Fashion Climbing

by Bill Cunningham

  Another time Countess Cassini came in on her way to a big cocktail party. She always had an entourage of friends. The countess, who had a marvelous sense of humor, decided all the ladies should have amusing hats. One of the ladies, who shall remain nameless, insisted on having a white turban under her beach hat to protect her coiffure. I hunted all over the joint, and there wasn’t a scrap of white jersey in the shop. I stood there looking at the woman, and thought for a minute, and I don’t know what ever made me say it, but out of the clear sky I asked her what color her panties were, as they were the only thing I could think of that would be jersey. Everyone howled, but a couple of conservative Southamptonites who were buying veils to wear to church almost passed out. I must say the countess’s friends were full of fun, and within a second the lady dropped her white panties, right in the middle of the salon, and just as quick I picked them up, slashed them with the scissors, and proceeded to drape them around her head. The countess loaned her a diamond brooch to hold the turban, and they left for the cocktail party amid gales of laughter. As a matter of fact, there was so much laughter, a crowd had gathered outside the shop. But this was not unusual.

  I would often put on one of the wildest beach hats and parade around the village, like those guys you see going up and down Broadway with the sandwich signs over their shoulders. Sometimes a few customers would follow me back into the shop, but generally they only had money for an ice cream soda, not a hat. At the end of each season, on the same Friday night that the Southampton ladies had a town fair across the street from my shop at the Parrish Art Museum, I would hold a midnight sale of all the hats. And what a kooky event that was! Everyone in town would manage to come into the shop sometime during the evening and have a ball trying on and buying everything in the shop. In one night I would make the whole summer’s business: three thousand dollars. It was a real carnivalesque sale. I made huge foot-long color price tags, which I tied on each hat with long bright ribbons, and with a dark crayon I’d make all sorts of outrageous prices, like $700 reduced to $5, or $2.95 increased to $35. The whole affair was a riot, and by the morning there wouldn’t be a hat left in the shop, and I’d close the door and head back to New York with only a few empty boxes and the mattress I slept on.

  In Southampton, shops open and close faster than car doors. The only reason my shop survived was that I never got discouraged—if one approach didn’t work, I tried a dozen others, until it succeeded. A lot of people thought I was crazy, but I wasn’t out to please, and after all, I was paying my rent, not my critics’. The darling Miss Woodward came almost every day, always buying a hat. She had more hats than anyone. On her trips from New York for the summer vacation, she would rent a separate truck to move all her hats, and in the hotel an extra room was reserved to keep the piles of hatboxes. She absolutely adored hats. I think she bought a new hat every day of her life. There wasn’t a milliner in New York who hadn’t sold to her and enjoyed her keen sense of humor. One summer, after sitting in my shop for an hour or so each day, she would rush back to her hotel without my realizing it and record all the wild goings-on. She was planning to produce a play around the shop—it was in production when she unexpectedly passed away. A lot of people in Southampton breathed a great deal easier.

  One time while she was sitting in the shop, a friend of hers returned a hat she had bought the day before. The night before, the lady and her maid sat up trying to improve on the design. They made a mess of the hat and were now asking me to take it back. This was a regular habit of hers. I said I’d take it back but that she couldn’t come in the shop again. Miss Woodward never said a word as she sat through this whole episode. Two months later, Miss Woodward was again sitting in the shop when the ladies from the church bazaar came in for donations. When I brought out an armload of hats, which included the cut-up model belonging to Miss Woodward’s friend, she said nothing but got up into her chauffeured car and followed the ladies to the church bazaar, where she promptly bought her friend’s old cut-up hat for twenty-five cents. All so she could present it to the original lady as a birthday gift!

  The second summer, I made a deal with a friend of Kathy Keene to take care of the shop three days a week while I was in New York working on the wholesale orders. In exchange, the young lady could have a rack of clothes and operate a small business of her own in my shop. It seems one of her miles of boyfriends manufactured sports clothes, so she could have her clothes made without cost. It was a good deal for her and for me, as I didn’t have to pay her a salary, and she desperately wanted to be in Southampton so she could meet her life’s ambition, a millionaire boyfriend. It was a delightful summer. Her life was one continual screening of Stella Dallas. From the first weekend on, she was constantly invited on board the swanky yachts of the rich. Each Monday I was filled in about the size of the boat, whom it belonged to, and how rich they were. Frankly, I thought it was a lot of baloney until one weekend I heard so much about the 145-foot yacht she was going to spend the weekend on that I bicycled over to the docks to have a look for myself. Sure enough, there was my ambitious salesgirl playing Mrs. Richbitch.

