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lounge looking jumpy. He poured him-self a cup of tea and took some valerian.He stared unhappily at the oversizedPanerai Luminor watch on his wrist.7:13 A.M. Two minutes to go.

A few dozen tastefully dressed menand women with chic handbags and un-derstated accessories began boarding theflight. Still no sign of Combs. For thepast three days, he had been in Atlanta,at a music-industry event sponsored by Bad Boy Entertainment, the recordcompany he has run for nearly a decade.There had been a party the final night,and Combs didn’t leave until aroundfour in the morning. He was driven di-rectly to his chartered Gulfstream G4jet. By 6:30 A.M., he was on the groundat Teterboro Airport, in suburban NewJersey, but the morning traffic on theGeorge Washington Bridge had begunto build.

By seven-twenty-five, the passengersin the lounge had checked in and mostwere already on board. The Air Franceflight attendants were eager to close thedoor. One was tapping her foot. Every-one in the Combs entourage—Tweedy;Bone, a friend from high school; MarSabado,one of Puffy’s assistants;her boy-friend, a designer in dreadlocks namedEmmett Harrell—was on his or her cellphone or working his or her Motorolatwo-way pager. Sabado was on thephone with Combs’s twenty-eight-year-old chief aide, Norma Augenblick, whowas in Paris, making certain that every-thing was in place for Combs’s arrival at the hotel: champagne in ice buckets;a sufficient supply of Puff Daddy’s fa-vorite tequila (1800); plenty of Cubancigars, either Monte Cristo No. 2 or Cohiba. Then, there were the racks ofclothing to unpack and organize. Puff

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 9, 2002 117

The Air France hostess was pleas-ant but unwilling to compromise.

“This flight closes in three minutes,’’she said. “We don’t make exceptions.”Chuck Bone, who was sitting in theConcorde’s first-class waiting lounge at J.F.K., reached casually for his cellphone. It was 7:12 A.M. on a Monday in July. The Concorde was scheduled todepart for Paris at eight, and its passen-gers generally consider even the briefestdelay intolerable. Bone, who was wear-ing a blue-and-white tracksuit and had asimple diamond stud in one ear, startedtalking. “Where are you guys? You needto get him here now. They are closingthe flight.” He listened for a momentand then turned to the woman in chargeof the lounge. “He is in the airport,’’ hesaid. “He’ll be at the terminal in fiveminutes.’’ The hostess, who was nowflanked by three colleagues, was un-moved. “Seven-fifteen and we close it,’’she said.“I am sorry,but Mr.Puff Daddymust come by then, or he will have totake another plane.’’

Mr.Puff Daddy, the thirty-two-year-old rap impresario, restaurateur, cloth-ing entrepreneur, bon vivant, actor, andPage Six regular—who is also known as P. Diddy, and whose mother calls him Sean John Combs—was expectedin Paris within hours. He needed to beon the 8 A.M. flight: it was the first day of fashion week, and Donatella Versacehad invited him to sit in the front row at her couture show. Versace’s shows al-ways attract enormous publicity, usuallymore for the celebrities in the audiencethan for the models on the runway.The Concorde was Combs’s only hopeof making it on time. Jeffrey Tweedy,the vice-president of Combs’s cloth-ing company, Sean John, was in the

PROFILES

I AM FASHION

Guess who Puff Daddy wants to be?

BY MICHAEL SPECTER

PHOTOGRAPHS BY HERB RITTS

“Fashion is about leaving on your jacket and tie when other people are too hot to bother,” Combs says.

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Daddy does not travel light, and by the time he reached his hotel suite thatevening he expected everything to be in order.

At seven-thirty, a man in a two-piecewhite terry-cloth outfit appeared at thefar end of the terminal. He was wear-ing white tennis shoes, white socks, askintight white terry-cloth hat pulledlow over his forehead, and a large dia-mond ring on his right pinkie. He waswalking slowly, and talking rapidly intohis cell phone. The hostess wheeledaround and left when he approached.He looked tired but clearly pleased to seehis friends. He embraced the variousmembers of his crew and then shookmy hand. “I hope you are ready to seri-ously hang out in Paris,’’ he said. “Be-cause don’t come with us if you can’t stayout with us. I fully intend to show Paristhe respect it deserves. We are going torock that place to the ground.’’

His friends clapped once, the wayfootball players do at the end of a hud-dle. Then they headed for the plane. Itwas seven-forty. As Combs turned to-ward the walkway heading onto theConcorde, a security agent gently put ahand on his shoulder and asked him tostep aside; after all, even Al Gore getssearched these days. “Mr. Combs,’’ the

guard said. “Would it be possible to getyour autograph?” Puff Daddy nodded,pinned his cell phone between his leftshoulder and his ear, and, still talking,signed the back of an envelope.

“Thank you, sir,’’ the security guardsaid. “Have a really nice trip.’’

Two minutes before takeoff, a stew-ardess came over and asked,hesitantly, ifCombs might be willing to turn off hisphone. He apologized, then snapped itshut.Despite his outsized image,Combsis a not a big man, and he often speaks ina whisper.When he addressed the stew-ardess, she had to lean in toward the seatto hear him.“I forget how fast this planetravels,’’ he said. “I was trying to explainit to my son before.’’ “Eet eez zee speedof a boullet,’’ the woman replied. “It eezexactly like we are shot out of zee gun.”By the time she had finished describingthe velocity of the plane, its cruising al-titude, and what happens when theflight breaks the sound barrier, Combswas asleep.

Within moments of touching downin Paris, Combs and his crew

were back on their phones. Puffy, nowwide awake, seemed to be having troublewith his, so Tweedy, who was sitting onerow behind him, offered some advice:

“You have to dial 001 to call a New York cell phone, even if the person is inFrance,” he explained. Combs whippedaround in his seat. “Yo, Jeff, excuse me,’’he said, in a low, steady voice.“This is myfourteenth Concorde flight. I’m an in-ternational fucking player. I’ll tell youhow to use a phone.’’

