN IPOD OF SONGS THAT I ACTUALLY LIKE SO IT MAKES CARDIO MUCH EASIER...IM LIKING THE BOOM BOOM POW SONG FROM THE BLACK EYES PEAS..ITS SORT OF MOTIVATING

MY MAN IS BACK IN TOWN. WHY AM I NOT EXCITED? I WAS FOR A DAY OR TWO AND NOW WE ARE BACK TO THE SAMENESS. OR AS I SEE IT THE SAME LAMENESS. FORGET GAY MARRIAGE, I FEEL LIKE I AM IN ONE AND ITS HORRIFYINGLY BORING. I STILL HAVE THE LOVE FOR HIM BUT IT SIMMERS NOT BOILS ( AS IT ONCE DID)

IM LOOKING INTO BUYING A WEEKEND HOME TO ENJOY. FOUND SOMETHING UPSTATE, POOL, LAND THE WHOLE NINE..I L KNOW MORE SATURDAY.

WORK HAS BEEN GOOD. MY BILLINGS ARE THE SAME AS LAST YEAR. BOOKING ALL THE USUAL SUSPECTS. NO REAL SURPRISES. WITH THE ECONOMY IN THE SHITTER IM GETTING ALO TOF USAGES ON THINGS RATHER THEN RESHOOTS, SO IT HS BEEN A GOOD THING FOR ME. TWO FRAGRANCES WERE RENEWED SO THATS ALWAYS GOOD. EASIER TO KEEP THE IMAGE THEN RESHOOT .


ANYWAY, IM OUT..TIME TO GET IT GOING

XO
J

NOW REPRESENTING OLD NAVY SUPER MANNEQUINS

THE HOTTEST THING SINCE GISELE

BEA ARTHUR R.I.P

TAKEN FROM DLISTED. Bea Arthur really did tango off to heaven yesterday. My soul is still weeping. Mostly because it hit me out of nowhere. And also, Bea was a true talent in every sense of the phrase. The simple fact is that Bea just wanted to entertain and didn't give ten shits about being famous. A born performer who didn't take herself too seriously. There really aren't many like her left.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUCAS KERR AND CHANNING TATUM

FOR YEARS, I USED TO THROW THEIR BIRTHDAY PARTIES TOGETHER AS THESE TWO CLOSE FRIENDS SHARE THE SAME BIRTHDATE AND AGE. NOW THEY BOTH LIVE ON THE LEFT COAST. SENDING THEM LOVE ON THEIR B DAYS..PLEASE DO THE SAME

KERRY DEGMAN

PH:GREGORY VAUGHAN
IN LONDON SHOOTING WITH MERT ALAS AND MARCUS PIGGOT TODAY

GO SHORTY

NOW REPRESENTING ANTHONY GALLO

INTRODUCING NICHOLAS BOEHMKE BY GREGORY VAUGHAN

MICHELE GRAGLIA BY GREGORY VAUGHAN

GAWKER'S GENIUS RECAP OF THE HILLS

What drama! What intrigue! What mystery! What emotion! Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about my trip home for Easter. Now where were we? Oh, right. The Hills. Yes. Spencer and Heidi are no more.

If we are to believe that they ever really were. Or if we're to believe television, which has been lying a lot to us lately. But Heidi and Spencer may be the grandest lie of them all. Was this muddled, factory-cut couple ever really a couple? Or were they simply drawn into each other's hungry orbits by the pull of MTV's dark gravity? Did they see in each other a collection of warm pockets in which they could entrust their hearts and other body parts, or was it merely a cold transaction, like buying deli meats at the supermarket? I suspect it was probably somewhere in between—their relationship was probably akin to that of organ grinder and monkey assistant. They love each other a bit, yes, but mostly it's about the work, about the money. Plus one of them is covered in fur.

The episode began as most horrible episodes do, with Spencer the Fleshbeard chatting glumly with his horrible sister, Spencerina. Because this show has been straining for plotlines ever since Audrina hopped aboard that stagecoach made of spiderwebs and flew off into the night sky, the producers have been forced to shove the malformed Spencerina front and center. There she dances hideously in her soiled tutu, scary sideways accordion music playing, an old woman loudly sobbing somewhere unseen. "Aren't... I... a pretty... girl?" Spencerina plaintively asks through hacking coughs and toothless whistles. Her glass eye falls out and plink plink plinks down the hall. "Love... me?" she asks, as dust comes wheezing out of her ear holes.