  When she arrived back to work the Monday following her big weekend cruise, she seemed very unhappy. After much probing, I found that the millionaire boyfriend just sat there and read murder mysteries all weekend, completely ignoring her charms.

  On another Monday, she arrived in a tizzy after a weekend at the estate of some millionaire whom she said she wasn’t able to meet. She went on to tell me about a man dressed like a farmer, who fell madly in love with her. He told her that he worked on the farmland of the estate, and she wasn’t having anything to do with any unattractive farmer. After getting his description, I knew right away that this was the multimillionaire oil scion. Sure, he worked on the farms—he owned them all, and this was his hobby. When I told her, she almost killed herself—to think she had moved on to a flashy, penniless phony whom she met the same night. This girl was really a hoot. When it came to selling her clothes, God help the poor customer—many times I had to leave the shop, as I couldn’t stop laughing, when she’d pull them into her snake-pit fitting room, where they didn’t stand a chance of escape. One woman, whom I remember vividly, had been thrust into a floral jacket about five sizes too big. This never bothered the salesgirl. She saw it as a challenge, and she’d give the customer a song and dance about the new dropped shoulders that reached the elbow, and how smart it was to have the cuffs a foot deep. I was often astounded at the gullibility of many women in dress shops. I don’t know whether they bought the things to get out, or they really believed the story. The salesgirl and I soon parted company, as her night life became so active that she couldn’t get to the shop until late in the afternoon, just in time for cocktails. During the first month of the girl’s stay in Southampton she succeeded in gate-crashing the wrong beach club. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she wasn’t in the right one, which is named the Bathing Corporation, but referred to by its members as “the beach club.” This club was quite unimposing from the outside, but the one my girlfriend joined was a huge white elephant mansion some declassé people turned into a club. When I’d be in New York, she’d quickly take down the sign “William J.,” swap it with her own, and then empty the window of hats, replacing it with all her clothes. Then she’d invite her rich boyfriends, trying to impress them with her big business. I think she told them I was the stock boy or something.

  Oftentimes when I’d return to Southampton, customers would tell me they couldn’t find the shop; it seems the salesgirl did such a complete change of the display that many people thought I had only a weekend rental, until I finally tossed her and her rack of clothes out the door and paid a legitimate saleslady to run the shop in my absence.

  The third summer, Jack Edwards, a friend who was studying theater and costume design, came out and decorated the shop. He also designed some fantasy beach clothes, which we sold with moderate success. I remember a wonderful beach shirt he designed, with five different-colored str
ipes that ended in points from which hung colored tassels. It was only thirty-five dollars, and a real creative idea. The Seventh Avenue manufacturers were always shopping the store to see what ideas they could swipe. One afternoon the Seventh Avenue boys had their wives trying on the shirt as they sized it up. I just knew they were stealing the idea, but I figured they’d buy it. After pulling it on and off, they decided they wouldn’t buy it, and I really got mad as hell and told them the least they could do was to pay thirty-five dollars for the design to encourage the creator to do more work for them to copy on return visits. Well, they weren’t having any of that, and the reply was, “We don’t need to buy it.” And I guess they were right—just so long as they got the basic idea, they could copy anything they saw. As you can imagine, selling the general public creative ideas can be very disheartening. But this is what Paris has lived with for so long.

  Although the shop was paying expenses and giving me a good change of scenery during the summer, I decided to close it and concentrate on my wholesale orders for fall hats, which were making it impossible for me to spend much time in Southampton.

  On the close of my third season in Southampton, I arrived back in New York to find a new landlord had bought the Fifty-Fourth Street house, and he wanted $250 more for rent. He had been looking around my salon during the summer when I wasn’t there, saw all the glamorous decorations, and figured it was worth much more rent. Well, I wasn’t going to be taken for any sucker, and there was nothing I could legally do to avoid the increase. So I up and moved the whole business in two weeks. I’ll never forget the look on the new landlord’s face when I had stripped the salons of all their fancy slipcovers. All that was left were the broken walls and tenement atmosphere. Only the white ceiling with its gilding remained from the elegant decor. I took a temporary place at 56 West Fifty-Sixth Street with the French dressmaker from the second floor, and we quickly set up our businesses, with her taking the back room and me taking the front room with the northern light. I couldn’t afford an apartment, so I just camped there, without a bathtub.

