Smart—Current fashion
Dowdy—1 year after its time
Hideous—10 years after its time
Ridiculous—20 years after its time
Amusing—30 years after its time
Quaint—50 years after its time
Charming—70 years after its time
Romantic—100 years after its time
Beautiful—150 years after its time
Schiap is Indecent. Audrey is Smart. Her closet turns over yearly. My sister and I are built differently. Jo’s long-waisted and has broad shoulders. I have a tiny waist and Gaston Lachaise hips. Audrey is five-five. I’m five-seven. Jo is five-nine. Anything handed down from Audrey, we will it to work.
She refuses to spend major dollars on shoes. She buys her “skyscrapers” at Chandler’s on Fifth Avenue. Audrey eschews the more outrageous styles—spectator riffs, jeweled embellishments or anything with see-through plastic—shoes that, by trying too hard, give themselves away. She opts for ornament-free, classically cut shoes that could have been purchased at I. Miller’s across the street.
Handbags hail from Ohrbach’s, their excellent European bag collection at West Thirty-fourth Street prices. Every night, she opens that day’s handbag and extracts her French purse, comb, Shocking flacon, hankie, keys, lipstick, Stim-U-Dents, Pall Malls and matches. She lines them up on her vanity and wipes them down. She tosses her used hankie in the hamper and replaces it with a fresh one. Then she turns her handbag over and shakes the tobacco shreds into her mirrored wastebasket.
Prowling the Palazzo, Elsa finds a ladder that leads up to the attic. In an old trunk she discovers her mother’s wedding dress and small lace-covered cushions she experiments with: “There were white pads that in my mother’s youth women placed behind them, keeping them in place with string knotted in front, so that all the emphasis should be given to the curves of the behind and, in front, to their bosoms, which were held very high.”
She spends hours alone, modeling long skirts and gowns, posing in front of a cheval mirror. Later, she uses this bustled, high-breasted silhouette again and again. It shows up in Muriel Spark’s novel The Girls of Slender Means:
In wartime England, girls of slender means venture to London to find jobs and romance. A private club is converted into dormitories. Despite rationing, spirits are high, love is topic number one, and everybody trades coupons. One of the girls has something the others covet: a “Schiaparelli taffeta evening dress which had been given to her by a fabulously rich aunt, after one wearing.… For lending it out Anne got various returns, such as free clothing coupons or a half-used piece of soap.”
The dress is made
with small side panniers stuck out with cleverly curved pads over the hips. It was coloured dark blue, green, orange and white in a floral pattern as from the Pacific Islands. [Nicholas] said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a gorgeous dress.”
“Schiaparelli,” she said.
He said, “Is that the one you swap amongst yourselves?”
“Who told you that?”
“You look beautiful,” he replied.
She picked up the rustling skirt and floated away up the staircase.
Toward the end of the novel, the Schiaparelli is stolen by Selina, who risks her life to retrieve it from a fire.
“Not very nice of her to pinch another girl’s dress …” says the rector.
“It was a Schiaparelli dress.”
On her twelfth birthday, Elsa is given a clothing allowance. She will be able to spend fifty lire a month and choose her own wardrobe. “This was not a great amount even in those days, but I managed to look very well on it. Planning things out on the principle of what we now call ‘separates,’ I managed to give the impression that I had a lot of clothes.”
Twenty years later, walking her dachshund Nuts on his Shocking Pink leash through the streets of Paris, she looks like a wealthy, stylish woman. She is barely five feet tall, trim and well proportioned. She rarely leaves the house without a hat: the Monkey Hat, the Tiny Fedora, the Pancake, the Poker Chip, the Pin Cushion, the Igloo Hat, the Hide-and-Seek, Bicornes, Poke Bonnets and Hussar Toques, the Roman Helmet, the Matador, the Birdcage Hat with Singing Bird, Cones and Funnels, the visionary Television Hat. Feathered skullcaps and turbans. The Pencil Hat with a real pencil piercing the crown for jotting down bets at the track and the Inkwell Hat with a quill. There is a hat that looks like a lamb chop with a white patent-leather “panty” on the bone. Her most imitated hat is her simplest: a jersey tube sewn closed on one end and worn multiple ways, called the Mad Cap. One of her clients, Katharine Hepburn, popularizes it. In New York, a hat manufacturer names his hat company Madcaps and turns out thousands. Alfred Solomon becomes a multimillionaire and moves to Saratoga Springs. “Schiap did not make millions,” she wrote, “she just got so tired of seeing it reproduced that she wished she had never thought of it. From all the shop windows, including the five-and-ten-cent stores, at the corner of every street, from every bus, in town and in the country, the naughty hat obsessed her, it winked at her from the bald head of a baby in a pram. That day she gave the order to her salesgirls to destroy every single one in stock, to refuse to sell it, and never mention it again.” Mad Caps live on. Would Schiap laugh or be outraged? Maternity wards send newborns home in her unsinkable design.