Actually she talks to Spencer about his disappearing girlfriend and about how she was in Colorado and a boy named Cheddarblock was eying her like my dog eyes the stockings on Christmas morning; not much to look at on the outside, but what mysterious treats might lie within... So Spencer was like "evs" and Spencerina didn't seem to find anything wrong with playing both sides of this muddy, shit-filled field so MTV nodded its head and said "OK."

Meanwhile there were goings down at Fashion. Lauren, our wistful wind-blown heroine, had a meeting with the very scary Kelly Cutrone. Now that Whitney has been gone for a long time and she's already had her whole show "happen" and the world has forgotten her entirely, Kelly decided that it was time to have a meeting about "How do we replace Whitney?" Lauren suggested teaching one of those moving-eye cat clocks to talk, and Kelly admitted that it was a very good idea and a very close approximation to the real thing, but she still needed something else. After affixing googly eyes and a wig on a large ham, and finding that not quite right either, they decided to hold interviews. "Do you know anyone?" Kelly asked, bored and looking off into the distance almost as if she knew what Lauren would say next. "Spencerina," Lauren whispered into the quiet room. "Bring her in," Kelly mumbled. Then everyone—Kelly, Lauren, the camera crew, the people outside on the street, me, probably my dog in Boston—began weeping profusely.

So Lauren met with the shitty thing and told her that they were looking for interns. "How would one... hypotechnically ... go about... getting... a .... jorb... at... Fashion?" Spencerina asked, an earwig crawling around in her hair, her wooden leg mildewy and graying. "Like any other job," Lauren said. Like any other job that you get while being on a TV show. So Lauren got Spencerina an interview and she rushed home to iron her best Grown Up Girl clothes and write her little resume. "Work Experience..." she typed with one little be-Lee'd fingernail. "One time I helped gramma move some boxes to the attic. Another time I moved my friend Belinda's car out of Ryan McKenzie's driveway because Liam needed to take Marcy home because she was tripping but Belinda was too drunk to back her car out herself. The neighbors weren't too mad about the mailbox. Or the cat."

Back at Mordor, Spencer came home from God knows where—following a divining rod around looking for Patron, reading a finance book by Donald Trump upside down while some day-shift hooker bounced up and down on his lap, ominously lurking near a schoolyard fence whispering someone's name—and Heidi bellowed from the sex-making room "Spennnceerrr? Is that youuuu?" It was Spencer. And he lunked into the bedroom and they got into a fight because of Cheddarbob and because of Stacie the Waitress and Heidi was mad at Spencer for making her feel feelings when he knows that hurts her face so and Spencer was mad at Heidi for being mad because it was really harshing his mellow or something so they just stormed off in opposite directions, Spencer out the door, Heidi into the wall, which she hit and fell over, her legs and arms still moving as she lay on the floor. All around them buildings collapsed and cars and hydrants and people were sucked into the ground. The La Brea mammoth got up and walked away East, out to the Inland Empire, where he could disappear into that vast, empty desert.

Spencerina woke up and Hoku's "Perfect Day" was playing on the radio and she knew that the interview would go well. She put on her Big Girl trousers and her Believe In Yourself blouse and got into her car. After about twenty minutes she realized that she wasn't getting anywhere. So she went back into the house, got the keys, and went back to the car. When she showed up to People's Revolution, she was very nervous. She clutched her little resume and Lauren beamed at her bemusedly and said "I like your Successful Sistah shoes." Spencerina said "Thanks. A homeless woman threw them at me." So they sat there awkwardly for a while, elevator muzak playing, Spencerina flipping absent-mindedly through a copy of Ranger Rick. "I love this magazine, but the articles are just too long," she said to no one in particular. Finally it was time to go see Kelly. Spencerina gulped and headed up the stairs, whispering to herself "the penitent man shall pass, the penitent man, the penitent man... the penitent man... KNEELS!" and she deftly avoided the spinning blades that would have lopped her head off.

After almost dying several other times on the way to Kelly's office (at one point Lauren cried out at her desk "But in the Latin, Jehovah is spelled with an I..."), she finally pushed open the large doors and there was Kelly, sitting there in chain mail. "I brought... resume..." Spencerina stuttered. And it was all downhill from here. She started chatting aimlessly and dumbly about how she wanted to be a handbag designer and about how awesome Kelly's PR was and things were awesome and, um, handbags? Kelly gave her the hairy eyeball and said "So you want to come here and exploit my clients and techniques to make handbags?" Spencerina said, "No, I meant like long term handbags, like in ten years!" Kelly laughed and pressed the button under her desk that typically sends the interviewee up into a pneumatic tube but she forgot that the repair guy wasn't coming until Thursday and oh fuck this.

