Walking with the Muses

by Pat Cleveland

  The doctors told my mother that I needed an operation, but the chances of full recovery were slim. I flat-out refused. No way was I going to let them muck around with my spine. If something went wrong—even something small—I could end up paralyzed for the rest of my life. Instead, I spent the next six months of my life in the hospital in one of two places: my bed (where I was usually hooked up to that contraption, known as traction) or my wheelchair. Every day I’d watch other people who were in the same boat summon every ounce of strength they had in an effort to regain movement in their limbs.

  The first day I tried to take a step out of the wheelchair, I fell and wouldn’t let anyone pick me up. Two boys about my age with whom I’d become friendly—they were both paralyzed and would never walk again—saw me crying and wheeled over and said, “You can do it, you have a chance.” All I remember is looking at their legs from my position on the floor and seeing them smile at me. That motivated me to pull myself up by my arms onto nearby exercise bars. I mustered all my strength to bring my legs along, but they felt like deadweights. Ten steps might as well have been ten miles. All I could do was sob. When I realized that my sobbing was holding me back, sapping my strength, I concentrated all my energy into a ball inside my head—my head actually ached from the effort—and pictured myself walking. My body started to feel lighter and lighter, and I heard the two boys cheering me on. By the time I managed to pull myself to the end of that length of carpet, I knew that I would walk someday. But I didn’t know how or when.

  Over my many months in the hospital, I got to know other patients; all of us acted as one another’s pep squad. Eventually, I could take a few steps with the help of a cane. What a gift, simply to be able to walk a few tiny steps! I kept refusing the operation, and when I left the hospital and returned home, my cousin, a Jehovah’s Witness, gave me the name of her chiropractor, whom she swore by. This was in the days when everyone thought chiropractors were quacks, but I’m forever grateful to this one. The adjustments he did on my back worked wonders.

  Slowly, I got stronger and straighter. And then there I was again, walking around the living room with a book on my head, just as I had as a kid. Next, I tried a few tentative dance moves. Within three months, I was actually dancing—very carefully, back brace firmly in place—around the apartment. I wasn’t pain-free, not by a long shot. It would be years before I could say that, and even after the pain was mostly gone, it would occasionally return out of nowhere—on the runway, in the shower, at a fitting—and I’d be sidelined temporarily.

  But I knew I was healed.

  chapter 22

  OVER THE RAINBOW

  Getting dressed with the help of the master of color, Stephen Burrows, at his apartment on East Seventh Street, 1970.

  Courtesy of Charles Tracy.

  Mostly recovered, I went back to go-sees. Now, at least, I’d graduated to some A-list photographers, thanks to my relationship with Vogue and Diana Vreeland. Ford got me an official go-see with Avedon, though they did it reluctantly. So there I sat, in the same reception room from which I’d been ejected, in front of a different receptionist, who quickly but politely flipped through my portfolio and said she’d keep my name on file. Off I went to my next appointment, with Irving Penn. The same thing happened there. On to Bert Stern’s studio and the same thing. I’d leave feeling pleased, a name checked off my list with a note to follow up in the next week. Only in the evenings did I give in to feeling hungry, demoralized, and beat.

  One of the photographers I went to see was a protégé of Hugh Bell’s named Anthony Barboza. Tony was a hip guy who loved Rasta music, had lots of opinions, and was all about black power. His studio was hung with his photographs of exotic-looking black women like Pat Evans, who became known for her clean-shaven head, Joyce Walker, Arlene Hawkins, Barbara Cheeseborough, and Carol Hobbs. And now he wanted to photograph me! I went to see him several times because he wasn’t sure I was right for the work he was doing. Tony was helping develop a new magazine called Essence—it was going to be the first glossy fashion, beauty, and lifestyle publication for black women—and he wanted it to make a strong statement. He wasn’t convinced that I fit in with its mission. He would kid around, saying, “I only photograph black girls” or “You’re not black enough.” That hurt my feelings. I just wanted to be photographed no matter what color I was, though I understood what he was getting at. I’d worked for Ebony and Jet, the only successful magazines for black people at the time. But I also came from Vogue. These represented two different cultures; they were like different sides of the railroad tracks, and I kept crossing over from one to the other. In the end, Tony didn’t use me.

