D.V. (12 page)

When people ask me what the greatest change in my life is, I always say it is Fear—the sense of imminent physical danger that we must all live with in big cities everywhere today.

I was once afraid of nothing. All those years on Seventh Avenue—the garment district—how many years was it? The years I was on
Vogue
I wasn't
that
much on Seventh Avenue, but on
Harper's Bazaar
I was the fashion editor. So I went there to see what they they had to offer. I tramped the streets. I covered the waterfront.

I'd walk home those sixty blocks alone all those years. I
loved
the fur district, and that's where I'd walk when I finished working.

These are the war years I'm speaking about now. Believe me, there were no cabs; I'd walk these
long, long
blocks. We were practically in a blackout—what they called a brownout—the lights were very dim. I was absolutely
freezing
. There weren't slacks in those days, and there weren't boots—I was in sandals. I had a fur coat on—a fur-lined raincoat—and I'd just
shout
to myself, “Keep walking! Keep walking!”

I did this evening after evening. I took it as much for granted as the fact that I'm going to sleep in my own bed tonight.

When I got home, I was alone. The boys were in the armed forces. Reed was living in Montreal through the whole war, working for British interests. He was there for seven years. We were married for forty-six years, and for seven of them he was away. It was a very vivid period in my life. For seven years, I was by myself….

But I was so happy when I was down on Seventh Avenue. I was always going up rusty staircases with old newspapers lying all over the place and the most ghastly-looking characters hanging around…but
nothing
was frightening to me. It was
all
part of the great adventure, my métier, the scene. I suppose that's why I have such a devotion to Seventh Avenue today—because the whole bit was interesting to me. So many of them were Jewish refugees. Hardly spoke English. They meant a great deal to me because they provided a touch of old Europe. It wasn't a letdown, even after Chanel. After all, it was my world. The men down there were my pals. They were the people who looked after me. They were the people who made my life
possible
.

I never wore clothes from Seventh Avenue myself, you understand. I always kept a totally European view of things. Maybe that's why I was so appreciated there. I was independent. In those days, don't forget, fashion traveled very slowly. When I arrived back in this country after the war started, I couldn't believe what I saw. In the summer, every woman wore diamond clips on crêpe de chine dresses. And they all wore silk stockings—this was before nylons—under these hideous strappy high heels. This is in the summer, you understand—in the
country
. It was
unbelievable
.

For years in Europe I'd been bare-legged and thong-sandaled once the heat came on. I still have some of my original sandals I had made in Capri in 1935 when Reed and I were staying at the Fortino on the Marina Grande. The theory of the sandals was that the sandal strap went between the toes. The soles of these sandals were so beautiful. They were built up in layers thinner than my fingernail—layer upon layer. When you walked, it was like walking in satin. In Capri, we used to walk up through the hills, through the vineyards, and all the way out to Tiberius's palace—that's a hell of a walk. I can remember Coco Chanel and Visconti used to
do it on donkeys. She'd wear her beret and her pullover and her white duck pants—and her pearls, naturally—and the donkey would carry her uphill over this steep, rocky road. Visconti was infatuated with her, and he'd follow her on his donkey. Capri—pagan and wonderful.

Then the war came, and there was no more communication among any of us. But I had the sandals. And I gave them to a shoemaker from New Jersey called Mr. Maxwell and asked him to copy them. He'd never seen anything like them. So I told him the story of where
I'd
copied them from—the pornographic museum at Pompeii, which had originally been open only to men. Those were the days of boat trips on the Mediterranean, and these old maids would save up their money for years, get themselves men's suits, and get into the museum, where they'd holler and yell and scream, and be found epileptic on the floor. It was
unbelievable
. The police would be brought in, these old maids would be carried out on stretchers, and eventually the museum had to be closed down entirely.

Through a friend in the Mussolini government, I was able to get in. “Nothing could be easier to arrange,” he said.

So I
saw…
. In Pompeii, everything that can happen in life was captured in the minute and a half a volcanic eruption takes. Women are having babies, dogs scratching their backs
…held
forever in eternity. And in the museum I saw a woman having an affair with her slave, who was wearing…

I was telling all this to Mr. Maxwell, who, naturally, was absolutely horrified. He was the most charming, gentle soul—reeked of all the nicest Englewood, New Jersey, characteristics—but he'd never heard a
woman
discuss such things. But I went on….