The thing about the handbag thing... Didn't Spencerina just seem so dumb at that moment? Like, the thing always seems like a hopping idiot, but this was special. Dumb because, really, this girl has clearly not taken one fucking honest hour's worth of her time to just sit down and think about what she wants to do with her life. So here's dumb, fattened, aimless youth, everyone. This hideous thing yipping about handbags as if that's a job. It's not a job. Neither is "I'm going to have my own skin care line," idiot on Real Housewives of Orange County. None of that is real. But more importantly, don't act like anyone owes you these ridiculous non-jobs. You aren't owed shit. You owe us. You, Spencerina the Brave Mumbling Idiot, you owe us.

As she left the interview, a car drove by, Hoku's "Another Dumb Blonde" playing softly on the radio.

Anyway, sorry. So Kelly decided to bring the potato sack onto the team, with a caveat issued to Lauren that if (when) she fucks up, Lauren has to fire her. Because Kelly don't play that. She bopped Lauren over the head and trotted off and as I watched her head back upstairs to her office I shook my head and thought to myself "She chose... poorly."

Then it was time for the real blowdown. Heidi was having fish dinner with Handbags and they decided to find Spencer out at the clurb. Miraculously, Handbags knew just where to find him. It was this totally off the hizzy new club called H.Wood, which is short for H. Wood Jeblome, a prominent Los Angeles financier and restaurateur. So there indeed was Spencer. He was lounging on a couch with the wicked bitch Stacie the Waitress and her two idiot friends who will look back on this experience one day and think "Oh god, oh god oh god oh god," their trembling hands clutching long cigarettes, the last desperate light of the day clinging to the sad red rocks of Sedona. "Where did I go?" they will think, their vodka lemonades just a little too strong, but they'll drink it anyway and they'll just chug a lug here in this pocket of Arizona, hoping that some vortex will one day work its magic and soothe this strange, clawing pain.

But in the present, there they were on couches with Spencer and his friend, Barney Rubble. Stacie is a really creative girl so she said she wanted to request "Pour Some Sugar On Me" by that great band "The 80's", and Spencer grinned and said he hoped that meant sexy dancing on bars and stuff. Stacie said of course it did, but sadly she didn't get the opportunity to prove it, because Heidi and Handbags showed up, their milk pails sloshing and the cows behind them mooing, their braids blowing softly in the Alpine winds. "What are you doiiiiiiiiinggggg?" Heidi bellowed. Spencer removed his penis from Stacie's mouth and was all "Nothing, stop getting mad, what the fuck, fuck." Handbags then called Stacie and her friends sluts, and Stacie got involved and everyone just started bickering at each other until Heidi fired a gun into the air and everyone went silent. "This... Ends... Here!!!" she yelled. She was done. It was over. She dropped the gun on the floor and ran out, Handbags flapping away in tow.

The next day it was time to rehearse the play, Manhattan Beach Memoirs: Heidi & Spencer Break Up: This Time It's Personal. They met at some airy outdoor cafe, safe and open, lots of witnesses, you know the drill. Heidi, having had a really dumb conversation with Handbags the night before, said that maybe the couple should try therapy. Hint hint, went the elbows and you could just see MTV's reality version of In Treatment with fucking Dr. Drew or something forming in the mind of some horrible programming exec, a bulge forming in the crotch of this lame 41-year-old's skinny jeans. But it was not to be. Spencer didn't understand why someone who went to "one extra year" of school should tell him how to live his life. Spencer, therapists have to do more than one year of college. Which is what I assume you meant. Because one more year of school than you would be freshman year of college. So. There you go.

But Heidi made it an ultimatorium: either therapy or we are over, Spence. Spencer just sat there glowering. And then The Hills did something I've never actually seen them have the balls to do before. They hired an extra to play a waiter, who, with convenient timing, came over and asked the warring couple: "Can I get you anything else?" Heidi shook her head, overcome by, but secretly proud of, all of this swelling drama, and said "No. We're done." And they were! She got up and walked off, her dumb butt swaying down the filthy LA street.

But of course they're not really done. Nothing is ever really done on this show. They'll get back together and continue to bicker and Handbags will try desperately to keep them together because otherwise she has no reason to be on the show and then she might actually have to try to get a real job and be a real person and enter into the world and in thirty years she'll hop in the LeBaron and leave Bakersfield behind and she'll drive all night to Sedona and there will be those two slutty whores, sitting on a deck, overlooking a Red Robin parking lot, and they'll drink grapefruit juice and vodkas and they'll smoke Dunhills that some old boyfriend brought back from Europe, years and years ago, and that will be a few afternoons. And when she dies, there will be a small break in the clouds, out above some stony mesa, and you'll know that some glimmer, a logo, a designer nametag, some tiny bit of soul has escaped this earth.

