Long before Vera Wang revolutionized bridalwear, she was a 22-year-old editor at Vogue. Here, she recalls encountering Polly Mellen, the sittings editor, who, as a maestro of the magazine, orchestrated some of the 20th century’s most iconic fashion imagery. Plus, her no-nonsense-ness was legendary: On her first day with Mellen, Wang was famously sent home to change. To Wang, Mellen was both a muse and mentor. Following Mellen’s passing, Wang reflects on the singular Halston-clad editor who didn’t just capture fashion—she defined it.
Back when I started working, fashion was for the very few, the very rich, and the very stylish. Polly Mellen bridged all those gaps. When she started, it was with Alexey Brodovitch at Harper’s Bazaar, and then she was brought over to Vogue by Diana Vreeland. I came to Vogue about two months after Mrs. Vreeland, and it is a true story about her successor, Grace Mirabella—how they say the office went from red to beige. I was in the beige part of it. But Polly was a force—a force that I can’t explain. Even at the young age of 22, when I was supposedly at my peak of energy, Polly was someone I was just in awe of.
I did not work with Polly at the beginning. I was a rover for about the first three months, then I worked for Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, and then I did a week with Elsa Klensch. Next, I worked in Grace Mirabella’s office for about four months. She had two major assistants, and I was the third one who ran to get coffee, but I had no complaints. I was happy to be there and easy to work with. All of this was before I was brought into the lion’s den, into Polly’s office.
On my first day with Polly, I was trying to dress as I thought a young woman, a Vogue editor, would dress in those days. I had no idea. I came to Polly quite proud. I’d been living in Paris, done a lot of studies at the Sorbonne, and just finished Sarah Lawrence and Columbia graduate work. I walked in there pleased as punch with myself. I was in a Saint Laurent white crepe shirtwaist dress—he was doing the ’40s at that point—and I had royal blue leather semelles compensées sandals. (Or, as Polly would say, “Se-melles compensées, dearie!” I’m doing a bad imitation.) She looked at my red lacquered nails and hair in a bob, and she said, “Go home and change. You should come back in jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt.”
I felt I had gotten off to a very bad footing with her and was worried about my job. I worried that I looked too vain or pretentious. She made me feel like I was not a worker and would not work out for her. She also asked me if I was a genius. I was taken aback. I said no. And she said, “Well, you better get a pad and pencil, then!” I handwrote every command she ever gave me.
First thing in the morning, I had to make sure she had her cottage cheese with extra pepper seated at her table for one o’clock. The specificity of it was insane. I’d worked as a salesgirl and folded sweaters at the Saint Laurent boutique to earn pocket money in college, but I never had a job like the one I had under Polly. Everything was military—I mean, military.
What I learned from working as a sittings assistant were lessons I probably could never have learned anywhere else. But really, it was tough love. The level of perfectionism, passion, effort: She was really a queen.
I had to nickname myself Vera Vogue at one point because I was so gung ho for Vogue, but in Polly’s case, she was Vogue to a great extent. There were other great sittings editors throughout my entire tenure there: Frances Stein, the fashion director before she went on to Calvin Klein and then Chanel; there were other editors like Jade Hobson, who made huge contributions to Vogue. But Polly was a force that’s hard to even describe.
Yet sitting next to her for 14 years doesn’t exactly lend to good mental or physical health: Polly hardly ate at all, and I would be surprised if she got out of the fashion closet by 6:30 p.m.
One summer we were shooting in Central Park. At that time of year, we all shot there: Elle, Glamour. We didn’t travel or go on location in the summer, so we all parked in front of The Met because it had a big wide sidewalk and the vans could fit on.
I had all the clothes hanging there; they would get wrinkled, and I always had to re-steam them. The vans were also where the models did hair and makeup. I dreaded when May came around because I knew it’d be three or four months working in vans on location. I’ve worked on every street on Fifth Avenue.
At this one shoot, Polly said, “Where’s this hat?” And I looked frantically; the vans were not big. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was searching through all the accessories—you can’t lay out all the accessories because there’s no room in the van—and the hat wasn’t there. Ten others were there, but the one she needed was on a Deborah Turbeville shoot. My heart just went down to my feet and back up into my throat. “You have to get it,” she said.