The slave was wearing link slave bracelets, which I recognized immediately, because everyone had worn slave bracelets exactly like them in the twenties. But then…instead of the very elaborate sandals of a
grand seigneur
or a warrior, or the sandals of a gentleman of the town or a tradesman, he wore the simplest sandal in the world. It had just
one
thong which went between the big toe and the one next to it, and
one
strap around the ankle attached to the heel.
You ask why he was making love wearing his sandals? He probably wasn't given the
time
. She probably jumped him and he didn't have a chance to get those sandals off; and then, of course, Vesuvius knocked them both to the floor. This was the design I took to Capri, where they made the sandals up for me from my description.

Eventually, Mr. Maxwell got over his shock. He copied the sandals. But no one could wear them. Apparently, there was something in the health regulations of New York City that said that no one could try on shoes unless she was wearing stockings. Obviously, the thong couldn't go over a stocking and between the toes, and of course that was the
whole point
. Somehow or other, the law was changed. Don't ask me how—I've never concerned myself with that sort of thing. But from then on there was a very nice business for Mr. Maxwell.

That was the Birth of the Thonged Sandal. The fingernails came next.

When I arrived in America, I had these very dark red nails which some people objected to, but then some people object to absolutely everything. The point is that they were absolutely clear and perfect. There was only one other woman in New York with perfect nails, and that was Mona Williams, who had a manicurist come to her every evening. In those days, you had your fingernails done at home for a very good reason—the varnish took
forever
to dry, and you couldn't use your hands for hours and hours. I had mine done at home, but they dried almost instantly, and that's what this story is about.

In Paris I'd had a manicurist, a Venetian named Perrera, who'd been in the chicken-farm business with Catherine d'Erlanger—the one who lived in Lord Byron's house at the end of Piccadilly. She also had a house outside of Venice, up the Brenta where there're those strange canals and those wonderful sixteenth-century houses. Her house, Villa Malcontenta, had Veronese walls and ceilings. Perrera was, I suppose, what you'd call a “peasant”—though I hate to use words which I don't quite know the meaning of; I merely mean that he wasn't a man of the aristocracy. He was in all kinds of
businesses, but what he loved more than anything else in the world was women's hands. When he came in the evening to my room in Paris, I don't think he would have noticed if I'd been naked. I'm not sure he ever looked at my face.

Certain men adore women for certain things and that becomes their life. Perrera's life was being with women with beautiful hands. He
worshiped
Barbara Hutton, for instance, who had the most beautiful hands in the world. He talked about them endlessly. Perrera was far from being a rich man. I'm sure that when he left Barbara Hutton, he'd walk through the rain of Paris to the nearest Métro and come home to a very simple life. His price, you see, was almost nothing—he took care of women's hands just for
love
.

He'd come in…and he'd undo this beautiful gray suede fitted case and take out his instruments, which were all gold—they'd been given to him by Ena, the Queen of Spain, granddaughter of Victoria. He had this
wonderful
varnish—don't ask me where
he
made it—that dried
as
he painted it on. You could have nails out to
here
, which I used to have, and they'd dry instantly.

Do you want to know what the artist Bébé Bérard liked more than anything else in the world? He liked to watch Perrera paint fingernails with this varnish—the
artistry
of it. Bérard saw this being done to me once in my hotel room and couldn't wait for the next time.

I can remember the last time I saw Perrera right after war was declared. We said goodbye and
au revoir
and “It won't be long” and “It isn't really a war”…and I brought two big flacons of his varnish with me to New York. I gave them to my little manicurist, who was sort of a free swinger in that she didn't work for a manicure parlor, but went from door to door. And one day the varnish ran out. Naturally, I was in a state.

“I've got a boyfriend downtown,” my little manicurist said, “and I think I can get him to copy it.”

“Oh,” I said, “who is he?”

“Well, he makes a nail varnish that everyone's crazy about.”

His name was Revson. He was working on about Twenty-
seventh Street and Sixth Avenue in a place with an old iron staircase up the back. His varnish had a great color, and it didn't chip—which was the biggest thing—but it took hours to dry, and it had no staying power.

