The Glass of Fashion

by Cecil Beaton

  Though there were elaborate parties during the First World War, its aftermath brought about a revolution with the introduction of “tango teas,” cocktails, and night clubs. All formality was dead.

  In London during the twenties Miss Loelia Ponsonby (now Loelia, Duchess of Westminster) was one of the instigators of a new type of gala. She lived with her parents in St. James’s Palace, where her father held a position close to the King. Miss Ponsonby would ask her friends to contribute to the parties she gave: some of them brought supper, all brought champagne. Together they formed a group of “bright young things” who were either of the aristocracy or entertained the aristocracy by their talents. They had a splendid zest for life and an ability for expressing that zest.

  Though the flower of young manhood had been killed off during the previous war, by the mid-twenties a new generation of youth began to assert itself. A group of “bright young people”—Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford, and a bevy of new personalities just down from Oxford—invented a whole new form of party at which friends gave imitations and impromptu cabarets; elaborate and ingenious treasure hunts were organized, and hoax exhibitions were arranged. The spirit of masquerade reached new heights. When others began, in a less original though wilder fashion, to emulate them, the “bright young things” began to receive unfavourable publicity and fell into disrepute. Whatever their virtues or vices, the best of these young people were an influence in making the twenties the remarkable period that other generations are now beginning to realize it was.

  Among the less conventional hostesses of this time, Mrs. Benjamin Guinness, Mrs. Richard Guinness, and Mrs. Somerset Maugham gave parties at which every stratum of society was represented: artists, writers, and royalty mingled in private houses that had acquired the atmosphere of the Embassy Club. These ladies also started the fashion of serving breakfast foods at a long buffet: haddocks, kippers, scrambled eggs, kedgeree, and bacon appeared along with oysters and caviar, superseding those suppers where silver dishes of vol-au-vents or stuffed quails were placed on the circular supper tables, together with pink-shaded candles.

  Stunt parties became frequent. Mrs. Corrigan, a rich woman from Cleveland, Ohio (who was never received by the society of her hometown), conquered London society with her fabulous evenings, at which the most grand or fashionable guests inevitably won the best prizes of gold cigarette cases in the lotteries, tom-bolas, or competitions. Elaborate cabarets were provided; and to spare her guests nothing, Mrs. Corrigan, amid a rolling of drums, would stand on her head. In America the boom produced some fabulous entertainments. Whole hotels were taken for a night and decorated to represent a circus; debutantes came out to the tune of “Button up Your Overcoat” and “You’re the Cream in My Coffee” and twenty-five thousand dollars. Under a Palm Beach moon good-time hostesses had their one moment of glory, vanishing overnight in the stock market crash.

  The American Elsa Maxwell, operating first in Paris and then after a long interval migrating back to New York, would take over an entire night club for an evening and always managed to bring together the most fashionable or beautiful people from many lands. She created her own “international set,” which developed into what is now broadly termed “café society” and included, as well as persons of social stature, a mingling of stars from the cinema or the arts. But Miss Maxwell’s real ambition is never satisfied until she has made the most distinguished people appear undistinguished. To this purpose she invented many clever “stunt” parties at which members of the aristocracy of Italy, France, and England, together with politicians and statesmen, were knocked off their pedestals. At her first pompous party in London she made her self-assured guests sit on the floor and blow a feather off a sheet. One of her most publicized parties was a “farmyard” affair, where the sophisticated guests appeared as rustics and milked an artificial cow for champagne. Since Elsa Maxwell has more character and intelligence than many of her guests, she succeeds in her objectives. The pictures that inevitably appear after each party make her guests appear excessively foolish.