  I spent many an evening with Mr. and Mrs. Mack, whom I always referred to as Aunt May and Uncle Mack. They were so kind and considerate over the years, and during this time it was their bathtub that kept me clean. Mrs. Mack was a wonderful influence. She was always knocking the butterflies out of my head. She was a “black is black and white is white” person, and none of this arty carrying on impressed her. I have her to thank for giving me the realistic outlook that I now enjoy, along with my natural imaginative powers. She saved me from the exaggerated views I gave life. Her influence was the reason for my success as a reporter, as I am now able to look facts right in the eye without turning away, whereas before I was always beating around the bush, trying to dodge the truth of the matter.

  The shop on Fifty-Sixth Street was a terrible place. Madame was always cooking her French recipes on the electric stove, which we hid from the fire department since it was against the law to live there. Madame’s cooking attracted a large following of the fattest cockroaches. One morning I was about to try a hat on a very distinguished customer, and just as I was about to pull it down on her head, one of the overfed cockroaches fell out of the hat and onto the floor. It had been sleeping off its dinner on the crown. Thank God the customer didn’t see it—with one motion I pulled the hat down on the lady’s head and slammed my foot on the cockroach as it ran across the room. Mrs. Nielsen, who was standing near me, turned sick and almost fainted—she had to flee the room. I must say I never blinked an eyelash but went right on chatting about the hat. (I never put another hat on a customer without first looking inside the crown.)

  Within a year the fire department had caught up with us and tossed us out. I was kind of glad, although we had had a lot of laughs, and I created two of my most successful collections in this atmosphere; one was the fall collection, when I made all the hats of leather and snakeskin—one of my best, and like most successful collections, it didn’t sell well at all. It was too new. But that collection set the mood for everything that was to follow.

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  I MOVED TO a seven-room duplex on the roof of Carnegie Hall. It was a marvelously grand place, with sixteen-foot ceilings in the huge studio, which was to become the salon. The kitchen was turned into a workroom; the refrigerator used to store the furs. Upstairs were two bedrooms and a bath. Imagine, the first bedroom I ever had in New York! It took me twelve years. One bedroom had French doors that opened onto a balcony that went around the huge studio. Southern-exposure windows ran from the floor to the ceiling. I decorated the space around a conservatory theme: 104 huge plants filled the room. The main room needed a stairway, and I had remembered seeing one being torn out of an old meat market on Madison Avenue. It was a darling circular iron stairway, which I bought for one hundred dollars. This gave the studio a wonderful air, and the jungle atmosphere was turned more fanciful with a fifty-candle crystal chandelier. (I really got carried away!) From the ceiling, hanging ferns dangled in midair, along with five cages, each housing a singing bird: a Japanese nightingale, a handsome wood thrush, a South American cardinal, and two female parakeets the French dressmaker had given me. One of her amours gave them to her as a gift, but when madame found out they were both girls, nothing doing—she wanted only mixed love affairs.

  The sun streamed in the big room all day, and customers thought this was the most wonderful place I’d ever had. Carnegie Hall was a fantastic place in which to live and work. The air was full of creative people singing their brains out twenty-four hours a day—you felt creation taking place all around. I’m very thankful they saved it for so long, and the people that lived in its 133 studios were certainly colorful. On my floor, a middle-aged photographer with long black hair down to her waist danced the ballet of the Dying Swan as her hobby. She performed only on nights of the full moon, and she turned out all the lights in her huge studio, which once belonged to Andrew Carnegie, with only the beams of the moon dancing across the Persian carpet. She would put on her Swan Lake costume, a feathered affair that looked rather molted when I arrived, but which I later refeathered—which made me a charter member to the dance nights. The whole performance was private, although occasionally she let in a few friends to watch her go into the mystical trance and glide through the moonlit room.