  My career was my first priority now, even though Matthew had come back to town and wanted to see me as much as possible. I’d book him for late Saturday or Sunday afternoon, when all good people in the American fashion world were off having fabulous weekends in the country. I longed to do the same but was stuck in the city. (Believe it or not, New York in those days was a quiet town on Sundays.) When Monday came around, I was back pounding the pavement in single-minded pursuit of my goal. Nothing mattered but modeling.

  Then, through a relatively minor mistake, I got a lucky break that would change the course of my entire career. I was booked to do a Vogue run-through from five-thirty to six-thirty P.M. After a day of go-sees, I went to the Graybar Building. Just being at Vogue’s offices did me a world of good; I mean, what could be better than beautiful clothes and smart people who call you “darling” and “dearest”? And when Mrs. Vreeland liked a look I was modeling, it was like oxygen itself.

  I bumped into Carrie Donovan as I was leaving that day. She was still busy finding new talents for her “Vogue’s Own” pages, and her scouts were always on the lookout. The mix-up came when one of her scouts thought I was someone else and scheduled me to meet a new designer at Henri Bendel’s studio who needed a fitting model.

  When I got to Bendel’s, I took the elevator to the eighth floor, and it opened onto an enormous cutting room with scores of men cutting layers and layers of cloth on large tables. I’d never seen such a big cutting room; I could have stood there for hours, watching those guys snip fabric around the paper patterns, imagining the dresses they were making.

  A slightly built guy wearing a T-shirt with phallus-shaped appliqués of orange, pink, red, green, and turquoise approached me. “Are you looking for Mr. Burrows?”

  “I am,” I said.

  “You’ve come to the right place,” he said. “My name is Bobby Breslow; come on, I’ll take you to Stephen.” In a musical sort of cartoon voice, he yelled, “Steve! Someone’s here to see ya!” We walked toward a closed metal door. “Steve!” Bobby yelled again.

  I heard nothing beyond the whirring of the machines. Then: “Go away for a minute. I’m not ready.”

  “Steve! It’s just me. There’s a young lady to see you.” We waited for a few minutes, and Bobby rapped on the door again. It opened, and out poured a cloud of smoke and the sounds of Motown and R&B. The room was dark, with brightly colored drawings covering the walls. And there, amid a cluster of hanging flowering plants, he stood: Mr. Stephen Burrows, a beautiful African-American man of medium height whom I guessed to be around twenty-six, wearing fringed leather pants, an appliquéd T-shirt similar to Bobby’s, and silver mirrored sunglasses, something I’d never seen. He had a mustache and was smoking a very tiny rolled cigarette.

  “Bobby! Close the door!” he said, as if he had state secrets inside that had to be kept safe. “I don’t want the smoke to get out,” he said to me by way of explanation. “They don’t like the smoke here.”

  So I just stood, enveloped in smoke and incense, feeling as if I’d fallen into the den of a great wizard. “Are you Norma Jean?” Mr. Burrows asked.

  “No,” I said. “My name is Patricia Cleveland.”

  Mr. Burrows hesitated, and that was when I knew there’d been a mix-up. He took a last puff on his cigarette, then buried the tip in a pile of sand. “Well, Mi
ss Cleveland,” he said politely, “do you have time to try something on?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  His voice changed when he spoke to Bobby. “Let’s put Miss Cleveland in the lettuce,” he said sweetly, almost whispering.

  The lettuce? I thought. I have to wear lettuce?

  I remained quiet as Bobby, who seemed to be Mr. Burrows’s assistant, got a dress off the hanger for me to try on. “Here you go, Miss Cleveland,” he said, handing me a silk jersey dress with a hemline that looked like the round, feathery edges of several heads of lettuce. I’d never seen a hem so fine or delicate, and trust me, I’d sewn a lot of hems.

  “Show Miss Cleveland the screen, Bobby,” Mr. Burrows said.

  No one’s ever called me Miss Cleveland before, I thought as I went behind the screen to change. They must really think I’m a grown-up! I could hear them whispering: “She’s not the girl Carrie said she was sending. There must be some mistake. But she looks good, don’t you think, Hector?”

  A new voice, tinged with a Puerto Rican accent, piped up. “Right on, Steve, why not?”