  The twenties and thirties also produced parties whose aims were more elevated: their design was to create beauty. In 1928 Mr. and Mrs. Cole Porter gave a red-and-white party in the wonderful Palazzo Rizzonico in Venice, where the guests were supplied with beautiful costumes of red-and-white paper that had been produced for the occasion in Milan. Acrobats in red and white performed on wires strung across the courtyard of their palazzo. Baron de Gunzberg gave a lyrical fête champêtre on an island in the Seine just outside Paris, and the guests in Winterhalter costume, arriving in boats, created an exquisite picture. The Sicilian Duc de Verdura made his international guests travel to his palazzo in Palermo, to appear in fancy-dress costume of the Empire period. This type of party culminated in Charles de Beistegui’s celebration of the anniversary of the building of his Palazzo Labbia in Venice during the summer of 1951, though the Marquis de Cuevas has recently given an even more highly organized fête champêtre in Biarritz. Charles de Beistegui’s purpose was to create a fete at which Antony and Cleopatra, as painted by Tiepolo in the magnificent frescoes in the great hall, were to receive the guests summoned from far and wide.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE VELVET GLOVE

  AMONG the many remarkable women who have affected the life and times of the past fifty years, there are some who defy classification, either because they cannot be linked to a definite profession or because they go so far beyond their professions in the expression of personality that it would be unfair to limit them in that way. Yet all have been tremendously important figures in influencing the multiple aspects of fashion as expressed in their changing environments. Some of them have died; all have brought their unique gifts to several or more decades, and those who still hold the fort give promise of influencing many more years as well. These pages are devoted to them, Americans and English alike, in the hope that these verbal sketches convey the indefinable charm of these unusual personalities.

  One of the first women ever to wear a short skirt was the ultra-stylish Phyllis Boyd. But it is not merely for introducing a fashion note such as this that Phyllis de Janzé’s name should be toasted in memory. She was in many ways a remarkable personality.

  A granddaughter of the beautiful Mrs. Jordan and William IV, she had inherited artistic ability, charm, and distinction, together with a beauty that was haunting and mysterious. She had the face of a puma, an extraordinary lithe line to her strong column-like neck, and the fastidious walk of a crane. It was extraordinary that England could produce something so essentially exotic as this Slavic-looking creature. With her pale complexion, knobbly features, nose of a pugilistic cherub, full cherry lips, and huge, pale, aquamarine eyes—eyes rimmed with a sharp line of black, as though from a fine mapping pen dipped in India ink—it was little wonder that Lady de Grey should sail up to her and say, “You are like Nijinsky.” But Phyllis’s reply was typically surprising. “I am, ain’t I,” she laughed.

  Henry Lamb, the painter, has said that any beauty whom he admires must have a boat-shaped face; that is, that the widest part of the face must be across the high cheekbones, curving down to the small prow of the oval chin. Here, in Phyllis and in excelsis, was Lamb’s boat. Her skull was rounded in a rather flat curve. Her hair was like a quarter of a yard of nut brown satin, or like an exquisite wig that was a size too small and had slipped a fraction out of position, so that the part ran at an oblique angle. To see Phyllis de Janzé turn her head, laugh, and swing her dangling earrings from side to side was to marvel at a complete work of art. She could have been produced only in a period of the highest civilization.

  But nature alone had not created this phenomenon. Phyllis, as a result of her artistry, had helped to make her own appearance the tour de force that it became, though as soon as she had finished the creation she forgot about it. There was nothing self-conscious about her: her frankness and sense of reality belied the innate exoticism. She had a carefree, coltish quality that was as refreshing
as her waterfalls of laughter.

  She might have been part of a sultan’s harem, or a court beauty at the time of Charles I. But it happened that she suited the silhouettes of the twenties so perfectly one did no know if it was she who had invented them or they that had invented her. The truth was, both Phyllis de Janzé and the twenties made a unique combination.

  After her marriage to the Vicomte de Janzé in 1922, Phyllis lived in Normandy, irritating her English friends by alluding to France as “mon pays.” She migrated to Paris, exchanged the somewhat picturesque type of dressing that she had adopted as a young art student for the ultra-smart suits from the house of Patou, for whom she now worked, and was highly publicized as the best-dressed woman in France. She gave an extra chic to the straight short skirts and the long-waisted jumper blouses and was the first to wear a baby’s cap on her sleek shingled head, tied under her chin with a velvet shoestring. With her exaggeratedly arched instep she wore impossibly high-heeled shoes of red leather with a strap around the ankles that looked like bracelets or reminded one of the shoes worn by Harriet of match fame. But the lady with the boat face could not take clothes seriously. She left Patou, she left her husband, she left France; the only thing she didn’t leave was the French taste that she brought with her when she settled in England.

