Fashion Show, or, the Adventures of Bingo Marsh

by James Brady

  I suggested Nunc send someone, Cap’n Andy perhaps, to Thaxter’s last known address to find out.

  “Good idea,” Nunc said. Such direct action had never occurred to him.

  A week later came another call. “That lad Thaxter…”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s alive, eighty-five years old. But it was a good thing we sent someone. They’ll cheat you, these lads, if they’re dead.”

  I realized again how much I missed Bingo, who would have clapped such a line to his bosom and treasured it.

  81 “Didn’t Marsh sack you?” I asked Elegant Hopkins.

  BINGO MARSH’S retirement was like the sightings of comets in Shakespeare, omen and portent of an ordered world tumbled into inelegant chaos. Had volcanoes erupted and continents moved and earthquakes set the Richter Scale to mad vibration in the tiny universe of fashion, the shock could not have been any more dramatic.

  “That son of a bitch,” some muttered, victims of Marsh and his magazine.

  “Fashion will never be the same again,” a few lamented, who’d not felt his lash.

  “A great man, a force for elegance,” the president of Saks Fifth Avenue told the Times.

  “What a prick,” remarked a senior executive for Bloomingdale’s, another victim.

  But these were mere emotional responses, and to be expected.

  The world of fashion was forever shuddering under the impact of enormous events, sea changes which had absolutely nothing to do with Bingo’s farewell address.

  It only seemed that way, cause and effect.

  In Paris, after thirty years, the great House of Dior sacked its designer, Marc Bohan, and hired… an Italian! Headlines exploded in the French newspapers: “A Shameful Day for France… Another Italian Betrayal.” The unfortunate Italian, Gianfranco Ferre, muttered, “Scusa,” and asserted lamely that “fashion has become international.”

  “Mangia spaghetti!” cried the aggrieved of the Paris couture, and reminded people Mussolini, too, had ended badly.

  Around the corner, André Courreges was abandoned by his Japanese financial backers and brought suit. What does one expect of such traitorous people? it was asked. The Chambre Syndicale, which had booted Courreges out of its union, snickered.

  Karl Lagerfeld fired his longtime friend and favorite model, Ines de la Fressange, remarking with something less than gallantry, “She was getting too big for her little brain.”

  Men with whom Marsh had feuded—Giorgio Armani and Paul Profonde—marked his demise with solemn masses in the more fashionable churches of Milano and Paris. Men whose careers he’d advanced ingratiated themselves with his rival, John Fairchild, another who never forgave a slight.

  There were new and grotesquely clinical rumors. Yves Saint Laurent was near death. Saint Laurent promptly hosted a costume ball to prove them inaccurate.

  The grand old Maison Lanvin was bought up by financiers. Bernard Lanvin, handsomest man in the couture, said modestly he would play a lesser role in management. The new owners, vulgar little people, made it clear Bernard would play no role at all.

  In New York the impeccably well-bred society woman Annette Reed divorced her blue-blooded husband to marry the widowed Oscar de la Renta.

  Olivier of Hollywood was said to be ill, a recluse in an unfashionable French province. Halston, too, was ailing, amid the usual ghastly rumors. Giorgio de Sant’Angelo really did fall ill, and shortly died. Then, as not to disappoint, so did Halston.

  Lagerfeld, enjoying a vintage season, engineered the sacking of his own boss, the president of Chanel. In a face-saving maneuver the woman was given a grandiose new title. Lagerfeld ensured no one would be fooled by it. “They say she’s the director of special projects. But we have no special projects.”

  Princess Tiny Meat sought protection in Chapter 11. And Elegant Hopkins, said to be having an affair with a woman, issued a statement of indignant denial.

  Rupert Murdoch, having started up a fashion magazine headed by Vogue’s old editor, Grace Mirabella, sold off his half of Elle. The Lacroix pouff dress Marsh had championed was on the markdown racks at Filene’s Basement. The Canadian real estate man, Campeau, who’d purchased Bloomingdale’s with junk bonds, collapsed into bankruptcy. Giorgio’s, on Rodeo Drive, sold itself to Avon for $165 million, and the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Hayman, divorced. Emanuel Ungaro, longtime friend of actress Anouk Aimée, married a young Italian noblewoman. And Count Vava was arrested and briefly held on munitions charges.

