Conversations in the Raw

by Rex Reed

  “I have recently.”

  “Everyone has prejudices if you scratch deep enough, but who wants to scratch that deep? I don’t ask that much of people except that they be themselves.”

  “It’s because you’re a Capricorn,” said Julienne, yawning in the pink glow of dawn through the kitchen window.

  “You’re hard to believe, you’re so good,” I said.

  “Then don’t believe me. Be suspicious. But it’s my way of keeping peace with myself. I don’t claim any altruistic labels. My reasons are purely selfish. But I passed the point a long time ago when I would cry when somebody called me a nigger. It’s what’s ahead that counts.”

  A few nights later, The Great White Hope opened. One minute he was a great big sweaty bald-headed Sambo, howling, raging, sobbing. The next minute he was a dandy, all gold teeth and double-breasted suits and carnation boutonnieres, high-kicking like a Cotton Club Stepin’ Fetchit. He was king of the world, and you could hear the bravos all the way over to Eighth Avenue. When the cheers died down, everybody gathered downstairs in the lounge. There were beautiful black women. Beautiful white women. And a beehive of forgotten husbands and boy friends of both races, sipping hot Scotch and waters in plastic cups while the beautiful women waited and swooned over the man who didn’t want to be a star.

  His Dad smiled shyly in a corner. “I’m very proud—he’s—well—yes, proud.”

  “He’s the end,” said a slinky redhead in a $35 copy of a last year’s Pucci.

  “Goodbye Sidney Poitier,” said a man with a Nazi cross, who looked like a Black Muslim.

  Julienne looked bright as a Jell-o salad in a silver and lavender chiffon sari she made on her own sewing machine.

  “I’ve seen it 12 times and I’ve never seen it like tonight. Jimmy went up like a rocket and stayed up there all night. People cried and the critics stayed through the applause and everything. They didn’t even run up the aisles to get out.”

  “I got news,” said a matronly blonde, flapping through the crowd, “my maid is watching TV and Channel 5 said it was ‘a play all America should see.’”

  “What about the rest of the world?” sneered the Black Muslim.

  Applause. And in the middle of the noise, there he was, in a black suit, black turtleneck sweater and a grin as wide as a watermelon slice. He tried to say a few words, but you couldn’t hear him. It was clear from the grin “The Problem” was not on his mind. In fact, no problems were. Then they swept him away in a tide of adoration and all you could see was his bald head shining. Black as a panther in the jungle night. Still too good to believe. “Be suspicious,” he had warned. But nobody was listening.

  China Machado

  China Machado!

  The name sounds like an endearment drawled mysteriously through a vapor of pomegranate incense in an old Veronica Lake Orient Express spy movie. Yet the girl who fits it has probably never even heard of Veronica Lake. Too busy for trivia. One of the busiest career girls, in fact, in the fashion world. Busy, interesting, powerful, and revolutionary. As one of the senior editors of Harper’s Bazaar, her influence over what every woman wears is inestimable. Haute couture designers woo her. Models seek her advice (She’s the only ex-model fashion editor in the business and to them she represents “making it”). Photographers send her expensive gifts (They’ll do anything to get into the pages of Harper’s Bazaar). She swears she never reads Women’s Wear Daily, yet her close friends on the Bazaar staff insist she wasn’t at all unhappy when its pages recently called her “the Buddha high priestess of Seventh Avenue.” China Machado is a name that is at once feared and revered. “We have to cater to her,” says one top designer, “because whether we like it or not, she’s God in this business. If she likes your work, she can make you a star. If she doesn’t, one word from her memo pad can kill you in the magazines.” And this from one of the top editors of Vogue: “China is an absolute goddess. She’s the epitome of what I tell my editors they should look like, act like and be like. Of course, you won’t print my name, will you? Vogue would kill me for deifying the competition.”

