D.V.

by Diana Vreeland

  “I’ve got a boyfriend downtown,” my little manicurist said, “and I think I can get him to copy it.”

  “Oh,” I said, “who is he?”

  “Well, he makes a nail varnish that everyone’s crazy about.”

  His name was Revson. He was working on about Twenty-seventh Street and Sixth Avenue in a place with an old iron staircase up the back. His varnish had a great color, and it didn’t chip—which was the biggest thing—but it took hours to dry, and it had no staying power.

  But then—from studying Perrera’s—he evolved a product that dried faster than anything anyone had ever used in America. And after a few years, he started to get pretty big. In fact, he became the biggest—the most.

  Today, the great varnish of the world that covers the waterfront is Revlon. And, curiously enough, whenever I saw him there was always something in Charles Revson’s eye…I always knew that he knew that I knew that he had made this incredible fortune off of one small bottle of mine with maybe this much left in it. Yes, there was always something in his eye….

  The first thing I did after the war was to try to find Perrera. No one—but no one—ever found him, not in Venice, not in Paris, not in the south of France. He disappeared off the face of the earth. I’d wanted to bring him to America to put him together with…well, I had the business connections. But I have always been very naïve when it comes to business.

  Reed and I never discussed business. It would have bored him to death. I never said to him, “Don’t you think I should go to this man Revson and say, ‘Look, I can do with a quarter of a half of a tenth of a percent of what you’re making today because it was my varnish that made your life as it is today possible’?”

  “So what?” Reed would have said. “You got the varnish you needed—what else do you want?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I remember the night Reed and I arrived in Paris right after the war. Oh, how it had changed! Potato flour. To think that one was eating French bread, the great French triumph, made of potatoes! Everyone was in wooden shoes. Clack clack clack. You could tell the time of day from your hotel room by the sound of wooden soles on the pavement. If there was a great storm of them, it meant that it was lunch hour and people were leaving their offices for the restaurants. Then there’d be another great clatter when they returned to the office, et cetera et cetera…. The day we arrived it just happened to be Bastille Day, although we hadn’t planned it that way. The fountains on the place de la Concorde were playing for the first time since the liberation. And we drove all over Paris. We went everywhere—Chaillot, St. Denis…I forget the names of the quartiers above Montmartre, but we went to all of them. Every little square had the most ghastly little band playing the same ghastly little tune.

  Strangers were dancing with strangers. Girls were dancing with girls. Strange young men who looked haunted—as if they hadn’t been out of a cellar in years—were dancing with fat old women. It was raining. No one was speaking. It was hideous—and marvelous.

  At what must have been four o’clock in the morning, I suddenly realized I was hungry. So we picked this little street above Montmartre, and on it was a restaurant that looked awfully nice, but the shutters were closed. So we banged and banged on the shutters until a man came out.

  “We’ve had nothing to eat,” I said. “We’ve just arrived from America and we’ve been spending this wonderful night in Paris, but we’re so hungry.”

  “Mais entrez, madame et monsieur!” the man said. “Entrez! C’est une auberge!”

  I’ve never forgotten that, because, for me, France has always been an auberge—for feelings, for emotion, and for so many other things. Reed and I spoke of that experience for years after. The man opened up the door so wide that he could not have made a greater gesture if it had been the Hall of Mirrors!

  Paris! I was so excited. But Paris had changed. The world had changed.

  I realized this when I went for my fittings. You don’t know what a part of life fittings once were. Remember I told you that before the war I used to have three fittings on a nightgown—and I’m not that deformed.

  After the war you were no longer fitted for nightgowns.

  Other things had changed. Couture before the war wasn’t that expensive. It was hard to pay more than two hundred dollars for a dress. I had been what was known as a mannequin du monde—meaning “of the world”—because I was out every night in every nightclub, seen, seen, seen…. I was always given by the maison de couture for being a mannequin du monde what was known as a prix jeune fille—that is to say, they would give me the dress to wear and keep. The phrase no longer exists in the French vocabulary. The first thing I asked after the war was: “Does it still exist—as an expression?” I wasn’t hinting around.