  “I was simply keeping some hand grenades for a friend, Sharkey,” he assured me.

  None of this mattered. Without Babe, my nights and weekends echoed vacantly. Attempting to compensate by filling my days, I found myself constantly turning to ask an absent Bingo what he thought, only to realize again that he was gone. For the first time in nearly two decades he would not be goading Fashion magazine into decreeing just who was In and who Out, not telling a hundred million American women where to wear their hemlines, was not going to determine just who was that season’s “greatest fashion designer ever!”

  Did anyone else regret he was gone? He had no real friends. People had feared him or lusted after his benediction, cozying up to power. Society women wanted him to publicize their charitable efforts. Designers craved good reviews. Retailers wanted their stores labeled smart, chic. Filmmakers and Broadway impresarios and choreographers and novelists and publishers and columnists and network executives had sought his patronage, knowing that while Fashion could neither make nor break them, it could make life easier. Or infinitely more difficult.

  Now that his magazine was owned by foreigners and run by commonplace people like me, with Marsh in exile, they turned on him, all the sycophants, pariah dogs worrying a bit of raw meat. I thought of his protégé Quinn, discarded years before, a Kleenex relationship. Maybe we really do sow what we reap.

  Such metaphysical musings gave way to reality when, at a very posh dinner party, I again encountered the African Queen, by now the great man of American fashion, threatening even Calvin and Ralph. And not only a great designer, but a significant cultural figure, exemplar of the deconstructionist school of thought which held that, given an open mind, nothing that Shakespeare or Ibsen or Dante had accomplished was equal to what certain anonymous Eskimo and Ugandan artists offered the world.

  We were all in black tie, all but Elegant Hopkins, who now affected a dashiki that topped bare legs encased only in the leather, knee-high thongs of the Roman centurion. I remembered the Savile Row suits he wore when first we met and how shabby we all felt next to him.

  Over the first course someone brought up Bingo’s name.

  “Oh, he’s so tiresome, really, with his petty feuds,” said Elegant. “Every magazine has its time and its season. Fashion, clearly, had its.”

  He knew I was at the table; he intended the insult. I couldn’t resist being as phony as he.

  “Didn’t Marsh sack you?”

  Elegant looked hurt. “I passed a brief apprenticeship at his little paper before moving swiftly on to better things.”

  A lady with a handsome ivory bosom, fawning over the Queen, shot me a vicious, triumphant look. Not being terribly good at bitchy repartee and feeling I was acting the fool, I got into the wine and shut up. A professor fellow from California went on at great length about scorch marks found on antelope hides in a recently unearthed Hopi Indian cave dwelling in Arizona, markings he said predated and were as rich in literary merit as anything Homer had written.

  Elegant Hopkins stirred from his languor.

  “More so, in all likelihood,” he opined. “One finds the Greeks arid and jejune, doesn’t one?”

  They’d moved on to the tremendous cultural and artistic contributions of Haiti when I muttered something rude, bowed thanks to my hosts, and left. Next morning Barrier Reef, whose spy network was developing nicely, called me aside.

  “Careful of the boongs, mate. You know the way they are.”

  “Boongs?”

  “Wogs,”
Reef said cheerfully. “Dark-complected gentlemen. They resent accusations of voodoo, you know. Sensitive souls.”

  A few of the designers loyally stuck by Marsh. Blass did, though I don’t know why, and Ungaro and Oscar and poor, bankrupted Tiny Meat. Most, like piranhas, swam in to tear off chunks of whatever influence and reputation remained to him.

  Unexpectedly, for Bingo despised the man, Barrier empathized.

  “People suck up when you’re on top and piss in your shoe when you’re not. Marsh ought to have understood that, being a bit of a sod himself on occasion.”

  I didn’t have to be told.

  But I continued to defend Bingo. After all, had the tables been turned, if I were the wounded stag at bay, torn by my enemies, Marsh would do the same for me.

