Ossie Clark (left) with his wife Celia Birtwell and Royal College of Art friend David Hockney (right)
When Mother moved us to London and she began her wacky expat divorcee phase, her wardrobe expanded and in some ways exploded with the flamboyant free flowing fabrics and radical cuts of Enlgish designer Ossie Clark (The King of King’s Road) and his wife, textile designer Celia Britwell. She may have seen his clothes at Henry Bendel in New York (they bought his first collection) but she fell in love with them in London.
His work came of age in the 60s and became the look and style of the 70s influencing Yves Saint Laurent, Anna Sui and Tom Ford among others. His classic lines done for Radley are still worn by Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell and, of course, by me and Robbie and our friends in the Chanel Bonfire party.
Nancy Reagan wearing Adolfo in her Pedro Menocal portrait
Adolfo (Adolfo F. Sardina), the Cuban born designer (and cousin of society portraitist Pedro Menocal) was one of mother’s favorite designers in late 60s New York. After graduating from the University of Havana in 1948, he emigrated to the U.S. and served in the navy. His fashion career started when he became an apprentice milliner at Bergdorf’s in the early 50s and then moved to Balenciaga in Paris and also Chanel –primarily as a milliner or hat maker. He moved permanently to New York in the earlier sixties and opened his own millinery salon, winning a coveted Coty award for his designs. Soon he began to design clothes which grew in popularity and surpassed his success with hats. In the late sixties, inspired by Chanel’s cardigan style suits of the 1930s he began a long line of knitwear suits with increasingly sensational adornments that captured the favor of the likes C.Z. Guest, the Duchess of Windsor, Nancy Reagan and Mother. His clothes are in the collections of the Met, the Smithsonian, LACMA and other museums. He retired at the top of his game in 1993 to the dismay of many of his clients.
The record that introduced the voice of Astrud Gilberto
The last icon of my New York City childhood is not a visual icon but a vocal one. Astrud Gilberto, a young Brazilian woman, came to the United States in the early sixties with her husband the guitarist Joao Gilberto and legendary songwriter, arranger and bossa nova stylist Antonio Carlos Jobim at the invitation of sax player Stan Getz to record an album of new jazz samba that would sell millions of copies and become one of the most well known jazz albums of all time and an iconic sound of the 60s. Astrud had never sung professionally but was pressed into service to sing “The Girl From Ipanema” because she was the only one of the Brazilians who could speak English. The low affect of her voice was the perfect counter-point the emotional inflection of her husband’s guitar and Getz’s hushed sexy-voiced saxophone. The record resonated from tropical wood stereo speakers in living rooms lit by the soft green lights of Harmon/Kardon receivers all over America. Astrud became the female voice of the 60s of my mother’s generation — the epitome of cool, adult sophistication. She left Gilberto for Getz in the mid-sixties and continued to record and sing until an unofficial retirement in 2002. Mother saw her in the late 60s in New York and I can still remember falling to sleep on Park Avenue to the clinking of classes, the laughter of grown up conversation and the soft voice of Astrud singing.
Eloise was an icon that symbolized my childhood in New York–unsupervised, wild and crazy, lonely, but always, somehow safe and frequently fun. Holly Golightly was the symbol of my mother’s time in New York. The Georgann Rea of the Dakota and Park Avenue, with charge accounts at Bergdorfs and Bendels and Bloomingdales and tables at La Grenouille and Lutece was a creation of my stepfather and his taste and money and also of my mother and her aching desire to have the perfect life she’d always dreamed about–glamourous and romantic and important. She’d glimpse it, grab at it and hold it in her hand like the exquisite jewelry my stepfather bought for her but she’d never be able to hang onto it. Underneath her frosted hair and her little black Italian silk cocktail dresses, mother would always be the Iowa orphan (Loreta May Gronau) and abused little girl from Kansas City (Georgann McAdams) looking for unconditional love and a sense of belonging.
It may seem strange that an eight or nine year old girl’s two memorable fictional icons are Eloise and Antoine Doinel the boy in les quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) but there you are — my childhood in New York was not usual or often appropriate. I do not remember the year exactly (’68, or ’69) that my stepfather rented Andy Warhol’s house in South Hampton but I do remember that in addition to whip cream fights and swimming and other exercises to introduce Robbie and me to his children from his first marriage, he showed a series of Truffaut movies on a screen in the living room. Mother and Oliver’s relationship was already quite volatile and would get much worse, end and then get better but I remember watching the troubled Antoine as he listened to his mother and stepfather fight and feeling that I knew how he felt. The film ends with a freeze-frame of his face at the beach and it stuck with me through that summer and forever — even as I finished the final scene of Chanel.
