BEFRIEND A HUNGARIAN gypsy and buy up all her shawls. Have a seamstress make them into tango dresses for you to wear to your parent-teacher meetings. It’s time to make an impression!
Soak your feet in molten molasses. The hotter the temperature, the more beautiful the pedicure.
Do not even think of leaving the house this season unless you are wearing a puce-colored leotard and a scalloped zebra cape.
You would be mad not to dye all your underwear cerise.
It’s all about the carelessness of a bare leg. Donate all your silk stockings to the Carmelite nuns, now!
Cardigans must be worn back to front . . . always! In fact, everything must be worn front to back, even your husband’s Y-fronts. You must insist upon it or suffer the unstylish consequences.
More than anything else in the entire world, you need a canary yellow Mongolian lamb evening muff. The fluffier the better.
Cut up your old ball gowns, sew them into ascots and give them to all your male friends. Save one for that homeless man who lives in a cardboard box near your house. There’s no reason why he should be deprived of sartorial flourishes.
When will the women of America understand? A tambourine is an accessory! Carry one at all times.
• • •
BACK IN THE LAST CENTURY, back before the notion of empowerment gathered steam, back before we all turned against authority figures and began “doing our own thing,” the fashion world was governed by an elite group of dictatorial maniacs. These tyrants felt duty bound to machine-gun the rest of the population with inspirational commands and bossy edicts. They told women to “think pink!” and to never picnic without a candelabra, to always use a coral ciggie holder, and to “banish the beige!”
Yes, Polly Mellen, I am talking about you.
Editor and visionary, La Mellen displayed no interest in prosaic dos and don’ts or prissy suburban etiquette. Fashion, for Polly, is, and has always been, a majestic, magical, mysterious galleon in full sail, and you would be INSANE not to hurl convention to the wind and jump on board.
While her reputation within the fashion world is the stuff of legend—in her decades-long career as a fashion editor, she collaborated with the greatest photographers of the twentieth century—she is perhaps best known for upstaging Isaac Mizrahi in what might be the most intriguing fashion movie of all time, namely Unzipped.
“Fussy finished,” intones Mellen, silencing all further debate on the issue of simplicity versus ornamentation for the rest of eternity.
“Be careful of makeup. Be careful,” says Mellen, sending a shiver of regret down the spine of anyone who has ever not been sufficiently wary of mascara or foundation and lived to tell the tale.
As her collaborations with Avedon and Bruce Weber et al can attest, Polly was always explosively hyperbolic and provocative. However, her creative flights of fancy are underpinned with a can-do practicality. Posture-perfect Polly is from the never-complain-never-explain school of life, advising women to “walk like a winner . . . do your crying at home.”
Polly’s enthusiasm for style is unbridled and unparalleled. I was present at shows where she excitedly clutched handfuls of skirt fabric as gals trotted down the runway, bringing the proceedings to a screeching halt. Sometimes Polly was so bowled over by a particular garment or model that she would be able to utter only one word, and that word was “chills.”
I first encountered Polly in the mid-eighties. She blasted into the mayhem of a busy sportswear wholesale showroom. I had stopped by to visit a pal whose job was flogging these schmattas to the big department stores.
“Polly’s here!” hissed the fashion pack, and it hid behind its collective lacquered Ming Dynasty fan. Chills.
Polly and her gaggle of assistants caused an immediate frisson of excitement. It was like a scene from William Klein’s genius surrealist fashion fantasy, Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Maggoo? with Lady Mellen in the role of the editor, the lady who declares, “Vous avez recréer la femme!” to the stunned designer.
Upon sighting the racks of sporty commercial samples, Ms. Mellen froze in the doorway. Her eyebrows shot up in the air and she gasped audibly. All eyes swiveled toward Polly. We waited for her to speak.
“Something is happening!” she said, sniffing the air like a panther seeking out a gazelle for lunch.
“Something is definitely happening . . . right here!”
We all knew Polly was intuitive, but who knew she could suss out genius without even coming within twenty feet of the clothing in question?
She turned and addressed her posse.
“Something is happening here. Mark my words. And you, and you, and you must stay here until you find out exactly what it is,” she said, pivoting on her heels and abandoning her bewildered assistants.
“DO NOT LEAVE!”
The assistants looked at one another like a bunch of startled ferrets for about five minutes. When they were sure Madam Polly was in the elevator, they slowly began to work their way through the racks of T-shirts and basic summer shift dresses.
Polly had clocked the simple nature of this particular fashion collection. Gotten the picture. Done it. Been there. She was too well brought up to simply about-face, so she instructed her assistants to go in search of a will-o’-the-wisp, a je ne sais quoi. Insane, yes, but who knows? Maybe one of those anxious acolytes might actually find “something.”
