Walking with the Muses

by Pat Cleveland

  I waited. No one came. Had I made a mistake and come at the wrong time or on the wrong day? I started to get fidgety and hot in my coat, but I didn’t want to take it off; I needed the editor to see it. I was so nervous that I could barely breathe. Then I noticed a door slightly ajar on one side of the room. I heard voices whispering through the crack. I turned my head to get a better look and saw the door close. As I turned my head back around, I sensed that it opened again. The two voices resumed whispering. Whoever it was, they were spying on me, so I sat up extra straight, just in case. Posture is everything, my mother taught me. It makes you look taller and richer, like royalty.

  I listened hard and recognized two elegant male voices. One of them said, “But darling . . .”

  I looked around again and this time caught sight of their eyes peeking at me from behind the door, which they quickly closed. Finally, the person I’d been waiting for arrived and went straight to her seat at the desk. She was wearing a pale blue turban, large golden ball earrings, and a pale blue cashmere sheath. She had on charm bracelets and gold bangles, which she wore over powder-blue gloves that came up to the middle of her arm to meet the sleeve of her dress. Her face was covered in the largest black-framed round glasses I’d ever seen, and her twinkling blue eyes showed from behind turquoise eye shadow. She looked dead at me.

  My heart pounded. This was the magazine’s fashion editor Carrie Donovan, who—though I didn’t know it then—was a legend.

  “Hello, dear,” she said, and I stood straight up. Before I could utter a word, a secretary came into the room.

  “Excuse me, Miss Donovan. Mrs. Vreeland would like to see you immediately.”

  Carrie quickly gathered some papers from her desk, said, “Excuse me, dear,” and left the room.

  Once again I was alone. Once again the people behind the door peeked in, whispered, and then backed away. This peekaboo game went on for several minutes before Carrie came back.

  “Where were we?” she said. “Ah, the young designer. Have you brought your sketches?”

  “Yes,” I said, and dove into my portfolio, pulling out drawings that I’d stayed up all night making for this meeting. Because I wanted to treat the sketches as if they were professional illustrations, I had matted everything, to give the art a frame.

  I handed them to Carrie, and she studied them carefully. “Well, these are very good,” she said finally. “I’m going to Paris next week, and I’ll take these. Givenchy is looking for a student designer from America.” Carrie looked at me closely, sizing up what I was wearing. “Did you make what you’re wearing today?”

  “Yes, I did.” I didn’t say that my mom had helped me with the lining; maybe Carrie wouldn’t like that.

  “Well, let’s see. Stand up.” I stood and showed her the coat and the lining, and she saw that underneath I was wearing my heavy wool forest-green maxi-skirt and my Scottish-plaid jersey top.

  “Take off your coat, dear, so I can see the skirt,” Carrie said. I did, and I could tell she liked it. “Have a seat, dear.”

  I sat as gracefully as I could. Then the door behind me popped open, and out came the most gorgeous men I had ever seen: One was tall and blond, the other dark-haired and Asian. “Carrie, darling,” the tall one said, pecking Carrie lightly on the cheek.

  “Joel, darling.” They were like two swans bobbing toward each other in a synchronized routine.

  Then the Asian man sat down in the chair against the wall. “Hi, Carrie,” he said in an all-American accent.

  “Carrie, darling,” Joel continued. “I don’t know what to do. I have to shoot ‘Vogue’s Own,’ and there’s no model. Berry is waiting, and I need a model.” The Asian fellow kept smiling at me. Then he winked at Joel, as though to say, Go ahead.

  “Carrie, who is this beautiful young thing?” Joel asked.

  “This is Patricia, a new young designer,” she replied. “We found her in the subway.”

  Joel looked at the Asian fellow and raised his eyebrows. “Maning, how about Patricia? Can we use her?”

  The guy named Maning said, “Yes, definitely!” Now I knew who and what the peekaboos were about.

  “Carrie, what do you think? It’s your story,” said Joel.

  “Well,” Carrie said, “I don’t know, she seems a bit—”

  “She’s perfect,” said Joel. “Just what we need.”