Combs had come to Paris for fun,but it was fun with a purpose. He con-siders himself (as do many others)among the most fashionable people inthe world, and the business of fashionhas become an increasingly central partof his life. Sean John, the clothing com-pany he started three years ago, hasemerged as one of the best-selling—andmost highly regarded—men’s lines inAmerica.Combs’s runway show in NewYork last fall met with praise from eventhe most skeptical fashion professionals.“It was better than anything in Europe,’’Kim Hastreiter, the editor of Paper, thedowntown fashion magazine, told me.“It was perfectly presented, perfectlyoriginal American fashion.” In 2001,Sean John’s sales, which were thirty mil-lion dollars in 1999, rose to nearly twohundred and fifty million.

This year, along with Ralph Laurenand Marc Jacobs,Combs was nominatedby the Council of Fashion Designers ofAmerica as the menswear designer ofthe year. He introduced his line with the type of T-shirts and baggy jeans thatcharacterize hip-hop clothing brandslike FUBU and Ecko, but he quicklygraduated to a more sophisticated look,with a modern, slightly off-kilter ap-proach to classic preppy clothes.Thismonth, he will bring out Blue—a moreexpensive line of denim directed at oldercustomers.Combs and Tweedy also haveambitious plans to enter the lucrativeand complicated world of women’s wear,and to open two Sean John stores inNew York next year. At a time whenmany designers are struggling just to stayin business,department stores seem eagerfor anything Sean John can supply.“Puffysells second only to Ralph in many ofour stores,’’ Kal Ruttenstein, the long-time fashion director of Bloomingdale’s,told me. “Some of that is because of hisname, of course. But his clothes are ac-tually quite wonderful, and you would be amazed to see how many types of peo-ple wear them.’’

Combs first appeared at the haute-

118 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 9, 2002

“Lucky girl—she got one before he was hardwired.”

• •

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couture shows in Paris five years ago.With his hip-hop credentials and hislove of the spotlight, not to mention apast that includes highly public mo-ments of violence, Combs provided ex-actly what the fashion crowd craves: afrisson of danger without much threat ofit. He represented the ultimate expres-sion of nineteen-nineties style: exces-sive, ironic, and a tiny bit thuggish. Hewore fur and leather and draped himselfin enough diamonds to rival PrincessCaroline of Monaco. Combs made hisfirst visits to the Louvre and to Versailles,which he described to me as “some awe-inspiring shit.”He was escorted to manyof the shows by Anna Wintour, the ed-itor of Vogue. “Puffy is so wonderfullyover the top and flamboyant, and, God,do we need that in our business,’’ Win-tour told me. “Fashion goes through se-verely dull periods and we must have re-lief. Puff provides it.’’

Donatella Versace,who knows glitz ifshe knows anything, was counting onCombs’s presence to add some adrenalineto her show.The show was scheduled tobegin at eight. At six, Combs was work-ing his way through customs at Charlesde Gaulle Airport.The drive into the citywould take at least an hour; then he wouldneed to change from his travel clothesinto a more fashionable, light-gray,chalk-striped suit, designed by Donatella. Hewould have to look, in the phrase coinedby Andre Harrell, his former boss at Up-town Records, “ghetto fabulous.’’ Thatmeant choosing appropriate accessories:a silver tie, smoke-colored sunglasses,diamond-and-platinum earrings,a brace-let or two, a couple of diamond rings thesize of cherry tomatoes, and a watchcovered with jewels and worth nearly amillion dollars.

There is nothing in fashion more de-liciously low than a Versace show. Theambience is one of excess, with securityguards stationed along the runway andmodels regularly spilling out of theirtops. The show, which was held at thePalais de Chaillot this year, was delayed.Puffy didn’t leave his hotel until eight-thirty. He was with Kim Porter, themother of one of his two children. (Shehas another child, whom Combs sup-ports and treats as his own.) By the timethey arrived, the bleachers were filled:the Hilton sisters, Nicky and Paris, werethere, along with their parents,Rick and

Kathy.Two of the Miller sisters—Alex-andra von Furstenberg and PrincessMarie-Chantal of Greece (along withher exiled husband, Crown Prince Pav-los)—were also in the audience. (Theyare daughters of Robert Miller, the duty-free billionaire.) These young womenare among the dwindling number ofpeople on earth with the means and thedesire to pay twenty thousand dollars fora dress they might wear once.

Combs and Porter, who was dressedelegantly in black and wore a diamondnecklace that, next to Puffy’s jewels,seemed almost demure, were seated be-side the actress Elizabeth Hurley,whosefloor-length green evening gown wascovered with paisley swirls and glitter-ing stars and cut in a remarkably low V.Hurley wore a silver pendant and pinkmules. The front row was a spectacle ofpreening,with Hurley,George Michael,Rupert Everett, David Furnish (EltonJohn’s lover), the singer Ashanti, and thedowntown celebrity actress Chloë Sevi-gny posing constantly for the cameras.The most photographed guest, by far,was Combs. (People,Us Weekly, and abouteight European magazines—many ofthem named Hello! in a variety of lan-guages—ran pictures of him with Porter,Hurley, or Donatella Versace. “Wow,Puff Daddeee,’’ the photographersscreeched. “Mr. Diddeee, can we see thediamonds?”)

The fashion show itself lasted aboutfifteen minutes. Puffy spent much ofthat time taking pictures of other celeb-rities with a tiny camera. As soon as thelast girl left the runway, he and hisfriends, led by three security men, wentbackstage. Versace was having a party atthe Ritz Club later that evening, andPuffy would make an appearance,but hestill needed to pay his respects to hishost. She was surrounded by her staff,some of whom find Combs an unwel-come addition to their world. (“He islike a mezzo Donatella,’’ one of them

said to me. “He’s a fashion Mini-Me:half the talent, half the glamour, just asdemanding.”) Air kisses were exchangedin the dressing area. “It blew me away,’’Puff said to Versace, about the collec-tion, which included a patchwork coatmade from more than eighty types ofantique fabric; a short jacket with bluecrocodile skin; and a silver ballgown ofantique brocade with a silver lamé skirt.Versace beamed. She wore her perox-ided hair straight and long, her lipstickwas brown, and her skin was a peculiarshade of gray. Puffy embraced her, andthen looked at his assistant Norma andnodded. It was after ten o’clock and, ashe put it a few minutes later, he wasready to “escalate.” Norma passed theword to the security detail, and withinminutes the entourage was gone.

