D.V. (11 page)

What amazing attitudes those marvelous people the English can conjure up! Especially when they're in trouble. Think of the Marquess of Bath, who owned Longleat. He went through the whole war with a duck on a lead, praying for bombs to fall so that his duck would have a pond to swim in.

Henry Bath was about as far as you can go in appeal—certainly for an Englishman. He had a lovely nose. He broke it breaking a bronc in Texas when he was very young, but a beautiful nose it remained. He joined the American forces—did you know that? Hank the Yank. Sort of like joining another table at El Morocco. He'd be asked, “Why are you here with the Americans?” and he answered, “Well, don't think I don't like the British—I mean, I
am
English.” And he
was
too. He was quite somebody. As Marquess of Bath he wasn't some alley cat. He always had that duck, looking skyward, the two of them, and if they heard the
crunch
of a nearby bomb, they would set off on the dead run to see if the bomb crater would fill up with water so the duck could swim.

The British bat their best friends in the face, but that's all right because their friends can
take
it. Very tough society, the English.
Of course, it's only if you're both English that you can dish out this kind of behavior. An Englishman would take
great
exception if an American said something insulting to another Englishman. The English never let each other down. They'd never quite say, “Shut up!”—much too polite for that—but they'd say, “My dear sir…” quite slowly, and go on in that department and put you right on your
back
.

Ah, the Englishness of the English! The cold feet of the English! The kind hearts of the English! And never mind the bad teeth of the English!

In 1926, before we lived in London, we'd come over to England for a visit. Now London in 1926 was a big, good-natured town—it ran the world, don't forget. There wasn't the mixture of blood and nationalities that London has today and which I find terribly exciting. In those days, you were either a Cockney or you were a West Ender—period. And then suddenly the whole country went on strike. The General Strike. Do you realize
nothing
worked? There were no trains, there were no taxis, there were no telephones, there were no cables, there were no newspapers, there was no food—there was absolutely nothing.
Everything
was at a dead still.

The swells picked up the slack. In Oxford and Cambridge, the boys started manning trains and got the milk delivered for the babies in London. Eventually there was milk and food for everyone, and the old town ran quite well. We discovered that these charming old dowagers in black lace dresses we'd meet—in those days, people who were older looked older, dressed older, acted older,
were
older—were all working around the clock—as telephone operators at the
Evening Standard
, for instance—to keep things going.

But what I remember best about the General Strike was motoring down to Maidenhead one day. We went in an open Bentley, and I was sitting in front with the driver when a man jumped on the running board.

“Don't be frightened, madam,” the man said. “It's quite all right. But may I please suggest that
perhaps
you
might…
you see, we're just turning a bus over down the road, and I thought you might be more comfortable if you made a
slight
detour.”

I've never forgotten it. Oh, but I think that thoughtfulness and manners are everything.

I've known the English. I've known their hearts and their courage and their fascination and their conversation and their ways and their means—the whole bit. Did you know Lord Astor of Hever? Quite a good artist. You'll remember that Churchill said that all English gentlemen were taught how to read, write, and paint. Lord Astor was enchanting, absolutely divine. His children were friends of ours, but a wild lot. They used to stay out in London too late, and he'd say: “If you're not back at Hever at such-and-such a time, the drawbridge is up. You don't get in!” So they'd stay in London a wee bit late, and when they'd arrive the drawbridge would be up. So there they were. Damn cold, as I don't have to tell you, in the middle of the night in the English countryside…no place to stay. What were they going to do? No way of getting the bridge down over the moat except from the castle's side. While a wet moat is considered most luxurious, it's nothing to be on the wrong side of at four in the morning. Fortunately, Lord Astor's passion in life was his dogs, so the children out there beyond the moat would start to bark, and that would get the
real
dogs barking. They'd all bark together, which would wake up the old boy, and he'd stump—he'd lost one leg in the First World War—through the castle, down through the great hall, through the corridors, past the great armory collection, the Holbeins, then an Elizabeth, then a Henry VIII, and then some of the wives he beheaded, and let down the bridge: “My darlings!” Here's this divine old gentleman in the middle of the night freezing to death in a nightshirt.

Then, of course, taxes made it impossible for him. He took it very quietly, left England, gave Hever to the eldest son, and moved to the south of France and painted his days away until he died. Then they had that great sale: finest armor in the world.

I have a passion for armor. To me, a gauntlet is the most beautiful thing. The golden fingers, the wrist line.

