Walking with the Muses

by Pat Cleveland

  The Bill Blass number followed. Bill, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame that night, was in the audience watching and (he told me later) loving what he saw. Afterward, all the models and designers went to the Coty Awards party at a grand mansion on Madison Avenue. I went back to Stephen’s place on East Seventh Street to get ready. He, Bobby, Hector, and Tracy all wore black tie in Stephen’s style, with studded jackets and pants, and I wore a black silk jersey wrap dress. We all danced like crazy at the party, and Bill Cunningham, as per usual, was there, camera in hand, to document the occasion.

  chapter 27

  I LIKE IT LIKE THAT

  When I let my hair go free—and fuzzy—what was once a flaw became an asset, 1970.

  Courtesy of Charles Tracy.

  While I was in rehearsal for the Kasper number at the Coty Awards, I received a hand-delivered message from my agent to call Halston. I vaguely remembered the name as belonging to the tall, handsome designer Stephen had pointed out at the party after his first show at Bendel’s. It tells you a lot about those antediluvian pre–cell phone days that I actually was not able to return Halston’s call for three days.

  I couldn’t call the first day because the rehearsal didn’t end until midnight. The next day I was doing the awards show onstage. On the third day, Wilhelmina called and said she’d scheduled a fitting for me with Halston that very morning. So I rushed over to East Sixty-Eighth Street, which was farther uptown than a typical fashion address. I looked for number 33, a five-story redbrick building, and found a nondescript entrance at the side.

  The wood-paneled two-person elevator moved so slowly, I could have taken the stairs and gotten there faster, but finally, the door opened. I looked out onto a small alcove heavily draped with batik-print curtains, beyond which was a larger square room with the same fabric covering the walls. Oversize palm plants gave the room even more of a jungle effect. The look was a trend: a jungle for city folks.

  A large arrangement of orchids in every color sat on a big round table in the middle of the room covered in the same matching fabric. The scent of orchids evoked Mrs. Vreeland’s office at Vogue, and I felt right at home. It was the scent of fashion; it was the scent of the expensive Rigaud candle I had seen recently at Bendel’s and been tempted to buy, but I simply couldn’t burn my money like that, literally.

  Out from behind this jungle-print curtain, far to my left, emerged a man not much older than I was, dressed head to toe in black. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said with the hint of a Southern accent. “I’m Ed. Come on back with me, honey.”

  He put his arm around me and, without another word, guided me through the curtained doorway through a tight little hall, past a bathroom, and into a stark white room. There was an oversize cutting table in the middle of the space, immense three-way mirrors against a wall, and racks of clothes covering them. Leaning against the other walls were long storyboards covered by six fashion figures, drawn on stationery in felt-tipped pen and thumb-tacked up. They hung there, still in their poses, cartoons in black and white.

  “How nice,” I said to Ed, looking around.

  “Oh, those are the clothes for the show,” he said shyly. “I only did the drawings.”

  I walked over to the drawings and started to read the notes on the sides until I felt someone coming into the room behind me. I turned around to look.

  He was taller than I was, even though I had on my highest heels, and he had a slim, nicely proportioned physique. His wheat-colored shoulder-length hair shone in the studio light, and without even seeing his face, I could tell he was knockout handsome, dressed (like Ed) in all black, with a silver Navajo belt woven through with black leather accenting his waist. I could have climbed up him like a cat, but I reminded myself to behave like a lady.

  He was talking to someone behind him on the other side of the curtain, and then he turned and looked dead at me, his blue eyes glistening and kaleidoscoping into a frosty green. It was like a romantic dream, and if the daze had stretched a second longer, I might have fallen madly in love with him then and there, but my professionalism asserted itself. This was Halston, one of the hottest fashion designers in America.

  “Hello,” he said politely.

  “I’m Pat,” I said, stumbling over my still relatively unfamiliar name.

  “I’ve seen you before.” He paused and looked past me at the dresses on the rack. “I bet you can’t guess where.” He looked pleased that I seemed puzzled. “I saw you in a wonderful show,” he said, smiling. Then he shouted, “Ed! Where’s the other dress?” He stood completely still, as though lost in thought. “The Fashion Fair,” he finally said. “You were there . . . it was you.” He looked at me directly. “I watched you move to the music.” He snapped back to attention. “How about we get something on her, Ed?” he said, adding impatiently, “How about now?”

  Ed was rolling in a rack of clothes, but Halston said, “No time for standing around.” He waved Ed off to the back room. When Ed returned, he quickly moved out two or three other garment racks to make room for the fitting. The cutting table in the center of the floor was so large, it took up all the space. It was a cramped place to change clothes, but at least there was a changing screen.

  “Let’s see,” Halston said, pausing to look at me. He seemed to be standing almost in a pose, with one of his arms crossed over his chest and his other hand up to his mouth with his fingers rubbing lightly over his lower lip, as if pondering momentous matters. Then he came over to me and encircled my waist between his two hands. “Ed, she has the smallest waist. Ed! Bring the tape measure.”

  Ed flew around me like a hummingbird. “Thirty, twenty, thirty-two.”

