But then a few weeks later, Henry Dent-Brocklehurst provided a second opportunity for Matthew and me to get together by getting married in grand style to a Hawaiian fashion model with the unlikely name of Lili Maltese. The ceremony was to take place at the Dent-Brocklehursts’ family seat, Sudeley Castle, in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, and with a guest list that included many of the well known, such as Liz Hurley and Hugh Grant, Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, as well as many of the wellborn, which included the aforementioned Matthew Mellon.
Henry, as his double-barreled moniker (and the castle) might suggest, comes from a terribly aristocratic family, and he’d just come home from L.A. to help with the family estate. His mother is Lady Ashcombe, and his godmother is Camilla Parker Bowles. As a wedding venue, Sudeley dates back to the twelfth century, and though the current structure goes back only to the fifteenth, it is the burial place of Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII, which is not too shabby.
All of us stayed in the village, and the next morning there was a convoy of cars to take us the two-hour ride back to London. It turned out that Matthew and I were staying at the same small hotel, but when it came time to leave, we were being ushered toward two different vehicles. When he saw what was about to happen, he jumped out of his and ran back and got into mine, and that sort of sealed the deal.
At this time, Matthew was living in L.A. and I was incredibly busy with Jimmy Choo in London, but we began to date, after a fashion, with him flying back and forth across the Atlantic, staying with me whenever he was in the UK.
• • • •
MATTHEW CAME FROM THE HIGHER echelons of America’s own version of aristocracy. In the nineteenth century, his great-great-great-grandfather, Judge Thomas Mellon, had placed shrewd bets on industrial expansion and thereby built a fortune to rival the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts. He first founded Mellon Bank, then expanded into other enterprises, and when he died, he left one of these businesses to each of his five sons. Mellons turned a new process for making aluminum into Alcoa. They were also instrumental in building General Motors, U.S. Steel, and Heinz. Their investment in oil, the Spindletop field in Texas, became Gulf Oil, and that’s the line from which Matthew is descended.
His mother, meanwhile, came from a long line of Drexels and Biddles, again very much to the American manor born. As a slightly darker distinction, Matthew claimed to have been the model for Julian, the drug-addicted rich boy in Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero.
Matthew’s parents had divorced when he was young, and he’d spent a large share of his earliest years sailing with his father out of Northeast Harbor in Maine, and in the Caribbean. But then when Matthew was five, Karl, his father, dropped out of sight, reappearing eleven years later with long hair, a beard, and rather lame apologies, as well as promises of being more of a father in the years to come. Unfortunately, Karl was seriously bipolar and in 1983, at the age of forty-five, he killed himself. As is usually the case, this parental suicide did nothing to make the teenage son a happier and more stable person.
Matthew grew up with his mother in Palm Beach and, according to the tale she told her son, he could not expect to inherit anything from his father’s family but the Mellon name. He enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania and along the way had rather un-Mellonish summer jobs working as a ditchdigger, and in the kitchen of Danny’s Seafood Connection in Boca Raton.
Then on his twenty-first birthday, he was summoned to Pittsburgh. His uncle Jay had served as something of a surrogate father, and now the older man brought his nephew into the boardroom of Mellon Bank and gave him the good news. Having reached his majority—surprise!—he would have access to thirteen expansive trust funds. As Matthew told the press, he immediately rang up the Wall Street Journal to start a subscription. He also bought the first BMW M5 in the United States.
Matthew was already a member of St. Anthony Hall, the Mellon family’s traditional fraternity at Penn, but he bought a ten-bedroom mansion just a few blocks away as his own private Animal House. He did his first stint in rehab while still in college.