  “Absolutely not!” I was told. “It’s as dead as mud.”

  Before the war everybody in London and Paris was dressed by somebody. I remember Reed always used to say about plump old Elsa Maxwell, for instance, who never had a cent: “The great thing about Elsa is that she’s dressed by Patou.” She’d slip off these jackets—this enormous mountain of a women—and there would be the label “Jean Patou.”

  Elsa wasn’t a vulgar woman. This is hard to explain to someone who never knew her, because she looked vulgar. You see pictures of her where she looks like a cook on her night out. The end of her nose was vulgar. Why wasn’t she? I don’t know.

  Maybe it was because she adored music so much. She was a sublime pianist. A love of music is a great purifier, and music was as clear as crystal water to her.

  Do you remember Mary Borden’s A Woman with White Eyes? In that book is a marvelous description of fat white hands galloping over the keys. They were Elsa’s. She started as an entertainer. Then, of course, she became famous for her parties. She’d whip it up in your own home. She’d take it over. These days everyone goes out to restaurants, but in her day Elsa would give the party in your home, invite all the important people, and you’d get a bill for the food, flowers, and wine. She herself never had a glass of port. She was not nobody. She always dined with kings. Nice kings. The King of Sweden. She watched him play tennis. She’d stay in any hotel that would pick up the tab. She started up roaring things around her in the Waldorf and ended up in the Summit. The chandelier in Elsa’s apartment in the Summit wasn’t exactly in the center of the room; it made you feel kind of wonky.

  I remember a dinner with her in Paris before the war. I was seated opposite a San Franciscan named Tony Montgomery, who was one of the playboys of the period, and we heard some Frenchman saying to Elsa, “And, Miss Maxwell, were you in San Francisco during the great earthquake?”—you know, conversation at dinner.

  “Of course I was there,” she said, “and I can remember it very well. I was walking down the marble staircase in my father’s house when, suddenly, the staircase cracked under my feet….”

  Tony gave me a look and I gave him a look. We both knew that there weren’t any marble staircases west of the Mississippi in those days—let alone in Elsa’s father’s house. But that was Elsa—she was just putting on the ritz, keeping things up. Why say you were born in a hovel? Who wants to hear that?

  She always kept the ball in the air. But I can remember one time when I saw her totally tongue-tied. She had called me.

  “Diana, do you want to meet Christine Jorgensen?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I haven’t thought of it.”

  “Well, I thought it might interest you. You’re in all sorts of businesses, and who knows? It might be a revelation to you. I’m giving a lunch tomorrow….”

  Naturally, I went. What year was this? It was after the war. Look it up—it was whatever year it was when Christine Jorgensen was the focus of the world, publicly recognized for, shall we say, three weeks, for being the first known transsexual. The lunch was in Elsa’s private room upstairs in a hotel salon. Leland Hayward was there, Fulco di Verdura, the great jewelry designer, and several other very fascinating men I can’t remember. And no
one could think of a single word to say to this very well-mannered, very charming person called Christine Jorgensen. We stared at her and had no idea how to begin. What would one ask: “What’s the first thing you did—blow up your bazooms?” Fulco had never been so tongue-tied in his life. He wanted to ask about what she did about her underarms. Never did. Christine Jorgensen did the best she could to keep the ball in the air, talking about the food and the weather and, mmm…my God, the changes in this world! Elsa was bouleversée. It was the only time I ever saw her like that, and I knew her very well.

  That first summer Reed and I spent in Europe after the war, Elsa invited us to an extraordinary evening in the south of France. We motored through Provence to Antibes. Ah, the light of Provence! We were having a sort of love affair with France, seeing again all the beauty we’d loved so much all our lives, smelling all the wonderful smells…little bluebells, little Persian pinks, and all the other delicious smells of Provence. We spent the nights in such luxury on real linen sheets in the most divine auberges after wonderful dinners and walks after dinner under the pines….

