Bergdorf Blondes

by Plum Sykes

  “Julie, you’re nuts,” I said. “Why have you started stealing again?”

  “Because, duh, I wanted that Hermès Birkin, you know the new ostrich one in baby pink with the white trim? I felt so depressed not having it,” she said, all faux innocence.

  “Why didn’t you just buy it? You could totally afford it.”

  “You can’t ‘just buy’ a Birkin! There’s a three-year wait list, unless you’re Renée Zellweger, and even then you might not get one. I’m already on the wait list anyway for the baby blue suede and it’s killing me.”

  “But Julie, it’s stealing and you’re kind of stealing from yourself.”

  “Isn’t that neat!”

  “You’ve got to stop. You’re going to be all over the newspapers.”

  “Isn’t it great?”

  Julie and I must have been there for at least an hour before Julie’s lawyer appeared and told us that he had managed to get the police to drop the charges. He’d told them that Julie always intended to buy the goods, she just never usually pays in the store, the bills go straight to her apartment. This was simply an embarrassing mix-up.

  Julie was really very cheerful about the whole episode. She seemed almost reluctant to finally leave the precinct that night. Clearly she had loved the attention she got from the cops. She had charmed Detective Owen—who was obviously 100 percent in love with her the minute he arrested her—into letting her call in hair and makeup for the mug shot. I guess she was right to treat it like a fashion shoot. I mean, that picture could be reproduced for years to come.

  The media went a bit nuts about Julie after the arrest. When she left The Pierre (where Daddy had generously bought Julie the other corner apartment) the next morning to go to the gym, she was faced by hordes of photographers. Julie ran back inside and telephoned me, wailing, “Oh my god! They’re all out there! Paparazzi, press, and they got my picture! Ugh! I can’t handle it.”

  Julie was crying hysterically, but this happens all the time so no one did anything dramatic like call 911 or anything. I told her that no one would look at the pictures, or even remember what had happened the next day. Really, it didn’t matter if she was all over the papers.

  “It’s not being in the papers that I mind,” she moaned, “it’s that they got me in sweatpants! I can never be seen on the corner of Madison and Seventy-sixth Street again! Please come over?”

  Sometimes, when Julie says things like that, I think, well, it’s lucky she’s my best friend because if she wasn’t I wouldn’t like her at all.

  When I arrived at her apartment, the housekeeper sent me straight through to Julie. Hair and makeup were on standby, hovering in terrified silence in the bedroom, which is painted pale jade, Julie’s favorite color. Two antique Chinese mother-of-pearl chests sit on either side of the fireplace. The upholstered sleigh bed is an heirloom from Julie’s grandmother. Julie won’t get into it unless it’s just been made with sheets monogrammed with her initials in pale pistachio silk. I found Julie red-faced in the dressing room, frantically raking through the closets. As fast as she tossed clothes out and into a mountainous pile on the thick white rug, her maid put them back in the closet, so that the pile never increased or decreased significantly. Finally Julie dug out an understated black Chanel dress of her mother’s, kitten heels, and very large sunglasses. She was totally channeling CBK, as usual. An hour later, blown out and made up beyond belief, she strolled out of The Pierre, a confident smile on her face, and gave an interview to the waiting press in which she explained about the “mix-up.”

  The next Sunday a fabulously glamorous picture of Julie appeared on the cover of the New York Times Style section, with the headline BEAUTIFUL BERGDORF INNOCENT and an accompanying article by the Times’s fashion critic. Julie was thrilled. So was her dad. She called me the following Monday to say that an antique bracelet had arrived from him with a note reading, “Thank you darling daughter. D.”

  “He’s pleased?” I asked.

  “I’m so happy,” said Julie. “I’ve never been in Dad’s good books like this before. All that shoplifting heiress stuff, it’s been like the greatest PR for the store; sales have gone through the roof, especially of the sunglasses I was wearing. He’s recommended the board make me marketing director. I just hope I don’t have to work too hard.”