  “She’s the smallest one,” Halston said, looking happy about my size. His attention shifted swiftly back to the clothes. “Are the pieces finished yet?”

  “N-n-not yet,” Ed said. A stutter had surfaced.

  Halston frowned. “You’ll have to come in before the show. Go give them the measurements.” Ed retreated. “We’ll just sew you up in them if they don’t fit,” Halston said, and smiled again. He picked up a silver box off the worktable, flicked it open, took out a cigarette, and lit it with a silver lighter that materialized from his pocket. He took a long, slow drag and slowly exhaled, looking upward as though contemplating the cosmos.

  “Actually,” he said, returning to Planet Earth, “if they don’t fit, we’ll have to fire Ed.” He winked at me. “I’m just joking,” he said in a low voice, “but don’t let him know that. The workers perform better if I shake them up a bit.” With that, Halston said, “Okay, we’re finished.”

  Then he walked away.

  Did I get the job? I wondered. I really wasn’t sure. But as he was going through the door, he looked over his shoulder, eyes sparkling. “We’ll see you for the show. Wear your hair exactly the way it is. I like it like that. And don’t be late.”

  I stood still, not quite taking it all in. Halston just hired me. (That was how it was done back then; the designer hired you in person.) Now there were two popular designers in my corner, which was a really big deal. I still wasn’t confident about my looks, but the red lipstick was doing wonders. I knew I’d never have Grace Kelly’s little nose or Rita Hayworth’s figure, but I could have bright red lips, lots of hair, and a job with Halston.

  With a new spring in my step, I exited the building, lifted my face to the sun, and met the warm orange glow with a red-painted smile. The weather was so nice, I decided to walk. I headed uptown on Madison Avenue toward Seventy-First Street, and there, I noticed a new clothing store with the name Yves Saint Laurent printed in large gold letters over the door. I didn’t have an Upper East Side income, but I was feeling really good and looking really good, so I figured why not go in?

  The shop was wall-to-wall with exquisite things, and the salesladies treated me as if I were the most important person in it. I overheard some of them speaking French to one another, which lent a flavor of Paris to the atmosphere, or at least what I imagin
ed Paris to be like. I browsed through the clothes, and sure enough, I couldn’t afford anything. But I was too embarrassed to leave without buying something, so I purchased my first French designer dress—a silk dress in a rust color with tiny covered buttons up the front, a little bow tie, and a thin belt—and shoes of the same color, with the highest heels and the highest arch I’d ever owned. Was I becoming materialistic? Maybe, but beautiful design and workmanship had always given me pleasure. Besides, given how much I was working every day, I felt I deserved them.

  I left the store with an oversize shopping bag that had “Yves Saint Laurent” printed on the side. Having spent my last paycheck and every cent I had in my pocket on that outfit, I knew a taxi was not in the cards. But I didn’t care: I walked the rest of the way home, swinging my bag, feeling like the queen of the world.

  When I got home, Mom was heading out to work—she was still a nurse’s aide on the graveyard shift in the mental ward at Bellevue Hospital—but as always, she found a minute for me, sharing my jubilation at being hired by Halston, inspecting the workmanship on my new dress and finding it impeccable. She was always tired, a far cry from the glittering young woman throwing parties and going to jazz clubs with her sister—two high-spirited “bachelor girls,” as they called themselves, who loved being out on the town. Now, with a tyrant for a husband and a job that exhausted her, Mom had no freedom, no social life, no time for the movies we’d always loved. She was the most creative person I’d ever known, and yet she had stopped painting; she’d even stopped making clothes. The only artworks she created now were sketches of the patients at the mental ward or, during the holidays, Christmas murals on the hospital walls to cheer the place up.

  The job was draining in every way. One morning Mom came home really shaken. She told me she had been in the solitary confinement area, face-to-face with a killer who was on his way to death row. For some reason, he had been brought to her hospital ward. While my mom was with him, she had sketched his portrait. He told her it was the nicest thing that anyone had ever done for him, and he took my mom’s drawing with him to the electric chair. I couldn’t sleep after she told me this story. She was living in a very dark world, and I could see her suffering.

  She had made so many sacrifices for me, and she’d married someone she didn’t love just to have a steady income. In “settling,” she had been forced to abandon her own artistic gifts and stifle her need for self-expression. I understood why and didn’t blame her, but I vowed never to let it happen to me. No matter how desperate things got, I would never marry for money. I and I alone would be responsible for me.

  chapter 28

  SECRET LOVE

  In the dressing room of Halston’s Sixty-Eighth Street studio, before my first show with Halston, 1970. From left: Pat Ast, Shirley Ferro, Anjelica Huston, Halston, and me.

  The story of my life was unfolding on a split screen, and as if to demonstrate its schizoid nature, Matthew called the night before my first show with Halston. I hadn’t heard from him in several weeks and had no idea where he’d been. I was half convinced that this time he really had received his draft notice and moved to Norway or Canada to avoid induction.

  As usual, I was instantly spellbound by his voice. “Do you know what time it is?” he asked. “It’s time for me to see you. Where have you been?”

  I could ask the same of you, I thought. “Modeling,” I said.