Combs moves like a candidate forthe Presidency. He is always late,

he is never alone. (Solitude seems tomake him nervous.) Even when heneeds to travel a single city block—say,from his Bad Boy offices, in midtown, tothe MTV studios, in Times Square—he is loaded into an S.U.V. and driven.This is not purely vanity; Combs hasbeen particularly conscious of securityever since his best friend, the rap starChristopher Wallace, who was betterknown as the Notorious B.I.G., wasgunned down in 1997 in Los Angeles.Combs was with Wallace the night hedied, and among his many tattoos thereis one on his right wrist, noting B.I.G.’sdate of birth and date of death. (Thecrime, generally attributed to an EastCoast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry thatalso took the life of Tupac Shakur, hasnever been solved.)

The group was whisked into an un-derground passage and out a back door.There were scores of kids waiting in the street, and when they saw Combsthey started screaming, “Pouf Daddeee,Pouf Daddeee!” and quickly surroundedhim, seeking autographs. Combs signedthem. (Every time he left a restaurant,hotel, or club in Paris, he was delayed by honeymooners, tourists, and otherpeople wanting him to sign an auto-graph or pose with them for pictures. Inever saw him refuse.) Combs wanted to go to the hotel for a drink beforeheading to Nobu for dinner. After din-ner, he went to Versace’s party, and then

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to another club,where he remained untildawn. Versace had booked Combs andhis entourage into the Hyatt RegencyParis-Madeleine, and he had a suite onthe seventh floor, with a separate eleva-tor key. It was a nice hotel, well situatedin the center of town. But it was an un-usual choice. In Paris, the beautiful peo-ple stay at the Ritz or the Plaza Athé-née. Many in the fashion crowd preferthe intimacy of the Hotel Côstes. No-body stays at the Hyatt. (The secondnight he was in Paris, Puffy visited VinDiesel in his suite at the Plaza Athé-née—a duplex decorated in white, witha large terrace off the bedroom—and he quickly saw what he was missing.“Norma, we need to stay here,’’ Puffyannounced. “Time for a change. Getme a room like this.” Norma had antic-ipated this whim,but the Plaza is alwaysfull during fashion week, and there wasnothing she could do.)

Not that the Hyatt was a hardship:the suite had a baby-grand piano and a large terrace. There were several gar-ment racks in the living room,with morethan a dozen suits, scores of shirts,leather jackets, what appeared to betwenty or so belts, and twice as manyties. There were enough shoes to last alifetime, and enough sneakers to outfitthe Knicks. Some of the clothes hadbeen provided by Versace, but most hadbeen flown over from New York. “Canyou possibly wear all this in four days?’’ Iasked Combs.“All I can do is try,’’ he re-plied, with a wink. Sunglasses had beenarranged in three rows on a high tablenext to a couch in the living room.Therewere about ten pairs in each row; eachpair was in its original case, with the top flipped up. It looked like the opticalcounter at Bergdorf ’s. We walked ontothe terrace. Montmartre and at least adozen church steeples stood out againstthe pale sky. Despite the hour, it was still light. A thin wafer of a moon hungabove the city. Emmett and Bone weresitting with Tweedy, sipping wine, takingin the view.

Combs, who often seems uneasy in a crowd unless he is performing, stoodself-consciously on the edge of the ter-race. “Before we get on our way, I justwant to say one thing,” he said. “We arein Paris and we are here to learn fromone another. We are going to philoso-phize and improvise and improve each

other’s minds.God gave us the chance tobe together in this wonderful place andwe are going to profit from it. I want to drink mimosas at the Eiffel Tower at dawn. I want us to have fun. But wehave to be together to do it.You will notleave me and I will not leave you, and wewill have the total experience.” (Combsnever seems still. Even when he’s sit-ting alone in a corner, he pays attentionto everything going on around him.)Within minutes, we were off to Nobu,where the Hilton girls and many mod-els, designers, fashion editors, and a fewhangers-on were having dinner. Afterseveral seating configurations proved un-tenable, Combs got the waiters to jointhree tables, and then he ordered ap-proximately two of everything on themenu. When the waiter finished read-ing back the order, Puffy told him tobring champagne, wine, and two bottlesof tequila.“But it has to be 1800 tequila,’’he said.“And bring it to the table. I wantto see the labels.”

Dinner ended around twelve-thirty.The Versace party was already

under way. By the time we arrived at the Ritz Club, a long line had formed,and the bouncers were on edge. Inside,Chloë Sevigny sat on a bench, posing for photographers, and Liz Hurley wasplaying blackjack with Versace. Despitetheir presence, it was an oddly B-listcrowd, made up mostly of unknownmodels, publicists, and Versace’s ownemployees. The Hiltons were there, butthey are at every party. At one-thirty,Puffy and his friends packed themselvesback into their cars and took off insearch of better music and cooler peo-ple. They found both. The place, nearthe Marais, was sweltering and crowded.Waves of hip-hop music rolled acrossthe dance floor. The Nelly song “Hot in Herre” was playing. It was the song of the summer, and, despite the heat,nobody wanted to remain seated. Soonafter Combs arrived, the d.j. shoutedout the obligatory greeting—“P. Diddy’sin the house!”—and then played Puffy’sNo. 1 song “I Need a Girl (Part 1).”

Most people assume that the song is about Combs’s relationship with Jen-nifer Lopez: “Every time I think aboutyour pretty smile, and how we used todrive the whole city wild, damn I wishyou would’ve had my child, a pretty lit-

tle girl with Diddy’s style.’’ Few cou-ples since Richard Burton and ElizabethTaylor have appeared more often in the gossip columns. While Combs andLopez were together, it was as if twocorporations, AOL and Time Warner,say, had merged; as much as anythingelse, they were a marketing phenome-non. When I asked whether “I Need aGirl” was, in fact, about Lopez, Combslaughed ruefully, then shook his head.“It’s a fucking song, man. Would youask a writer if his book is real or fiction?It’s just a song.’’