Though she could be serious, imperious and filled with fashion gravitas, Miss Mellen also loved a good chuckle. My favorite memory of Polly is sitting with her and Carolyn Murphy at the Met Ball—back in the last century, of course—critiquing the couture of the attendees while simultaneously counting the number of times Donatella Versace and Kate Moss minced across the room for a potty break à deux.
Speaking of the Met . . . let’s talk about the most fabulous fashion dictator who ever lived, the woman who mentored Polly. Yes—Diana Vreeland.
DV was a real empress’s empress. Her mission was to liberate women from humdrum convention and propel them into a world of fantasy by using electrifying edicts filled with shock and awe.
Many of DV’s bossy pronouncements were of the you’d-be-mad-not-to variety, though her most memorable style tips took the form of inspirational suggestions. Cunningly framed as questions, these life-enhancing promptings were more powerful than if they had been simple direct commandments. I am referring to her famous “Why Don’t You?” column in Harper’s Bazaar.
Why don’t you . . .
. . . waft a big bouquet about like a fairy wand?
. . . use a gigantic shell instead of a bucket to ice your champagne?
. . . cover a big cork bulletin board in bright pink felt, band it with bamboo, and pin with colored thumbtacks all your various enthusiasms as your life varies from week to week?
. . . turn your old ermine coat into a bathrobe?
. . . paint a map of the world on all four walls of your boys’ nursery so they won’t grow up with a provincial point of view?
. . . tie black tulle bows on your wrists?
. . . remember that little girls and boys look divine in tiny green felt Tyrolean hats—the smaller the child, the longer the feather?
. . . wear violet velvet mittens with everything?
. . . have an elk-hide trunk for the back of your car? Hermès of Paris will make this.
. . . have a room done up in every shade of green? This will take months, years, to collect, but it will be delightful—a mélange of plants, green glass, green porcelains, and furniture covered in sad greens; gay greens; clear, faded and poison greens.
Vreeland was the primordial muck from which all subsequent bossy emperors and empresses emerged. She begat Polly and André Leon Talley and Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele and Candy Pratts-Price and, yes, dare I say it—moi.
I consider myself fortunate to have worked for Empress Vreeland. It was during her tenure at the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute. I was hired by DV in 1985 to design the displays for a Met exhibit titled Costumes of Royal India and spent four sequin-encrusted months szhooshing bejeweled saris onto mannequins. And, yes, there was no shortage of pink ones. (Vreeland once famously declared, “Pink is the navy blue of India.”)
I have many happy memories of this period.
I remember Vreeland, who was allegedly color-blind, forcing the painters to repaint the walls ad nauseam until they got the “correct” shade. This persnickety obsession even extended to the gift shop: “Wrong! Not THAT gray. I want the gray of QUAKERS!” The painting and repainting went on for weeks. By the end of the show, there was so much paint clogging the walls that they had to cover them with fresh Sheetrock for the next exhibit.
I remember DV engaged in a cold war with the conservation department. Obeying the stringent guidelines issued by the teams of lab-coat-wearing, white-gloved conservation ladies was not in the Vreeland wheelhouse. Though much of the Met fashion archive was antique and disintegrating, Vreeland loved nothing more than to drag an eighteenth-century coat out of its tissue-paper coffin and—quelle horreur!—try it on for size! She would then strike period-appropriate attitudes. As far as the conservation department ladies were concerned, this was the equivalent of throwing acid at the Mona Lisa.
I remember Vreeland’s office, with its blood-red walls and leopard carpet. The cork board behind her desk was smothered with inspirational photos: Maria Callas screaming, Veruschka vamping, Nijinsky leaping. DV was a cultivated broad whose life spanned most of the twentieth century. She had met everyone from Buffalo Bill to Brigitte Bardot. (She once insightfully observed that Brigitte’s lips “made Mick Jagger’s lips possible.”)
I remember Vreeland’s personal style. She wore kabuki-style rouge on her ears and massive black rosettes on her shoes. Her nuanced look was a palimpsest of all her previous incarnations: a thirties hairdo, a fifties manicure, a sixties go-go boot. There’s a lesson there for us all: If something suits you, hang on to it and drag it with you into the next decade.
My mother did the same thing. In the 1940s she adopted a Bette Davis pompadour (circa Now, Voyager) and the very same hairdo adorned her head when we buried her forty years later. There was a brief moment in the sixties when she experimented with a trendy updo of tunnel curls, accented with dangly earrings. She came home from the hairdresser, took one look in the mirror and declared, “I look like a tart.” She then stuck her head under the kitchen faucet and reconstructed her Voyager pompadour.
