Michael Roberts’s Joyous Collage of a Life

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Michael Roberts, who died on Monday in Taormina, Sicily, was The New Yorker’s first and solely trend director. Starting in 1996, he contributed twenty-three exuberant covers, most of them for the journal’s Type & Design points, which he pioneered. Tina Brown, who introduced Michael to the journal, referred to as him the Jean Cocteau of the style world. Born in England and educated at artwork faculty, he was a painter, an illustrator, a stylist, and a photographer, however New Yorker readers will bear in mind him for his collages, joyous layers of colourful shapes that he minimize freehand with scissors, often working with no sketch.

Michael was within the trend world however not of it. Nothing delighted him greater than poking at its silliness and pomposity with the purpose of his scissors. “Hideous!” (which he pronounced “HID-yuss!”) was a favourite exclamation, adopted by “Cauchemar!” In tone, his tart graphic takes on trend foolishness recall Peter Arno’s sly eviscerations of café society. One cowl, from 2001, titled “Slaves to Vogue,” exhibits itty-bitty laborers dragging big slabs of gold onto a society lady’s outfit, as if constructing the pyramids. “It really works on two ranges,” Michael informed Marshall Heyman, in an interview for newyorker.com. The girl “is a slave to trend, dressing slavishly in gold, which is the style second, and the poor little buggers are slaving to trend whereas working to boost her magnificence.” One other cowl, referred to as “Head Over Heels,” exhibits fashions in sky-high stilettos, accessorized with canes and bandages round their ankles.

The outdated trend chestnut “Class is refusal” was a favourite of Michael’s. He had an austere bent; he loved the problem of telling a posh story utilizing solely scraps of paper. The cautious snipping of his scissors was a parallel, tangible model of what we editors do all day. (As Wolcott Gibbs put it, in a 1937 memo to editors, “The extra ‘as a matter of information,’ ‘howevers,’ ‘for situations,’ and so on., you may minimize out, the nearer you’re to the Kingdom of Heaven.”) Michael’s scissors flashed with precision, the leftover scraps pooling at his toes like rainbow confetti. He serenely sheared out his shapes wherever he went, the best way one other particular person would possibly knit; after 9/11, when scissors have been banned from flights, he was at a loss. Gusts from open home windows have been an occupational hazard; so have been resort maids, who generally swept his bits of paper treasure into the trash.

Then there was the documentary he directed concerning the shoe designer Manolo Blahnik, and a music video he made for Bryan Ferry. As a photographer, he was pleased with a 1989 shot he took of his buddy Vivienne Westwood performed up as Margaret Thatcher, for the quilt of Tatler. Final 12 months, Thatcher’s reverse quantity, Queen Elizabeth, awarded him an Order of the British Empire; he was on account of acquire it in particular person subsequent month from King Charles at Windsor. Among the many quite a few illustrated books that he revealed was an A-to-Z referred to as “Vogue Victims: The Catty Catalogue of Trendy Casualties.” From the introduction:

However right here, pricey readers, we intend
To ponder the world of development.
Dissect the egos, greed, and lies
That dazzle trend’s butterflies.
After which in language stuffed with sass
Strip naked the useless, the imply, the crass. ♦

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