In the meantime though, she'll sit and watch the ocean pound the surf, over and over again, and wonder where all the little bits of sand came from. If they were always there, or if it just took a long time for some large thing to break down, to bust, to burst, to scatter bravely into pieces.

Handbag wishes, to you and yours.

ITS WORKING!! STEVEN MEISEL MAY VOGUE VIA STYLE.COM

Over the years, Steven Meisel has developed an extraordinary body of work, an almost impenetrable mystique—and an uncanny knack for finding fashion's favorite faces.
By Jonathan Van Meter. Photographed by Steven Meisel.
Once, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away—early-nineties, supermodel-mad Manhattan—I went to a party at music producer Shep Pettibone's midtown apartment. It was a sultry July evening, and he lived in a penthouse with a huge terrace. The party had a decadent feeling: Everyone smoked; there were well-stocked bars inside and out; the crowd was by any definition a beautiful one. I got the sense that things would still be going on long after I had gone to bed.

At one point, I noticed that Steven Meisel and his tight little clique—which on that evening included a tall, cute blond guy and Naomi Campbell—were languidly slouching about, smoking. I had just run out of cigarettes, and so I turned and asked the group if I could bum one. Meisel, who had a bandanna covering his head and dark sunglasses on, did not even glance up.

The encounter—the first of many times in my life when I would not meet Steven Meisel—left an indelible impression, which was one of intimidating inscrutability. The fact that for so many years he has worn what amounts to a hip-gay-male version of a burka has only added to my perception of him as a creature of mystery. He is always covered up! Even when it's blazing hot out, he's got on some sort of headgear and layers of black clothing. It is a look that is designed to obfuscate and to keep people away. And it works.

Over the years, Meisel has become ever more reclusive, rarely going to fashion shows or parties, almost never giving interviews. There have been no retrospectives or gallery openings or lush coffee-table books published, nothing that would require him to face the public. His friends—to a one—say that he is shy and especially reserved around strangers, and they insist that his mysteriousness is not a cultivated affectation; it is just part of his nature.

"I think that he almost has to be that way to protect himself," says Amber Valletta. "He's so extremely sensitive."

Linda Evangelista, who is one of Meisel's closest friends, sees it a bit differently. "He's just private. He's not a media whore. I bet he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do this story. But it's got nothing to do with being mysterious. Fame and glory are not going to bring him satisfaction in life."

Even Madonna agrees that there is, indeed, "a great sense of mystery" about Meisel—so much so that after all these years she feels she still doesn't really know him very well. "I know that I love him," she says. "You get sucked into his aura. He knows things."

She learned this from one of their first collaborations, which was for the cover of Like a Virgin. "Before I worked with Steven," says Madonna, "I just showed up in the clothes I was wearing, stood in front of the lights, and got my picture taken. With Steven, a team of people descended on me, started to undress me. Someone grabbed my hair, another grabbed my face, another started helping me try on various bits of clothes, and they all seemed to be speaking a language I didn't understand—the language of Steven Meisel."

To hear Madonna talk about working with Meisel is like being let in on a long-held secret. She goes on, "Steven had a vision. He had done his research. He had very specific references. I really respected the care that he took with his work, how seriously he approached it, but at the same time he has a great sense of irony. He made me feel like I was part of something important. He treated each photo shoot like it was a small film and insisted that we create a character each time we worked but then would make fun of the archetypes we created. He was the first person to introduce me to the idea of reinvention." Who knew that Madonna, the goddess of reinvention, learned it from Steven Meisel.

Meisel's nearly 30-year career as a fashion photographer has been distinguished by two things: his unusually collaborative relationships with women and an almost perverse dedication to constant change, which, come to think of it, is a good description of fashion itself. In his work for, among others, this magazine, Italian Vogue (for which he has shot every cover since 1988), and innumerable fashion-ad campaigns, he has mastered so many different styles—from stripped-down studio shots of models in action to high-concept social satires, from lush couture shoots to high-glam camp—that it can be difficult to pin down whether there is a distinctive Meisel style at all.

"One of the reasons the world has been slow to recognize his contribution is that he is an absolute chameleon," says Charlotte Cotton, the photography curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Cotton, who considers Meisel the commercial photographer of our time, says he belongs in the pantheon of image-makers with Avedon, Penn, and Newton. "It's a remarkably risky position to take. It's like starting from scratch every time you go on a shoot, because it's based on whatever influences you've cherry-picked from the culture at that moment."

