D.V. (14 page)

I had never seen those rooms the way they were that night. Everything was in a glow. The fire was discreet because it wasn't that cold, but it was Paris and therefore damp. Niki and I were the first to arrive. Then the Windsors were announced. Coco went forward, and I had never seen a woman look at a man the way she welcomed him. I can't put it into words. Their drinks were brought to them. They never looked away from each other. The Duke was just as absorbed as she was.

They went and sat on a sofa, and in low, completely joyous
monotones they talked to each other. No one else existed for them. The rest of us could have been out on the street for all they cared. Time went by. Finally Hervé Mille, a charming man who was one of the six, said, “Coco, I thought we were all invited here to
dine
.”

Coco turned from the Duke—the first time—and batted her eyes at the butler, and we proceeded into the dining room. She was on his right at dinner…and they started to talk again. Obviously, they had once had a great romantic hour together. Well, I mean, it was clear to the dullest eye. I have never seen such intensity in my life.

The next morning I was sleeping a little late. When I asked the operator “Are there any calls?” she said, “
Oui, Madame la Duchesse de Windsor a téléphoné cinq fois, madame
.” She'd been calling since eight o'clock in the morning; you know, she never sleeps at all. When I reached her, she said, “My God, Diana, will we ever see the likes of that dinner again!”

The Duchess wasn't at all disturbed. She couldn't wait to get me on the phone in the morning to have a good talk about it.

When Chanel died—she had never been taken ill; she'd finished her collection two or three weeks before—her secretary approached Susan Train of French
Vogue
with a little black velvet bag and a note that read: “
Pour Mme Vreeland de la part de Mademoiselle
.”

In the bag were the pearl earrings Chanel always wore. These were
real—
though she seldom wore real jewels. Actually, on the day she died, as far as we know, her
great
collection of jewels—including the famous Romanov pearls Dmitri had given her—disappeared off the
face of the earth
.

Isn't it curious, though, that she gave these earrings to me? I'd always been
slightly
shy of her. And of course she was at times
impossible
. She had an utterly malicious tongue. Once, apparently, she'd said that I was the most pretentious woman she'd ever met. But that was Coco—she said a lot of things. So many things are said in this world, and in the end it makes no difference. Coco was never a
kind
woman…she was a
monstre sacré
. But she was the most interesting person
I've
ever met.

One night Coco was going to stay in New York on her way to Paris from Hawaii. I said, “Would you like to come for dinner on your way through?” She said, “No, no, no. Too strenuous. I'm too tired. I'm too bored! I can't wait to get back to Paris.” Then there was a phone call saying, “Mademoiselle would love to come for dinner if she doesn't have to talk.” I said there would be only four of us; she didn't even have to come to the table—but I would so love to see her. She didn't come often to this country; I think she came three times in all. In those days the French seldom crossed the Atlantic. I have no idea why the French complain about travel. Of course, they complain about everything…including France.

So Coco came with a very charming man, French, she'd been traveling with. She sat exactly where you are, crossed her legs, and started to talk. Dinner was announced; she came to the table; she ate everything in sight. She never stopped talking. In the middle of dinner she asked: “Couldn't we send a message to Helena?”—meaning Helena Rubinstein. Did you ever see any pictures of
her
? Marvelous looking. Polish Jewess of splendor. Splendor! So I telephoned Helena and said, “If you don't mind coming after dinner, we're half through, but Coco wants to see you.”

