The weekend before, his parents—Bill, an accountant, and Carol, editor of a medical journal—had come to town. He took them to see a Rangers game.
“I don’t really remember where I actually met him,” said Rangers star Sean Avery, who spent a summer as a Vogue intern, from his team’s locker room, of Mr. Blasberg. “I think it had to have been at some sort of fashion dinner, somewhere, and, I don’t know, early on when I moved to New York, Derek was always the guy that I would look for as soon as I got to one of these fashion dinners or fashion parties, because I would just feel safe with him.”
Mr. Avery said most of all he admires Mr. Blasberg’s style, which he described as “old Englishman crossover with a ’90s preppy and somebody that lived in Connecticut.”
“He’s as bold as I’d like to be, ’cause he, I’m envious of his color choices, and he mix-matches to the point where it matches, if that makes any sense,” he said. “The guys all love him, and for an athlete, you know, sometimes they’re not as open to homosexuality.’”
Derek “Der-bear” Blasberg’s ability to fit in with the hockey folk would not come as a surprise to those who attended his high school in Shrewsbury, Mo.
“My high-school experience was like really different,” he said. “I was very involved like in the school, like I played a sport every season. I was Missouri scholar-athlete, I’ll have you know.”
Indeed, young Derek was captain of the varsity volleyball team. He never missed a day of school K through 12, something he used to brag about. He was the class valedictorian. He had a 4.639 GPA. He was in the theater club.
“They thought it came to him very easily,” said his high-school best friend, Maria Zemen, on the phone. “What they don’t know is that, what I think it is that while Derek is very talented, he also is a person who once he gets it in his mind he wants something, he goes after it.”
She said that he was also secretly sketching beautiful, flowing gowns in his bedroom, which was always a clutter of books and magazines. And had very advanced methods for putting together great outfits. “It actually was pretty ridiculous because Derek always got the hot girls.”
I asked what she thought of Mr. Blasberg cultivating a posse of high-profile ladies like Lindsay Lohan, Barbara Bush and Jacquetta Wheeler, with whom he backpacked across India. “If anything, I would guess that they’re drawn to him. Derek has a magnetic personality.”
Mr. Blasberg came to N.Y.U. with the aid of several scholarships. He discovered the fashion industry and got paying jobs, first at the Elite agency, then at One Models—when he did a year abroad in London—then later at David Yurman, the jewelry company. He interned at W and Dazed & Confused.
We passed by his old dorm, where senior year he threw himself a black-tie party in the cafeteria (someone poured a bottle of vodka into the juice dispenser). The model Mariacarla Boscono came, as did socialite Arden Wohl.
He landed an internship assisting Vogue managing editor Laurie Jones, which turned into a job after college. It wasn’t the perfect fit.
“I regret some of my behavior,” Mr. Blasberg said. “I didn’t understand how that organization worked. I was too young, I thought I was too fabulous. I was so happy, I was so exuberant, I worked in the managing editor’s office, which is like contracts and very specific. I was all over the place. I wanted to help out the fashion department, I wanted to assist on shoots, I wanted to call in jewelry. I wasn’t focused. I cringe when I think back on—oh, wait, put the recorder away.”
(We had crossed paths with the prince of Monaco, who looked more like the speed dealer on a college campus, wearing a tracksuit draped in chains and some dainty sunglasses.)
In early 2005, Mr. Blasberg left Vogue amid rumors of playing a “pivotal” role in the breakup of Proenza Schouler design duo Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. “I felt powerless,” he said, of the gossip.
Determined not to head back to Shrewsbury, he began freelancing like a maniac. Besides V, style.com and various international Vogues, “I also often contribute to Interview magazine, Ten magazine in London and the London Sunday Times,” he said. We were on a leafy block on West 11th now. “Can you not put that in a quote? I’ll sound like—
“Hey, Derek!” said a smiley fella in a ball cap. “Milla’s in there; go say hi.”
We ascended the steps of a townhouse. Mr. Blasberg opened the door. Milla Jovovich stood on a staircase in a skintight white gown. She looked down at him.
“Who’s fat now, Derek?” she hollered, and then smiled. The door was quickly pushed shut.
He said he had hinted to her about her weight when she was pregnant.
Blasblog?
“Nooo, to her face,” he said. “We’re good friends.”
smorgan@observer.com