She thinks wigs are a brilliant idea. Antoine, the famous Parisian coiffeur, designs her three that are waterproof. Schiap skis in them instead of a hat: “I wore them in white, in silver, in red for the snow of St. Moritz, and would feel utterly unconscious of the stir they created.” Others are more formal: “On a gala evening you send it to your coiffeur. No loss of time, no heat, no pins, no torture. It comes home beautiful and glamorous.”
She is not afraid to wear her most outrageous designs, even her see-through dress: “Although I am very shy (and nobody will believe it), so shy that the simple necessity of saying ‘Hallo’ sometimes makes me turn icy cold, I have never been shy of appearing in public in the most fantastic and personal getup.” She rattles expectations. She transgresses. Collaborating with Salvador Dalí, she takes his Venus de Milo of the Drawers and designs a suit with drawers for pockets. She puts fingernails on gloves and windmills on heads. She blurs the line between fashion and art. She lives the creative person’s dream: Every time you’re seeing it, you’re seeing it a new way.
The major difference between Schiap’s clothes and my mother’s is, Schiap’s are designed to draw attention to the clothes, not the face. Wearing her clothes is a performance, dressing as theater. Whether you are beautiful or not, when you enter a room wearing something designed by Elsa Schiaparelli, your clothes are the star. An unattractive woman and a beautiful woman become, for a moment, equals. What face could compete with the Tears Dress from her Circus Collection, fabric printed to look like human flesh flayed by a lion? The image covering a living person’s skin is her skin ripped off. Who even notices a face? A dress made of hanging flesh eighty years before Lady Gaga’s meat dress.
“Two words have always been banned from my house—the word ‘creation,’ which strikes me as the height of pretentiousness, and the word ‘impossible.’ I kept in touch with the needs of the women who had confidence in me and tried to help them find their type. This I believe to be the principal secret of being well-dressed.”
I love the way my mother dresses. I subject her to the same critical eye she uses on me. The difference is, I can’t find anything wrong with how she looks. Not one thing. I’m proud of her appearance, as if her glory rubs off on me. But I suspect there can be more to what you wear, that fashion rules aren’t fast and true. I don’t want to dress like she does. I don’t want to be a glamour-puss. Not that I want to be Debbie Reynolds either. What I want is, I want my clothes to have ideas. I want them to have meaning. I want my clothes, if I think about them during the day, to make me smile.
We are watching What’s My Line? on television. The Mystery Guest signs in. A sweeping “S” is
formed by a gloved hand loaded with bracelets. I’m riveted. I know that “S” from Audrey’s bottles and boxes. Could it be? A “C” connects to the “S,” then an “H,” then “Schiaparelli” in white chalk fills the blackboard.
The three of us, Audrey, Jo Ann and I, sit next to each other on the couch. Elsa Schiaparelli is drenched in jewelry as if she’s risen from Captain Cook’s treasure chest. Elsa Schiaparelli! Our TV is black and white, but in my heart I know her shiny strapless dress and matching hat are Shocking Pink. Audrey plucks a Pall Mall shred off the tip of her tongue. She leans in as the Mystery Guest fields questions. Schiap tries to disguise her voice, but her laugh doesn’t sound American. My sister and I are glad Dorothy Kilgallen has been replaced for the evening by Faye Emerson. We are sure Dorothy Kilgallen cheats. We are sure that when Miss Kilgallen raises her tiny chin she’s peeking under the blindfold. After a few rounds of questions, Bennett Cerf closes in: “Would it be safe to say that you are based in Paris?”