  The girl-woman they’re all talking about doesn’t look like a demagogue at all. That is, if you’re lucky enough to get close enough for a good look. In a business where being seen in Adolfo harem pants or photographed leaving El Morocco in a Jean Barthé hat and Yves St. Laurent see-through lace pajamas is what the business is all about, China embroiders her net of mystery like an elusive butterfly. It is next to impossible to schedule an interview. “You have to see me in action,” she says. And she’s right. But one week she’s lunching at the White House, the next week she’s off to some island hideaway off the coast of Mazatlan. A Friday afternoon coffee date is canceled by a harassed secretary: “China’s in Mexico City photographing the Olympics.” A Wednesday morning sketch appointment is off because “Darling, I have to catch the Emeric Partos fun-fur show at Bergdorf’s. They’re doing something absolutely wild in beige broadtail mink walking suits.”

  So come along and catch her quick, before the Friday morning caterpillar turns back into a weekend butterfly. If it reads like a movie about the fashion industry, just remember it also plays like one. The fashion industry and all the glamour you see between the glossy covers of Harper’s Bazaar is a movie more bizarre than anything MGM ever turned out. And China is the star.

  SCENE ONE: China’s office at Harper’s Bazaar. A map of Vietnam covers the door. The room is small and dirty, something you’d never expect a fashion magazine office to be. It overlooks Madison Avenue, with one soot-covered silent air-conditioner braced in the window. Other editors have lacquered their offices with decorator colors—lavenders and lemons, creamy beiges and delicious pinks—like the fruit-flavored lipsticks gleaming from the pages of slick magazines. China’s office is drab. No time for such nonsense. Boxes of accessories—bracelets, earrings, gloves—sit idly on the windowsill. Walls of photographs beam down in black-and-white coldness—layouts for future issues, men in motorcycle glasses, etc. China bombs in, looking like a glamorous cobra, eyes narrowed and slanted like slivers of almonds, arms lithe and flying, sipping Chock Full O’Nuts coffee in a paper cup, wearing a brown turtleneck sweater, a plaid mini-skirt and a man’s wrist watch with a black leather band. “I go through stages of dressing,” she explains. “I feel like sweaters this week, so I’ll probably wear nothing else. We’re beginning a new issue this morning, so you can see everything for the first time right along with us.”

  In comes Hiro, the Japanese fashion photographer who is one of the centrifugal forces behind those revolutionary fashion pages you see in Bazaar. Hiro is small and round-faced, with a slash of straight raven-black hair jetting across alert and inquisitive eyes that peer out from a pair of enormous black horn-rimmed glasses. China works with all the top fashion photographers, but it is clear almost instantly that Hiro is her favorite. In comes a teenage model in a Luba mini-raincoat. Hiro isn’t too happy about it. “I want white. I see white.” In comes a girl who looks like a concentration camp survivor (“Models are getting skinnier every year,” sighs China) in a white silk John Moore evening gown. “May I see the side?” instructs Hiro. “Now the profile? The back? It has a long draped back. Is Lawrence of Arabia coming back this year? Every year we get either Lawrence of Arabia or Dr. Zhivago.” Gwen Randolph, Bazaar’s fashion director, says “Russia’s always good.”

  China hands Hiro some photographs of models who will be considered for the layout. “I know this one, she’s a young Jean Shrimpton type.” “She’ll do. I don’t know this other one,” says Hiro, flipping through the photos and résumés of hopeful models. “I have three girls in mind I want to use. Book them on Wednesday and the rest of the week will be tentative.”

  By now several of China’s associate editors are standing in the room, sizing up the clothes on the showroom models. “Where’s our leader?” asks one, referring to Nancy White, Bazaar’s editor-in-chief. “Our leader is shopping,” says China. There are eight major editors
in charge of such departments as accessories, shoes, beauty, etc. China is the senior fashion editor, in charge of haute couture and millinery. This means she must select the fashions shown in the pages of Bazaar, choose and book the models and photographers, arrange shootings, and dress the pages. The other editors work around her, decorating her fashions with the right jewelry, shoes, handbags, etc. China must also play den mother to photographers like Hiro, who often have their own creative ideas. “They want me to go underwater,” he pouts. “I won’t go underwater.”