But then—from studying Perrera's—he evolved a product that dried faster than anything anyone had ever used in America. And after a few years, he started to get pretty big. In fact, he became the biggest—the
most
.

Today, the great varnish of the world that covers the
waterfront
is Revlon. And, curiously enough, whenever I saw him there was always something in Charles Revson's eye…I always knew that
he
knew that
I
knew that he had made this incredible fortune off of one small bottle of mine with maybe
this
much left in it. Yes, there was always something in his eye….

The first thing I did after the war was to try to find Perrera. No one—but
no
one—ever found him, not in Venice, not in Paris, not in the south of France. He disappeared off the face of the earth. I'd wanted to bring him to America to put him together with…well, I had the business connections. But I have always been very naïve when it comes to business.

Reed and I
never
discussed business. It would have bored him to
death
. I never said to him, “Don't you think I should go to this man Revson and say, ‘Look, I can do with a quarter of a half of a tenth of a percent of what you're making today because it was my varnish that made your life as it is today possible'?”

“So what?” Reed would have said. “You got the varnish you needed—what else do you want?”

I remember the night Reed and I arrived in Paris right after the war. Oh, how it had changed! Potato flour. To think that one was eating French bread, the great French triumph, made of potatoes! Everyone was in wooden shoes.
Clack clack clack
. You could tell the time of day from your hotel room by the sound of wooden soles on the pavement. If there was a great storm of them, it meant that it was lunch hour and people were leaving their offices for the restaurants. Then there'd be another great clatter when they returned to the office, et cetera et cetera…. The day we arrived it just happened to be Bastille Day, although we hadn't planned it that way. The fountains on the place de la Concorde were playing for the first time since the liberation. And we drove all over Paris. We went everywhere—Chaillot, St. Denis…I forget the names of the
quartiers
above Montmartre, but we went to all of them. Every little square had the most ghastly little band playing the same ghastly little tune.

Strangers were dancing with strangers. Girls were dancing with girls. Strange young men who looked haunted—as if they hadn't been out of a cellar in years—were dancing with fat old women. It was raining. No one was speaking. It was hideous—and marvelous.

At what must have been four o'clock in the morning, I
suddenly realized I was hungry. So we picked this little street above Montmartre, and on it was a restaurant that looked awfully nice, but the shutters were closed. So we banged and banged on the shutters until a man came out.

“We've had nothing to eat,” I said. “We've just arrived from America and we've been spending this wonderful night in Paris, but we're so
hungry
.”

“
Mais entrez, madame et monsieur!
” the man said. “
Entrez! C'est une auberge
!”

I've never forgotten that, because, for me, France has always been an
auberge—
for feelings, for emotion, and for so many other things. Reed and I spoke of that experience for years after. The man opened up the door so wide that he could not have made a greater gesture if it had been the Hall of Mirrors!

Paris! I was so excited. But Paris had changed. The world had changed.

I realized this when I went for my fittings. You don't know what a part of life fittings once were. Remember I told you that before the war I used to have three fittings on a
nightgown—
and I'm not
that
deformed.

After the war you were no longer fitted for nightgowns.

Other things had changed. Couture before the war wasn't that expensive. It was hard to pay more than two hundred dollars for a dress. I had been what was known as a
mannequin du monde—
meaning “of the world”—because I was out every night in every nightclub, seen, seen, seen…. I was always given by the
maison de couture
for being a
mannequin du monde
what was known as a
prix jeune fille—
that is to say, they would give me the dress to wear and keep. The phrase no longer exists in the French vocabulary. The first thing I asked after the war was: “Does it still exist—as an expression?” I wasn't hinting around.

“Absolutely not!” I was told. “It's as dead as mud.”

Before the war everybody in London and Paris was dressed by somebody. I remember Reed always used to say about plump old Elsa Maxwell, for instance, who never had a cent: “The great thing
about Elsa is that she's dressed by Patou.” She'd slip off these jackets—this
enormous
mountain of a women—and there would be the label “Jean Patou.”

Elsa wasn't a vulgar woman. This is hard to explain to someone who never knew her, because she
looked
vulgar. You see pictures of her where she looks like a cook on her night out. The end of her nose was vulgar. Why wasn't she? I don't know.