“You gay-ting hot!” Schiap says.
Cerf nails it. The panelists fling off their masks. Schiap rises from the guest chair, sashays over to the panelists and, bowing slightly, shakes their hands.
“Humpf!” Audrey says. “Look at her back in that dress! Didn’t anyone tell her? How could she not know? She’s too old for a strapless! And that jewelry! She looks like Astor’s pet horse. And frankly, girls, if you ask me, that hat doesn’t work. Not at all!”
My sister and I will ourselves into Audrey’s hand-me-downs (left to right: Cecil, Audrey, Jo Ann, Patty).
Man Ray’s photo of Schiap in a wig designed by Antoine. (illustration credit 6.2)
“The Desk Suit” had drawers for pockets and hardware for buttons. It was based on Dalí’s Venus de Milo of the Drawers. (illustration credit 6.3)
Katharine Hepburn, a client of the House of Schiaparelli, popularized Schiap’s Mad Cap in America. (illustration credit 6.4)
chapter seven
The Womanly Arts
It is the responsibility of a wife to redecorate her home every ten years.
—Audrey Volk
I acquired nothing merely because of its value either in money or age. Therefore the house sings with a feeling of abandon, throws its arms around you, hugs you, and whoever comes to it to be a guest never wants to leave it.
—Elsa Schiaparelli
Whether she works or not, a woman has certain inviolate areas of expertise:
1. A woman is responsible for running the home.
A smoothly run home is the province of the female.
That is why she is called “the Lady of the House.” A man has enough on his mind without being pestered to pick up milk or drop off dry-cleaning. It is understood that if it weren’t for men, women wouldn’t have a home to run. Men are unstintingly praised for their hard work:
“Have another slice, darling. You work so hard!”
“Here. Put your feet up. Isn’t that better?”
“Let me get you that glass of water. You must be exhausted!”
A woman makes all decisions regarding what her family eats and wears, standards of cleanliness, social engagements and child-rearing. She “lays out” her husband while he showers. That said, she doesn’t “keep house.” She runs her home by directing her housekeeper. In our case, that’s Mattie Watts. Nana has Lily Brebner. Granny, Martha Wyjtola.
As soon as Schiap can afford it, she hires a married couple. They stay with her for twenty years. The wife does all the cooking except on Sunday nights. Sundays are reserved for friends Schiap calls “the chosen.” On that night, Schiap herself cooks—pasta or an ox tongue with port—and invites as many as twenty. She gives them “the run of the house. They can use anything in it to put on shows—furs, underwear, kitchen utensils, jewels.”
Greta Garbo, her friend and client, asks: “How is it that you allow these wonderful but crazy people the freedom of your possessions?” Schiap explains that they leave the house “in complete order, so that after they are gone my cupboards, my bathroom, and indeed every other corner of the house, are as tidy as if a fastidious maid had been at work.”
I don’t know what to make of this. Audrey doesn’t like anyone to touch her things. If I borrow a blouse, it’s mine. She won’t wear it again. She won’t wear anything anyone else has worn.
2. A woman must be adept at entertaining.
When she entertains, which is frequently, Audrey sets the table with gold-monogrammed place plates, a gift from Granny Ethel. On top of those, she layers her favorite Herend Rothschild Bird china she got in Nassau “for a song.” Mattie polishes the wedding flatware and George II cobalt saltcellars held aloft on the hairy hooves of silver goats. Candelabras light the table. An enormous gold jewelry-casket spills roses. A small wrapped present is laid to the left of everyone’s water glass—perfume or a pretty pillbox for the ladies, knotted silk cufflinks or pocket squares for the men. Audrey is smitten with her stemware—water goblets, red-wine, white-wine and champagne coupes, twelve of each, forty-eight glasses purchased on the island of Murano, hand-blown, hand-carved, hand-gilt.
“These are Clara Petacci’s glasses,” she announces. “Clara Petacci had the same ones.”
Why my mother is proud to have the same taste in stemware as Mussolini’s mistress baffles. Everybody knows Mussolini was the enemy. Visiting her mother in Italy, Schiap turns down an invitation to meet him. Neighborhood kids sing a song to “Whistle While You Work”:
Whistle while you work
Hitler is a jerk
Mussolini
Hit his peni
Now it doesn’t squirt.