  After that, Julie couldn’t go anywhere without having her picture taken, all in the cause, she said, of raising Bergdorf’s profile, which she did, along with her own. She thought the publicity was very good for her self-esteem and was helping with her issues—issues being the hip term for the glamorous psychological problems of the type that afflict those living in New York and Los Angeles.

  Julie has issues with the receptionist at Bliss Spa who won’t book her vitamin C skin injections with Si-monetta, the top facialist there. She is encouraged by her doctors to explore her “childhood issues” and is “in a lot of pain” over the fact that her parents used to fly her business class to Gstaad every Christmas, when everyone else’s parents flew their kids first. Naturally, she has a catalog of “food issues” and once followed Dr. Perricone’s Wrinkle Cure Diet, which led to her acquiring “issues with potatoes and wheat.” She has issues about having too much money and she has issues about not having as much money as some of the other Park Avenue Princesses. She previously had issues about being a Jewish WASP, which she recovered from when her licensed psychologist told her that Gwyneth Paltrow also suffered from this affliction, being the product of a Jewish father and WASPy mother. After this issue was resolved, Julie then got another issue about her psychologist charging her $250 for information she could have gotten from Vanity Fair at a cost of $3.50, which, it transpired, was the place where the licensed psychologist learned of Gwyneth’s ethnic roots. When anyone disagrees with Julie it means they have issues, and when Julie disagrees with her shrink it’s because he’s the one with the real issues.

  When I once suggested to Julie that maybe her issues would eventually be resolved she replied, “God, I hope not. I’d be so uninteresting if I was just rich and not screwed up about it.” Without her issues, she said, “I’d be a personality-free zone.”

  Luckily it’s très chic to be neurotic in New York, which means that Julie and I fit in perfectly.

  You can imagine Julie’s reaction to the e-mail about the glaring difference between our kind of Chloé jeans happiness and Jolene’s and K.K.’s and Cari’s fiancé happiness. We were having brunch a few days later at Joe’s, this super-unhealthy diner on the corner of Sullivan and Houston. Julie was way overdressed in that tiny new Mendel mink jacket that everyone’s gone nuts about. But then Park Avenue Princesses overdress for everything, even ordering in. I would too if I had that many new clothes every week. She was basking in her shoplifting triumph but frowned when I reminded her about Mimi’s shower.

  “Are you trying to give me another issue? Eew! How could you! It’s beyond!” she cried tearfully.

  “How could I what?” I said, pouring maple syrup onto a silver dollar pancake.

  “E-mail me that whole thing about, like, everyone but me having a fiancé. It’s so unfair. I’m happy but I’m not beyond happy like K.K. and Jolene. You’ve got to be in love for that.”

  “You don’t have to be in love to be happy,” I said.

  “You only think that because you’ve never been in love. God, I feel so unhappy and so un-chic! I heard they all look amazing now that they’re engaged.”

  Underneath all the issues and the drama and the clothes and the vitamin C injections, Julie is hopelessly romantic. She claims to have been in love more than fifty-four times. She started young—acquiring her first boyfriend at seven—“but that was before the oral sex epidemic hit,” she always says. She actually believes love songs. Like she really does think that love lifts you up where you belong and seriously fell for the Beatles’ crazy idea that all you need is love. Most of her love-type problems have been caused by Dolly Parton, who inspired her so much with “I Will Always Love
You” that Julie says she genuinely loves all her exes, “even the ones I really hate,” which her shrink says is a “huge issue.” She thinks “Heartbreak Hotel” refers to the Four Seasons Hotel on Fifty-seventh Street where she checks in every time she rows with a boyfriend. If I could afford a suite at that divine place, I’d break up with a man every two weeks, too. Julie was convinced the only way she could be happy was to be in love and have a fiancé on her arm like everyone else.

  “I have all the Vuitton bags Marc Jacobs ever made, but what’s the point if my other arm doesn’t have a fiancé supporting it? And look!” she gasped, pointing at my legs under the table. “You’re wearing fishnets! Are fishnets in, too? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  Julie flopped her head dramatically onto the table and wiped her tears on her mink, which I thought was a really spoiled princessy way to behave, but this is totally in keeping with her personality so I shouldn’t be too shocked, I suppose. After a few minutes she calmed down and her face suddenly lit up. Julie’s mood swings are so unpredictable, sometimes I think she’s schizophrenic.