I always have armor in my Metropolitan shows. You don't notice them? In “Vanity Fair” I had a very beautiful lace room, and
in the middle of it I had a gold breastplate. It was swollen gold…and out of the neck poured
point de Bruxelles
, the most beautiful lace in the world. The combination of gold and steel and lace!—no combination as beautiful.

Oh, I'm mad about armor.
Mad
about it! I love the way it's put together. I love the helmets with the feathers out the back. Milanese, you see. Have you ever seen a tilting green? It's the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Once I went down to Dartington Hall in Devonshire to see the tilting green, and I've never seen anything so beautiful in my life. I don't know how long a tilting green is, half a mile or so, but it's the most beautiful grass you'll ever see. There are great banks that rise up on either side like giant steps terraced in grass—grass, grass, green grass—where they set the silken tents dripping with tassels and gold…trouvères and troubadours strolling the grounds and beautiful women sitting out in front to watch. And all this wonderful green ground, with the knights in armor, banners, and these great horses. You can say, “Well, give me a good game of foot-ball.” But that must have been the most beautiful contest to see in the world. You can't imagine it until you've seen a tilting green. All green, green, green, right to the sky.

Violet is a color I really like. But then I like almost every color. I have an eye for color—perhaps the most exceptional gift I have. Color depends entirely on the tonality. Green, for instance, can look like the subway—but if you get the
right
green…a spring green, for instance, is
marvelous
. The green of England and the green of France are the most beautiful spring greens. The green of England is a
little
deeper than the green of France, a
little
darker….

Red is the great clarifier—bright, cleansing, and revealing. It makes all other colors beautiful. I can't imagine becoming bored with red—it would be like becoming bored with the person you love.

All my life I've pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me. It's exactly as if I'd said, “I want rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple”—they have
no
idea what I'm talking about. About the best red is to copy the color of a child's cap in
any
Renaissance portrait.

I loathe red with
any
orange in it—although, curiously enough, I also loathe orange
without
red in it. When I say “orange,” I don't mean yellow-orange, I mean
red
-orange—the orange of Bakst and Diaghilev, the orange that changed the
century
.

At the same time, I love nineteenth-century colors. I love the
names
of the colors of men's clothes of the Regency period—buff, sand, fawn…and don't forget snuff! My God, there were
words
in those days. But where is snuff today?

Balenciaga had the most wonderful sense of color—his
tête de nègre
, his
café au lait
, his violets, his magentas, and his mauves. Every summer I'd take his same four pairs of slacks and his same four pullovers to Southampton with me. Then…one year I went down to Biarritz. I laid out
exactly
the same four pairs of slacks,
exactly
the same four pullovers…and I'd never seen them before! It's the light, of course—the intensifying light of the Basque country. There's never been such a light. That was Balenciaga's country.

Lighting is everything in a color. It's affected by the way the sun shines in certain countries. And the farther north you go, the more sense of color you get. I'm not talking about little gray stone Scottish villages…but the
roses
of Scotland are so rose-pink! And the
purple heather—
the violent violet of heather under the blue Scottish sky…I adore Scotland. If only I didn't have to sleep there at night—it's so bloody cold.

I don't like southern skies. To me, they're not…enough. Although the most beautiful sky I've ever seen in my life was in the tropics, over Bahia—until I saw
exactly
the same sky over Hong Kong. I'd been told in Bahia that the only other place where that special blue existed was China, although they couldn't be farther apart. Bahia is practically on the equator, and most of China is very cold northern country; but the blue of the sky is
identical
. It's a
cold
blue of
hard
enamel, and it's
too
beautiful.

There's never been a blue like the blue of the Duke of Windsor's eyes. When I'd walk into the house in Neuilly, he'd be standing at the end of the hall. He always received you himself, which was terribly attractive, and he always had something funny and friendly to say to you while you disposed of your coat. But I'd see him standing there, and even in the light of the hall, which was quite dim, I could see that
blue
. It comes from being at sea. Sailors have it. I suppose it's in the family—Queen Mary had it too. But he had an
aura of blue around him. I mean what I say—it was an azure aura surrounding the face. Even in a black-and-white picture you can feel it.

Black is the hardest color in the
world
to get
right—
except for gray.

Pauline de Rothschild, when she was Pauline Potter, lived in a house in New York where everyone used to argue about what color she'd had the drawing-room walls painted. I can tell you what it was. It was a light gunmetal gray—the color of the
inside
of a pearl.