Party menus are a variation of what’s served every day: Instead of steamed artichokes with brown butter, the hollow is filled with Hollandaise, a sure-hit appetizer. Rack of lamb persillé sits in for lamb chops or New York strip is replaced by my favorite, Tournedos Rossini. Plain asparagus morph into Asparagus Mimosa, baked potatoes into creamy, crusty Pommes Anna. Audrey’s favorite dinner-party dessert is Baked Alaska accompanied by flaming Cherries Jubilee, surrealistic food, frozen and on fire at the same time. It takes two people to serve: one to hold, one to torch. On these evenings, Mattie wears a shiny black dress with white collar and cuffs and a white, heavily starched apron. She leans in smiling, serving to the left, gripping both ends of the silver well-and-tree, a wedding present from Aunt Gertie in flusher times. Guests slip Mattie a dollar when, as good-nights are made at the door, she materializes to help them with their coats.
Schiap entertains four ways: lavishly, casually, intimately and solo. For her formal Bal de Ballon, she has a hot-air balloon inflated in the center of her courtyard and hires a man who looks very much like the great balloonist Monsieur Auguste Piccard to sit in the basket all night long. She drapes the tables in Shocking Pink silk tartan and illuminates her trees with green and pink lights. For casual evenings, friends fill a real bistro with a zinc bar built into her basement. Politicians, artists, writers, whole dance companies come for cellar dinners after the show. Tables are set with gold-embroidered cloths and vermeil plates. Glasses are all different colors and shapes. “There is certainly something psychologically tantalizing in having good china, good linen and good food in a cellar.” Schiap invents an oversize tête-á-tête for intimate dinners in her living room. A man and a woman can dine together, facing each other, with a tray between them, leaning back, legs extended in total comfort. But for her favorite soirée of all, when Schiap entertains Schiap alone, the librarian’s daughter makes an actual written-down date with herself to spend the evening in her favorite room in the world, her library, a room with photographs of friends, “beloved paintings put anywhere, on the floor, on chairs, against ancient Chinese bronzes. Then there are books, books, books.…”
3. A woman must play an instrument.
Sheet music is kept in the piano bench of the same Hardman grand Audrey played as a little girl. We sing as she sight-reads the popular tunes of the day: “I Love Paris,” “There’s a Small
Hotel,” “Where, Oh Where (Is That Combination So Rare?).” She warms up with “I Can Dream, Can’t I?,” a song that starts with a thrilling glissando down the keyboard from the highest note to the lowest, hand over hand, until it ends in bold chords. When company comes, Audrey hoists me onto the piano lid and places a long chiffon scarf in my hand. I sing “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” for her guests and flail the scarf. My act is followed by my sister’s command performance of “Rondo alla Turque” with a “Minuet in G” encore. Jo takes piano lessons from Cosme McMoon, former bodybuilder and accompanist to the soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, who is cited in The Incomplete Book of Failures: The Official Handbook of the Not-Terribly-Good Club of Great Britain as “The Worst Singer.” Mr. McMoon raps Jo’s fingers with a Mongol pencil when she hits the wrong key. Lessons end on an up note. Commandeering the piano bench, Cosme McMoon bangs out “Round Her Neck She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” for us to sing at the top of our lungs.
I’m not good enough for Mr. McMoon. I take lessons from Blanche Solomon, who lives crosstown, a two-bus commute. I’m not crazy about her neighborhood. One day, as I’m approaching her awning, someone with perfect timing dumps orange pulp on my head from a window. Mrs. Solomon doesn’t like teaching me so she feeds me instead and we pass a strained hour with graham crackers and milk. She sits across from me at a red oilcloth– covered table in her kitchen. I ask why I can hear myself swallow if the action takes place inside my body. Mrs. Solomon gives me swallowing lessons. Time passes. We fill an hour. I fail to transcend “The Spinning Song.”
Schiap loathes her piano lessons too. In Shocking Life she writes: “That was sheer agony. To sit on a stool, hitting the same note, was unbearable.” She fakes hysterics after each lesson until her parents let her quit.
Shocked: My Mother, Schiaparelli, and Me Page 5