God knows how he managed to graduate, but thereupon he took a job with New York’s then mayor Rudolf Giuliani, doing “opposition research” and writing what he called “mudslinging” press releases. The Ford modeling agency had approached him, but his family would have rather he join the Sandinistas than have him appear in advertisements. By the same token, they were none too pleased when he began to spend his evenings in downtown clubs, and at an uptown place called Au Bar, often dancing wildly without a partner (and without shoes), even entering break-dancing contests and—God forbid—winning. He used to hire limos with the drivers rotating shifts as, coked out of his mind, he kept the party going around the clock. Unfortunately, these binges represented more than high spirits and youthful energy. Matthew had inherited his father’s bipolar illness.
Matthew Mellon was utterly beautiful and utterly goofy, which was a very endearing combination. He was also damaged goods, wounded and struggling, and that, I think, is where we made the real connection. My mistake was in assuming that, because I’d overcome my addictions, he could, too.
• • • •
IN 1993, MATTHEW MOVED TO L.A. to produce rap music for Grindstone. He then moved on to film, trying to put together a documentary, which, as I recall, had something to do with nuns. He collected Ferraris, leased one house in Beverly Hills and another on the beach in Malibu. But crack was becoming the era’s drug of choice, and the smart set and gangland began to overlap, which added too many guns to the mix. Then in 1994 he overdosed, and a friend took him to his first 12-step meeting. He went on to a Malibu rehab center called Promises, where people with agents and managers are regulars. When he got out, he moved in with Henry, the two of them adrift without drugs, floating in their pool, waiting for their next NA meeting. He was still in that state of post-addictive limbo when we met.
After about six months of our peculiar, transatlantic romance, Matthew invited me to come to a charity dinner in Pittsburgh. He picked me up in a limousine strewn with rose petals, blindfolded me, took me to a waiting helicopter, recited a bit of verse he’d written, and proposed while circling the Mellon Bank building. It was a sweet poem, with “I want to marry you” expressed very lyrically. It all seemed rather sudden, but like the always plucky fictional character I’m supposed to resemble, perhaps I had “a special radar for inappropriate men.” Of course I said yes.
Matthew moved to London to be with me on a live-in basis, and my brother Gregory, who was an estate agent at the time, working for a company called Foxtons, scoured Belgravia to find us a house, eventually locating a duplex on Eaton Place, not far from Chester Row. Matthew bought it, and I paid for the decorating, which led to a photo spread in W.
Matthew didn’t take to London at first. Our famously English weather was a problem, as was the somewhat arcane and highly structured social system, which is difficult for anyone from the outside to navigate. Certainly the people aren’t quite as gregarious as they are in L.A. But Henry had moved back as well, so at least Matthew had one close friend, and he did his best to acclimate.
• • • •
THE NEXT BIG SCENE IN our script was, of course, a wedding, and, initially, we thought we’d get married in Venice, just because it seemed the most romantic place on earth. We actually took a trip there with my parents to look at churches. My mother was sober at the time, and she behaved, and over a three-day period we must have looked at fifty possible venues. The wrinkle, of course, was that all the beautiful and atmospheric chapels in Italy are Catholic, and we were not, and the priests there take this matter of religious affiliation very seriously. For a while we thought about converting. We even went to see the priest at a Catholic church in Knightsbridge, but he declined the assignment, expressing doubts about our religious fervor.
My father had his own doubts, not just about having a Catholic wedding in Venice, but about having
a wedding anywhere with Matthew Mellon as the groom. According to tradition, it’s the bride’s father who pays for the wedding feast, and that led to some discussion about just how grand a ceremony we were going to have. Dad offered a budget of £100,000. Anything beyond that was up to us.
Even during this prenuptial phase of high romance and heavy distraction, I still had a business to run, and I still had the same troublesome business partner. In April, I received an unwanted wedding present from Jimmy in the form of an article published in the Mail on Sunday. He had spoken all too openly with the reporter, going on about the growing rift between us. He even went so far as to say that we were harming him by using his name (for which, you may recall, he was being compensated with half ownership in a company that was going to make him rich). As for the fact that Sandra and I were, in fact, designing the collection, he responded, “Anyone can sketch a shoe.”