  “You think we should use her today?” Bobby asked.

  “We should use her today,” said Stephen.

  I finished dressing and came out from behind the screen, and they stopped talking. The new guy, who must have been Hector, looked at me, put his hand over his heart, and said, “Oh my Gawd,” as if he’d seen an apparition. They all looked at me, dead silent. Then, simultaneously, they all said, “Oh my God!” and screamed with delight.

  “Look how she looks in that dress!” Mr. Burrows said. “It’s perfect! Perfect!” He picked up his cigarette and happily relit it.

  “Okay,” said Hector. “We’ve got our girl.”

  “We’d better get over there,” Mr. Burrows said, while I wondered where they had to get over to. “No, wait! Let’s put her in one more thing.”

  Bobby handed me a bright chartreuse top and a midi-skirt decorated with yellow appliqués and bands of suede in different colors. These two pieces felt so good on my body, it was as though I had found a perfect second skin.

  Mr. Burrows began winding a long ribbon of fabric snugly around my waist, and as he wrapped, the scent of his musk oil sent me into ecstasy. I think I was falling in love with this man. As he was finishing off the knot, I took a long look at his sketches. They were minimal, with thin, almost cartoonlike figures; they reminded me of my own drawings. (He must have felt something similar, because years later, he described meeting me as “having one of my sketches come off the page and walk straight toward me.”) I knew then that I’d found my master designer and that I’d never again have to design or sew another stitch of clothing, because he was doing it for me—flawlessly.

  “Steve, we gotta go,” said Bobby. “They’re in the park, waiting for us.”

  There I was, dressed in that skintight kelly-green midi-skirt with bands of color in buckskin and suede, and the chartreuse top. A couple of models I’d run into on go-sees entered the room, already dressed in Mr. Burrows’s creations—a girl named Deanna who was as white as porcelain and had the highest cheekbones I’d ever seen, and a boy named Bobby Rovetta. They were accompanied by a photographer named Charles Tracy (everyone called him by his last name), who was also dressed in Mr. Burrows’s designs. I’d never seen anything like it—this chic bunch of people, dressed in the best-looking clothes I’d ever seen. And I was part of it.

  We all walked out the front door of Bendel’s, past Buster the doorman, who, I was told, was seventy-eight years old and had been working at the store since he was sixteen, when horse-drawn carriages pulled up to the door and Fifty-Seventh Street was a residential area with townhouses. We walked to Central Park, and a passerby asked Tracy if we were with a circus. “No,” he said, “we’re from Stephen’s World.” It was true—that was actually the name of Mr. Burrows’s new boutique at Bendel’s, and we were wearing pieces from his first collection.

  We marched past the majestic Plaza Hotel and down a grassy green hill, over the little stone bridge that crossed the pond, toward a colorful new universe filled with young, beautiful people. It was as though I’d walked into a rainbow or the Land of Oz. I felt as if I’d finally arrived at my true home, the place I was really meant to be in. I was coming to life, and I felt beautiful for the first time. That was the effect Mr. Burrows’s clothes had on me. I’d put them on and feel like dancing.

  I met another of his friends, Renaud White, and then we posed under the tall trees, and Tracy snapped away—for Vogue! After the shoot in the park, we went back to Bendel’s studio, where Mr. Burrows dressed me in a few more outfits. When we finished, he gave me a jersey jacket to keep, and even took me to the store’s shoe department to pick out a pair he wanted me to wear—brown patent-leather wedges, a sort of variation on Buster Browns, with candy-striped shoelaces. The brand was Goody Two Shoes, and they were so tall that I got dizzy when I first walked in them because the floor seemed so far away. I strapped on those platforms and once again felt like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

  The next day I went up to Bendel’s again, and Mr. Burrows hired me as his fitting model. That meant he’d be making the clothes on me while I was wearing them. I felt like the luckiest girl in New York. From then on, I started going to his studio regularly. Stephen (we soon graduated to first names, though he still enjoyed calling me Miss Cleveland) was a master of color. When I watched the vibrantly hued cloth fly back and forth as he draped those jersey fabrics on the bias, it was like witnessing a magician at work.

