Rupert Everett, Gabé Doppelt, and Grace Coddington Pay Tribute to the Late, Great Michael Roberts

We survived, and our friendship was firmly cemented. He and I went on to do my second book 10 years later. Both of the covers had amazing cutout portraits of me by Michael. I did manage to get my own back a little later when he asked me to work on his Mr Snippy book, where I edited out all of his pictures of naked guys. It was a wonderful book, mostly of his paper cutouts from the New Yorker days—beautiful, irreverent, and so, so funny.

Over the years we only fell out once, when he did a drawing of me from behind for the British Sunday Times. I was wearing my usual uniform of a very tight Azzedine Alaïa skirt, a white shirt, and had huge frizzy red hair in full bloom. Unmistakably me, even though he had added a good few inches onto my hips. 

In the caption he wrote, There are certain fashion editors who should know better. I was furious and hurt (though it did encourage me to lose a few pounds). Years later when he was drawing my doppelgänger, the orangutan GingerNutz, he drew her with the same Alaïa skirt and white shirt on, but this time round, he added hairy legs. We laughed until we cried.

As I write this, I struggle to get across how amazing Michael was at so many things and how much I adore him. I just wish he was here to help me. After all, there is no one in the world who wrote in my voice better than he did. And he certainly would have enjoyed writing this. 

Gabé Doppelt

Michael was my first boss at Tatler magazine in London. I was 17, had failed at the latter part of my education, and the only diploma I possessed was from a typing course. Which was perfect because Michael had no need for academics. He introduced me, as assistant, to the world of fashion, albeit his version of it!