I remember how much Vreeland loved Bill Cunningham. DV was convinced that every Met costume installation needed to have a contribution from the bicycle-riding photographer-milliner-fashion sage. On the occasion of the Royal India show, I was instructed to leave space for a white peacock in one of my maharajah dioramas. Bill, an amateur taxidermist, had promised DV that he would deliver a specimen, stuffed and preening, in time for the opening.
Days passed. The clock ticked. No peacock. I stared anxiously at the empty space, already spotlighted, which awaited the arrival of Bill’s bird.
On the last day of the installation Bill careened into the parking lot on his bicycle. On the handlebars was a large object in a trash bag. Yes, it was Mr. Peacock. Hugely relieved, I indicated the allotted space and left Bill to unwrap, fluff and install his creation. Returning half an hour later, I was greatly amused by what I saw.
Bill’s bird was a real mieskeit, a total Marty Feldman of a peacock. It was a strangely unmajestic bird, an enigma, a mutant.
I asked Bill where he found this unpeacock.
“Oh, young fella, it’s not a peacock. I was cycling through Central Park and I found a dead seagull, and I thought, Perfect! For Diana’s show! So I took it home and stuffed it and added goose feathers and peacock feathers! Voilà!”
With a little careful lighting and judicious angling, Bill’s seagull delivered a remarkably good impersonation of a regal peacock. There is yet another lesson for us all: When in doubt, make sure you are totally backlit.
More memories . . .
After the opening, I remember having dinner with DV at her apartment. This was the exquisite red-lacquered Park Avenue aerie which Billy Baldwin had created for Madame in response to her request for “a garden in hell.” The living room was a decadent, fabulously overdecorated opium den. The walls and upholstery were a hallucinogenic sea of blazing red patterns and foliage. Every horizontal surface was jammed with objects: turtle shells, silver-dipped seashells, lacquered boxes, enamel snuff boxes. Vreeland was no stranger to the concept of the tablescape.
She smoked throughout the entire evening, clutching a ciggie in one hand and, in the other, a handheld buzzer which summoned her housekeeper. On this particular occasion, Vreeland seemed less than pleased with her staff. Apparently they were attempting to dilute her vodka. Like many women of her generation, DV had developed an impressively high tolerance for booze. Any sneaky attempts to minimize her intake were met with lots of frantic buzzing.
When the meal arrived, Vreeland took revenge on her vodka saboteurs.
“Euch!” she said, viewing the deliciously simple chicken-’n’-two-veggies platter with exquisite disdain. “Take it away and make it into sandwiches! And bring me a cup of borscht!”
I remember Vreeland’s memorial. This was the mega A-list occasion when Richard Avedon pointedly lauded the old guard, Vreeland, and dissed the new arrival, Anna Wintour. (La Wintour had recently arrived at Vogue and had earned Avedon’s ire by cancelling his long-standing contract.)
I took my seat in a strange little angled pew. I looked up and gulped. I was seated facing Jackie Onassis, just three feet away. She was a longtime friend of DV’s and had been the recipient of much fashion advice, most especially after becoming First Lady. The depth of their friendship was more than apparent during the memorial: Jackie O sobbed openly throughout. Afterward, I heard socialite Pat Buckley telling somebody, “Jackie always cries at funerals because she was not allowed to cry at Jack’s.”
Chills.
Vreeland got the send-off she deserved. She was the empress to end all empresses. With her mind-blowingly unconventional worldview, she understood that fashion was more than just smart dressing for rich ladies. She knew the importance of panache and eccentricity, and of adding a dash of vulgarity to the mix: “A little bad taste,” she said, “is like a nice splash of paprika.”
Where did all those dictatorial divas go? Do we have a Vreeland for the twenty-first century?
The truth is that the empress is, in the twenty-first century, as dead as the dodo. The world has changed. Gals no longer need provocation or liberating edicts from a crazy old broad who wore her hair in a jet-black helmet that resembled a chic beetle. Thanks to Vreeland and her ilk, they are already free.
Vreeland liberated women from the oppression of girdles and white gloves. She gave them a sense of creative possibilities. We live in the era of self-expression and rabid individuality which Vreeland dreamed about and helped create. Yes, there are status-obsessed real housewives who are conformist and dreary, but they pale in comparison to the hordes of liberated, groovy chicks and eccentric gals. If Vreeland were alive today, she would look at Ke$ha and Tavi and Nicki and Gaga and Florence and Gwen and Daphne and Riri and Tilda—and yes, even Miley and Kat von D.—with amusement and satisfaction. Mission accomplished.