  82 Remember George C. Scott in Patton?

  NOW Marsh returned to the city, his mysterious errands wound up or on hold. There were rumors he would start a competing magazine, would go to work for Newhouse, was writing his memoirs. I sought him out immediately. How amused he’d be by Elegant Hopkins’s absurd get-up and pretensions, how helpful professionally would be his counsel to me. He’d taken office space in Rockefeller Center, something called vaguely Marsh Enterprises. I dropped by 30 Rock one afternoon without notice to be greeted in some dismay by his secretary. As Bingo always had, Mrs. K. lied badly.

  “He isn’t here. He’s at lunch. Out of town. He…”

  I tried to comfort the woman. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. I realize he’s busy. Just tell him I dropped by to say hello. Nothing vital.”

  It would be typical of Marsh, I realized, to hide away, to avoid people, to go to ground until he was ready with the announcement of some dramatic coup. Or that was my assumption. A week later I actually got through to him on the phone, his secretary being away from the desk. He was distant, more arch than usual, hurried. I put it down to strain, to a sense of loss on his part. Then people we both knew reported, with a certain human glee, that Marsh had been sniping at me, suggesting disloyalty and brash ambition, blaming my columns about the Republicans for his failure to win a cabinet post. I sloughed off such gossip.

  “That’s just Bingo being bitchy. He’s out of the loop and resents it. He’ll find another toy soon enough and snap out of it.” I refused to let people drive wedges between us.

  Failing again to get through by phone I wrote a long letter, telling him candidly what I’d heard from third parties and how hurt I was, how he knew better than anyone that I’d been loyal, a good and faithful servant, that it was his idea for me to become editor. “I never wanted your job and told you so at Arcachon. And you know that, Bingo.”

  My letter was returned, unopened.

  Shortly before he resigned, I’d lent Marsh an out-of-print book he wanted particularly to read, and now I sent another note, this one stiff, simply asking if he’d finished the book to send it back. A reply came from Mrs. K.

  “Mr. Marsh knows nothing of such a book and doesn’t understand your request.”

  Like the long-ago Peter Quinn, I had become a nonperson.

  Other mail brought consolation: long, weekly letters from the Philippines. Babe celebrated a birthday, and I sent a ten-speed bike, the sort of thing after which she’d lusted but couldn’t afford in law school days. It had never occurred to me to give her a ring; a bicycle more neatly symbolized our relationship. In letters, she talked about her work as legal officer for U.S. Army advisers working out of Clark Air Force Base and the Subic Bay naval station.

  “You know, if a tank runs over someone’s water buffalo on its way to rescue the Filipino people from genocide and the farmer sues for a hundred bucks, I try to bully him into admitting the buff has a history of aberrant behavior. Failing that, I negotiate the bribe, which is legalese for ‘settling out of court.’ Most buffalo go for about forty, maybe forty-five on a good day.

  “It’s a lot of fun here. I ride my bike a lot, and every week there’s an attempted coup. Sometimes even a real coup. Mrs. Aquino (whom everyone calls ‘Cory’) doesn’t have a clue. No coups ever happen weekends, however, because the colonels who organize the coups reserve weekends for golf or visiting their mistresses. Everyone has a mistress or several. I’ve received a number of flattering offers myself, substantially better than the going price for water buffalo. Sometimes the rebels (there are Communist rebels and Moslem rebels, both in addition to the coup-ists, who are all in the army), who do not play golf and therefore have their weekends free, try to blow up an American vehicle or an adviser. Occasionally you hear gunfire just beyond the perimeter, which I theorize is mostly GI’s who are jumpy. I’ve informed the base commander of my theory on this, but he resents West Pointers and in so many words told me to stick to my torts and leave the fighting to him. Some fighting. I keep hoping we’ll have a real firefight with guys coming over the wire as per your famous adventures at Da Xiang. But so far, no luck.

  “You’d love Manila,” she wrote, “a combination of ‘Miami Vice’ and the Gaza Strip. Everyone drives a hundred miles an hour and drinks too much, and you can buy a little girl or little boy (Olivier of Hollywood would have loved this joint!) for about ten dollars. And everyone carries a gun. The nightclubs have a checkroom just for guns, and all the doormen at office skyscrapers and posh apartment buildings keep loaded 12-gauge shotguns just inside the front door. What with the boozing and the mistresses and everyone having guns, someone gets shot every fifteen minutes and the Manila newspapers make the New York Post seem reticent.