In preparation for this month's exhibition, "The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion," Harold Koda, curator in charge of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, has been poring over Meisel images from the eighties and nineties. In doing so, he has realized that there are a couple of things about a Meisel photograph that come close to a signature. For one, Meisel is a true postmodernist. "He samples only those things from the past that can be electrified by a contemporary aesthetic," says Koda.

The other quality that characterizes Meisel's work is a strange kind of precision. "The thing that looks like Steven is an obsessiveness with an almost chilly perfection," says Koda. "Even if the models are meant to look tousled, they are perfectly tousled," he says. "There's never a moment where there isn't this intrusion of the photographer into a very controlled image."

He brings up Meisel's infamous Versace campaign, shot in over-the-top mansions in Beverly Hills with Amber Valletta and Georgina Grenville, who are made up and posed to look like the most glamorous sixties Stepford wives imaginable. "I think that's Steven at his best, when he has inserted his own imagination of reality into the photograph and it becomes this kind of hyperreality," says Koda. "I really see a directorial role in the way he takes photographs."

If Steven Meisel is like a film director, then his movie stars are, of course, the supermodels. The term was coined by an agent in the 1940s, but if we are to give one person credit for our idea of Supermodels, capital S, that credit would have to go to Meisel. Christy, Linda, and Naomi—no last names necessary. Of course, there were famous models before, but none who permeated every aspect of the culture—and embodied it—in quite the same way.

As Koda says, "He really is a kind of a Svengali in terms of being able to take a range of beautiful women and transform their particular look into the look of the moment. And he has the business savvy to be able to create careers."

I spent a goodly part of my winter tracking down many of the women Meisel "made." Naomi rang from a car as a fellow named Yuri drove her around Moscow (she yelled at him only once during our talk). I interviewed Linda while I was sick with the flu. (She offered to have chicken soup sent over.) Christy almost didn't call me at all, because she was busy studying for her master's degree in public health at Columbia University. I found Carolyn Murphy living nearly off the grid somewhere in Southern California; Liya Kebede in New York; Coco Rocha in Australia; Amber Valletta in Santa Monica. Stella Tennant called from Scotland, and Kristen McMenamy from a closet in her house in London, where she had to hide so her kids couldn't hear her.

The first thing you realize is how similarly articulate, funny, and intense these women are. The second thing you notice is that they all view Meisel as the opposite of inscrutable—as a nurturing father figure. "He makes you feel so safe," says Linda. Carolyn Murphy describes Meisel as a "proud papa. He pays attention, and you know that he's really interested in you." Valletta says, "He always inspired me to care about what I was doing."

McMenamy believes that Meisel empathizes with women, models in particular. "I think pretty much all models have got a hang-up about one thing or another. I have a huge hang-up about my looks. I was always the outcast growing up. When I first worked with him, he made me feel beautiful and comfortable. And there's this certain magic in that he makes you feel part of the team. He makes you feel as important as he is."

"He has this incredible gift for being able to find the diamond in the rough," says Liya Kebede. "He sees you when you first arrive on the set and you look unpolished, and then he finds the girl inside."

All of the women say that they "owe their careers" to Meisel. "It's a very strange thing," says Stella Tennant. "He's a bit like my fairy godfather, I suppose." She laughs. "But it was like that! You shall go to the ball! And you shall be on the cover of American Vogue! Because that's quite a power to have. There are other photographers who have it to some degree, but I don't think any other photographer can project a model so far and so high into the business." Meisel's most recent muse, Coco Rocha, agrees: "If he says it's so, it's so. And that makes your career. He's the Godfather of all models."

Full disclosure: I have never met Steven Meisel. I have been to a few of his photo shoots over the years, where he works literally behind a scrim. A couple of years ago, I think I might have clapped eyes on him as he scurried from the designated hair-and-makeup area (where I could hear gales of laughter coming from Pat McGrath and Garren) and then ducked back behind the curtain. At a Linda Evangelista shoot I went to, he was working inside what seemed like a black box. I could hear his voice, a barely audible murmur, as he gave Linda direction or expressed his pleasure over something she was doing with her upper lip or her hand.

When I first contacted his office, he agreed to a phone interview, which we decided should be an hour long. We picked a Tuesday at noon and then, weirdly enough, stuck with Tuesdays at noon for several weeks, like it was ironclad and I was his shrink whom he couldn't bear to see in person.

Meisel was surprisingly forthcoming on the phone—willing to entertain pretty much any question. But he was also brusque and impatient—sort of perpetually annoyed with the idea of doing an interview at all. Because he has such a thick outer-borough New York accent, I sometimes felt as if I were talking to a cranky but very funny old Jewish grandmother. I noticed that he seemed to want to take control of the interview; for example, he would answer one of my questions and then ask himself a follow-up question. And then answer it! At other times he completely relaxed into the process and just talked.