  “I’ve got an idea. Let’s go fishnet-stocking and fiancé shopping together!” she said excitedly.

  Julie honestly thinks fiancés are as easy to come by as hose.

  “Julie, why on earth would you want to get married now?” I said.

  “Eew! I don’t. I said I wanted a fiancé! I’m not necessarily going to marry him right away. Ooh, I can hardly wait. We are going Prospective Husband hunting,” she continued.

  “We?!” I exclaimed. “Isn’t America supposed to be a modern country where career girls don’t need things like fiancés?”

  “Everyone wants to fall in love eventually. Fiancés are so glam! Tell me this, who was CBK before JFK Jr.?”

  “Julie, you can’t get engaged just to look glamorous, that would be selfish,” I said.

  “Really?” exclaimed Julie, her face growing brighter. (Every week Julie’s therapist tells her she’ll be happier if she’s more selfish, not less. Judging by most people’s behavior, everyone’s therapist in New York must be saying this.) “I’m so excited! Okay, I gotta go home and not eat. I’m putting on weight just looking at the napkins in this place,” said Julie.

  Before she left, Julie made me promise to help her out with her “PH campaign”—her way of referring to the Prospective Husband hunt. She would acquire the fiancé just as easily as the fishnet stockings. I was sure of it. Julie is a shining example of the Park Avenue Princess ethic at work. She doesn’t let anything stand in her way.

  Julie headed back uptown and I rushed off to a work appointment. God, I thought in the cab, Julie’s PH hunt could be stressful. Sometimes the perfect party-girl life is as exhausting as boot camp. Sometimes, I thought, I could be doing something less exhausting, like living the perfect non-party-girl life somewhere relaxing like the British countryside. Okay, so I wouldn’t have any nice shoes, but there are other benefits to living in a Manolo-free zone. None came to mind right away, but I was sure I would think of something positive.

  Then Mom called.

  2

  I let voice mail pick up.

  The sound of Mom’s voice always reminds me that there are very good reasons why I am living the party-girl life here, and not living the non-party-girl life over there.

  Four reasons to leave England, in ascending order of importance:

  1. Mom

  Migraine-prone. Migraines caused by such terrifying prospects as driving into multi-story carpark at Heathrow Airport; taking a holiday abroad because she might have to drive into multi-story carpark to get plane because planes leave from airports, which generally include multi-story carparks; remembering she’s an American; sending a fax; sending a postcard; thinking about the idea of learning how to send an e-mail; living at our house in rural Northamptonshire; living in London. In other words, everything.

  The result is that Mom, who always calls herself “Mummy, because it’s more British,” is obsessed with controlling her only daughter’s life. A Professional Mom and a stunningly unembarrassed snob, she’s fixated on the British aristocracy, their interior decorating style, and the brand of Wellington boots they wear (Le Chameau, leather lined). Her ambition was to marry me off to someone British and aristocratic. (A career wasn’t part of her plan, but it was part of mine.) The ideal candidate was “the Boy Next Door,” the son of the local peer, the Earl of Swyre. Julie could never understand why I hated Mom’s idea so much. She always says she’d do anything to marry a guy with an English castle. But then, she has no idea how damp they get in winter.

  Our house sits on the border of the twenty-five-thousand-acre estate of Swyre Castle. “Next door” for the English upper classes means a twenty-minute drive. Ever since I can remember, every time we motored by the castle gates Mom would exclaim, as though she’d just that minute thought of it, “Little Earl is just your age! He’s the most eligible man in Northamptonshire!” (She was describing our six-year-old neighbor, whom I’d never actually met.)

  “Mom, I’m five and a half. You have to be sixteen to get married,” I said.

  “Start young! You are going to be the most beautiful girl and you are going to marry Little Earl next door and live in the pretty castle, which is much grander than any of your relations’ castles.”