Gwen Stefani appeared on the edgeof the dance floor. In the echo chamberof the fashion world,Stefani is currentlyamong the most adored of celebrities.Puff was thrilled to see her. He grabbedher by the leg and gracefully swung heraround so that her head nearly dipped tothe floor, then he reached for her footand slowly caressed it. At that point, heturned to me and started to sort of rap:“Iam fashion because I live fashion,’’ hesaid. It was so hot in the club that it wasdifficult to breathe, but Puffy was stillwearing his suit, and not one button wasundone. His tie was so tightly knotted itseemed to put a strain on his Adam’sapple. A diamond stud was planted ineach earlobe. A thick rope of a diamondbracelet—from Jacob, the New Yorkjeweller to the hip-hop élite—adornedhis wrist. He said, “From my manicureto my pedicure, from my head to my toe,it’s the swagger that I show the world, it’smy face, baby. It’s my walk, my at-titude.’’ He rubbed the wisps of hair onhis chin. “Fashion is about leaving onyour jacket and tie when other people are too hot to bother.”He was also wear-ing a yellow diamond ring,which lookedlike a piece of rock candy.“Details, baby.It’s all about the details. Look at the arm. The ring. The watch. Look at mycanary-yellow diamond. Impeccable.Admit it, I am impeccable.” He let out a wolf howl, and dozens of dancersstarted to cheer. At this point, Norma,who is keenly protective, and who, de-pending on the hour, is a corporate exec-utive, an accountant, a fixer, a party plan-ner, or a high-end concierge, shoutedacross the floor to me, “This is all offthe record, it’s off the record!” Combswaved her away.“I don’t want this off therecord. I’ve got a lot of shit to say aboutfashion. It don’t really matter what you

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Clothes from the Sean John autumn collection. Combs, center, says,“It’s the swagger that I show the world, it’s my face, baby.”

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write about me. Because I’ll still be afashion god, no matter what.’’

Puff walked to a table where hisfriends were sipping Cristal and eatingstrawberries. (“I don’t even drink theshit,’’ he told me. “They bring it wher-ever I am. It’s a cliché.’’) He plunged hisarm into a bucket of ice water. Then hewaved it in my face. “Look at that ring,’’he shouted. “Look at the way it glistens.I am a damn fashionable motherfucker,and I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

Puff Daddy believes that he inher-ited some of his fashion sense from

his father. “People say we have a similarapproach to fashion,” he told me oneday. “They say he was the fliest manaround. But he died when I was three. Isaw a couple pictures of him, and thatwas all.’’ Combs’s father, Melvin, spentmany years as a limousine driver, and hismother, Janice, told him that his fatherhad died “in his car.’’ That was true, butMelvin Combs didn’t die in an accident;he was a drug dealer, and one night in1972 he was shot dead in his car in Cen-tral Park. Combs’s mother raised Seanand his younger sister, Keisha, alone,

working three jobs—as a school-busdriver, a teacher at a local day-care center,and an attendant for children with cere-bral palsy—while her mother watchedthe children. (Combs and his motherstill speak to or see each other severaltimes a week; his sister works for him atBad Boy; and one of his tattoos is ded-icated to his grandmother, who died in1994.) When Combs was ten,he spent asummer with the Amish in PennsylvaniaDutch country, through the Fresh AirFund. Not long after that, the familymoved to Mount Vernon, where Seanattended Catholic schools. He gradu-ated from Mount St.Michael Academy,in the Bronx.

Even as a boy,Combs was exception-ally driven. Although he has been calledthe “black Sinatra,’’ his early role modelswere closer to the president of the 4-Hclub than to the coolest kid in school.“He came home one day and told me he wanted to start a paper route,’’ hismother recalled when I went to see herat her apartment overlooking the Hud-son. “That is how he started. He alwayswanted to work and make his money.We had a Cadillac car and a house, and

he liked life like that,’’ she told me. “Ofcourse, he loves clothes. I do, too. I al-ways made things nice in my house. I’ma fashionable-type person. My husbandwas a fantastic dresser. It seems to haveworn off.”

Combs attended Howard Univer-sity—“the black Harvard,” his mothercalled it.But he was obsessed with music,and was committed to a career as a producer. He begged Andre Harrell,who was then the president of UptownRecords and now runs Motown, for ajob as an intern. Harrell didn’t havemuch to lose—interns come free—andhe was soon amazed by Puffy’s capacityfor work. Combs took the train fromWashington to New York every week to work for Harrell; before long, hedropped out of Howard, moved intoHarrell’s house, and became the first(and last) teen-age division head at Uptown.“I wanted to get my hustle on,”Combs says.His decision to leave schoolstill bothers his mother. “I really was sodisappointed about that,’’ Janice told me.“A person works day and night just toeducate a kid, and to be able to have aroof over your head and a school uni-form. He was a fine student, and whenhe left college it was hard for me.’’

Although newspapers like to run pic-tures of Combs on a jet ski in Saint-Tropez, most of the time if you want tofind him you would have better luck call-ing his office at Bad Boy than checkingout the club scene. But no hip-hop mu-sician has successfully positioned himselfas a workaholic with a Catholic educa-tion who grew up in the suburbs. SoCombs found a way to be hipper thananyone as commercial as he is, and to bemore commercial than anyone as hip. Ithas proved to be a remarkably success-ful formula in music and in clothing.Combs made a name for himself as anenergetic club kid who danced in a cou-ple of music videos;by the early nineties,when he was in his twenties, he was acheerleader for the life of excess thatcharacterized the time. It was an insaneera that would see Yahoo! become worthmore than General Motors.

From the start, Combs was criticizedas a mediocre and derivative rapper.That assessment has not changed, al-though his 1997 record “No Way Out”sold more than seven million copies andwon two Grammys. It is as a talent“I had a hat.”

