Lisa Love Looks Back at Her Life in Parties
The peripatetic creative director and editor gives us rare VIP access to her festive world.
Lisa Love has lived many lives: She was a painter, a model, and then Andy Warhol’s Los Angeles driver of choice before she became the West Coast editor of Interview, and then the West Coast editor of Vogue, a position she held for close to 30 years. Now she’s the brains behind the annual star-studded Academy Museum Gala, among other things. Love spent her childhood in Rome, Geneva, and London. It was in Geneva that she met her lifelong best friend, the photographer Pamela Hanson. “When we were all of 6 years old, we used to ‘cohost’ our parents’ cocktail parties, pretending to be waiters, passing inedible hors d’oeuvres we had made, or mixologists, concocting disgusting drinks,” Love says. “Before bedtime, we had morphed into ‘event photographers.’ We made a cardboard copy of a Rolleiflex, with an opening in the back where we stashed small painted portraits of the guests, then charged them 50 Swiss centimes a portrait. It’s no wonder that she ended up the photographer and I the party planner.” Those outside of the fashion world might recognize Love from her star turn on MTV’s The Hills, where she delivered the iconic, perfectly deadpan line “She’s gonna always be known as the girl who didn’t go to Paris.” Love remembers her experience as a reality television star somewhat less than fondly, but she has plenty of other fascinating stories to tell.
Love onboard the RMS Queen Mary in 1965, traveling to London with her father. “Well, I think that’s the first red carpet picture I ever did,” she says. “This is the Queen Mary’s step-and-repeat, in front of the telephone booth.”
“This is Pamela and me at the Battersea Park Fun Fair. We were probably around 10 years old,” Love says. “We were little hustlers back then. We were obnoxious, I’m sure. I can’t imagine we weren’t.”
Love was born in Cincinnati but lived there only a few days before her family decamped to Rome. “My father was one of those original Mad Men, in charge of advertising for Procter & Gamble. In the 1950s and ’60s, they shipped everybody off to Europe.” Here, Love (right) sits at a dinner with her mother (far left).
Love moved to Boston to study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts. “I was a painter, but I always preferred the photography department—those were my people,” she says. She became close with the likes of David Armstrong (above), Philip-Lorca diCorcia, and Nan Goldin, who took this photo. “That period informed a lot of my life, because I’m still surrounded by photographers all the time.”
“Europe lends itself to being more festive than the U.S. They can turn every opportunity into a party, and they take traditions very seriously. Dinner is not just dinner on the table—it’s also a time to celebrate being together,” says Love. Here, she’s in her mid-20s in Klosters, Switzerland, in a photo pulled from her mother’s archives.
“I was happily an artist until Arthur Elgort came to Boston and started taking pictures of me. Then I was sent to Paris to model,” Love says. “Any excuse to be in Paris was the most exciting thing ever. The ’80s were a great period to be there: bad haircuts, weird clothes.” Here, she gets ready for an evening out with her roommate at the time, Caroline Pagano, also a fledgling model.
“I moved to London when I was 11. I thought I was moving to the gloomiest city in the world, but, of course, London was phenomenal in the ’60s,” Love says. “It was the height of everything: King’s Road, Chelsea Cobbler, zoot suits, snakeskin boots, the Rolling Stones. I mean, the Beatles’ manager lived across the street from us.”
Love, here with her daughter Laura at her feet, celebrating her 40th birthday at Good Luck Bar, a now-shuttered Chinatown-themed institution near her Los Angeles home. “Randy Quaid hosted this party for me, and Alexis Arquette performed, and I’m sure there was cake,” she recalls.
Love (second from left) moved to Los Angeles in 1982 and became the West Coast editor of Interview in 1988. Here, she is at an L.A. club with a crowd that includes the singer-songwriter Cherry Vanilla (second from right), the actor Paul Fortune (far right), and the director Marek Kanievska (center). “I met some incredible people—before coolness was quantified by follower counts—and made genuine friendships with artists, designers, filmmakers, photographers, and even some actors who have stood the test of time.”
After a year at Interview, Love took a position with the same title at Vogue. “This is from my first Met Gala, in 1995,” says Love, here with actor John Enos III (left) and Richard Gere (right). “Richard had just broken up with Cindy [Crawford], and he wanted to go out. It was very casual—before the Met transitioned into the epic event that it is today.”
At Vogue, Love’s job eventually included helping out with the Met Gala. She humbly describes her role in the event as “just an assistant to the assistant to the assistant to the assistant.” Here, she poses for a throng of photographers at the 2019 “Camp” themed fete.
Another Met Gala moment, here at an afterparty at the Boom Boom Room in 2017, with her former intern Sara Moonves (now W’s editor in chief).
“This is at Pamela’s wedding, in Geneva. She married a Russian, so it was a Russian party,” Love says. “I’m rewearing that same dress I made—we rewore dresses then. I still do.”
Love at her rehearsal dinner, in London, in 1982. “My husband’s father was a member of a gentleman’s club, so we had it there,” Love says. “I remember there was a certain formality that was very English—very much the old-school kind of rehearsal dinner, with just the family, the maid of honor, and the best man. Poor Pamela had to give a speech, and she doesn’t like giving speeches.”
Lady Gaga (right, with Love and managing director, partner, and co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency Bryan Lourd) performed at the first Academy Museum Gala, in 2021. “She was just magnificent,” Love says. “Once the last award was presented, to Sophia Loren, Gaga started singing from her seat. Nobody could tell where she was. She moved through the crowd, café style, and then when she got onstage, the stage lit up and there was a full orchestra behind her.”
Love planned both of her daughters’ weddings. Her younger, Laura, had her reception at the Odeon, in New York, in 2022 (above). “It was a second attempt at a wedding. It was supposed to be on New Year’s Eve in 2021 at the Chateau Marmont, but the hotel got shut down,” Love says. “Then Laura visited a psychic who told her to reschedule it for April 9. So we turned a wedding around in three months—you don’t need a year to plan.”
“I can’t tell you where this photo was taken,” Love says, coyly. What she can tell us is that she’s wearing a Paco Rabanne dress, Prada shoes, and her signature Barton Perreira frames. “I can see clearer with sunglasses on. My eyes are very light sensitive. The only time I ever switch to clear lenses is when I’m driving.”
Love at home with her daughters, Laura (left) and Nathalie. “I always tell my children, ‘Don’t waste your time going to a party unless you come home with something new, or someone new,’ ” Love says. “ ‘Don’t be a bore, and for God’s sake, write a thank-you note.’ ”
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