The father of the bride, who was also chairman of the company, stepped in and wrote him a cease and desist letter. Jimmy responded by saying that I was the one who should be restricted from speaking to the press. We offered to buy him out. He refused.
Matthew and I continued our path to the altar, but to get married in England you have to fill out forms and sign documents in front of the superintendent registrar within the village or town where you reside, so we actually took care of the formalities with a simple civil ceremony at the registry office on Kings Road. We were still planning the “big church wedding,” of course, and we were so focused on that larger event that the moment of officially becoming man and wife really was not a big deal for us. We had a few friends along as witnesses, and then my dad took us to lunch at La Famiglia. Afterward, we had tea at Claridge’s.
By this time we had settled on the perfect setting for a proper English wedding: Blenheim Palace, the home of the dukes of Marlborough and birthplace of Winston Churchill. It’s a gorgeous example of English baroque set in a two-thousand-acre park to the west of London, and Vogue wanted to do a feature. But of course that meant that the dress had to be perfect.
Six weeks before the big day I still didn’t know what I was going to wear. Matthew and I were out at the Oscars when I ran into Carlos Sousa, head of PR worldwide for Valentino. He said, “Darling, you must come to us. Don’t worry! We will work it out for you.”
Trouble is, at that time I really didn’t have any money. My salary from Jimmy Choo was still not much beyond £15,000 a year, which just happened to be the cost of a couture dress from Valentino.
Matthew’s brother, Henry, graciously stepped in to loan me the money, so when we got back to London I set up an appointment and booked a ticket to Rome, whereupon Valentino himself did three sketches for me to choose from. Vogue covered the story, with photographs of me being fitted. It was the only couture clothing I’ve ever had made, and it was amazing. But the lasting value-added was that Valentino and I became great friends. He began to call whenever he was in London, and later he would invite us to spend time with him on his boat.
At this point, it was still unclear how the rather grand scale of this event was going to be financed. My mother was back to being her normal, difficult self, and so for a while my parents weren’t going to come at all, and then they were going to come and were inviting ten friends, and then they ended up bringing thirty guests. Every step of the way was fraught with the kind of family drama I’d known all my life, with my mother continually causing scenes behind the scenes. As per usual with my mother, you could never anticipate what nonsensical thing was going to set her off, and thus you could not avoid the trip wires. Harry Winston was loaning me a fifty-carat diamond to wear, and when I went to Paris to pick it up, I took my mother with me, hoping that letting her borrow something really lovely, too, might placate her, but to no avail. I was the bride but, as usual, our interaction wound up being all about her.
Adding to the stress was the persistent question of who was footing the ever-growing bill. The invitations said “Mr. and Mrs. Yeardye invite you . . .” but, as it turned out, Matthew kicked in $400,000 in addition to my father’s £100,000, and then when I received my first large cash proceeds from Jimmy Choo, I reimbursed him. This slightly unusual arrangement added a huge element of friction I really didn’t need because Matthew’s uncle Jay, the kind of multimillionaire who always flies coach, was sensitive about the Mellons being taken advantage of for their wealth. I think he also had an inflated sense of just how much money my father had. (He also had no idea how much my father was spending on the face-lift that my mother insisted on undergoing before she’d deign to show up.)
We did the American thing of having a rehearsal dinner the night before, but with an English twist. Henry was best man, and he allowed us to stage the event at Sudeley Castle. Maria Grachvogel made my dress for the evening, a bias-cut cream slit dress with a crocheted lace tail. We brought over a clear plastic marquee from Paris under which the 170 attendees could sit and enjoy the sight of the illuminated castle while listening to an Irish folk band.
The ceremony the next day was in a church near the estate, small but still large enough to accommodate our three hundred guests, which included, once again, Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley, even though they’d announced their split one week earlier. We weren’t part of the congregation or property owners in the area, so technically all the minister could offer us was a “blessing.” But we went through all the normal vows, and it looked like a proper enough wedding, especially for a couple who’d already been married for several months.