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scout, packager, and creator of deals thathe has met with true success. His firstact, Jodeci, sold seven million records.Since then, Combs has produced thework of Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans, andmany others. More important, though,he discovered Christopher Wallace, aformer crack dealer who rapped as theNotorious B.I.G. By 1997, the yearB.I.G.was murdered,his albums,“Readyto Die” and “Life After Death,” whichdrew a chilling, nihilistic portrait oflife for an urban black man, had turnedhim into one of the seminal voices ofthe decade.

Combs’s career has been punctuatedby violence. In 1991, he and the rapperHeavy D, among others, promoted anAIDS benefit at City College; too manytickets were sold, there was a stampede,and nine people were crushed to death.In 1999, he and two others were arrestedfor beating a rival record-company exec-utive in his offices at Interscope Records(with a chair, a telephone, and a cham-pagne bottle). Although Combs wasasked only to pay the executive a fineand take a one-day anger-managementcourse, his image suffered badly; streettoughs didn’t respect him,and his middle-class fans were appalled. Then, just after midnight on December 27, 1999,Combs was involved in an incident at aManhattan night club, in which threepeople were shot. He fled with JenniferLopez in a Lincoln Navigator, but hewas arrested and charged with gun pos-session and attempting to bribe hisdriver into taking the rap for him. Afterseven weeks of testimony, covered byNew York’s press as if it were Watergate,Combs was acquitted of all charges.The verdict was broadcast live on thenetworks.

The lowest point of Combs’s career,though,came after the death of his friendBiggie.Combs was depressed for months,and his mother told me that she hadbeen worried for his life. When I askedCombs whether he felt that he had seenmore than his share of violence, he said,“Nearly every black man faces an unac-ceptable level of violence in this society.I’m not different. Money can shield you;it can protect you. But it doesn’t makeyou white.” Eventually, Combs recov-ered.His tribute to Biggie,“I’ll Be Miss-ing You,” a remake of an eighties hit by the Police, won a Grammy, and re-

mained at the top of the charts fortwenty-eight weeks. It became his sig-nature song. It also helped inaugurate acommercial boom in hip-hop that lasteduntil the end of the nineties.

That boom is over. Last year, onlytwo of the top twenty-five pop CDswere recorded by rappers: Ja Rule andNelly. Neither ranked among the top fifteen albums. Hip-hop fashion has, ofcourse, always been tied to the musicmarket. In the early eighties, kids inbaggy jeans started listening to Grand-master Flash and spray-painting theirsignatures on subway cars. A few yearslater, in reaction to the emerging mar-riage of music and fashion, Run-DMCpositioned themselves as anti-glamourauthentics (“Calvin Klein’s no friend ofmine /don’t want nobody’s name on mybehind”). Around that time, the cloth-ing line FUBU—“For Us By Us”—wascreated, so that minority people couldwear clothes designed by minorities. Bythe nineties, though, rappers like theNotorious B.I.G. had embraced the cul-ture of brand names; even their socksbore labels. “I put my hoes in N.Y. ontoDKNY, Miami, D.C., prefer Versace,’’Biggie rapped on “Hypnotize” in 1997.“Every cutie wit a booty want a Coogi.”

Early hip-hop clothing lines were not much different from vanity licenseplates; they were mostly about promot-

ing the image of the star,not about fash-ion, per se; you can see Russell Sim-mons’s affection for argyle vests, for ex-ample, in Phat Farm, or the Wu-TangClan’s love of oversized T-shirts in WuWear. And, early on, Puffy sent sequinsand lots of fur onto the runway. (Puffyloves fur; people still talk about his burgundy ostrich trenchcoat with thesheared-mink lining.)

If hip-hop music falters in the mar-ketplace, will its fashion also be in dan-ger? Several people told me that Combswas passé.“We don’t listen to his music,’’a white Manhattan teen-ager who is aparticular follower of rap told me. “Andnobody I know would buy his clothes.”One of New York’s best-known fashioneditors put it more baldly:“Oh,my God,Puffy is sooo two years ago.’’

But such criticism misses the point.Combs has never really wanted to be thehippest guy in the room; he wants to be the hippest successful guy in the room.He told me that his fashion and busi-ness idols are Ralph Lauren and MarthaStewart—two self-invented characterswhose deft re-creations of America, realand imagined,have made their fortunes.“Those are the templates,’’ he said.“When you look at what they have ac-complished, it’s magnificent.” It is notsurprising that he wants to leap out ofthe world of hip-hop, with its fetishiza-

THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 9, 2002 123

“Are you kidding? I’d kill to have your warts.”

• •

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tion of Gucci and Fendi, and into theworld of Ralph Lauren and MarthaStewart. “Here I think Puffy is very in-teresting,” Kelefa Sanneh,who has writ-ten extensively about hip-hop and popculture, told me. “You can see him shiftaway from the aspirational approach ofthe nineties. He is not a great rapper, oreven a great producer. But he goes outand scoops up new beats and talent. Inclothes, he seems to be doing the samething. He is a mogul, and he is movingwith the market.”

Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewartare more than brands; they offer vi-sions of the world. Where Lauren pre-sents an ersatz interpretation of the sub-urban dream life, Stewart has turned the middle-class hearth and home intoan industry. Puffy hopes to dignify theurban life and package it for people whomay never have entered a city. He hasmanaged to market his clothes to kidswho are tutored for the E.R.B.s and theS.A.T.s. He is becoming to the streetwhat Ralph Lauren is to Waspiness andMartha Stewart is to the ideal of theAmerican homemaker. And Combs’sempire continues to grow as rapidly asever.“The thing I love about Puff is thathe comes back,’’ his assistant Norma toldme. “After B.I.G. died, people thoughthe would go right down the toilet—thenhe put out a No. 1 album. During thetrial, Jennifer dumped him, they said hismusic career was over,he would be goingto prison—and even if he got off hewould be through.Well, guess what? Hehas a best-selling record, he’s a happyfather, his clothing company absolutelyrocks. Puffy will always come back. He’slike nature.”

During his trial, Combs worked onhis collection; most nights after

court, he sat with Tweedy and the de-sign team and sketched out ideas. Hewould talk through a notion, and thedesigners would attempt to translate itinto patterns, which he would evaluate.He told me that he founded Sean Johnbecause the clothes he saw bored him.“I felt there was a total lack of some-thing,” he said. “Fashion was dull, dead.I thought maybe we could bring in some life.”