  I had no idea what was going on. I looked around, and Maning whispered reassuringly, “We need you.” With these three words, I felt as if my guardian angel had arrived.

  Joel handed me my coat, grabbed my hand, and said, “Come on!”

  I followed. “My sketches?” I said as we were leaving.

  “Don’t worry, you can leave them here with Carrie.”

  I looked at Carrie, who seemed a bit in shock over Joel’s quick decision. I looked at Maning, and he gave me a nod. Before I could even gather my thoughts, I was in the elevator with Joel Schumacher, on my way to having my life changed forever.

  Joel’s limo was outside Vogue’s offices. We jumped in the backseat, which was filled with shopping bags and colorful kites. His driver and secretary sat in front with more bags of stuff. “We’re going to Central Park,” Joel said. “But first we have to pick up our photographer.”

  Vogue’s offices were right next to Grand Central Terminal, in the Graybar Building, so we drove west on Forty-Second Street and uptown on Park Avenue, where we stopped to pick up a young blond girl with bright blue eyes who squeezed into the backseat with us. “Berry, Patricia,” Joel said. “Patricia, Berry.”

  We exchanged hellos and took off for the park. We were all in high spirits, and I felt as though I’d been lifted from street level to the penthouse of the world. Our limousine came to a halt not far from the Metropolitan Museum. The driver opened the car doors, and we piled out and ran up Dog Hill, my favorite spot for sledding when I was a little kid. The secretary and Joel carried the kites, and a coat and hat they wanted me to wear. The secretary handed me a kite.

  “Now,” said Joel, “all you have to do is fly the kite, and Berry will take the pictures.” It was so windy, the kite almost carried me away. “Yes,” shouted Joel, “that’s perfect!”

  We had a splendid time, but even so, I was aware of the dampness and chill in the air, and the slipperiness of the ground, and how desperately I wanted to get in out of the cold. Fortunately, everybody else felt the same way, and before I knew it, the job was done. We rushed back into the warmth of the car, where Joel instructed the driver to take us back to Vogue.

  Whew! Berry Berenson—the younger sister of Marisa, whom I’d met at JoJo Smith’s studio with Bobby—had taken the first pictures of me for Vogue, and Joel Schumacher had followed his heart by using me. I was truly grateful. Joel would go on to become a well-known film director who made such blockbusters as Batman Forever and The Phantom of the Opera. Berry went on to marry the actor Anthony Perkins, have two sons, become a widow, and lose her life aboard American Airlines Flight 11 when it crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

  chapter 18

  BEAUTIFUL DREAMER

  Modeling my own design in Central Park for a spread in “Vogue’s Own Boutique,” 1968.

  Courtesy of Berry Berenson.

  Later that year, in the spring, I was called back to Vogue because Carrie Donovan had returned from Paris, where she’d gone to see the latest collections. She had taken my design sketches with her, and now she’d asked Joel to have me photographed in my own designs, as a young designer. So there I was in Central Park again, sitting on that big rock by the pond, dreaming about my beautiful future. At seventeen, I had my heart set on becoming someone or something, and now, as the flower buds were beginning to pop, and the air still had a touch of that early-spring frostiness, it was happening.

  I posed wearing an antique lace shirt that Mom and I had made from strips of sixty-year-old lace, a long skirt, and a big-brimmed floppy hat that Joel had brought. He also added a long
chiffon scarf, which made it all very Vogue. He loved a romantic look.

  After the shoot, we all returned to the magazine’s offices. When I went back to see Carrie, she was holding up my drawing. “I’ve shown your work to Bendel’s,” she said, like a fairy godmother about to zap me with her magic wand. “I told them how wonderful your designs are, and they’d like to meet with you on Monday. My secretary has made the appointment. Can you do that?”

  Can I do that? I thought. That’s what I’m living for.

