My next stop was Bridget’s, back in town. I felt like a yo-yo, going back and forth, back and forth. Yet not a word of complaint out of my Camry. That Japanese engineering really is something. I don’t think I’ve ever even checked the oil. You just fill the tank with gas, and away you go! Miraculous. As for my destination, well, I had sworn restraint, it’s true. But this time I had an occasion—no money, but an actual occasion. Surely that counted for something. It wasn’t like I was being frivolous. Or some kind of shopaholic. Not at all. I was there to secure a loan, not to make a purchase. It was very simple. No involvement of credit cards. Nevertheless, the beads of sweat began forming on my brow the minute the bell on the door tinkled.
Bridget was at her desk, bellowing at a young man in an acid-green frock coat.
“Are you listening, Justin? Let’s go over it again. I am not in for that woman, ever. I’m in New York or Paris, I don’t care, anywhere but here. In fact, next time she calls, tell her I had a stroke! Went to Cedars Sinai in an ambulance, oh, that’s good! Cece!” She’d deigned to notice me. “Come in, don’t be shy. We’re just practicing our phone etiquette.”
Every summer, a different intern was indoctrinated into the cult of Bridget. This involved mastering mysterious rites (i.e., operating the steam iron and the espresso machine) and memorizing bizarre arcana (Helmut the dog’s food allergies and the color preferences of various Hollywood starlets). Justin had proved an able initiate. A graduate student at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, he was working on a dissertation entitled, “The Drape in/and/of/Madame Grès.” But he needed to get his hands dirty some and, like the best of his predecessors, was willing to play masochist to Bridget’s sadist. That made two of us.
I gave Bridget a big hug. I had come on a begging mission and was fully prepared to pay the ritual obeisance. But the woman had a nose on her that knew no rivals.
“Cece, what are you up to?”
She was like a lynx. She could see storm clouds before they rose above the horizon. She could feel the earth vibrate from a hundred miles away.
“I need to borrow a gown,” I said. “It’s for a party at the Oviatt Building on Sunday night. Forties theme. I wouldn’t ask, Bridget, but a handsome man is involved.”
“Say no more.” She turned to Justin. “Your moment has arrived. You are in charge until I come back. But don’t you dare try on a thing. I’ve seen you eyeing my Azzedine Alaias.”
Bridget grabbed her purse and ushered me out the door. “Oh, Cece, the most amazing shipment arrived this morning. Three Christian Dior New Look dresses! One of them is plum wool—plum wool!—with fifteen yards of fabric! Plus, matching Dior corsets, with taffeta underbodices and ruffles at the breasts and hips!”
“Where are we going, by the way?”
“Aaron Arden’s, of course.”
On the way over, Bridget filled me in. Aaron Arden had made his name twenty-five years ago as an award-winning costume designer for TV variety shows. A sketch about hay-seeds visiting the city? Aaron could whip up a pair of overalls and a red-and-white-checked shirt with shoulder pads that would make a porky guest star look positively soignée. A bit about space aliens confronting a New York City pretzel cart? You needed helmets that could accommodate three-inch false eyelashes, Aaron’s specialty. A Versailles parody? Marie Antoinette he could do in his sleep.
Aaron went on to design regrettable evening gowns for the occasional celebrity friend. These betrayed his overweening ambition—asymmetry, beading, starched ruffs, capelets, sometimes all in the same dress—and provided tabloid fodder for years to come. Bruised but undaunted, Aaron used his connections and back stock to open up a costume rental house the likes of which this town had never seen. At Aaron Arden’s, you could get everything from a Roman gladiator ensemble, cuffs and all, to an authentic Carnaby Street minidress with matching go-go boots and wig. The smaller studios and TV production companies unable to fund their own costume departments relied heavily on him.
“And so,” Bridget concluded, her eyes shining, “the schmata business paid off! It’s the stuff that dreams are made of!”
The girl at the front desk recognized Bridget and snapped to attention.
“I’ll get Mr. Arden right away, Miss Sugarhill.”
“Please tell him we’re interested in the 1940s. Evening wear.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, dear.”
When Aaron entered the foyer, the girl pressed a can of Tab into his hand like an operating room nurse handing a scalpel to a surgeon. Bridget pushed me forward. I was her prizewinning cow.
“Cece here has met Meredith Allan!” she proclaimed by way of introduction.
“Get outta town!” Aaron said, leading us into the elevator. He was a short, compactly built man clad in black from head to toe. He had a graying Afro and a goatee.
“It’s true! Tell him, Cece.”
Knowing I was going to have to pry a gown out of this man, I nodded.
“Well, I’ll be. So, dish!”
I knew what he wanted to hear. “She looked like hell.”
“Appearances are never deceiving,” Aaron said thoughtfully. “Here we are, fourth floor. Everybody out.”