  Then we arrived in Antibes. Everyone was waterskiing. Every girl was in a bikini. At the time, I said that the bikini was the biggest thing since the atom bomb, but I suppose bikinis started during the war—they probably just tore bedsheets apart and made them. It was the year of “La Vie en rose.” We’d go to bed rather early every night at the Hôtel du Cap, and we’d hear people walking home—everyone singing “La Vie en rose.” Songs last forever. They fix particular years in your mind. That year, everyone was singing that song to everyone else into the night, and we’d lie there and listen to the happiness…it was all “La Vie en rose.” The air is so still there. It holds music. Do you know what I mean?

  Reed, naturally, was dressed and ready to go long before I was in the morning. He was wonderful to travel with because he’d always get up early, case the joint, then come back and pick me up, and together we’d share what he’d found to see or do. And one morning he ran into this Argentinian, Dodero. Dodero was one of Perón’s henchmen—well born, well educated, very charming, and his manners were magnificent. He invited us to come to his villa in Cannes for a party the next night. Reed told him that we had already agreed to dine with Elsa Maxwell that evening but that we’d try to come by after dinner.

  Elsa’s dinner was for Maurice Chevalier. It was in the old port of Antibes, which very few people have bothered to see. Elsa had taken over the main street, which led down to the docks, and set up one long table. I was right across the table from Chevalier. Of course, I’d been looking at him since I was sixteen years old, coming down the steps of the stage of the Casino de Paris, but now I actually saw him. My God, what an attractive man, and what a fascinator! It must be wonderful to feel that the world loves you and that you have something to give the world. I would think it’s the best life going. Do I love a boulevardier! The way he wore a hat! Carried a stick!

  After dinner, we went up in the hills above Cannes to the Dodero party, past several of his henchmen—when henchmen have henchmen, you know they’re big—and through an absolutely empty villa. Obviously, no one slept there or lived there—heaven knows what they used it for. Then there were steps down through the pine groves, and this charming man, Dodero, came up the steps, took hold of my hand, and kissed it. I felt this terrific beat in his hands and realized he was a very sick man—the tension of the life he was leading as part of the Perón setup was too much for him. It was obvious he lived in terrible danger all the time. That summer he had three floors of the Hotel Carlton, three yachts in the harbor, and then three villas in the hills behind Cannes. It was the most mysterious setup.

  But we walked with him down this long flight of steps into a beautiful place that had been cut away as a dance floor, and he showed us to our table. Soon there were little gold chairs pulled up all around it. People began to arrive. All the old playboys from before the war—I can’t remember any of their names—stopped by the table. All of the girls came up to me because they were our models from New York. Everyone was terribly attractive.

  I’ve always been so flattered that anyone, whatever his status, feels he can ask me to a party. Reed and I could dine with a king one night and the next night go to a party like this one…which was the last, I would say, of the demimonde. The demimonde—the mystery of those women! Men have always been able to take any background they wished for themselves. I was being read Proust the other evening, and a demimondaine turns up at a party—no raised eyebrows—at a party for the Duchesse de Guermantes. They’re still around, I’m sure, but no one gives parties for them anymore. No one even uses the expression anymore but me. It’s antique as a word, like risqué, like roué, like outré…they’re all terribly out of date.

  The demimondaines were not the only ones there that night. In every sense it was a perfectly respectable party. I came in a sleeveless short dress. Summer clothes. It was a magically memorable evening. The waiters were wonderful. The lights were draped through the groves. It was the night Rita Hayworth, who was certainly the best-looking thing we ever had in America, met Aly Khan—we saw the meeting. It was the night Tyrone Power met Linda Christian—we saw the meeting. And this was the night I met a girl named Carroll McDaniel. She later married Fon, the Marquis de Portago, whose special passion was racing cars. You’ll remember that Fon stopped in the middle of a car race, the Mille Miglia, for some oil, and across the track came Linda Christian, who by then had given up Tyrone Power. She leaned into the racecar and kissed him. The Kiss of Death: He was dead seven minutes later in a crash.

