Wendy Diamond, Pet Savior
Celebrities love the camera. So do their dogs. As Lil Kim preened for photographers on a recent Tuesday night in front of the nightclub Exit, her doggies did the same. Kim was in a canary-yellow satiny 50s letterman jacket of her own design. Underneath it, a low-cut camo top hugged her breasts. She wore jeans with a rectangular patch of leather over her ass. At her feet, three tiny, affected canines in cheerleader outfits (also Kims design) basked in the warm paparazzi glow, their bulbous eyes darting according to the photographers urgent directions.
NY1s George Whipple and his Jack Russell terrier looked smart in their matching sweater vests. One dapper designer strode by with his pooch on a feather-boa leash. There were miniature dachshunds in Chinese gowns, cocker spaniels in bowler hats, Lhasa Apsos draped in faux fur. Hallie Kate Eisenberg, the full-on-dimples little girl from the Pepsi commercials, was accompanied by a golden retriever that outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds. Rachel Dratch of Saturday Night Live was there with her dog, both attired in frumpy housecoats. Her coworker Ana Gasteyer had someone elses dog under her arm; they were dressed in Coach. The standout of the evening was Bear, the first rescue dog on the scene at the World Trade Center attack.
As the stars and their pets were paraded into Animal Fairs third-annual Paws for Style runway benefit for the Humane Society of New York, they stopped, cheek-pecked and posed with Wendy Diamond, the magazines founder and editorial director, as well as the organizer of the event. Its hard to keep the fluff quotient to a minimum when writing about Diamond. To say that she is charming and endearing is like saying that prepubescent girls find NSYNC kind of cute. She has gorgeous, haunted eyes; she doesnt laugh, she explodes in a cockatiel squeak.
Diamond has sold designer clothes in post-Cold War Russia; self-produced a pair of celebrity cookbooks for charity; built her own magazine from the ground up; and successfully transplanted herself into the hug-and-kiss-hello Manhattan celebrity scene. How does a girl from Chagrin Falls, OH, manage all this?
"Theyre all real people," she says. "They just got lucky, when you think about it. I think its more about how I look at life. I love everybodys story... Theyre all real people, theyve just got big names."
The way Diamond describes it, Chagrin Falls (not a joke) is a waterfall- and polo-ground-filled paradise (and comedian Tim Conways hometown). After she got her BA in marketing from all-girl Pine Manor College in the Boston area in 93, Diamond moved to Europe and got into designer clothes. She made a small fortune in post-Commie Russia, moved to New York in 95 and, after volunteering on the Bowery, decided to produce a music-celebrity cookbook benefiting the homeless. At that point her publishing experience consisted of a food column she wrote for her college newspaper and an internship at Boston magazine. She managed to get the corporate funding to produce a book of recipes gathered from the likes of Madonna and Hootie & the Blowfish. Diamond told CNNfns Donald Van De Mark of the celeb recipes, "Basically I had all my friends...bring over one of the recipes, like potluck. So if they werent so great, we would kind of doctor them up, add a little salt or whatever... Like Mick Jagger, when he first sent in his recipe for shrimp curry...[his] first line in his recipe is like, saute one large onion, and then you look in the ingredients and there was no onion, so you really have to be, you know, very careful on these." A Musical Feast raised around $200,000 for homeless organizations around the country.
In 97 she self-published All Star Feast Cookbook, featuring recipes from sports figures. She says it raised around $150,000 for the Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis and the Womens Sports Foundation. Diamond "rescued" her first animal from a shelter in 1999, a white Maltese named Lucky that she carries around with her everywhere in fashionable handbags. Next was a Russian blue cat named Pasha. By then her charitable attentions had turned from the homeless to animal welfare.
She acquired the funding from friends to publish the first issue of the now-quarterly Animal Fair ("A Lifestyle Magazine for Animal Lovers") in November 99. She says she knew the printing, editorial and photo process, but "didnt know how hard it would be with the advertising, but I figured that out. I basically just did it because I knew there was a need for [the magazine]."
In the beginning, Diamond said that Animal Fair was for people who were interested in "designing a lifestyle with their pet." Tony Guida of CNNfn asked her, "Can you say that with a straight face? ...I was reading an article...that said this seasons must-have accessory apparently is a dog... And the fashion houses like Gucci designed all kinds of stuff for rich people." Diamond responded that doggie fashions were for people who "dont have children...and take care of [pets] like they are children." Guida then went straight to the point, asking, "[Do] you think that these products and maybe even your magazine are for pet owners with a lot more money than common sense?" Diamond answered, "I think that Im a perfect example of somebody that would want this magazine [B]asically I created Animal Fair to focus on lifestyle articles about what do you do in the winter for your dog "
AF has a staff of seven. The quarterly is not a full-time job for any of them, and Diamond admits the pay is abysmal. She says her staffers are doing it for the animals. One presumes her employees are the kind of people who dont need to work for a living. Diamond pays herself a token salary that, again, doesnt sound like enough to foot the monthly maintenance and mortgage; she wouldnt give up any details on other sources of income she might receive.
As in most any charity endeavor, then, the key word here seems to be "volunteer." Photographers and writers–including names like Amy Tan–donate their services. That helps the magazine turn a "profit," all of which goes to various animal charities; Diamond says that she and her magazine raised $100,000 last year for animal organizations.
Each issue of AF has a theme. The current issue, with Charlize Theron on the cover ("Angel to the Animals"), is a travel issue. The standout article is a photo essay about the Brooke Hospital for Animals in Peshawar, Pakistan, on the Afghan border. Diamond has contacts in the UN, and was able to get photographer Kate Orne into the region recently to take some amazing pictures. (The accompanying saccharine prose by executive editor Hampton Stevens conspicuously mentions the hugging and milking of these beloved animals by their owners, but not their slaughter for consumption.)
This same issue includes an article called "Furry Muse: Renowned Writers and Their Four-Legged Inspirations," which has interviews with and pictures of John Irving and his chocolate Lab, James Ellroy and his bull terrier, Dean Koontz and his Lab. Theres a one-pager on the late Marjan, the one-eyed lion of Kabul; an advertorial spread on the "Purr-fect places to stay" with your pet; profiles of various celebs and their pets; and, of course, two pages of society photos.
A two-year subscription to Animal Fair goes for $19.95, and Diamond claims 71,000 paid subscriptions. She says that a full-page ad (most are for pet food; others feature pet-friendly destinations and mineral water) runs about $13,000. Of an average 100 pages per issue, she says 15 percent is ad pages. People know of the magazine through word of mouth, and free copies are distributed in goodie bags to the A-listers who attend Diamonds chichi events.
Diamond comes off as so sincere and genuine you really want to believe her when she says, "I know at the end of the day, if I die tomorrow, Ive done everything Ive ever wanted to do. I feel like Ive helped and inspired people... It hasnt been easy. You just have to believe in what youre doing and keep going."