Maybe it was because she adored music so much. She was a sublime pianist. A love of music is a great purifier, and music was as clear as crystal water to her.

Do you remember Mary Borden's
A Woman with White Eyes?
In that book is a marvelous description of fat white hands galloping over the keys. They were Elsa's. She started as an entertainer. Then, of course, she became famous for her parties. She'd whip it up in your own home. She'd take it over. These days everyone goes out to restaurants, but in her day Elsa would give the party in your home, invite all the important people, and you'd get a bill for the food, flowers, and wine. She herself never had a glass of port. She was not nobody. She always dined with kings. Nice kings. The King of Sweden. She watched him play tennis. She'd stay in any hotel that would pick up the tab. She started up roaring things around her in the Waldorf and ended up in the Summit. The chandelier in Elsa's apartment in the Summit wasn't exactly in the center of the room; it made you feel kind of wonky.

I remember a dinner with her in Paris before the war. I was seated opposite a San Franciscan named Tony Montgomery, who was one of the playboys of the period, and we heard some Frenchman saying to Elsa, “And, Miss Maxwell, were you in San Francisco during the great earthquake?”—you know, conversation at dinner.

“Of course I was there,” she said, “and I can remember it very well. I was walking down the marble staircase in my father's house when, suddenly, the staircase cracked under my feet….”

Tony gave me a look and I gave him a look. We both knew that there weren't
any
marble staircases west of the Mississippi in those days—let alone in Elsa's father's house. But that was Elsa—she
was just putting on the ritz, keeping things up. Why say you were born in a hovel? Who wants to hear that?

She always kept the ball in the air. But I can remember one time when I saw her totally tongue-tied. She had called me.

“Diana, do you want to meet Christine Jorgensen?”

“Actually,” I said, “I haven't thought of it.”

“Well, I thought it might interest you. You're in all sorts of businesses, and who knows? It might be a revelation to you. I'm giving a lunch tomorrow….”

Naturally, I went. What year was this? It was after the war. Look it up—it was whatever year it was when Christine Jorgensen was the focus of the world, publicly recognized for, shall we say, three weeks, for being the first known transsexual. The lunch was in Elsa's private room upstairs in a hotel salon. Leland Hayward was there, Fulco di Verdura, the great jewelry designer, and several other very fascinating men I can't remember. And no one could think of a single word to say to this very well-mannered, very charming person called Christine Jorgensen. We stared at her and had no idea how to begin. What
would
one ask: “What's the first thing you did—blow up your bazooms?” Fulco had never been so tongue-tied in his life. He wanted to ask about what she did about her underarms. Never did. Christine Jorgensen did the best
she
could to keep the ball in the air, talking about the food and the weather and, mmm…my
God
, the changes in this world! Elsa was
bouleversée
. It was the
only
time I ever saw her like that, and I knew her very well.

That first summer Reed and I spent in Europe after the war, Elsa invited us to an extraordinary evening in the south of France. We motored through Provence to Antibes. Ah, the light of Provence! We were having a sort of love affair with France, seeing again all the beauty we'd loved so much all our lives, smelling all the wonderful smells…little bluebells, little Persian pinks, and all the other delicious smells of Provence. We spent the nights in such luxury on real linen sheets in the most divine
auberges
after wonderful dinners and walks after dinner under the pines….

Then we arrived in Antibes. Everyone was waterskiing.
Every girl was in a bikini. At the time, I said that the bikini was the biggest thing since the atom bomb, but I suppose bikinis started
during
the war—they probably just tore bedsheets apart and made them. It was the year of “La Vie en rose.” We'd go to bed rather early every night at the Hôtel du Cap, and we'd hear people walking home—everyone singing “La Vie en rose.” Songs last forever. They fix particular years in your mind. That year, everyone was singing that song to everyone else into the night, and we'd lie there and listen to the happiness…it was all “La Vie en rose.” The air is so still there. It holds music. Do you know what I mean?

Reed, naturally, was dressed and ready to go long before I was in the morning. He was wonderful to travel with because he'd always get up early, case the joint, then come back and pick me up, and together we'd share what he'd found to see or do. And one morning he ran into this Argentinian, Dodero. Dodero was one of Perón's henchmen—well born, well educated, very charming, and his manners were magnificent. He invited us to come to his villa in Cannes for a party the next night. Reed told him that we had already agreed to dine with Elsa Maxwell that evening but that we'd try to come by after dinner.