She arrived. It was summer. Coco had on a little white quilted satin tailleur, skirt, below the knee but short, a white ribbon and a gardenia in her hair, and a white lace shirt. I have never seen anybody look as delectable, as adorable. What age was she then? She died at eighty-eight. What difference did it make? Helena Rubinstein was in a very distinguished coat to the ground. By “distinguished” I mean the buttonholes and the loops were so beautiful; the collar was really high; the coat was bright shocking-pink Chinese silk. The two women stood facing each other. Then they went back to Reed's room. After a while I went back to see if they were all right; I thought perhaps they had a suicide pact! They hadn't moved. Helena said, “I only like your husband's room. I love it here.” The two of them stayed in there the rest of the evening talking about God knows what. I went in from time to time to check up on them. They never sat down. They stood—like men—and talked for four hours. I'd never been in
the presence of such strength of personality. Both of them. Neither of them was a real beauty. They both came from nothing. They both were so much richer than most of the men we talk about today being rich. They'd done it all alone. Of course, there'd been men in their lives who had helped them, but they earned every cent they made. You ask if they were happy. That is not a characteristic of a European. To be contented—that's for the cows. But I think that they
were
, at least when they were in power, at the wheel, and when they were running everything. And they did—these two women ruled empires.

How I adored Paris! When I went there in the twenties and thirties, I stayed at this ghastly hotel on the boulevard Haussmann with third-rate Indians in it. They were always strangling women across the court. It struck my maid so much: “Such terrible and vulgar people! Why do we stay here?”
We!
I came because it was inexpensive, and I was spending my money elsewhere.

Lunch was never a big part of the day with me. I'd often have it in my little room upstairs in my hotel, my cheap hotel, to save time, so I could get right back to doing what I wanted to do.

In the evening, in those days, there would be dancing. And the dressing for it! Don't forget, we were beautifully dressed all the time. I mean, we didn't go out with any old thing to Studio 54.

I used to spend my day at fittings. I used to fit my nightgowns. I had three fittings on a nightgown. Can you imagine? People say: What in the world were you doing that for? Because that's the way you
got
a nightgown. Too beautiful, and cost about twelve dollars. You ought to have seen the material. The choice! The different types of crêpe, of satin. The different
weights
. The different colors
—greige
, a combination of grey and beige that you never
see
today. The lace! The way they were put together! It was a whole life. The life of
fashion was very strenuous. I'd fit all afternoon—very strenuous. Oh, very strenuous—no question about it. And your shoes. Gloves made to order at Alexandrine. Hats—Reboux. And Suzy.

I don't know how to shop in America. In Paris, if I'm going to see the collection, it's one thing; if I'm there for a fitting, it's another. It's all very efficient; the French are very smart—they're very good business people. Those places are wonderfully run. But in America it's different, Bloomingdale's is the end of shopping because there isn't anyone to wait on you; you just sort of
admire
things. Then you see a man; you think he's a floorwalker: “I'm sorry, lady, I can't help you. I'm like you, I'm just looking for somebody to help
me
.” So you go out into the street with tears in your eyes: you've accomplished nothing and you've lost your health!

Or I go into, say, Saks Fifth Avenue, and there on a rack on wheels are two dozen five-thousand-dollar dresses. On a rack! It shocks me. I mean, first of all, to get
through
Saks is quite a performance. You get off the elevator; you're in the wrong department; you turn and get back on the elevator. Then you get off again, past the lingerie, past the cosmetics, and on for miles through the shoe department, and then finally you get to the five-thousand-dollar dresses, dangling there, Oscar de la Rentas, Bill Blass, each next to the others on a rack. Of course, lots of people enjoy the variety. They go home empty-handed. But they've shopped. It's a sport. In Paris it's a serious interval in one's life—perhaps twice a year. It's a pilgrimage.

Going to Paris for the collections always gave me a chance to see Bébé Bérard, who was such a delectable artist. That's one of his sketches over there on the wall. Bébé Bérard, to me, was like someone from the age of Charlemagne. Don't ask me why I say that, but I do. He had the
clearest
eyes in the world. Why this should be so I have no idea.

He was my very best friend in Paris. He was the friend of everybody in Paris with talent. And where he put his hand was like the golden touch. Whether it was in art, in fashion, in the ballet, in the theatre…Bérard bridged
every
world.

The sad thing about Bérard is that what the world has in
hand today of his is so little compared to what he produced. So much of what he did was
mise en scène
. But the productions that I saw…to me, there's never been any scenery in the world except Bérard's.