I left the van. It was a torrential downpour—I mean, torrential—and I didn’t have a dollar on me. I noticed the other Condé Nast vans behind me. I went into one, and Patrick Demarchelier was sitting there. I asked, “Could I please have a dollar or two to get back to the office?” Patrick thought it was hilarious and has told that story to everyone for 20 years!
After all that, Polly said, “You have ruined this sitting, my dear. You have ruined it. And now we will be off schedule because of this.” I know now that, in many ways, this was Polly giving me tough love. She was not trying to punish me; she was letting me see what level of editor she was and why the pictures she created were so special.
I’m trying to think of which shoot that was exactly. We didn’t always use hats in those days. Vogue then was more minimal. It was post–Mrs. Vreeland, so we weren’t doing purple wigs with daisies on the eyes—kind of wish we were, but we weren’t.
I did another shoot with her and Dick Avedon at the studio on 75th Street with Margaux Hemingway. That was another difficult shoot because Dick did not allow anyone in the room he shot in. I was Polly’s assistant and had to put a hat on Margaux’s head. She was about six one, and I’m five six, and there was no ladder. And she was mad at me because I couldn’t get the hat on her head—even when she was kneeling! These are the kinds of things I had to live with every day.
A lot of people don’t know what a sittings editor really is. I didn’t know when I went to Vogue, but Polly told me it’s to make the subject feel the most beautiful, the most unique, the most perfect version of themself. You give them that confidence as a model or supermodel. She would tell me it’s your duty always to bring more clothes than we think we’ll need—bring a thousand times more. Because even if we’re doing a still life with Irving Penn of shoes, he may want wrists in there, he may want a fingernail in there, he may want a back of the body there.
Polly was also protective. I remember one night when we were together, and I saw a guy who I thought was very attractive because I was single, but I can’t say who! Polly knew about him and said, “You are not going out with him.” She went up to him and said, “She will not be joining you for dinner tonight. She’ll be having dinner with me.” There’s a story I’ve never told!
After a while, I was made a sittings editor. It was Dick who first said, “That girl should be made editor,” and shortly thereafter, the famous Mary E. Campbell Flannery, who ran Condé Nast HR at that time, and Muriel Hobson—these were the famous characters of Condé Nast—made me an editor. I then shared an office with Polly. Can you believe? The stress of sharing an office with Polly? I can tell you that her presence was not just felt, it was electric.
I started to do my own shoots, and one time there was a set of photos that people in the art department loved and then they didn’t. You suffer a thousand deaths as a sittings editor. I was very upset. I sat there and just questioned whether I should even be at Vogue anymore or be a fashion editor. Polly sat down with me and said, “Dearie, listen to me. I go through the exact same thing. I always worry I’m only as good as my last set of pictures.” This interaction is insightful; she had a deep understanding of human nature, and that’s very important to say.
I think she always believed in me. When I wrote a wedding book, I hired a separate editorial team and Polly headed it for nearly four years. She’d already left Allure by then, and we worked together even still and had such a great time doing it.
After she left magazines, she never went back to fashion. That surprised me. She didn’t go to shows. She could have gone to shows till she died, but she moved on with her life, and for that I have enormous respect and astonishment. I think it meant so much to her—and I’m tearing up a little bit because I know what it meant to her. I know what it meant to every editor there. We were there because we felt honored to be on the Vogue staff. We felt that we had an education that no one else could get. We felt we were at the epicenter of that world.
Polly was very much a part of that transition from Vreeland into more contemporary fashion, and then, of course, when Anna took over, she just brought in modernity and mixed high and low beautifully. I was there through all those transitions. Can you imagine going from Marella Agnelli to Kim Kardashian? That’s quite a thing to live through in one life. But the thing about Polly is she embraced it all. She never got old. She never saw things in one way. Things have changed and will continue to change, and one of Polly’s greatest gifts was not just that she was a cheerleader for fashion, but she was also really open to understanding.
Polly’s passing is raising a lot of feelings about our relationship and how much I learned from her. She was a force to be reckoned with and never relented on her standards. I will never forget Polly. Every time I walk up The Met’s stairs, I look to my right and the north and think of Polly.