  In comes another girl in a lemon-yellow John Moore with a hood and cape. “You have nothing graphic this month,” announces Hiro. Three women fly at the model trying to make her look more graphic, while China answers some of the phone messages stacked on her desk. “I need angles, flaps, sides, backs,” says Hiro. “I knew I should’ve done this in Paris.” “When you take a crew to Paris,” says China, “you have to do it like reportage. Here, we can have some choice.” Then she turns to me: “You see, the problem is we work so far ahead of schedule the designers can’t keep up with us. Now we’re photographing for spring and most of them have just finished summer and winter collections. Donald Brooks is in Hollywood, Bill Blass has only two people working in his showroom, Geoffrey Beene is out of town. They’re on holiday and we’re ready to work. Sometimes we have to make up the designs and invent the clothes ourselves. Then we ask the designers to make them up. I know them all well, so they don’t mind.” “Also,” adds Hiro, “they get the credit. They all want to be in Bazaar.”

  In comes a model in a navy blue and white two-piece Dior. “This is chic, what someone might buy,” says China, touching the tip of her pretty nose with a crisp yellow pencil. “We’ve got to stop using just crazy clothes. We also have one other possibility—a Rudi Gernreich.” “Probably with four bosoms, two in front, two in back,” groans Hiro. China laughs. “I’ll think about that one and tell you later.” In comes a girl in a Mylar plastic evening dress that looks like a banana split that just exploded. Hiro: “That looks like seaweed.” China: “There are two more things coming—a Dior on its way over with feathers and a culotte suit by Simonelli.” China phones Geoffrey Beene long distance in a moment of desperation. “OK, Geoffrey, have a nice weekend—you’re too harassed now—I’ll talk to you on Monday.”

  China is frantic with no clothes Hiro wants to photograph. “We’ve got to think of a way to make this issue more interesting without being too crazy. Maybe we could use muslin hats or clocks on the legs. Rudi Gernreich and Oscar de la Renta are both designing special clothes for us, so maybe they’ll come up with something!” “How do you feel about that first raincoat, Hiro?” asks the sportswear editor. “NO!” “No!” repeats China, “then that’s out.” It becomes increasingly more apparent by the minute that the photographer influence exerts an enormous pressure over the magazine. China’s success is partly due to her dedication to the whims of the men who illustrate her pages. She knows them all and, unlike most fashion editors who were never models themselves, she knows what they can do for clothes, how they can make them zip right off the page in a good layout. “It’s a great experience to work with a great photographer. He inspires me to be more creative, and teaches how to look at a dress in a completely different way.”

  She also knows when to keep them in line. “I want evening dresses because they blend in better with my photographic concept,” says Hiro. “Mrs. White doesn’t want evening clothes this month. They won’t buy evening dresses in April,” says China flatly. Out comes a Simonelli culotte suit in boat-deck blue. Hiro: “I can’t have any fun with that!” China: “Fun!! We’re not here to have fun!” The other editors circle the suit. “I hate those buckles. They’re tacky.” “Those shoes will have to go, even if they are Gucci.” “We could re-do the belt and give her some snake gloves. Snake is in again.” “Maybe some shoulder pads, so she looks like a parachute.” Hiro: “I’d like to make them all look like Indians with papooses on their backs. I saw a girl walking in Central Park yesterday with a red miniskirt and a baby on her back and it looked great!”

  Hiro explains his concept for the spring issue. “It will be a computerized photographic essay showing the point of view of a fashion design from three different sides, all done by remote control radio. I want faces in back of the head for a three-dimensional effect.” China pulls her hair. “Do you hear right? Did I hear what he’s saying? How can I get a face in back of a girl’s head?” “We could use masks,” says the accessories editor. “I am a creative man,” yells Hiro. “I refuse to photograph Sears, Roebuck catalogue pictures! Everything is geared toward business here!” “It’s not that,” soothes China, “we have to do things that will sell.” Hiro leaps from his chair in a burst of inspiration. “I see nuns! Wrap all of the girls’ heads in gauze and put motorcycle goggles on them . . .”