  His mother was one of those great Irish girls who get more freckles if they cross a street. She broke her leg skiing when she must have been eighty, had it set in a cast, and started skiing again. She once told me a wonderful story about herself. It was during the war, and we were sitting on the Southampton beach. On the beach—she was wearing bracelets with green pears like this falling from marquise diamonds like that—it took just a few stones to go around the wrists. She told me she had once been a nurse in the Government Hospital in Dublin. The elderly person she was looking after asked her if he could take her home to be his private nurse because he was dying and couldn’t be without one. She had nothing else on her plate, and he was a very nice old man. They got married.

  At some point he realized that there was no reason for going on, and he took her hand and said, “Tell me—if I were not so rich, would you have been so kind to me?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Would you have married me?”

  “No.”

  So he said, “You’re the most honest girl in the whole world. For that, you will inherit everything.”

  So the richest widow in Europe hit Spain, married the most eligible man in Europe, the Marquis de Portago—the King of Spain’s godson—gave birth to Fon, the King of Spain’s namesake, who later married, as I’ve already told you…look here, you mustn’t let me repeat myself!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  In my leisure time I appear rather…impractical. But I do think that I’ve made a practical woman out of myself. You can’t have worked the number of years I have, through hell and high water, without being basically practical.

  A man has a disciplined, clear mind and a sense of language. When he writes a business letter, for instance, it’s with total authority—there can’t be a comma wrong or a semicolon wrong or a word with two sides to it. Whereas a woman…I had to learn discipline. And it was men—particularly Reed Vreeland—who taught it to me.

  By the time I moved back to America and went to work, I was quite well formed in the discipline department. Very few women had affected me. Carmel Snow, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, certainly had no effect on me when I arrived. In fact, in a curious way, I think she resented my taste. But I know I was always influenced by Elsie Mendl.

  Elsie had total discipline. You could see her discipline in the way she’d arrange flowers, in the way she’d plan a meal…in the way she did e
verything. Everything had a plan. She was very American in that way, but she also had a great understanding of the French eighteenth century, which was a very logical time for women.

  I adored her house at Versailles and the way everything smelled of lavender and the way her windows would be half-open when it was raining outside and the way she’d arranged her zoo of topiary animals just outside the windows, which was too charming…but it was all done with authority. She called a spade a spade.

  Elsie, naturally, had wonderful taste, like everyone I knew in Europe. Of course, one is born with good taste. It’s very hard to acquire. You can acquire the patina of taste. But what Elsie Mendl had was something else that’s particularly American—an appreciation of vulgarity. Vulgarity is a very important ingredient in life. I’m a great believer in vulgarity—if it’s got vitality. A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste—it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I’m against.

  What catches my eye in a window is the hideous stuff—the junk. Plastic ducks! This was why Reed would never go walking in any city with me. “If you’d occasionally stop in front of a window where there might be something…” he said. “But as you go straight to the ugliest things, I won’t walk with you unless we go straight to the park.”

  Do you know anyone why buys plaster poodles? A few years ago Jerry Zipkin met me in Palm Beach. Now Jerry Zipkin’s a good friend because he’s constructive. He’s destructive and constructive, and you know what that means. That means he pulls you apart—but then he puts you back together again better. I’ll give you an example. I probably hadn’t been in Palm Beach in thirty years. When I arrived Jerry said, “May I have the honor of taking you down Worth Avenue?” Well, I had a vista ahead that I could not have imagined! We saw plaster poodles, painted pink—quite a beautiful pink, actually, like a Du Barry rose—and we saw picture frames with plaster angels, painted pink, of course, and mirrors and shells. On the right side, the left side, the poodles, the angels. Everything was either plaster or jewelry—not jewels but jewelry. Apparently, they can’t keep the poodles in stock—not possibly. It was the goddamnedest thing. Endless. Forever. Who buys them? I was alarmed. “Jerry,” I said, “let’s stop this. I think I’ve got the hang of it. Don’t you think we’ve had Worth Avenue?”