  As a young girl Phyllis had shown promise as a draughtsman at the Slade School and could perhaps have developed into another Gwen John. But she was content to make her life a work of art and cultivated a gift of unending leisure in which to enjoy the Regency rooms she had arranged for herself in London. Here she read eighteenth- and nineteenth-century books on travel, or sat, wrapped in a shawl, under the fig tree in her small garden, writing long descriptive letters to a friend abroad or working on an extraordinary piece of Persian needlework embroidery. Phyllis received friends from all walks of life and always had time to devote to them and to her lovers.

  For Phyllis de Janzé was always in love and always had a posse of ardent lovers around her. She lived for and by her amours. She would provide them, at any time of the day or night, with a sympathetic haven, sitting cross-legged on the floor while they ate boiled eggs, oysters, or foie gras and drank burgundy, listening to her clipped, rather precious voice as she beguiled them with fascinating stories told in the coarsest language. Phyllis could be Hogarthian in her manner, and when she flew into a rage became the original shrew.

  As the years passed, her interests became ever more absorbing and varied, allowing little time to bother about her appearance, thought she always chose her things, whether from a barrow or from Woolworth’s, with the touch of the connoisseur. She was wonderfully oblivious to the squalors and mediocrities of life. The look of the twenties gave way to a more barbaric or “artistic” appearance, with gypsy skirts and black blouses; she grew her hair so that it fell in fronds around her sturdy neck. To see her shopping at Fortnum and Mason with her maid, friend, and companion, both wearing identical hats, was like coming across a figure out of mythology, a goddess living in disguise, or a supernatural spirit with her Pekinese dog as her familiar.

  If she had not been racked at an early age by an unknown illness, Phyllis de Janzé would doubtless have been another Lady Hester Stanhope. For she became an ardent traveller, journeying in great discomfort to the most unlikely parts of the globe. She would go for a summer holiday to Haiti, and in Arabia fell in love with a pasha.

  But though her friends mourn her loss and are regretful that Phyllis de Janzé was not able to continue her activities into middle age (and there is no question but that she would realistically have faced up to and adapted herself to any change of conditions), there can only be rejoicing that her life was so complete. By living as she did, she fulfilled herself. It was irrelevant for her to leave a portfolio of drawings as a legacy: her contribution to her time was herself. Phyllis de Janzé was her own finite expression. It is people such as her who, though not public characters and unknown to the masses, nevertheless have enormous influence on their devoted friends and disciples, possessing in themselves the rare seed that sows itself in unlikely places, there to blossom and enrich the world for those who come after.

  Lady Juliet Duff has for many years held a unique position behind the scenes of the London theatre. She has remained completely stage-struck, counting among her friends all sorts of lights from the theatre, big and small, high and low. Their regard for her is mutual. Many successful playwrights who know little of the mentality of the real aristocracy but try nevertheless to evoke “high life” explain that their duchess or grande dame is “Let’s face it, really Juliet.”

  Among Lady Juliet’s theatrical friends few are capable of assessing her real worth. The majority can appreciate only in a vague way her good manners and taste. Often when a point is raised in the discussion of a new production with the management and producer concerning a phrase, a girandole, a window seat, or whether a room should be built in a certain style, the criterion is always, “Would it be like this at Juliet’s?” With questions of etiquette and behaviour she is apt to receive a telephone call from the provinces (where the latest play is being tried out prior to coming to London) at any time of the day and night for advice on some particular point. Actors, authors, and producers alike know she will throw herself into their problems with such conscientiousness that she is likely to follow up her verbal advice with a telegram or will personally motor for miles to beg, borrow, or steal the requisite gold wastepaper basket.

  LADY JULIET DUFF AT BULBRIDGE, 1953

  Lady Juliet Duff not only inherited many beautiful Fabergé objects and French eighteenth-century pictures from her mother, Lady de Grey (the Duchesse de Guermantes of London), but also possesses her mother’s graceful gift of striking a happy note between grandeur and cosiness.