He never saw the clothes he designedas solely an extension of his hip-hoppersona; rather, he regards his place in

hip-hop culture as a forum for sell-ing clothes. One day not long ago, Iwalked around the Sean John boutiqueat Bloomingdale’s. I saw clothes simpleand sophisticated enough to please JilSander. When you first look at them,the clothes seem as if they belonged at Brooks Brothers or Paul Stuart.Thenyou notice the lavender and mustard car-digans, the shiny mother-of-pearl but-tons and the bold stitching on the coats.Sean John pants are sharply tailored,the textures are rich, and the buyers areoften men in their thirties hoping tolook cool.

Combs hired Jeffrey Tweedy, a for-mer Ralph Lauren executive, as vice-president of his company. Tweedy, adapper black man who grew up in Wash-ington, D.C., got his first job stocking

clothes at Britches of Georgetown. Hesees or talks to Combs three or fourtimes a day. “I was a little leery at first,’’he told me. “I thought, Whoa, what didI need with a celebrity cat who wanted to start yet another label? But the more I talked to him the more I realized hewas completely able to do this. He is totally involved, yet willing to let peo-ple do their jobs.” Sean John is now soldin more than twelve hundred stores.Thecompany,while not yet competitive withTommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren, haseasily surpassed its competitors in theurban fashion market, FUBU, PhatFarm, and Ecko.

“We design for a hip young guy,”Tweedy told me. “Loves clothing, verystylish, and has a bit of disposable in-come—not for a teen-ager but for a man

124 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 9, 2002

ORCHID

Now that you are gone, you are everywhere.Take this orchid, for instance,

its swollen lip, the scrawny stalk’s one descended testicle

as wrinkled as rhetoric on the bar-scene stump,the golden years since

jingling in its purse. How else signal the bee?

In my swan-clip now languish urgent appeals from the usual charities

lined up to be ignored. But your flags are up:I see the flapping petals,

the whorl of sepals, their grinning come-on.Always game, again

I’d head straight for the column’s sweet trap.

Ducking under the puckered anther cap to glide toward the stiff,

waxy sense of things, where male and female hardly matter to one’s heady

urge to pull back the glistening lobes and penetrate the heart,

I fell for it every time, the sticky bead

laid down on my back as I huddled there with whatever—mimicking

enemy or friend, the molecular musk of each a triggering lure—

wanted the most of me. Can I leave now, too?I have death’s dust-seed

on me. I have it from touching you.

—J. D. McClatchy

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who aspires to wear Gucci one day andPrada one day and to be able to affordthe custom Zegna suits. Now, down theroad we will try to develop a life-stylebrand. That’s the goal.’’

As a fashion figure, Combs has tran-scended hip-hop completely. He hasdone more:black fashion has been rippedoff and reinterpreted for many years,and Combs has helped take it back fromthe Tommy Hilfigers of the world.“There is this clear dialectic—it’s sort oflike jazz,’’ Kim Hastreiter, of Paper, toldme. “White designers forever would goto 125th Street to see what was happen-ing. That is where they got their inspi-ration, their cool.Then the blacks turnedthat upside down. They took the iconsof the rich and suburban and blastedthem.This is when sweatshirts with theword ‘Harvard’ printed on them a hun-dred times emerged; the ghetto was mak-ing fun of the suburbs, and if the sub-urbs were about Mercedeses then thekids in the ghetto would wear a necklacewith the word ‘Mercedes’ in block capi-tals.’’ After the most recent Sean Johnrunway show, Hastreiter wrote, in Paper,“He threw bling bling out the windowand sent out a low-key, gorgeous ready-to-wear collection. This stuff couldstand up to anything, anywhere in theworld today.’’

The company has moved deliberatelybut with apparent ease in the market-place. Some fashion veterans are thrilledby its success and the attention it hasbrought the industry; others find it hardto believe that a man who doesn’t knowhow to sew is considered a successful de-signer. But the significance of Sean Johnis no longer questioned. One day whileI was in Paris, I ran into Richard Buck-ley, who is the editor of Vogue HommesInternational. “I just got an e-mail fromthis writer who asked me who I thoughtmattered in men’s clothes these days,”Buckley told me. “I said the only manwho is doing anything important is PuffDaddy. Right now, he is all we got.”

The second night of his stay in Paris,Puff Daddy threw a bash at Les

Bains Douches, the former municipalbath that has been among Paris’s mostpopular clubs for more than a decade.The party could have been in Saint-Tropez,New York,L.A.,or East Hamp-ton: the crowd, the food, the highly paid,

artificially enhanced strippers disrobingon the bar, and the music. (In Paris, someof the women smoked Gauloises insteadof Marlboro Lights.) Men wear gray,and women wear black. They all carrytiny digital cameras and minuscule dual-band cell phones.

The party began around midnight,but there were many stops to make first.Puffy’s days in Paris started late—hetended to go to bed about 9 A.M. andsleep till early in the afternoon. If therewas time, he would work out—he wastravelling with a trainer, a stylist, and at least two personal assistants—before beginning to think about the evening’splans. (In New York, he sleeps aboutfour hours a night, and makes only occa-sional visits to clubs.) This night, AnnaWintour was giving a party to celebratethe publication of a book by Grace Cod-dington, Vogue’s longtime creative direc-tor. Afterward, there was to be a dinnerat Karl Lagerfeld’s eighteenth-centurymansion.Oddly, though Puffy had beeninvited, he was a no-show. I met him and his friends around 11 P.M. at a res-taurant down the street from the PlazaAthénée. Usually chatty and solicitous,he was sulking. Norma had somehowmarooned him at a restaurant wherethere was no 1800 tequila. By the time I showed up, she was working two cellphones, trying to repair the damage.Shecalled the Hyatt, but it had none; shestruck out at the Ritz, too. It was nearly

midnight, and Puff ’s party was about tobegin. Bijou Phillips, who was making a film in Luxembourg with MadeleineStowe and had arrived in Paris that day,tried to help. “How do you say ‘eight’ inFrench?” she asked.“If we could just tellhim the number in French, maybe hewould have it.’’Combs had also just beenmade aware that he had forgotten to attend the Anna Wintour party. “Howthe fuck could something like that hap-pen?” he asked Norma, who offered noexcuses. She put her head in her hands,then ordered roses to be sent to Win-tour’s hotel. Wintour has been amongCombs’s most vigorous supporters, andhe was beside himself at the notion thathe might have offended her. In the mid-dle of dinner,he decided to go to the barof the Plaza Athénée, down the street,and abruptly got up and left.

