When Princess Diana's marriage was falling apart and she needed a photographer to help recast her as sexy, independent and carefree, Patrick Demarchelier was the man she called on. When Madonna was done with her "Sex" book and needed a dash of elegance, she did the same.
Over the years, Mr. Demarchelier has photographed them and countless others in sensuous but classically pretty spreads for Vogue, Glamour, Vanity Fair, W, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Allure.
So it shouldn't surprise that editors from many of these magazines were in attendance at Christie's on Wednesday night, toasting Mr. Demarchelier at an exhibition of his most iconic images, many of which hark back to the supermodel era, when Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and Kate Moss ruled the roost.
There to the left was Glamour's Cindi Leive, whose upcoming cover image Mr. Demarchelier had just shot. "Twenty-three hours ago," she said, adding that she would not remotely be interested in revealing the subject's name.
There to the right was Vogue's fashion director, Tonne Goodman, who worked with Mr. Demarchelier at Harper's Bazaar in the 1990s and at Vogue over the last decade.
Overwhelmingly, his colleagues praised him for his speed on set, his strong eye and his impeccable taste, which has not wavered even in this blown-out, porno-chic era.
They also marveled at how far Mr. Demarchelier has come, because almost no one who has met him in the decades he has spent in the Unites States understands a word he says.
In fact, over the years, Mr. Demarchelier's unique blend of French and English has become so legendary that there is a question asked routinely in the industry before people are brought onto jobs with him: "Do you speak Patrick?"
For a man known for being chipper in a field of depressives, his sole resentment is toward consonants. If a somnambulant Frenchman picked up a six-year-old cellphone, the sound would be remarkably similar to Mr. Demarchelier's everyday speech.
"It's taken me years to decipher the language," Ms. Goodman said. "The best is when Patrick is talking to a celebrity and the celebrity has that look on their face like they are trying desperately to understand what he's saying and they can't let on they do not."
"No one understands anything he says," Grace Coddington said. "But he calls the models 'bebe' and says 'fabulous' and 'diveeeeene,' and he makes them feel beautiful."
And so they stand on beaches, lie atop of Frette sheets and crawl across the desert sand for the tall man with the wavy gray hair, who goes snap, snap, snap and grunts with approval.
Mr. Demarchelier — who stood in the corner looking casually chic in his greenish Hermès blazer, his blue Hermès shirt, his washed-out J Crew jeans and his New Balance Sneakers — said the most important thing is to capture beauty, inside and out.
"I like to photograph the positive way of life" was how he put it. "I like the beauty, the beauty inside."
And he has no illusions that the words that flow from his mouth are not deciphered by all. It makes him laugh.
"My accent is strong," he said. "Sometimes I do TV interview, and I see the subtitles underceese. Or the say 'Do you mind speaking English?' "