  Her rooms never sacrifice comfort for effect. Far from being stage sets, they are the living emanation of their occupant’s interests and tastes. The upholstered easy chairs, shoulder-high screens of striped silk or white and gold crackled painted bookcases, which in a decorator’s house would be considered impermissible, her china owl of a lamp, her blunt-pencil drawings by relations, her calendars from Tattersall’s or the late Queen Mary, her snapshots in passe-partout frames, and her sewing baskets—all of these details give extra charm to a room that boasts magnificent Jacob chairs with rams’ heads and a remarkable Oudry swan sitting on two eggs as it is being frightened by a ferocious dog in a flash of lightning. Her other pictures are a jumble of Eve Kirk, Tchelitchew, and John drawings, together with Boilly and a contemporary portrait of Madame de Pompadour’s dog.

  Lady Juliet is continually altering the arrangement of her furniture. After driving a hundred miles from London to arrive home late at night, she will suddenly say before going to bed, “I see now that desk should be moved over there.” Sleep forgotten, she then starts to reorganize the drawing room completely, to the surprise of the household next morning. The heavier the furniture, the more she is inspired to use her imagination and strength. Each new scheme seems more comfortable and pleasing to the eye than the last.

  Lady Juliet’s colour sense is restrained to such a degree that only when a room is assembled does it come to life. The patterns of pea-soup green, dull rose and grey seem dull and lifeless in the hand, but in her rooms they create a harmonious ambiance.

  Although she has carried out her mother’s dictum that every room ought to contain at least one shabby object and une note de rouge (Edwardian ladies were very fond of sprinkling their sentences with French phrases), Lady Juliet herself has few theories about decoration. Like manners, she considers it best not to think too much about it, though her instinct is remarkably firm, and she seldom listens to advice, even of those whose taste she most admires. One feels that if interior decoration had never been invented, Lady Juliet’s house would always be the same. Her talent is natural and unconscious of others. Every room is recognizably her own, with its particular landmarks: the table covered in the French fashion with a rather shabby
circular cloth of brocade, cluttered with bibelots; a brass model of the Eiffel Tower from the exhibition of 1870; a plaster cast of Coquelin as Cyrano, Titania’s flowers in pots, or enamel frames by Fabergé containing infinitesimal snapshots of Queen Alexandra and her sisters.

  Lady Juliet Duff’s combinations of flowers, grasses, and herbs, picked from her garden, are always natural and unsnobbish. She never makes flowers appear grand or expensive, and no field grass is considered too plebeian to be part of a grandiose “still life” in her drawing room. Somehow she lifts those coarse, and to me quite horrid, rambler roses, or flowering shrubs such as weigela, privet, choisya, and ceanothus, to her own heights of grandeur.

  Among the women whose vocations involve them with the world of fashion, none is more strikingly individual than Mrs. Vreeland of the American Harper’s Bazaar. She is indeed such a powerful personality in her own right, and so little dependent on the fashion world for her terms of appeal, that many of her friends never think of her in connection with printer’s ink. Outside business hours Mrs. Vreeland talks neither about her work nor the worlds with which it is involved; she seems totally unaffected by the more fatal aspects of fashion, its determined snobbery, its ruthless pursuit of the new for its own sake. The lures of cocktail parties and celebrities have little interest for her, and they certainly offer no competition to the husband and two grown sons with whom she spends the majority of her leisure hours.

  Yet in the world of fashion the name of Diana Vreeland brings a smile of warmth to the lips of all and sundry. Though she has no married daughter in Provence to write to, Mrs. Vreeland is unquestionably the Madame de Sévigné of fashion’s court: witty, brilliant, intensely human, gifted like Madame de Sévigné with a superb flair for anecdotes that she communicates verbally rather than in epistles, Mrs. Vreeland is more of a connoisseur of fashion than anyone I know and possesses both the seriousness and the humanism that are necessary for making her own tolerant moral judgments about the behaviour of the world in which she is involved.