Once he did Molière. I can't remember what the play was;
Ecole des femmes
, I believe. It started in a rose garden with rose trees everywhere and underplantings covering the stage and rose trellises up here, and everybody moved within and without these trees and
then…
the lights dimmed. As they dimmed, slowly…down came a chandelier! And another, then four more, and we were looking into a great drawing room. It sounds so simple. I haven't made it sound like anything. But no one could have done it but Bérard.

Then…the way he did
La Folle de Chaillot
! In a cellar this old madwoman is speaking of getting up in the morning, and what she does when she puts on her face and how she sees herself in the mirror and how her
eyes
come to life…this mad poetic dreaming…the speech, of course, was Giraudoux's; but Bébé's set showed the little cellar room where this poor old thing slept on a pile of rags…and it was the
tallest
set you've ever seen in your life. Everything—but
everything—
was rags, rags,
rags…
but there was something so beautiful about it. Years later I ran the text in
Vogue
, in which Giraudoux describes the madwoman's morning maquillage. It had all come back to me one morning when I was making up
my
face.

The set, of course, was thrown out when the play closed. Unfortunately, there's no room in the world for used scenery. All you have are the memories. It's like an opium dream that came to an end.

Bébé always used to say to me, “You must come with me and walk through the cemetery, Père Lachaise, and we'll see all our old, old friends.” Every name on every stone, of course, is a name we've been brought up with—it's civilization. I'm sure it would have been fascinating. We never went. But often, on Sunday's, we'd go out to an old rundown château not far from the center of Paris. The château was empty, and we used to walk around and look at this wall with all these wonderful animals on it
—stags
and
dogs
and
horses…
you'd know this wall if you've ever seen Cocteau's movie of
La Belle et la bête
.

As well as I knew Bébé, I never really knew Jean Cocteau. But I remember an evening with Cocteau in his hotel room right before the war. It was in a funny little hotel on the Right Bank near the rue Cambon on a street you never noticed when you passed it. His room was narrow and very sparse, with an iron bed, but beside it was a low table
very
luxuriously fitted out with the accoutrements of an opium smoker. Cocteau was lying on the bed, wearing a little red and white handkerchief like a brigand wears around his throat, which he kept pulling tighter and tighter. I'd never heard of this before and I've never heard of it since, but I was told it affected his thyroid and stimulated him because of the pressure—true or false, how do I know?

The room was full of smoke, and Cocteau never stopped talking. I don't know how many pipes he'd had by then, but it was a
lot
. And I became so dehydrated I thought my
throat
was going to crack, but he never stopped talking long enough for me to ask for a glass of water. He had Jean Marais kneeling on one side of the bed and another beautiful boy kneeling on the other side, in attendance like baroque archangels…but I was a new audience. So he talked and talked and
talked
. Of course, I was fascinated by what he was saying. He talked exquisitely,
fantastically…
it was one of those ecstatic, marvelous dreams that come out of a good smoke. I can't tell you a word of what he said.

Finally, at about one-thirty in the morning, I couldn't take it any longer and I left. When I got back to my hotel, I think I drank six bottles of water. Then…the next morning, I woke up with a hangover that would have killed a Marine. I felt as if I'd been pushed into the Iron Maiden at Nuremberg—with
knives
going in all around the crown of my head.

Once I told my maid that the most thrilling thing in the world was going to happen any hour now. Mr. Bérard was planning on coming to New York, to America! You know how the French hate to travel—but Bérard was going to come. We didn't know exactly when he would come, or even
if
, really…but we'd
hoped
. One day my maid came to me and said, “Madame, I have
seen
Mr. Bérard.”
I said, “How could you possibly recognize him? You've never seen him before.” “But, madame, he is just as you described him—a little man, a dancer, with pointed shoes, and his face turned toward heaven.”

What ecstasy! She summed up everything I felt about him, she had passed him in the street and knew immediately who he was.