My maid of honor was Anouska Hempel, daughter-in-law of Anouska Hempel the hotelier, and she wore an Elie Saab dress that complimented my Valentino gown. We had young boys in morning coats as ushers, and Matt Clifford, who plays keyboard for the Stones, composed a special processional. It was held late in the afternoon so that the light would be perfect as we stepped out of the chapel and the Vogue photographer caught us releasing a flock of doves.
I think all brides are worn out by the time the big day arrives, and true to form I was utterly exhausted. In truth, the wedding was one long stretch of misery for me, and I felt like crying the whole time. I’d been working incredibly hard for Jimmy Choo, planning this huge event alone while trying to keep everyone happy, and I’d just about reached the end of my tether.
The dinner was held in the library at Blenheim, with catering by Admirable Crichton, flowers by Kenneth Turner, and a five-foot-tall cake made of profiteroles. My face hurt from maintaining a beauty contestant’s frozen smile, and I was counting the hours. I had one more costume change, an amazing gray silk cocktail dress from Chloé for going away. Then I’d throw the bouquet and go back to the hotel and cry.
When it came time for the toasts, Uncle Jay ended his by thanking Matthew for graciously hosting the festivities, and I felt like I’d just been kicked in the stomach. On top of everything else, I now felt utterly humiliated (insult added to injury when you consider that I would pay for everything in the end), and I felt terrible for my dad.
Matthew had flown over an American disco cover band called Boogie Knights to play at the reception. I drifted around the floor for a moment or two, faking merriment, but very soon I found my way to the small room just off the main hall that had been set up as a lounge. I sat there in my wedding dress, staring off into space, as vacant as I’d ever been at Heathfield, unable to connect with anyone.
We had to be out of the palace by two a.m., and by then it had begun to rain, and Matthew and I left in a blue Bentley, driving down the very long drive as sparklers and Roman candles shot up into the night sky.
There were two small hotels in the nearby village of Woodstock, and we were staying at the one called the Bear, a Tudor bed-and-breakfast with the musty bar and the shabby green carpet. I went up to the room alone, and Matthew partied until dawn with his American friends, all of whom were staying at the place next door. It was not an auspicious beginning.
• • • •
OUR WEDDING PRESENT FROM UNCLE jay was a honeymoon trip to Bali, and on the eighteen-hour flight from London I was a zombie, getting a good head start on a serious commitment to rest and relaxation. We were in the South Pacific for two weeks, and for the first time in years I had some genuine time off, with no faxes coming in at all hours.
Some might wonder about two reformed addicts being in such a faraway place on their honeymoon, but we didn’t need NA meetings to keep us on the straight and narrow path. We stayed very busy with tons of scuba diving, and I even picked up my advanced certification.
One day we were out in a boat, anchored above a reef just off one of the smaller islands where the currents draw you around in a big circle. This was the last part of the advanced course where you have to swim around a patch of treacherous water, and we employed the buddy system. I was in the water with my partner when I saw Matthew signal that he was going up. My buddy and I followed, and luckily we all popped up just alongside the hull. We climbed aboard and waited for the other people to come along—a couple from Hong Kong and the dive instructor. And then we waited some more.
When we’d been waiting about forty-five minutes, Matthew said to me, “This isn’t good.” He had calculated the current and the wind, and he said, “They’re being swept out to sea. I can tell you exactly where they’re going to pop up.”
He explained to the mate what must have happened, but the man wouldn’t take the initiative. Then another hour went by and I said, “Matthew, you’re going to have to do something. They’re going to drown.”
Having spent months every year in Maine and in the Caribbean sailing, Matthew had his captain’s license and knew how to handle big boats. In the end, he had to push the mate away from the controls and commandeer the wheel. He started the engine and headed out to where he figured the wind and the current would be taking the three missing people, and he nailed it.
In My Shoes: A Memoir Page 8