  SCENE TWO: Monday. China relaxes over lunch. She has just returned from a five-mile hike through the wholesale showrooms on Seventh Avenue, a futile search for fashions which has turned up nothing interesting. “I’ve covered all the design houses and nobody has anything new to show me. We’ll just have to jazz up the clothes we have and make them look more interesting with accessories. Our budget is nil. Hiro and I traveled all over the world once with five people on a budget of $2,000. Sharing a bath, staying in horrible hotels. You can’t imagine what we go through. Bazaar knows that I always tell the truth about everything, so you can print anything I tell you. I will be absolutely honest. Every girl who comes out of college wants a job with a fashion magazine, but it is not a glamorous, exciting business all the time. I love it, or I wouldn’t be here, but it is also very hard work. Salaries are starvation wages. You start out at about $60 or $70 a week as a secretary or an assistant of some kind. The most you ever work up to is an average salary of $120 a week at the top. I don’t know a single fashion editor who lives on her salary alone. Most of them have rich families and they already dress well because they can afford it, or they have husbands and don’t need to work. Also, it is not a good job for romance. I would say that 75 percent of the fashion designers are homosexual, and although all of the Bazaar photographers are heterosexual, most of them are already married. But fashion work also has its advantages. It is a very feminine job, which can make you really feel like a woman. It’s like playing paper dolls, where you dress your doll, comb her hair and make her look beautiful all the time. You get all your clothes wholesale, you get to travel everywhere and meet everyone. So a fashion job does have its advantages too. But it is not a job to get rich quick in.”

  The more you’re around China the more you’re convinced she’s the right girl for the job. She has beauty, wit, charm, intelligence, a super figure that never counts calories, and the stamina of 20 farmhands. She has traveled to Brazil, Africa, India, Spain and Europe with 27 pieces of luggage, two models and a photographer on a bread-and-water budget. She lived for a week in Russia on caviar and goat’s milk. She was the last person to ever photograph the women’s quarters in the Sultan’s palace in Zanzibar, a week before the revolution. To photograph an emerald necklace once, she bribed the bellboys of a hotel in South America to catch lizards, then placed them on silver paper around the necklace inside a shoe box. It became one of Bazaar’s most talked-about pages. She’s tuned in to everything. Separated from French actor-photographer Martin La Salle, she has two daughters—Blanche, 8, and Manuela, 5. She attends off-Broadway plays like The Beard, hangs out in Salvation and the Electric Circus, avoids expensive restaurants and fashionable watering holes, and usually ends up grabbing a steak at Casey’s in Greenwich Village or eating Chinese food at Pearl’s on West 48th Street. She owns a $200 jukebox that plays her own favorite top 40 hits, and lives like a Eurasian princess in an elegant, high-ceilinged, 11-room palatia in a 58-year-old building on Central Park West. Obviously she doesn’t live this well, with a car and two maids and a luxury apartment and a country home on Long Island, on her salary alone. As one of the most sought-after fashion exp
erts in America, China has been able to triple her income with outside fashion consultant jobs in television. She changed the whole look of TV commercials by organizing the famous Bell Telephone spot in which all the pages of Harper’s Bazaar came to life, filmed by the same photographers who had shot the still pages. Instead of scolding her for making money on the side, Bazaar was so thrilled it has now made China head of its new film division, which will utilize her services and advice in movies, still photography, ads and commercials. Through determination and hard work, she has made fashion pay off. “I wasn’t one of those rich girls out of college with family connections,” she says. “I started out as a workhorse and I had to think of a way to make it pay off.”

  China was born in Shanghai; her mother was Siamese and her father was a Portuguese diplomat who also dabbled in the import-export business. As a child, she lived in Argentina and Lima, Peru. Already she was on her way to becoming a jet-set bonne vivante. When she was 17, she went to Paris to study art, instead ended up singing in a nightclub and acting in B movies. The directoress of Balenciaga met her at a cocktail party and saw modeling possibilities in her unusual non-Caucasian beauty. For two years she was Givenchy’s top model in Europe. Then, in 1958, she came to America for the first time. She arrived at 8 a.m. By 11, she was in the office of Diana Vreeland, who was then the fashion director of Harper’s Bazaar. Mrs. Vreeland had been on the scene for 27 years, but she had never seen anything like China Machado. By sunset, she had introduced her to Richard Avedon, who made her a super-star. China became the highest paid model in the world. Avedon called her a “Barbarian Beauty” and photographed her on blocks of ice and snow in a frozen lake in Canada in snow leopard, Mongolian lamb and white fur Eskimo parkas. The photos became so famous they are now in photography collections. When Diana Vreeland went to Vogue in 1962, China became the first model to ever join the editorial staff of Bazaar. She’s been there ever since.