The bar was crowded with débu-tantes, models, actors, and rock stars,most of them transplanted from Man-hattan. “I’m with Puffy,’’ Paris Hiltonsaid to her friend Cornelia Guest. Youcould feel the thrill pass between them.(I had asked Norma if Puffy was, in fact, friendly with the Hilton sisters orthe Miller girls. “Not friendly, exactly,’’she replied. “But there are really only two types of rich people—the ones whogo out, and the ones who don’t. TheHiltons go out.”) Suddenly, there was abrief confrontation at the bar. NaomiCampbell had just arrived, and she and

“What about accessories?”

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Bijou Phillips were calling each othernames. Phillips bumped into Camp-bell, and Campbell wheeled around andscreamed,“I could knock you out,Bijou.”The word “bitch” bounced back andforth like a Ping-Pong ball. There wassome suggestion that Campbell, who iseven more unpleasant than she is allur-ing, had hit on Phillips’s fiancé, SeanLennon, earlier in the summer. Combs,who has a gift for conciliation that hasserved him well as a producer, walkedover, put his arm around Phillips, andgently pulled her away.

Black cars were lined up for blocksaround Les Bains Douches by the

time Puffy arrived. The party was socrowded that even people clutching in-vitations were having trouble getting in;the Hiltons (accompanied by their par-ents), the Miller sisters, Ivana Trump,Tom Ford, Mick Jagger, Eva Her-zigova, Vin Diesel, and Bijou Phillipswere all there. Jagger, sipping on a Hei-neken, looked rumpled. Combs’s prin-cipal action was to issue whistles to mostof the people in the house and to standin a corner, stomp his feet, and clap alongwith the writhing dancers. He orderedfive bottles of Cristal, four of VeuveClicquot, two of Absolut, and two of1800 tequila,with enough Coke to wash

it down. He was dressed casually, inwhite linen without a jacket or tie. A di-amond crucifix dangled from his neck.Tom Ford was having a drink at the bar when we entered. Puff started towalk over to him, then came back andgrabbed me by the wrist and pulled mealong. “You got to come with me forthis, dawg,’’ he said. As Combs ap-proached, Ford held out his hand, butPuff Daddy got down on his knees andstarted an “I’m not worthy” wave at him. Ford laughed uncomfortably. “Youare my god,’’ Combs told him. “I wor-ship you.”

Hundreds of people had packed into the narrow old club. Puffy and hiscrowd had sequestered themselves in acordoned-off area near the entrance.Everyone could see them, but only thechosen could approach.The group con-sisted of Puffy, Kim Porter, the rest ofPuffy’s visiting friends, Vin Diesel, theHiltons, and Ivana Trump. Not longafter 2 A.M., Puff handed a whistle toIvana, and she spent much of the nexthour blowing it.By that time, the Hiltongirls were on a tabletop, dancing. So wastheir mother, Kathy. “I feel so bad forParis,’’Bijou Phillips said as she watchedKathy Hilton wriggling.“Can you imag-ine how mortified she is watching herown mother acting like that?” The

d.j. dedicated the Sheila E. song “TheGlamorous Life” to Puff. “This is forP.Diddy,’’ he said,using the most currentversion of his name. (During a particu-larly searching interview after Combs’strial last year, he announced that fromnow on he would be referred to not asPuff Daddy but as P. Diddy, which iswhat Biggie called him. He meant itpartly as a joke. The next day, to his as-tonishment, the news was on the frontpage of the Post.) By 4:30 A.M., the partywas winding down. Only the core groupremained, dancing to Chaka Khan andsome old Prince tunes. At about five,when it looked as though the eveningmight be over, Combs turned to me andsaid, “We are going to a strip club, andwe are all going together.” As soon as hefinished speaking and climbed into hiscar, Norma turned to me and mouthedthe words,“Totally off the record.”Thenwe left.

After breezing by two bouncers, wedescended through a tunnel with videoscreens in the floor and walls. Hip-hopmusic played in the background. Puffytook a seat next to the catwalk where thegirls “work.” He insisted that I sit next tohim. “Let’s do an interview,’’ he said. Itwas 5:15 A.M. and he finally felt relaxedenough to answer questions. Next to us,there was a spectacularly gifted woman atwork. She had started off in a latex cat-woman suit but was now wearing only anelaborate mask, a G-string, and a pair ofstilettos. “Look at this woman,’’ Puffysaid. “Jesus. Do you think she’s French?”(He wanted to tip her, but he rarely car-ries money. He waved for Norma, butshe was across the noisy room.) I re-minded him that Norma had decreedthat the trip was off the record.“Nothingin my life is off the record,’’ he said. “Iwish it was, but it isn’t. Never has been.’’I asked if he enjoys his celebrity. “Ofcourse,’’ he said. “I hate rich people whocomplain about how tough it is beingrich. They are insane. I pay, like, fifty-per-cent taxes and I am very proud ofthat. I would happily pay more.’’ I askedhim if Sean John was as important tohim as music, and if he got pleasure outof the clothes. “It’s different from music.I don’t mix the two.What I do mix is lifestyle. I am making a life style, and it’s partof entertainment. This just seems to bean obvious expression of who I am.’’

“Does the clothing line need to make“My summer vacation: How I made money in a bear market.”

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money for you to be satisfied with it?”I asked.

“Fuck, yes,’’ he said, taken aback bythe question. “I want people to knowhow serious we are and what we are ca-pable of doing. And I want to be knownas a businessman who made somethingbetter, made my people happy, and hadsome fun.”