  Stephen was unusually sensitive and respectful. I especially liked the way he’d apologize if he thought he’d stuck me with a pin, or the way he’d ask, “How does that feel?” when he was draping something on me. The studio was such a lively, happy place, with a constant “cookin’ up something in the kitchen” quality that happens when creative people come together. The week the studio opened, friends constantly popped in to visit, including Norma Jean Darden, the original (very lovely) girl whose name Carrie had given Stephen, and Carrie herself, with none other than Cher in tow (they were preparing for a Vogue shoot).

  Bobby Breslow and Hector Torres, the two guys I’d met that first day, were Stephen’s two assistants. Hector was sort of Stephen’s right hand, a homey type who took time with the older ladies who came into the studio; Bobby was tiny, animated, and enthusiastic about almost everything Stephen did. He cracked us up with his constant one-liners. Then there was Don Fendley, who handled the music for Stephen’s shows. He knew about trends before they hit the mainstream, and brought soul music to the fashion world. Don came up with the idea of deejaying for fashion shows and immediately cornered the market. People loved the fantastic selection of soul music he put together for Stephen so much that all the other designers wanted it for their shows, too.

  And there was Tony, who ran the flower shop at Bendel’s, also on the top floor. Sometimes I’d go there after lunch just to spend a little time in that heavenly hothouse high above the city. Tony kept the studio supplied with paradise flowers and jungle ferns, including plenty of fuchsia flowers, Stephen’s favorite: He said they looked like little ballerinas wearing petals. I loved that image. Stephen’s unique way of seeing things always inspired and pleased me. No more running around to studios, I decided. I just wanted to work for Stephen.

  His fanciful imagination, along with his playful, color-saturated designs, brought to mind the brilliant animation of Walt Disney; indeed, Mr. Burrows reminded me of a latter-day Mr. Disney as he sat in quiet concentration at his drawing board (he rarely spoke until he was finished with a design) and puffed not on a pipe but on his exotic tiny cigarette. Wearing his trademark mirrored wire-rims, he’d dress in multicolored leather pants and what he called “muscle shirts”—very tight tees with the sleeves turned up to just the right place to show off the wearer’s biceps.

  Just watching him made me almost giddy with happiness. Becoming a member of Stephen’s World was a turning point for me. It lifted my
career—my whole life—from black and white to Technicolor.

  chapter 23

  HOT FUN IN THE SUMMERTIME

  First day on Fire Island, feeling free in a design by Stephen Burrows, 1970.

  Courtesy of Charles Tracy.

  One of the benefits of knowing Stephen was that my social life kicked into high gear. And that was a good thing, because once again Matthew had taken off for California without telling me. He left the day after my birthday. Now I was twenty and single.

  I did Stephen’s first show at Bendel’s a couple of months later, in the middle of August. It was held in his boutique on the third floor, Stephen’s World, which was light-years ahead of its time and looked absolutely spectacular: shiny black vinyl walls creating a mirrored effect; recessed lighting above the clothing racks (which had silver studded borders); and lacquered black ceilings and floors. The effect was of a super-slick nightclub or a trendy piano bar. The show was such a hot ticket that helpers had to keep extending the show space out into the hallways, bringing out folding chairs for the extra people until seats reached all the way to the elevators. Some editors arriving late found themselves, as they got off the elevator, walking along with the models in the middle of the runway until they located their assigned seats among the small gold chairs lined up against the walls. Geraldine Stutz, president of Henri Bendel, was the official host, and tastemakers like the newspaper columnist Eugenia Sheppard and the publicist Eleanor Lambert, who founded the Coty Awards and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, were scribbling away enthusiastically in their notepads.

  That night after the show, I went to my first party with Stephen. When we got there, the festivities were well under way, and I didn’t know a soul. Then I noticed my high school friend Donna Jordan. She came dancing into the room, holding up her wide fifties-style petticoated skirt like a cancan dancer. She was with a girl who had very black hair and a face painted so white that it looked almost like a Japanese mask; her tiny lips were bright red. The two of them went to sit with a guy with a mop of very white hair; it was the same person—the “famous artist”—I’d seen her with at the club in Sheridan Square when we were in high school. I was about to go over to say hello when a tall, very handsome man dressed entirely in black walked in and sat near us. He kept looking at me, so I asked Stephen who he was. “His name is Halston,” Stephen said. “He’s a designer, too.”