Martha Stewart: the art of the makeover

Martha Stewart knows how to antique a mirror, monogram a tea cozy and, now, it seems, resurrect a media and merchandising empire with a dramatic image makeover, all while serving five months in a West Virginia prison camp for lying to the government about a stock sale.

Naturally, it took a lot of hard work — scrubbing prison bathroom floors, foraging for wild onions on prison grounds, learning to cook with a microwave, befriending women whose lives bore no resemblance to her own. But Stewart is now more sympathetic, perhaps more human, than she's ever been. After 23 years as the world's most capable hostess, a fantasy so many Americans loved to hate, she seems to have acquired the one useful trait the public felt she lacked: humility.

People who know Stewart say the ordeal has simply underscored the strengths she acquired during a hard-knocks childhood as one of six kids living in a one-bedroom house in Nutley, N.J. But expert spin doctors recognize good PR when they see it.

Celebrity precedents

Post-conviction comebacks are tricky for celebrities. Some have had to reinvent themselves completely. Michael Milken, known in the 1980s as the "junk bond king," served nearly two years in prison for securities fraud before reemerging as a philanthropist. President Nixon's so-called "hatchet man," Chuck Colson, who served time for Watergate-related crimes, went on to become a Christian activist and a talk-radio star.

But Stewart has a different plan. She intends to immediately reclaim her well-established role, this time as a survivor who is more marketable than ever.

Stewart, 63, who left Alderson Prison Camp in West Virginia early yesterday, will become the star of two new TV shows on NBC produced by Mark Burnett, of "Survivor" and "Apprentice" fame. In one, she revives her daily homemaking show with guests and a live audience, and in the other she will test and ultimately select a new employee a la Donald Trump on "The Apprentice."

From haughty to gutsy

In a matter of months, Stewart's image has morphed from that of a petty, condescending perfectionist whose wealth and prestige had so isolated her that she had no real empathy for, as one juror put it, "the little people," to a gutsy woman who took her lumps.

Though luck and timing played a role, Stewart's comeback is based on a carefully calculated strategy involving crisis-management teams, attorneys, friends, family and the one person who understood Stewart's image better than anyone: Martha Stewart.

"She seemed too perfect," says Walter Dellinger, the Washington, D.C., attorney handling the March 17 appeal of her conviction. "Her life seemed too good. ... Now she can be seen as someone who can come back from very tough places."

Stewart's fall from grace began in June 2002 when the government launched an investigation into her sale of about $45,000 worth of shares in the biotech company ImClone Systems the day before a negative FDA ruling caused the stock to plunge. It looked as if she'd received an illegal tip, but Stewart seemed to ignore the seriousness of the allegations.

On June 4, 2003, Stewart was indicted. She was not charged with insider trading, but rather with conspiring with her broker to make it appear that her ImClone trade was unrelated to the FDA ruling, and then lying repeatedly to federal investigators.

That day, her New York damage-control firm, Citigate Sard Verbinnen, launched a Web site, marthatalks.com. It began posting open letters from Stewart, fan mail, legal briefs and case updates. The site received nearly 2 million hits in its first 17 hours.

Stewart agreed to televised interviews with Barbara Walters and Larry King. Yet, try as she might, Stewart seemed incapable of channeling warmth or provoking much sympathy.

"Martha Stewart has an interpersonal cadence that's very patronizing," says Eric Dezenhall, president of the Washington, D.C.-based corporate crisis-management firm Dezenhall Resources. "That's a personality thing ... Martha is always telling us she's better than us."

A poor defendant

In early 2004, Stewart's image took a beating at trial. Through it all she was stoic, wearing a look often described as "grim." She didn't testify, leaving unchallenged characterizations by associates and former staff that she was mean-spirited, prone to tantrums, hypocritical and overly demanding.

Stewart was convicted in March 2004 on all counts — conspiracy, obstruction of justice and two counts of lying to investigators. It was, said juror Chappell Hartridge, "a victory for the little guys." Her company's shares plummeted 23 percent the same day, and Stewart lost $95 million on paper.

In the days after her conviction, she resigned as director and chief creative officer of her company and from the board of Revlon. Viacom announced it was pulling her TV show, "Martha Stewart Living," from CBS and UPN. Within weeks, Stewart's magazine dropped her monthly editor's letter and planned a redesigned cover downplaying her name.

Yet a subtle effort to reimagine Stewart had already begun. Her younger sister Laura Plimpton and niece Sophie explained to Larry King how after Plimpton's husband died prematurely, Stewart bought Plimpton a house and set her up with a job. Stewart's daughter Alexis told King her mother was "incredibly saddened" and "disappointed over feeling like her life was wasted."

Staying on message

Importantly, everyone also stayed on message: Martha Stewart was a scapegoat, the victim of an overzealous government and that dreaded double standard that punishes women for being unabashedly successful.

In July when she was sentenced to five months in prison, a $30,000 fine, five months of home confinement and two years of supervised probation, Stewart didn't bemoan her fate. "I'll be back," she promised.

"She was not haughty," says Gerald McKelvey, crisis PR manager at the New York firm Rubinstein Associates. "She wasn't imperious. She did not act as though she was entitled to some sort of special consideration."

Not long after, she appeared again on CNN's "Larry King Live" and ABC's "20/20," stressing her interest in helping others.

Crisis-management experts say the turning point in Stewart's public rehabilitation came in September when she asked to begin her sentence immediately. Many of her attorneys wanted to appeal the conviction. But Stewart made a business decision, according to those close to her. She said she wanted her release to coincide with spring planting. "I must reclaim my good life," she told a federal judge.

She entered prison in October, giving Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia advertisers and investors a finite end to the ordeal.

"By (Stewart) going to prison," Dezenhall said, "I think a lot of people said, 'All right. We win.' "

Within weeks, the news turned to Stewart-as-humble prisoner — using her daily power walks to gather dandelion greens and wild onions, requesting yogurt for the prison vending machines and comforting one weeping inmate with a yoga lesson. She took to her chores — cleaning the grounds and the administrative offices — dutifully. After one visit, Barbara Walters reported to the audience of "The View" that Stewart "loves scrubbing the floors in the bathroom" and "misses absolutely nothing material."

Tabloid photos depicted a wan-looking Stewart in oversize prison garb, wearing large, clunky glasses (contact lenses weren't allowed), no makeup and really bad hair.

She craved visitors, one friend said, because they provided the only time she could access the vending machines, which offered the prison's most palatable food — chicken wings. Stewart and her friends and relatives began describing her prison term as a much-needed respite from the world.

"I have had time to think," Stewart wrote in a posting on marthatalks.com, "time to write, time to exercise, time to not eat the bad food, and time to walk and contemplate the future."