If you don’t know Mickey Boardman, we think you probably should. Not only because of the eccentric outfits we often see him in or his powerful personality, but his story of rising to the top that can help us all.
BuzzFeed Fashion sat down with Paper magazine’s editorial director to discuss how he made it into the fashion industry. Check out the deets below.
Mickey’s love for fashion started at a very young age, but he didn’t know how to explain it to others:
I remember being in the grocery store in Hanover Park, Illinois, seeing Vogue. I thought, What is a legitimate excuse for a 10-year-old boy to buy a Vogue? I also recall once when my mom was sick, I said, “Oh, I’m just going to get some magazines for mom because she’s sick.”
But in the survival of the fittest fashion industry, Mickey didn’t get the props he wanted.
And no one cared — two teachers ever in my time there thought I was fabulous, and the rest thought I was insane. There was some contest we all had to enter, and I did Las Vegas showgirls on swings, and they basically had no clothes on — they were wearing body stockings with glitter and headdresses… What was I thinking? I did three and a half years of a BFA in fashion design and then failed a class my senior year and didn’t finish.
Mickey soon became an intern at Paper magazine and after awhile, became the star intern.
I was the star intern, and I just felt at home. I was so happy that the [attributes] other places thought made me bad, [at Paper] they thought made me good. And the positive reinforcement made me work even harder. When I stopped answering the phones I was very sad, because there you’re at the heart of everything — if you’re a gossipy type like myself, it’s [great]. And despite being a real sloppy mess, I ran a tight ship at the front desk. My desk was immaculate, and I would scrub it every night.
And while working at the magazine, Mickey had some horrible stories to tell:
With Mariah, I wanted her to drink only out of a gold goblet, but none of that happened. She was a little nutty, though — all she wanted to do was be on all fours with the boobs out and the butt out. If you have Mariah, you’re going to get Mariah.
But others didn’t go over as swell with Mr. Mickey, most notably Mariah’s Idol rival Nicki Minaj.
Nicki Minaj was not fun. The Nicki thing turned out fine in the end, but it was two weeks of hideous torture and [her] walking off shoots…I had to sign up for AOL Instant Messenger so I could talk to her later, and she hung up on me on AIM. It was a super headache.
We are all aware of Ms. Minaj’s absurd antics.
The first day of the shoot, she was locked in a room with her hair and makeup team, people whom she picked — she made them put [all her hair/makeup] on, then take it off. She would not let anyone from our team, stylists or photographers, talk to her. She came out and it was a mess. The photographer took some shots and she said, “Let me see.” He [showed her] five frames and she walked off — it was insanity.
Ben Stiller seems to be part of Mickey’s horrible celeb twist, he adds:
Ben Stiller was also pretty horrible. We were supposed to shoot him on a Thursday, his team called late Wednesday night saying they couldn’t do it and they’d let us know about rescheduling. So they call Monday afternoon and say they can do it tomorrow. I was scrambling for a studio and I found one — it was basically somebody’s apartment that had a studio in it. And he was just not having it. At one point he said to his publicist, “Can you call Mickey and say the air conditioning’s not cold enough?” And I’m like, “I heard him because he was standing right next to me.”
Well Mr. Mickey, it all paid off.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed Fashion