It was past dawn,nearly 6 A.M. “Howdid you feel about Jennifer Lopez leav-ing you the way she did?’’ I asked. Lopezhad left him in the midst of the trialafter the night-club shooting, when itseemed as if his musical empire, alongwith his self-made persona,were about tocome crashing down.“Well, you know, Iwish her the best in her life. I alwayshave,’’ he said. “But . . .” His voice trailedoff. “Look, if she is happy, then I amhappy for her.’’ One of his friends hadbeen listening.“Disloyal bitch,’’ the friendsaid. “She’s nothing but a disloyal bitch.”

The following night, Puffy was in-vited to a small gathering at Karl

Lagerfeld’s mansion. Norma made surehe didn’t forget this party. “Go,’’ she toldhim. “Just get up and go.” We were hav-ing a late dinner (with Puffy, there is noother kind) in the Buddha Bar, aroundthe corner from the Hotel Crillon, and,as Combs and Porter were leaving, hedecided to buy her some Buddha Barsouvenirs. (In recent months, Combsand Porter have spent considerable timetogether. When I asked him about it,he said, “I don’t really know where it will go.”) He dropped the souvenirs onthe counter and spelled out the name“N-O-R-M-A” to the woman behindthe register. Then he placed an interna-tional cell-phone call to Norma—whowas finishing her dinner about a hun-dred feet away—and told her to pick upPorter’s gifts when she was done. Puffywas in an expansive mood as his limou-sine sped through the nearly emptystreets of Paris. “This city is so fly,’’ hesaid. “Look at the clocks and the win-dows and the lights. And those littleSmart cars.Even the buses are cool.Canyou find a speck of dirt or any garbageon the ground? It’s amazing.These peo-ple have the food, the clothes, the love.This city is just mad beautiful.”

Lagerfeld’s home is in the Sixth Ar-rondissement, a neighborhood inhab-ited mostly by rich businessmen and

diplomats. His house looked as if itcould have served as a pied-à-terre forthe Sun King. Occupying twenty acresor so, the hôtel particulier—as the Frenchcall such immense city houses—hadbeen lavishly restored over the previ-ous decade to its pre-Revolutionary opulence. A petite woman, dressed inChanel, opened the door onto a grandhallway where about a dozen peoplestood talking and smoking cigarettes.Butlers served champagne. The scenelooked like a Ralph Lauren ad, down to the women in flowing dresses andchignons, and the sockless men in tuxe-dos. Pink buds—mainly freesias androses—lined the hall and the main salon.The only thing missing was a golden retriever.

Lagerfeld was completing a late-night fashion shoot. Models whoseclothes were too cumbersome to permitthem to move unaided were led down agrand marble staircase by walkers, likeThoroughbreds being taken to the gateat the Kentucky Derby. The ball gownswere cut from sheets of silk, lace, andtulle. Several women wore masks. Achandelier draped in pink silk domi-nated the salon. One of the models, in ablack hat that was five feet wide, requiredtwo men to guide her, one on each sideof the hat. A samba band played brisklywhile Lagerfeld snapped pictures; everyten minutes or so, an assistant wouldtransfer what he had recorded to a pow-erful computer in the next room. Puffand Kim looked on in amazement.Lagerfeld seemed pleased to have Puffyin his house—but wasn’t quite sure whatto do with him. “Let’s take a tour,’’ hesaid. And they proceeded to stroll up-stairs, where the models were gettingdressed.“Good evening,girls,’’Puffy saidpolitely—before snapping some Po-laroids of himself and Porter in thescene. “I hope we are not interrupting.”

It isn’t easy to get Puff Daddy to leavea party, but his friends were bored, andthey weren’t mixing with many of theother guests. Kim grabbed Puffy anddragged him toward the car. The Hil-tons and the Millers and several of theirfriends needed a ride to the next stop—a birthday party at a club called Cantina.None of the women had a car, so theystarted to pile in with us, and there justwasn’t room.“Wait,”Puffy’s stylist, a no-nonsense black woman, yelled. “Them

bitches be heiresses. Blond Somethingvon Furstenberg and Hiltons and shit.What are we now, a fucking limo ser-vice? They got to be getting their owndamn cars.’’

Combs had many supporters at theCouncil of Fashion Designers of

America award ceremonies—the fash-ion world’s equivalent of the Oscars—this year. Anna Wintour told me thatshe was rooting for him, and so did thefashion editors of other magazines.Theceremony was held in the Celeste BartosForum of the New York Public Library.By 7 P.M., limousines had started to pull up to the covered runway on FifthAvenue. Penélope Cruz accompaniedRalph Lauren; Lauren Hutton camenext. Puffy was with his mother, JeffTweedy, and several members of theSean John design team. He was the lastnominee to arrive. He was dressed con-servatively: a simple diamond earring ineach ear, the canary-yellow pinky ring,and a subtly patterned black suit. Hismother was more elaborately attired: shewore black stiletto slippers, diamondhoop earrings, and a variety of amulets.Her blond hair dangled over bare shoul-ders. They posed together on the redcarpet. “Janice, are you proud of yourboy?’’ a television reporter asked. “Yes, Iam always proud of Sean,’’ she replied.

By the time they swept into the fronthall, it was almost empty. Puff strolledthrough,working his two-way pager andoccasionally taking a phone call. RalphLauren came out to say hello and CalvinKlein wandered over to tell Janice howlovely she looked. I asked Puffy if hewas nervous.We were standing beneathblowups of Jackie Kennedy, Oleg Cas-sini, and Audrey Hepburn. “No,’’ he re-plied. “Why be nervous about what youcan’t control?’’

It wasn’t until after 11 P.M. that AlanRickman presented the award for men’sfashion. Puffy stopped sending e-mailand making phone calls. After a briefvideo display of each man’s work, Rick-man announced that the award would goto Marc Jacobs. Puffy applauded loudly,smiled at everyone, and then picked uphis phone.Tweedy sighed.When we gotup to leave, I asked Combs how he feltabout losing.He shrugged.“Hey, I didn’tlose,’’ he said.“I was nominated. I am justgetting started.” ♦

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