  “It’s a terrific place and the people are swell and you ought to come out for a visit. And you know how I nag you about drinking too much? All that ‘wine of the country’? Well, you’d be dried out pretty soon here because the ‘wine of the country’ stinks. All else is pretty good, hot and steamy and beautiful with palm trees and three-inch cockroaches and except for the coup-ists and the rebels, people are hospitable and on a Yank salary everything’s cheap. With your money you could rent the best one-bedroom apartment in town, with a pool out back.

  “Did I mention I ride my bike a lot?”

  I wasn’t sure the redundancy was intended. But I liked that she was riding it.

  Over the next few months I made several more attempts to reach Bingo and finally gave up. I wrote about it to Babe.

  “What a pompous, pretentious twit he is. You were right about him. After all these years he refuses to have lunch or even acknowledge my existence. You’d think it was my idea to sell the damned company and not Nunc’s. Not a day goes by I don’t hear from someone that he’s trashing me as an ingrate and a traitor. The bastard.”

  Babe wrote back a week later.

  “Remember George C. Scott in Patton? ‘L’audace, toujours l’audace?’ You ought to try a little ‘audace’ on Bingo Marsh.”

  I’d seen him once or twice in restaurants and had cut him dead, too sore to acknowledge his existence. But Babe was right. That wasn’t how to handle Marsh, with his neurotic fear of confrontation, not at all the way.

  “L’audace, toujours l’audace.”

  Inspired by Babe (and by George C. Scott), I conceived of a simple and yet horrific plan of vengeance. Since Marsh was avoiding me, concealing himself behind secretaries and money and lies, denying my existence, sending me to what his father would have termed a bad chamber, I would simply refuse to be ignored.

  An opportunity soon manifested itself. Dior was celebrating an anniversary, and Bloomingdale’s was giving a black-tie party. I was invited, of course. It was inconceivable Bingo would not have been asked.

  I arrived early, paid my respects to Monsieur Rouet of Dior, paid similar obeisance to Marvin Traub of Bloomie’s, and sheltering behind a vodka on the rocks, waited my prey. It was not a long wait. Not fifteen minutes after I got there, Bingo arrived, heading toward the receiving line (and me) from the Lexington Avenue end of the store, bouncing along with a little skip thrown in every few steps, his dinner jacket superbly cut, his pouty face wreathed in smiles as he spied Rouet. Polite
greetings were exchanged, a few words, then on to Traub, the ritual repeated. I bided my time behind the vodka and ice. Then, with Marsh totally relaxed, a champagne flute in his hand, I sprang at him, crying his name loudly.

  “Bingo, my dear fellow, Bingo Marsh!”

  Heads turned toward us. Bingo’s mouth fell and eyebrows rose simultaneously as I threw myself upon him, seizing his right hand in mine, pumping it energetically and with vast enthusiasm, repeating his name several times and with emotion, calling out how good it was to see him again, “after all this time!” and then, quite abruptly, breaking off with a final shouted cry of “We must have lunch!”

  Marsh was reduced to a stammering repetition of my name in a cracking voice as he retrieved a hand-rolled Irish linen handkerchief with which to mop a suddenly slick brow and flushed cheeks. Marvin Traub, who knew there was bad blood between us, stood there marveling while Monsieur Rouet, mystified, tugged at Traub’s sleeve for explanation. Tony the paparazzo shook his head in admiration.

  “He’s gone, Shark, I saw him heading for the cloakroom.” He paused, then went on, impressed. “You chased him, you know.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I believe I did.”

  After that, whenever we met, I sprinted toward Bingo, calling his name, seizing one or both hands: on Fifth Avenue, in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons, queuing up for his coat at Le Cirque. So upset would he become, he sometimes left the place without having made his purchase or eaten or, in one instance, without returning to his aisle seat at the theater.

  Then, almost overnight, Marsh disappeared from the city. People said he was ill, had retired to the islands, was living with various Hillary relatives on a great estate in England. I knew better, and was taken in by none of this.

  I had driven Bingo from New York by sheer amiability.

  83 The designer’s own wife wept openly throughout…