In Paris, Molyneux had a salon painted and carpeted in another
perfect
shade of gray. All his
vendeuses
wore crêpe-de-chine dresses of the
exact
same color. Everything was gray so that the clothes he was showing would stand out. You saw
nothing
except the clothes he showed.

The Eskimos, I'm told, have seventeen different words for shades of
white
. This is even more than there are in
my
imagination.

But don't you
adore
the look of white silk slippers with the dark hem of a velvet dress? For months at
Harper's Bazaar
I went around saying, “Remember Velásquez!” That was one of my ideas that never reached the general public.

Purple is a beautiful color—a bit overdone at the moment because people have been so slow to take to it. It's associated with the church—ecclesiastical and powerful things—and it's also very Japanese, although it isn't really a purple the Japanese like. They prefer a sort of currant red with a
little
violet in it.

Taxicab yellow is
marvelous
. I often asked for taxicab-yellow backgrounds when I worked in photography studios.

At
Harper's Bazaar
a story went around about me: Apparently, I'd wanted a billiard-table green background for a picture. So the photographer went out and took the picture. I didn't like it. He went out and took it again. I didn't like it. Then…he went out and took it
again
and I
still
didn't like it. “I asked for billiard-table green!” I'm supposed to have said.

“But this
is
a billiard table, Mrs. Vreeland,” the photographer replied.

“My dear,” I apparently said, “I meant the
idea
of billiard-table green, not a
billiard table
.”

This story is apocryphal, but it could well be true. The other day someone was talking about the idea of painting a room the color of the pupil of an eye in a Vermeer painting. I understand this
totally
.

Actually, pale-pink salmon is the
only
color I cannot
abide—
although, naturally, I adore pink. I love the pale Persian pinks of the little carnations of Provence and Schiaparelli's pink, the pink of the Incas….

And though it's so
vieux jeu
I can hardly bear to repeat it—pink
is
the navy blue of India.

Oh, but violets. You should have seen Balenciaga's violets. He was the greatest dressmaker who ever lived. Those were the days when people dressed for dinner, and I mean
dressed—
not just changed their clothes. If a woman came in in a Balenciaga dress, no other woman in the room existed.

He wasn't interested in youth. He didn't care a bit about bones or anything to do with what we admire today. Oh, those collections! They were the most thrilling things! We'd stand in the corner of the salon if we couldn't get a chair to see his collections. You've never seen such colors—you've never seen such violets! My God, pink violets, blue violets! Suddenly you were in a nunnery, you were in a monastery.

Nobody else compared to him.

His voice was very low, and often you had to concentrate to hear it. His first name was Cristobal. His inspiration came from the bullrings, the flamenco dancers, the loose blouses the fishermen wear, the cool of the cloisters…and he took these moods and colors and, adapting them to his own tastes, literally dressed those who cared about such things for
thirty
years. He loved the coquetry of lace and ribbon, and yet he believed totally in the dignity of women. Balenciaga often said that women did not have to be perfect or beautiful to wear his clothes. When they wore his clothes, they became beautiful.

One never knew what one was going to see at a Balenciaga opening. One fainted. It was possible to blow up and die. I remember
at one show in the early sixties—one put on for clients rather than for commercial buyers—Audrey Hepburn turned to me and asked why I wasn't frothing at the mouth at what I was seeing. I told her I was trying to act calm and detached because, after all, I was a member of the press. Across the way Gloria Guinness was sliding out of her chair onto the floor. Everyone was going up in foam and thunder. We didn't know what we were
doing
, it was so glorious. Well, what was going on was that Balenciaga was introducing the maillot for the first time. A maillot is like a body stocking, closed at the neck, ankle, and wrist. At this show it was a nude color, half-gold and pink, and over it was a tent of chiffon surrounding the model, the girl. It was
incredibly
beautiful. And don't forget, Balenciaga didn't use long-legged models—he used rather short-limbed, plump models, because he liked Spanish women. It was the most exciting garment I've ever seen. It was a dream. And do you know, I tried to get it for my Balenciaga show at the Met and no one could even remember it—how like a dream it had passed!

And then one day Balenciaga just closed his doors. He never even told Bunny Mellon, who of course was his greatest client…I suppose she had the greatest collection of Balenciagas in the world.

I was staying with Mona Bismark in Capri when the news came. I was downstairs, dressed for dinner, having a drink. Consuelo Crespi telephoned me from Rome, saying it had just come over the radio that Balenciaga had closed his doors forever that afternoon, and that he'd never open them again. Mona didn't come out of her room for three days. I mean, she went into a complete…I mean, it was the end of a certain part of her
life!