I began to enjoy this unusual process, partly for its novelty but mostly for its strange intimacy. There's something lovely and old-fashioned about talking on the phone once a week for a month. Who does that anymore?

Turns out Meisel does. "I used to spend hours on the phone with him," says Anna Sui, who has known him since they went to Parsons together in the seventies. "He loves that." Turlington also mentions their marathon sessions. "I would talk to him on the phone as I would to a girlfriend in high school, both watching the same TV show, talking through the whole thing."

It's clear that, as with everything he does, Meisel likes to be in charge. He insisted on taking me through things chronologically. If I jumped ahead in time, he would stop, put a mental marker on the subject, and then address it when we'd arrived at the appropriate place for it in his story.

Steven Meisel was born in Manhattan in 1954, but he was essentially raised on Long Island. His parents, Sarah and Leonard, moved him and his sister, Robin, to Port Washington when he was about three. (When I ask if his parents are still living, he says, "Still alive! Still married!") Leonard is 95 ("still cantankerous!"); he is of Russian-Jewish descent; Sarah, who is Irish-English, is 85 and still comes into the city once a week to have lunch with her son.

Though he didn't appreciate it at the time, he was introduced to a sort of glitzy nighttime world at an early age. His maternal grandfather was Nat Simon, the songwriter whose standard "Poinciana" was a hit for Bing Crosby. Meisel's mother was for a while a big-band singer; she went to Hollywood for a screen test, hoping to sign a contract with one of the film studios, but Leonard didn't like the idea, so she quit and became a housewife. ("My grandfather never forgave her," says Meisel. "He always hated my father.")

Leonard worked for London Records. "Artists would come from Europe, and my father would take them around the city to concerts and radio stations," says Meisel. Tom Jones once stayed at their house for four days. Leonard would sometimes take young Steven to Jilly's, where they would see Frank Sinatra at the bar, or to the Copacabana, where he remembers sitting so close to the stage the night the Supremes performed that he could practically touch them. When the Beatles came to Shea Stadium in 1965, the Meisels went backstage and met them before the show. "Now I see that it was very glamorous," he says.

Meisel's cousin was Diane Rothschild, the legendary advertising executive. When Meisel was about twelve, she took him to an advertising shoot the fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky was doing for a fabric company. What he remembers most is that he watched the models—not the photographer—because he knew who they were from his constant reading of fashion magazines. "I was obsessed even then," he says.

His mother and sister were stunners in their own right. Sarah, who took Steven along when she had her hair colored at Kenneth, was an icy-blonde beauty—in old photographs, she looks like she could have stepped out of a Meisel shoot. His sister, who shared her brother's dark good looks, let him experiment with hair and makeup and photograph her. He went shopping with them every Saturday to Saks and Bergdorf and then later to boutiques like Paraphernalia and Abracadabra on the Upper East Side. "I had to go to the stores!" says Meisel. "It seemed like the world that I was looking at in the magazines come to life."

Meisel soon figured out that he wanted to attend the High School of Art & Design, on East Fifty-seventh Street. It was quite a scene. In the back of the lunchroom there was a table where, according to Meisel, "the groovy crowd" sat. Meisel eventually worked his way into the group, one that included the model Pat Cleveland, future Warhol superstar Donna Jordan, and none other than Harvey Fierstein. "We called him Little Stevie," says Fierstein. "I was sort of on the very edge of the cool crowd because I had no business being there…trust me!" What about Little Stevie? "Oh, I think he was snapping at their heels," he says in that basso profundo. "I remember him as a dark-haired, very sweet Jewish boy."

Even in a school well stocked with creative oddballs, Meisel managed to stand out, says Cleveland, whom Meisel would photograph years later, most recently for the black issue of Italian Vogue. "He had this long, silky black hair down to the bottom of his derriere. He wore really tight little jeans and beautiful shirts. He wasn't wild. But, you know, when you see someone who is that beautiful, they don't have to be outrageous and loud. He didn't have to push his way into anything."

It was the end of the sixties, and he made a place for himself just as easily in New York's nightlife. A photographer friend of his sister's took him to Max's Kansas City when he was fourteen—he became nearly delirious on the phone one day as he recalled the lighting in great detail, as only a photographer could. That early exposure to the theatrical aesthetic of the demimonde has had a profound influence on his work. When he conjures glamour, as Charlotte Cotton points out, "his frame of reference could be a transsexual's glamour rather than the real Marilyn Monroe's glamour."

One also gets the sense that it was a period in which this famously controlling man cut loose. "Yes. I went to every single club, every single hangout, every single after-hours drug place. There wasn't one thing that I didn't do; there wasn't one place that I didn't go to."