“You know, you look fabulous, Aaron,” Bridget interjected. “You’ve had work done, haven’t you?”
“No knife touches this face, doll. I’m skinny, that’s it! Look at these.” He ran behind a counter holding the most amazing selection of Bakelite jewelry I’d ever seen, organized by color from the reds, oranges, and ambers to the midnight blues and blacks, and pulled out a pair of wide-wale corduroys. “Look, look! My fatty pants! I use them as a sleeping bag now!” He started to crawl into one leg.
I looked at Bridget, but she shook her head. Aaron was now lying down in his fatty pants, waiting for us to say something. We nodded approvingly.
“I have something in mind for you, Cece,” he said at last, scrambling to his feet, “but, oh dear, you’re not exactly Barbara Stanwyck, are you?”
“She was tiny,” Bridget whispered.
“I know that,” I snarled. I had spent a year on the New Jersey pageant circuit being told how gargantuan I was.
“You’re more of a Jane Russell type—oh, don’t get me wrong. What a babe! Most people know her from the bra ads, but there was so much more to Jane than that,” he said consolingly.
We sauntered past racks and racks of clothes, all of which were sheathed in heavy plastic and labeled. There was a group of young women gathered around a case filled with cloche hats. “A low-budget remake of The Great Gatsby,” Aaron murmured.
Bridget stopped to study a top hat sitting on a pedestal.
“Marlene Dietrich,” said Aaron with pride.
“Erle Stanley Gardner wanted her legs for the cover of The Case of the Lucky Legs,” I said.
“Good legs,” he confirmed, doing a little two-step.
“But too expensive. After discussing it with the people at Paramount, where she was under contract, the publishers decided on a less beautiful pair in their price range.”
“Compromise,” he proclaimed. “Story of my life. Ah, here we are.” He handed me an armful of bags. “Try this, this, this, and this.”
While I was in the dressing room, he chattered with Bridget.
“Are you still doing the thing?”
“I am. You?”
“The thing is perfection.”
“I’m so glad the guy told us about the thing.”
“What’s the thing?” I asked, poking my head out of the dressing room. They looked at each other and cracked up.
“I like bad girls. Meredith Allan has always been such a bad girl,” Aaron said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, needing help desperately now. I was stuck in the spiraling overskirt of a maroon satin cocktail dress with a nipped-in waist.
“Never mind,” he said in a singsong voice.
My curiousity was piqued.
The next dress I tried on had been worn by Ingrid Bergman in a publicity shot for Notorious—a black silk skirt and white wraparound top cinched at the waist with a thick suede belt with diamanté clips. It was simple and elegant, but I was going for va-va-voom.
“What about the sarong?” Aaron asked.
“The sarong!” Bridget exclaimed.
“Are sarongs forties?” I asked, slipping into what was perhaps the most divine dress ever.
Bridget launched into lecture mode. “Edith Head designed the first sarong in the movies for Dorothy Lamour in 1936. Jungle Princess, a Paramount film. That started a vogue for tropical fabrics and sarong draping that lasted through World War Two.”
I came out and there was a collective gasp.
“It’s perfect on you,” Bridget said.
“Somebody, put out the fire!” Aaron said.
“I can’t breathe! My ribs are being compressed into my lungs.”
I loved it.
The dress had a sweetheart neckline and a diamond-shaped cut-out over the stomach, and folds and puckers and sarong draping in all the right places.
“Do you think Rita Hayworth could breathe when she sang ‘Put the Blame on Mame’?” Aaron chided, patting my stomach meaningfully. “Think again.”
I stared at myself in the mirror. I was a sea siren. I was a symphony in fuschia and orange. I was the sun setting over the waves in Trinidad and Tobago, wherever they might be.
“It comes straight from the MGM costume department,” Aaron said, with a nod to Bridget. MGM was where her grandmother had worked. “It was worn by the singer in the nightclub scene, but I forget which movie. Nobody would actually wear a midriff-baring top in those days, but it was the movies! Bigger than life! You, Cece, are going to wear it with a hot pink orchid tucked behind one ear, and if your feet aren’t too big, I have ankle straps covered in iridescent copper beads, and yes, yes, yes! Carlos the genius is going to do your hair!”
Bridget nodded happily. If there was anyone she’d defer to, it was Aaron Arden.
Back downstairs, Aaron asked, “Do you have silk stockings and a garter belt?”
“I do.”
Bridget raised an eyebrow.
“So, Aaron, let me ask you something. What do you think silk stockings signify?” I was thinking of Della Street.
Bridget piped up. “By 1941, they were already the sacrificial lamb of the fashion industry. The war effort, you know. Thick wool legs at cocktail hour! What an affront!”
I looked at Aaron.
“Silk stockings mean you’re fuckable.”
There was no arguing with that.