Elsa's dinner was for Maurice Chevalier. It was in the old port of Antibes, which very few people have bothered to see. Elsa had taken over the main street, which led down to the docks, and set up one long table. I was right across the table from Chevalier. Of course, I'd been looking at him since I was sixteen years old, coming down the steps of the stage of the Casino de Paris, but now I actually
saw
him. My
God
, what an attractive man, and what a fascinator! It must be wonderful to feel that the world loves you and that you have something to give the world. I would think it's the best life going. Do I love a boulevardier! The way he wore a hat! Carried a stick!

After dinner, we went up in the hills above Cannes to the Dodero party, past several of his henchmen—when henchmen have henchmen, you know they're
big—
and through an absolutely empty villa. Obviously, no one slept there or lived there—heaven knows what they used it for. Then there were steps down through the pine
groves, and this charming man, Dodero, came up the steps, took hold of my hand, and kissed it. I felt this terrific beat in his hands and realized he was a very sick man—the tension of the life he was leading as part of the Perón setup was too much for him. It was obvious he lived in terrible danger all the time. That summer he had three floors of the Hotel Carlton, three yachts in the harbor, and then three villas in the hills behind Cannes. It was the
most
mysterious setup.

But we walked with him down this long flight of steps into a beautiful place that had been cut away as a dance floor, and he showed us to our table. Soon there were little gold chairs pulled up all around it. People began to arrive. All the old playboys from before the war—I can't remember any of their names—stopped by the table. All of the girls came up to me because they were our models from New York. Everyone was terribly attractive.

I've always been so flattered that anyone, whatever his status, feels he can ask me to a party. Reed and I could dine with a king one night and the next night go to a party like this one…which was the last, I would say, of the demimonde. The demimonde—the mystery of those women! Men have always been able to take any background they wished for themselves. I was being read Proust the other evening, and a demimondaine turns up at a party—no raised eyebrows—at a party for the Duchesse de Guermantes. They're still around, I'm sure, but no one gives parties for them anymore. No one even uses the expression anymore but me. It's antique as a word, like
risqué
, like
roué
, like
outré…
they're all terribly out of date.

The demimondaines were not the only ones there that night. In every sense it was a perfectly respectable party. I came in a sleeveless short dress. Summer clothes. It was a magically memorable evening. The waiters were wonderful. The lights were draped through the groves. It was the night Rita Hayworth, who was certainly the best-looking thing we ever had in America, met Aly Khan—we saw the meeting. It was the night Tyrone Power met Linda Christian—we saw the meeting. And this was the night I met a girl named Carroll McDaniel. She later married Fon, the Marquis de Portago,
whose special passion was racing cars. You'll remember that Fon stopped in the middle of a car race, the Mille Miglia, for some oil, and across the track came Linda Christian, who by then had given up Tyrone Power. She leaned into the racecar and kissed him. The Kiss of Death: He was dead seven minutes later in a crash.

His mother was one of those great Irish girls who get more freckles if they cross a street. She broke her leg skiing when she must have been eighty, had it set in a cast, and started skiing again. She once told me a wonderful story about herself. It was during the war, and we were sitting on the Southampton beach. On the
beach—
she was wearing bracelets with green pears like
this
falling from marquise diamonds like
that—
it took just a few stones to go around the wrists. She told me she had once been a nurse in the Government Hospital in Dublin. The elderly person she was looking after asked her if he could take her home to be his private nurse because he was dying and couldn't be without one. She had nothing else on her plate, and he was a very nice old man. They got married.

At some point he realized that there was no reason for going on, and he took her hand and said, “Tell me—if I were not so rich, would you have been so kind to me?”

“No,” she said.

“Would you have married me?”

“No.”

So he said, “You're the most honest girl in the whole world. For that, you will inherit everything.”

So the richest widow in Europe hit Spain, married the most eligible man in Europe, the Marquis de Portago—the King of Spain's godson—gave birth to Fon, the King of Spain's namesake, who later married, as I've already told you…look here, you mustn't let me
repeat
myself!