After high school, Meisel went to Parsons to study fashion illustration. Along the way, he worked at Halston for a summer, his very first job, where he met Stephen Sprouse, who became a lifelong friend (until his death in 2004); they bonded over their disdain for the older designer. "Everyone would be called into this room, and he would stand there like…like…Kay Thompson. 'Think Pink!' Oh, he drove me crazy." Worse yet, Halston designed a uniform for his young charge to wear: a black ribbed short-sleeved shirt and black slacks. "He would yell at me and say, 'Don't just sit around, Pocahontas! You have to do something!' "

In 1974, Meisel, drawings in hand, went literally across the street from Parsons to Fairchild Publications, where Women's Wear Daily's offices were, and met with the art director, who hired him. Ben Brantley, André Leon Talley, and Bonnie Fuller all worked there.

It was here that Meisel met the fashion illustrator Kenneth Paul Block, the closest he has ever come to a mentor. "He taught me so much about everything," says Meisel. "He would sit there with this long cigarette holder and a polka-dot bow tie, always a sports jacket, immaculate. He never lost his temper. He had so much style, so much class, so much chic." Block would sometimes draw Meisel, whose androgynous good looks allowed him to stand in for a woman. (In Block's fantastic book, Drawing Fashion, which came out in 2008, there is a spread devoted to Meisel that is titled simply "Steven.")

While at WWD, Meisel started traveling back across the street to Parsons to teach illustration. A young student named Marc Jacobs tried to take his class. "I had seen Steven out and about in New York with his little entourage—Teri Toye and Stephen Sprouse and Anna Sui—but I didn't know him," says Jacobs. "But I was such a fan of his drawings and just thought he had a really great eye. I was very disappointed because the first night when I showed up, it was announced that he wasn't going to be teaching it, because he was off on a photography assignment for W. He had just started taking pictures."

By the early eighties, Meisel intuited that fashion illustration was on its way out. "I needed to do more," he says. He started by snapping pictures of his girlfriends. One day, he met a girl shopping and asked if she would sit for him. She was Valerie Cates, the sister of Phoebe Cates, then a model represented by Elite. "So I would shoot Valerie and Phoebe on the weekends," says Meisel. The B-girls—the bookers—at Elite loved Meisel's photographs, so they asked him to do test shoots with other newly signed girls. Elite supplied him with film and processing, and Meisel began to hone his craft—while also learning how to make fourteen-year-old girls feel comfortable posing as women. From the very beginning, he did the hair, makeup, and styling all by himself. "I didn't know any different," he says.

An editor at Seventeen saw his pictures in a model's portfolio and called to offer him an assignment. His first magazine shoot was at a country house in Connecticut. "I took these sweet little pictures," he says. In quick succession he started shooting for W, Mademoiselle, Self, and then finally Vogue. "I was still at WWD, and teaching," he says. "And there was an editor at Vogue, Mary Russell, and she just loved my work. I went up to the offices and she introduced me to art director Alex Liberman, and he asked if I would go to Europe to do the collections." Meisel took some time off from WWD to go to Paris and Milan with a model he chose, Marisa Indri. "I didn't have any assistants; there was no hair and makeup. We would go to Saint Laurent, knock on the door, and they looked at us like, Who are these people? But we went into the different houses, they gave us the clothes; sometimes Marisa and I would go out on the streets. I would do her hair at their cabines, and she would get dressed." When he got back, Vogue asked him to do the New York collections. "We were in a natural-light studio, and all of a sudden we had hair and makeup. I said, 'Hmm. OK.' That was my first job at Vogue."

Before long, Meisel began working with Polly Mellen, and that is when things really began to click. "It was very, very exciting to work with her," he says. "The way that she treated models was unbelievable. To her, your model was gold. She was everything. Your girls felt that. They felt like stars." Meisel is a very good mimic. Here, suddenly, he does a dead-on imitation of Polly Mellen's singular whispery war cry: "You are work-ing with Tur-ling-ton to-daaaaaay." He goes on, "Sometimes, looking at the girl as I was working, she would actually cry. She was that moved. It was incredible! It was what I thought it would be. It was what I wanted."

With surprising swiftness, he established his very collaborative creative process, one that almost always involved inventing a narrative persona for his subjects. As Turlington says, "We started to work, honestly, three quarters of each month. I felt like a house model. We used to work at this place on lower Broadway. I'd come in every day and go into the makeup room and it was like, What are we going to do? What are we going to create today?"