  A memorable guest was ninety-year-old Mrs. Lila Tiffany, who lived on our floor and was a notable character who played the accordion on the street outside Carnegie Hall—you may have seen her when you came out of the concerts, she used to be there all through the heat of summer and the cold of winter. She’s one of those marvelous eccentric treasures that make New York the most super place in the world. On the coldest nights, she could be seen sitting on an old egg crate, wearing three or four coats, her feet wrapped in newspaper and hidden inside a cardboard carton, her fantastic face with its long drawn lines and yellowish appearance, with those darting eyes piercing out from under the mass of silver-gray hair, which was crowned with an old red felt hat decorated with faded roses and ostrich plumes. I made her a new hat once, but she couldn’t wear it because it looked too rich, so I told her to sleep on it for a couple of weeks. She was mad for dogs, and at one time had thirty-three. Often when I was walking my dog on cold winter nights, I took him over to her, where she warmed her hands in his fur. On one night of the full moon, Mrs. Tiffany wasn’t feeling well, so the ballet dancer invited her in to rest and watch “The Dying Swan.” Poor Mrs. Tiffany could hardly make it to the Empress Eugenie sofa; as she sat down, she put a brown paper bag under her. The dance of the swan began; the lights were out, and Mrs. Tiffany soon fell fast asleep. After the swan had died, Mrs. Tiffany awoke to find her paper bag—which she claimed was filled with $1,800—gone. Well, all hell broke loose, but the bag of money was never found.

  Several days later, two gorgeous white damask sofas were moved into the dancer’s studio (the dancer had been crying poverty) and Mrs. Tiffany, seeing the new furniture, threw a cu
rse on the place, and in particular on a beautiful white Carrara marble statue of Venus. It was a prize possession of the dancer, but that night old Mrs. Tiffany had a vision of snakes crawling under her door and wrapping themselves around the cold statue. At this point, she jumped up out of her bed and threw another curse on it. Now, let’s face it, I’m a good Irish Catholic, and I don’t believe in a lot of hocus-pocus, but I’ll be damned if the statue didn’t topple over and break into a thousand pieces the following day! Of course, no one really knew if she had money in that paper bag, and there were other people in the room at the time. The following day, Mrs. Tiffany enlisted my help in carrying some bags of pennies to the bank, as she needed rent money. I didn’t mind carrying a few bags of pennies, but piled up outside her door were five years’ worth of pennies collected from playing on the street. Mrs. Tiffany was full of superstitions, and on Friday the Thirteenth she entertained us all with her good- and bad-luck songs.

  My customers loved the shop in Carnegie Hall; it was a new experience for them. They’d been to the concerts on Friday afternoons, but this was their first time to come up into the bohemian living quarters. My work there flourished, and I presented four collections. During this period, I opened an experimental branch on Madison Avenue, but found it to be just like Southampton—loads of people looking who didn’t understand designers’ fashion. I think this is the reason you seldom saw high-fashion shops on the street level, as customers rarely just walk in from nowhere and plunk down hundreds of dollars for fashion. Most business was done by word of mouth and recommendation, where personal confidence exists. The granddaughter of one of my rich customers worked with us on this venture. She was a romantic fashion type who dressed each day to suit her mood. I couldn’t wait until she arrived each day, as the changes in her appearance were astonishing—a complete transformation of hair and facial makeup. Some days she was a champagne bubble; others she was a stern New England schoolmistress. She was pure theater, with a gift of gab that could have sold the whole street. The boys at the local delicatessen were her slaves—I’d have to wait hours for my coffee, while Gay would hardly have the receiver down on the phone, and the delivery boy would be panting at her office door. During the Christmas season, when the shop was a little slow, Gay would get herself conspicuously into the shop window, and when she’d collected an audience outside, she would rush out to admire her window dressing. Of course, this was all bait to attract men into the shop, and sure enough they followed her like bees after honey. As a matter of fact, one of the men who followed her in is now her husband. She was the most accommodating salesgirl I’ve ever known. She would have whimpering matrons pouring out all their troubles, and at the end of each sentence she’d sell them another hat. We could hardly make the hats fast enough for her, but we had the financial problem of not being able to make hats cheap enough for the street trade, so we closed the shop and concentrated on the hidden private salon in Carnegie Hall. I’ve always felt if you really had anything good, women would find your door, no matter where it was—it’s only important to have a convenient, central location.