When writing about French personalities for Interview’s “What Ever Happened To . . .” column, I cast my thoughts back to Paris. Having fallen in love with the city in 1976, I remembered shaking the sugar in my first citron pressé, the smell of the baking baguettes wafting in the afternoon, and the blunt bangs of a little girl sucking a lollipop.
I’d rather had it with Manhattan. It was not a place to be poor and unconcerned with accumulating wealth. This hit home when being entertained by Gayfryd and Saul Steinberg in their 17,000-square-foot Park Avenue apartment. They had just rented Eilean Aigas—my former family home in Scotland—and reached out to make contact. Saul was a jolly bon vivant, but Gayfryd was hard to gauge. Unlike Nan Kempner, C. Z. Guest, and the old guard of socialites I’d met, she didn’t appreciate my questions or British sense of humor. Strange, when she looked lively in photographs and personified Snow White in person. I struggled to talk to her about her numerous charitable causes—there were quite a few—and hopelessly failed. It was excruciating for both of us. I was longing to escape the gilded and cathedral-sized cage, and she must have been relieved to see the back of me.
In the meantime, I kept finding examples of Manhattan’s misery in strange corners. Walking to work one morning, I found a bedroom slipper in a pool of blood. I looked up at the apartment building and decided that the slipper’s owner had jumped. There was no other evidence, but it demonstrated my mind-set. When walking to a swimming pool on the far Upper West Side, I witnessed Jed Johnson and Alan Wanzenberg having a furious screaming match on the corner. Usually both beauties were so calm. It was also strange because I’d just seen them at an intimate New York City Ballet fund-raising event.
Every time I left the city, I felt better. My brother Damian’s graduation from the Harvard Kennedy School put me in an optimistic mood. Benazir Bhutto gave the commencement address. It was an uplifting experience furthered by my discovery of the dancer and choreographer Mark Morris, who was performing for the Boston Ballet. His production of Dido and Aeneas was life-changing. Morris was a large lad, possessing a massive torso and tree-trunk thighs, but his delicacy of technique and understanding of music transformed him into an enchanting woman. There and then, I realized that belief was what counted and everything else followed. And I started to think about the possibility of moving to Paris.
Not that my life in New York was so bad. I had moved into the Upper West Side apartment of Carrie Minot, Zara Metcalfe’s great friend, who worked on David Letterman’s show. It was through Carrie that I discovered the Victorian art of decoupage, which would give me peace of mind. I was also making necklaces out of semiprecious stones and charms or bits and bobs that I owned. My very first necklace broke on Amsterdam Avenue; I hadn’t mastered the importance of weight and the clasp. When I finally did, I gave them to friends such as the novelist Susan Minot, Carrie’s sister, who wore my necklace when reading from her book Lust and Other Stories, and Quintana Roo Dunne, Joan Didion’s daughter, who sported hers at her graduation party. Meetings about my necklaces were also organized at Ralph Lauren and Oscar de la Renta, even though both fashion houses deemed them too “ethnic.”
Making the jewelry was much more satisfying than writing. It was just as well, because after Sandy Brant’s dictates, my “What Ever Happened To . . .” column was terminated, and I gathered from snippets of conversation that our new boss didn’t rate “Anglofile” either.
Nevertheless, my decision to leave Interview had nothing to do with the Brants. It happened because Warhol Studio was “no longer responsible” for sponsoring my green card, or so Fred Hughes informed me. Sitting in his blood-red office, I could not believe my ears. When I tried to reason with him that they initially employed me and so forth, Fred exploded with an Exorcist-like tirade of mumbo jumbo. Scary to witness! But I forgave him because he looked so green and ill.
In the middle, Vincent came in and then swiftly disappeared. I’d heard that it was happening a lot, the whole business of tiptoeing around Fred and his tsunami moods. In desperation, I went to see Ed Hayes, who repeated Fred’s company line. I breathed in and channeled my best Susan Hayward. “This is my life on the line,” I began. “I’m in desperate need of help.” He didn’t budge. His dark eyes looked sharklike, and that’s when I decided that Paris beckoned.
For the following two weeks, I used the Interview phones and worked on Parisian connections. I went to see Kenny Jay Lane, who dismissed my necklaces—“You can buy the equivalent for tuppence on a street in Paris,” he said—but set me up with Leo Lerman at Condé Nast and with Grace Mirabella, who then ran her namesake magazine. Kenny was firm about continuing to write. “You’re talented,” he said. “No talent should ever go to waste.”
I had dinner with Ed Epstein, a Francophile, who said that it was “essential to find a place to live.” I thought of Fred. He owned a Paris apartment. In his diaries, Andy frequently referred to the place. During his European portrait-painting jaunts, he and Fred would stay there. I briefly wondered whether I should ask Monsieur Hughes about borrowing the place. But an attempt to do so misfired. I caught him in another foul mood and he screamed and shouted. Saddened by the episode, I thought of Shelley’s prediction: “Soon he’ll be in a wheelchair.”
After finding a studio in the Marais through Fiona Golfar, an English friend, I mentally checked out of Manhattan. When Sarah Giles called about Mick Jagger’s birthday, how sexy he looked and how poor Steve Rubell was sick with AIDS, I kept thinking about the Paris fashion world. Anna Wintour had faxed Gilles Dufour, Karl Lagerfeld’s right-hand man at the Chanel studio; Loulou de la Falaise at Yves Saint Laurent; and Jean-Jacques Picart at Christian Lacroix and then talked about each individual. It was unbelievably helpful. Names are never enough. Then she looked at “The Mermaid and Her Friends,” my collection of jewelry designs.
I’d created the collection because of Min Hogg, editor of The World of Interiors. When I’d casually revealed my plans to create jewelry in Paris, she asked if I’d been to design school or had any experience to speak of. “Because if you don’t,” she said, “I suggest you start doing a portfolio of your designs immediately.” Her delivery was quite sharp—make that harsh—but Min was right. Later she admitted, “I could not believe your arrogance, Natasha.” Actually, it was probably more like foolhardy youthful confidence. Then again, Min’s idea proved to be an excellent one.
I returned to Interview once more to pick up my last check. I bumped into Shelley, who’d clearly heard about Anna sending all the faxes to the fashion houses. Who was her Condé Nast spy? I wondered. “You don’t waste time, do you?” said Shelley. And I replied, “No, I don’t.” Nor did I plan to ever again. Shelley did give me a great letter of recommendation, as did Fred, who managed to freak out when signing his letter and then calmed down and apologized.
When flying to Paris, I drank the water of one of my neighbors by mistake. When I admitted to the fact, she smiled and said, “Pas grave,” meaning “not a big deal.” I liked the pas grave attitude and felt it was a good sign for the future.