  Bendel’s liked my designs, and I set about making several skirts and blouses for the store. They bought them all, put my name on the label, and sold every last item. But there was a problem. Mom and I had been so busy sewing like mad that, without thinking, we’d made everything in my size. When the store asked me to make things in larger sizes, it got complicated. I had to make darts in the blouses, which I’d never done before. (The whole point of my clothes was that they were for girls with small breasts who couldn’t find clothes that fit.) Because I didn’t really know how to make the larger sizes, I lost the order. I was so disappointed—not just for me but for Mom, too.

  Fortunately, Vogue still wanted me. Or, should I say, Maning Obregon, the beautiful Asian man I’d seen on my first visit, wanted me. Maning was Vogue’s illustrator, which was an extremely important position, especially since photographers were not allowed at fashion shows in those days.

  Born in Brooklyn to Filipino immigrants, Maning had begun his career at sixteen in Paris, as a sketch artist covering the collections for The New York Times. He’d moved to Vogue to cover the same beat. At the time, illustrators were like a mysterious, revered cult; they had as much mystique as their subjects. Maning was known not just for being the quickest but also the best illustrator of his time—one who could see and capture on paper every seam in a garment as it was moving. He was also adept at conveying the personalities of the people he sketched.

  Little did I know then how much influence Maning had at Vogue, thanks to his being the pet of Diana Vreeland, Vogue’s editor in chief. She was said to adore Maning because of his exotic Asian air. In any case, Maning took a shine to me immediately, and so I was called in just before the Vogue Seminars—the hectic month during which the editors analyzed all the designers’ looks for the upcoming season, which Maning then frenetically sketched so that they could decide which ones to feature in the magazine. I wouldn’t find out until years later that the reason he liked me was that I was a dead ringer (in his eyes, anyway) for his former favorite model—a young man who dressed up in women’s clothes to pose for Maning. As this fabulous drag queen was no longer available, I, his doppelgänger, was the next best thing. I was hired on the spot to pose for Maning for fifteen dollars an hour, which felt like a fortune. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was going to be part of the Vogue Seminars!

  The next day I was escorted into the Seminar Room, which was decorated with pale green flowered wallpaper that matched the fabric on the sofas. I ducked behind a screen to put on the little shorts I’d just been given.

  “Good morning!” a voice bellowed out. I popped my head over the screen. Maning, dressed in white from head to toe, smiled brightly. “Well, I got what I wanted,” he said, pointing to me in an exaggerated, comical way. “And that was you, girl! You’re all mine, and you’re not getting away till I make you a star.”

  I hurried to finish, zipping up the shorts and putting on espadrilles that tied up to the knee. Then I put on a boxy, feather jacket and stepped out from behind the screen.

  “My, my. Forty-Second Street finally hits Vogue,” he said saucily. “Don’t tell them I said that.” I stood there, wondering what the next step was. He snapped his fingers. “You never know how many looks they’ll give us. So hit it, girl.”

  Maning guided me to stand on the table, and up I went; I was used to this sort of posing because I’d done so much of it at school. “My God, you look just like him,” he said under his breath as he reached for some sketching paper. Then, “What would they do without me? They’re all terrible except for Mrs. Vreeland.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Diana Vreeland, darling. She’s the empress here. The rest are just slaves, like worker bees in a hive. Don’t tell them I said that. Oh, except for Carrie Donovan. The rest of them hate her because she has power over them, but she’s the only one finding new people, and they’re all jealous.”

  As if on cue, Carrie Donovan ran into the room, frantically waving her arms. “Maning, darling, commands from the top! The cubby jacket is in, she loves it, loves it, I tell you. And just to think, we came up with the idea, and the short shorts with the tights and the feathers. Yes, that’s the look. We win.” She whirled around to take a breath, then continued her monologue. “Maning, did you see Joel? Are we right? What did Vreeland say? Oh, darling, it’s in your hands. So, Maning, do your very best, draw as big as you can, because this is big. Harper’s Bazaar is out to get us, so let’s step it up. We have one hundred looks to do today.” She turned to the model booker. “Oh, dear! We never know when Diana’s going to surprise us, do we?”

  “She’s faster than fashion,” Maning said, agreeing with Carrie.