Meisel remembers in glorious detail his first shoot with Linda Evangelista. "I had seen some European magazine that was absolutely nothing, and there was a little picture of her. I remember thinking, This girl has amazing line." He booked her for a Vogue shoot with several other girls. "I was working with François Nars and Oribe at the time, and they were like, 'Oh, this girl! We're crazy about her!' They were very inspired. François was painting her and painting her, and Oribe kept making the hair bigger and bigger. She came out and she glistened. It was like crystal, like champagne corks popping. That smile! Her gums! Her eyes just twinkled! I decided to shoot the story on just Linda, and we sent all the other girls home. We were just very, very inspired and in love."

The feeling was mutual. "It was the beginning of our story," Evangelista says. "I remember I heard something about how they loved my knees. As a model, you are never referred to as a whole person. You are dissected into little pieces. I thought maybe they were being sarcastic, because I got teased my whole life about my knees. There were also comments about my gums. I was like, 'My gums?' I didn't think that my gums would stand out." She laughs. "So, there you go. My knees and my gums."

The day of the photo shoot for this piece with all of the women Meisel "made" happened to fall on a Tuesday, which meant that we would miss our standing phone appointment for that week in February. And since I failed to persuade him to let me be a fly on the wall at the shoot—but, oh, how I tried!—I had to wait until the following Tuesday at noon to find out how it all went. "Chaotic but fine," he said when we get on the phone. "Fun," he added after a few seconds. "Nice to see everybody." Another long pause. "Lovely!" he finally shouted. "I mean, I love all of them so much, so it was great."

It must have been strange for this Svengali to have all of his women together in the same place. He says the day felt a bit like a reunion, replete with hugs and tears and the showing off of baby pictures. He was also struck by the fact that the younger girls had never met most of the older girls. "It was very sweet and very touching," he says. "Because for some of these women, modeling changed their whole life. It really, really did! For me to sit there and remember the sixteen-year-old girls that I met, some of whom came in with a tattered coat and $3, and then to think that now some of them are married to billionaires.…This job in particular has a tendency to change lives more than most."

It changed his life, too. He now splits his time (with a boyfriend he won't discuss) between a mansion in Beverly Hills—like one of those "sick" (by which he means cool) houses he used to stage those Versace ads several years ago—and "a big old prewar monster" on the Upper East Side. When I ask him what his Peter Marino-designed place in New York looks like, he says, "It's a major apartment. That's what I wanted. That's why I work so much: to give myself some of the things that make me feel comfortable. My drapes are heavy velvet. It's kind of a little…I don't know…Saint Laurent, a little Chanel. A lot of crystal, a lot of mirrors. One of the rooms has a mirrored ceiling. I know it sounds bad, but it's so working." He laughs. "To me, that's what growing up here…that's what my city is…or, was, all about." One almost gets the sense that if he himself could go to Kenneth, as his mother used to, he would.

Of course, the passage of time has meant other changes. The man who is obsessed with retouching to the point of plasticine immortal beauty has complicated feelings about aging. In some ways, his reclusiveness has the whiff of the Hollywood star who cannot bear to show her no-longer-gorgeous face. "Would I rather look 20 again?" he asks. "Uh…yeah? I think anyone who says no would be crazy. It's difficult. It's also difficult physically. I don't have the stamina I once did." He pauses. "But the other stuff? What are you going to do? I love plastic surgery. I haven't had any, because it's very hit or miss. Even with the best doctors…there's no guarantee." Here Meisel asks himself a follow-up question. "OK, am I getting plastic surgery?" And then answers it. "I don't think so."

A few people suggested to me that one reason Meisel did not want to see me in person might be that he has become self-conscious about his weight. At one point, when I ask him if he has any vices left, he answers with one word—"food"—which seems to confirm this theory. "This week I even tried hypnosis," he says, laughing. "Still, I see the cookie!"

More than anything, one senses that he misses the time when he was closer in age to his subjects. "What am I going to talk about with a teenage Russian girl who barely speaks English?" he complains one day. It occurs to me that perhaps Meisel doesn't like to be interviewed because it's hard for him to dredge up the past. "I definitely don't live in the past," he says. "I definitely live in the present. I know people probably think of me as just living in the past. I do like certain periods in fashion. But I don't live in the past at all. I'm very much now and tomorrow. But when I go through old pictures, yes, I cry. It's not a sad cry. It's a melancholy one, but mixed with happiness, too."

MAY VOGUE COVER

COURTESY OF MODELS.COM
PHOTO:STEVEN MEISEL

ONE OF MY FAVORITE PICTURES

IT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

ANGELA LINDVALL FOR POP 2002(?FALL) BY MERT ALAS AND MARCUS PIGGOT