  “Are you selling out?” This was a constant refrain. As his politics had grown more and more radical and his worldview more occult, he’d become intolerant of anyone who sought traditional success or cared about frivolous things like clothes or possessions. All that mattered was one’s inner spiritual life.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Those people you’ve been hanging out with . . .”

  “I’m working . . .”

  “They’re the enemy,” he said. “They’re superficial and enrich the capitalists who distort our world.”

  “They’re not the enemy—they’re artists, too.”

  “They’re not real.”

  “They are to me.”

  “It’ll be too late when you realize what you’ve given in to. Come where I am, the place in Brooklyn. I’ll wait for you.”

  “I can’t tonight,” I said weakly. “Maybe tomorrow.” I hung up, puzzling over whether I should get on the train to Brooklyn to see him. Instead, sanity prevailed, and I decided to put together my things for the next morning. Let’s see, here’s my voucher book, my makeup . . . This was my before-bed ritual, to get everything ready for the next day, like a Girl Scout, always prepared.

  I arrived at Halston’s promptly at ten in the morning. The small back cutting room had been transformed into a dressing room, and several models were sitting at a long table in front of the mirrors, applying makeup. One of them was Naomi Sims, an onyx-colored, structurally perfect icon who was so high-fashion she could have been mistaken for one of Halston’s customers. Next to Naomi was a girl named Marina Schiano, a Vogue model who looked as if she’d just stepped out of the magazine’s pages. Then there was Elsa Peretti, whose low-chignoned head was turned to reveal an aristocratic Italian profile. All of these girls were much bigger than I was, both professionally and in terms of their polished looks. In the silent room, each was focusing on her reflection so intently that you could have heard an eyelash drop.

  My presence did nothing to break their concentration. So I sat down beside them at the makeup mirror and tried to do what they were doing. I noticed that Marina and Naomi had spidery eyelashes on both upper and lower lids, and Naomi highlighted her cheekbones with a shiny cream bronzer. Marina wore very white powder all over her olive skin and put on lots of eyeliner, which came to a fine point at the corner of each eye. Elsa, who was the oddest-looking of these three, applied lots of kohl around her eyes as she puffed away on a cigarette in a holder that hung loosely from her lips.

  I observed all of this surreptitiously, because whenever one of the models caught me watching her, it was if I’d pushed a pause button, a freeze hold, that kept me from seeing the next trick she was going to use on her face. Ah. Evidently a model’s makeup routine was a carefully guarded secret. I didn’t know if I could keep up with these big-time girls, so I just did my usual thing, concentrating on my red lips.

  At eleven o’clock sharp—showtime—we were dressed by Halston’s assistants, all of whom were dressed in black, just like their boss. It was the Halston uniform, a way of dressing that would later be identified with New York City but at the time was new and very odd to me.

  In model jargon, there is a name for every movement—before the show, backstage, during the show, onstage. The “Indian file,” for example, is the (admittedly politically incorrect) term for the single-file lineup of models waiting to go onstage. That’s when the designer walks by each model to see if the look is pulled together in exactly the right way, with the clothes and accessories just so. A single hairpin pushed in at the wrong angle is as bad as a hanging hemline.

  As I stood in the Indian file, I kept looking in the mirror at my silhouette, trying to figure out if I should emphasize the left side of the outfit I was wearing more than the right, and wondering where the pockets were, and whether I should put my hands in them in order to show off the clothes. What I finally figured out—it was something of an epiphany for me—is a concept known as “working with the clothes.” By treating them as though they belong to you, they become part of you, and both you and they look fully alive, displayed to full advantage. And that, I realized, is what fashion is all about.

  At the last minute, a girl with straight black hair arrived. She was as thin as I was, but her very broad shoulders made her look twice as tall. Because she came in late, there was a big rush to get her dressed, and when she was ready, she was gently wedged in line just behind me. I didn’t mind; she was wearing an intoxicating scent and a friendly smile. “Hi, I’m Anjelica Huston,” she said. I didn’t know who she was, and would not know for years
because she was so normal and unspoiled, with no attitude whatsoever.

  Just before we were to go onstage, Halston stood before us and cleared his throat. “You’re the best-looking girls in the world, or else you wouldn’t be here,” he said. “So be divine and go out there and kill ’em.” Then he came up to each of us and whispered something into our ear. To me, he said, “Be better than the rest, because you are.” The best? I thought. He really means that I am the best? I found out later that he’d told all of us the same thing.

  The competition was on, with each girl standing at her full height, which made me want to stand taller and be as graceful as I could be. We were like racehorses at the starting gate, ready to take off. Needless to say, I was racked with doubt because the other girls were so confident and experienced.

  Both the morning and afternoon shows went really well. Editors from all the best magazines, such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, were in the audience, seated across the aisle from one another, pretending they’d never met. I saw Joel Schumacher and Carrie Donovan seated together in the Vogue section; they were family at this point, and I did my best to make them proud as I passed by in the cashmere capes and silk crepe Halston designs, which were so modern, sculpted, and ladylike. With some of the outfits, we carried a number, so the society ladies would know what dress to order. It was a bit old-couture in terms of showing style, but also very au courant, with the smooth jazz accompaniment and all these models from glossy print publications.