  “Darling, it’s in your hands.” She blew him a kiss, then hurried out the door. “I’m off. Back in an hour.”

  A few young men brought in racks of clothes and trays of food. When Maning and I were alone, he said, “We should lock the door before the evil witches bring in more clothes.” Then he whispered, “Don’t tell them I said that.”

  For the next six hours, I put on a different outfit every ten minutes. Maning sketched furiously; Carrie paced, thinking of what to put together next. Both of them examined the clothes inside and out, going so far as to rip sleeves off dresses. Assistants ran around tidying up the mess, and there I was in the center, spinning, posing, and changing clothes as I watched the walls fill up with six-foot-tall sketches.

  Evening came, and we were still working. Finally, Carrie said, “Stop. Diana has gone to dinner. I must leave, too, but we’ll continue tomorrow.”

  I went home drained but exhilarated, eager to tell Mom every detail.

  The next day Maning and I continued to work very well together. For the rest of that week and into the next, we laughed about how everyone was vying for attention from Mrs. Vreeland, who never appeared at the office until late afternoon.

  One day, after he’d done a ton of drawings for the Seminars, Maning looked at me and lifted one eyebrow. “I’d love to do a few sketches of you in movement instead of just still,” he said. “But first I have to show you a few walking tricks. Go over to that side of the room and watch me. I’ll show you how to walk like a real mannequin.”

  With a twinkle in his eyes, he spun around and came walking toward me, full speed, head held high with a look of haughty daring, as though looking down from Mount Olympus, a god staring at the mortals. He moved his hands like two Chinese fans, and his long legs and shoes, which came to a point at the toe, accentuated the direction of his feet, like those of a dancer about to pirouette. “Now you do it,” he said. “Walk across the room with attitude. Let me see you walk like the greatest mannequin in the world.”

  “The greatest mannequin in the world?”

  “Yes! Like Dovima, like the empress of China. It’s all in the eyes,” he said, lowering his voice and squinting his eyes into a look of seduction. “Be mysterious.” He whipped around the room at high speed again. “Do it like this,” he said, bending his body back from the waist into an arch, jutting his hipbones forward. “You mustn’t look real. They must never see you breathing. In Paris, the models paint their faces many shades lighter to look like they’re made of plaster.”

  That didn’t sound particularly appealing, but I watched what he did and then did exactly the same. Again and again, until that walk became mine.

  The more time I spent at Vogue, the more comfortable I became. Being a fitting model came naturally to me, and I was used to being sketched. During my brea
ks, I roamed the office to see how they put the magazine together. In truth, I was more interested in what was going on in the graphics room than in modeling: It looked like a big art classroom at my high school, with everyone working intently on the mock-up of the next issue.

  One day as I was just finishing a break, Mrs. Vreeland’s secretary came to the Seminar Room and told me to change into a dressing robe. Then she led me to an area of the Vogue offices where I’d never been: the editor in chief’s quarters.

  I stood in complete silence before the lacquered door to Vogue’s inner sanctum. The crystal doorknob turned, and the silence was broken by a low hum of voices on the other side of the door. Nervous, I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my robe to keep from shaking. The door was opened by a woman carrying an empty silver tray and dressed like a maid in the classic black dress with a tiny white apron and little white cap. Memories of Marian Anderson’s house, all those years earlier, came to mind.

  Grace Mirabella, the associate editor and all-purpose helper to the editor in chief, walked by me and said, “Give us a moment.” The door shut; when it opened again, Grace invited me to enter. I’m not sure what possessed me, but I leaped into the room like a ballerina and landed right in front of the great Diana Vreeland.

  She wasn’t even looking my way, so I just stood there on tippy-toes in the baggy dressing gown. The walls were red lacquer, and there were plants everywhere—deep coral amaryllises, white lilies, luscious fuchsia peonies, and (of course) tall delicate orchids. The obligatory Rigaud candles glowed, giving off their faint perfume, and the walls were hung with big black-and-white photographs in heavy black frames. And there she was, like some exotic bird in her own jungle paradise.