  “Mom—”

  “It’s ‘Mummy.’ Stop saying ‘Mom’ and talking in that unflattering American accent or no one will ever marry you.”

  My accent was a replica of Mom’s. I couldn’t change it, just like she couldn’t. The difference was, I didn’t want to. I wanted a more American accent, even at five and a half.

  “Mummy, why do you always say that all our relations live in castles when only one of them does?”

  “Because the others died, darling.”

  “When?”

  “Very recently, in the Wars of the Roses.”

  One of our relations did have a castle near Aberdeen. We visited the Hon. William Courtenay, my father’s aging great-uncle, every Christmas. His grandsons, Archie and Ralph (pronounced, inexplicably, “Rafe” in England), were also on Mom’s shortlist of future husbands, their considerable inheritances making up for their lack of titles.

  Mom told me that everyone in America wished they got to go to a real Scottish castle for Christmas vacation. I never quite believed her. I mean, who wants to spend five days in a house colder than the North Pole when they could be at Disney World? After six arctic Christmases I developed a phobia of country houses that I doubt will ever leave me. Most of the time I fantasized about being Jewish so we could forget the whole Christmas thing altogether.

  Mom’s marital ambitions for me came up in almost every childhood conversation I can remember, the way other parents go on at their kids about getting into college or not taking drugs. I remember being about ten years old when we had a very tense talk over breakfast.

  “Darling, when are you going to go round to Swyre Castle and have tea with Little Earl? I hear he’s very handsome. He’d fall in love with you if he met you,” said Mom.

  “Mom, you know that no one’s seen the Swyres since Daddy sold the Earl of Swyre those chairs,” I replied.

  “Sshhh!!! All that was a long time ago. I’m sure the Earl and Countess have forgotten all about it.”

  “Anyway, Mom, everyone says they’ve moved away. No one’s seen them for years,” I said, exasperated.

  “Well, I’m sure they visit! How could anyone abandon a house that beautiful? That dome! Those Capability Brown grounds. Next time they’re here let’s call…”

  “Can we not, please?” I replied, even though I was secretly a little curious about the castle and its owners.

  Mom was in complete denial about two rather significant facts: first, that the Swyres had divorced about four years before—the mysterious Countess was famous for her affairs—and the Earl and his little boy seemed to have vanished; second, that ever since my father, who was always chasing a new “bargain,” sold the Earl
four Chippendale chairs that turned out to be fakes, the two families had been on non-speaks. The Chair Affair—as it was dubbed by the local newspaper—was a typical English village feud destined never to be resolved. Although the chairs were returned, and my father repaid the money and apologized in writing to the furious Earl, saying that he had been duped by his suppliers, the Earl refused to believe him. He let it be known that he distrusted Dad and wanted nothing to do with him. The Countess, naturally, sided with her husband. Mom, naturally, sided with Dad. Everyone in the village, naturally, sided with the Swyres, as was tradition, thereby increasing their chances of being invited to the big house for dinner.

  Mom, desperate to be friends with them, tried to make amends with the Swyres. However, when she invited them to her annual summer drinks party, they declined. When Christmas came around, there was no invitation to the castle for Boxing Day lunch. At church, the Countess publicly snubbed Mom by moving pews when Mom sat at the end of hers.

  Mom found the whole affair so socially embarrassing that she eventually started pretending it had never happened. Mom always hoped everything would be forgotten, but the village thrived on the story and wouldn’t let it go. Honestly, in small English villages people have lifelong feuds over the dumbest stuff, like the size of their cabbages, or what kind of tree their neighbors planted on the boundary (oaks are acceptable, conifers will precipitate legal proceedings). It’s tradition. I think it keeps them going through the long winter nights.

  After the divorce, the castle was run as a conference center, although the family kept a wing for themselves. The Earl was rumored to occasionally appear, alone, and then vanish.

  The older I got, the more Mom’s attitudes annoyed me. When I said, “I’m going to have a career and marry for love, if I do. You married Dad for love,” she replied, without missing a beat, “Exactly. Don’t do anything as silly as that.”