Marchesa designer and estranged wife of Harvey Weinstein, Georgina Chapman, spoke to Vogue about the scandal that brought down her husband and just where that leaves her and her company now. Fascinating stuff… if you are willing to believe she had absolutely no idea what was really going on with him.
A few choice quotes:
“I don’t want to be viewed as a victim because I don’t think I am. I am a woman in a s—t situation, but it’s not unique.”
She says she didn’t go out for 5 months, first hiding out at the home of her longtime friends, actor David Oyelowo and his wife, and then at her parents’ house: “I was so humiliated and so broken … that I didn’t think it was respectful to go out. I thought, ‘Who am I to be parading around with all of this going on?’ It’s still so very, very raw. I was walking up the stairs the other day and I stopped; it was like all the air had been punched out of my lungs.”
She says she was never suspicious of her husband: “That’s what makes this so incredibly painful: I had what I thought was a very happy marriage. I loved my life. I’ve never been one of those people who obsesses about where someone is.”
“My head was spinning. And it was difficult because the first article was about a time long before I’d ever met him, so there was a minute where I couldn’t make an informed decision. And then the stories expanded and I realized that this wasn’t an isolated incident. And I knew that I needed to step away and take the kids out of here” (she and Weinstein share a son, 5, and a daughter, 7).
“There was a part of me that was terribly naive — clearly, so naive. I have moments of rage, I have moments of confusion, I have moments of disbelief! And I have moments when I just cry for my children. What are their lives going to be? What are people going to say to them? It’s like, they love their dad. They love him. I just can’t bear it for them.”
As for what attracted her to Weinstein, she says “Well, he’s a wonderful father to my kids. But initially? He’s charismatic. He’s an incredibly bright, very learned man. And very charitable. He paid for a friend of mine’s mother, who had breast cancer, to go to a top doctor. He was amazing like that. He is amazing like that. That is the tough part of this … this black-and-white thing … life isn’t like that. … He was a wonderful partner to me. He was a friend and a confidant and a supporter.”
It has been revealed that Weinstein pressured a number of actresses over the years to wear his wife’s gowns on the red carpet, in exchange for his support. Chapman wants to make it clear that the absence of Marchesa gowns on starlets for the past six months (Scarlett Johansson was the first A-lister to wear Marchesa since the scandal broke, to the Met Gala just this week) was her choice, and not a consequence of stars refusing to wear her clothes: “We didn’t feel it was appropriate [to dress stars] given the situation. All the women who have been hurt deserve dignity and respect, so I want to give it the time it deserves. It’s a time for mourning, really… [But] a lot of people reached out and said, ‘Let me wear something.’”
(via Page Six; Photos: Pacific Coast News)