In 1955, my publisher Simon & Schuster published one of the greatest, most joyful, most subversive picture books of all time Eloise by Kay Thompson with illustrations by Hillary Knight. Eloise is a six year old girl who lives at the Plaza Hotel in New York City with her Nanny, her pug Weenie and her turtle Skipperdee and she is impossible and wonderful and for the most part on her own in a world made for grown-ups while her parents are always away. For me, it was almost like someone was telling my own story (the good parts at least) and Eloise became part sister, part role model, part best friend.
Kay Thompson (aka Katherine Louise Fink) was born in Missouri (just like me although in St. Louis not Kansas City) and became a singer, arranger, musician, songwriter, actor and, of course, author. She started in radio as a singer and choral arranger and worked with Bing Crosby and later headlined with the Williams Brothers (Andy’s first introduction to the world). She went to work for MGM as a vocal coach and choral director under the legendary musical producer Arthur Freed and worked with Judy Garland, Lena Horne and Frank Sinatra while there. Her only big starring film role was in the Stanley Donan musical Funny Face in which she played the imposing fashion editor, Maggie Prescott for whom Fred Astaire’s photographer and Audrey Hepburn’s model characters work. She was loud and brassy and wonderful — just like a grown up Eloise.
In fact, when asked if her goddaughter Liza Minelli was the model for Eloise, Thompson, the longtime Plaza Hotel resident, famously replied, “I am Eloise.”
While that may have been true, by the time I was introduced to the books while living in the Dakota and having tea at The Plaza and scrounging hors d’ouvres off the coffee table the mornings after Mother’s parties on Park Avenue in the late 60s, I was pretty sure that Eloise was me. And it was a great comfort.
We interrupt your Columbus Day celebrations to inform you that the Chanel Bonfire paperback drops in one month on November 12, 2013 just in time for the holiday season. Put it on your list!
It was no wonder Mother had been miserable in the wild west of the Dakota when the Upper East Side was rocking with places like Maxwell’s Plum the original and quintessential singles bar of the late 60s and early 70s. While it may have been unusual for seven and eight year old girls to be seen at La Grenouille, it was probably a bit of a shock for some patrons to find Robbie and me at Maxwell’s. Opened in 1966 by Warner LeRoy whose grandfather was Harry Warner (one of the Warner Brothers) and whose father Mervyn was one of the most successful directors in Hollywood, directing everything from The Wizard of Oz (uncredited) to Quo Vadis and Mr. Roberts to, more germane to my life, Gypsy. Like his father’s film choices, Warner’s menu was all over the place from chili and burgers to wild boar and caviar. And like both sides of his show business family, LeRoy was a showman first and foremost, later taking his larger than life sensibilities to Tavern on the Green and The Russian Tea Room. While I’m sure mother was keenly aware of “the scene” at the bar where Warren Beatty and Barbra Streisand and countless other hot, sexy young people were picking each other up, for Robbie and me, Maxwell’s Plum was a circus of stained glass, Tiffany lamps and large ceramic animals hanging from the ceiling that made it feel like a grown-ups restaurant for kids or a restaurant where grown-ups could act like kids.
I can not for the life of me find a photo of Rumplemeyer’s Ice Cream Parlor which was housed at the St. Moritz on Central Park South but it was my first favorite place in New York. Begun as a restaurant originally called Rumplemayer’s and imported from Paris and run by the Viennese chef Rumplemayer, it was an original part of the hotel (built in 1930) in which the likes of Marlene Dietrich dined. By the late 60s when we moved to New York it was the most wonderful ice cream place filled with white painted iron, stuffed animals and leather booths. It was like Christmas. We’d go after skating lessons at Rockefeller Center or after a walk through the park from the Dakota or a trip to the slide at FAO Schwartz. Once we even went there for dessert after eating at the Auto Pub in the GM building…
The Auto Pub at the General Motors Building
…which was like having Christmas on top of Christmas. The Auto Pub was just a burger joint that had regular booth and table seating but also had seats inside sections of cars. In another room there was a kind of mini drive-in where you could eat and watch movies. Our mother’s second marriage may have been spirallying out of control but New York was not stingy with wonderful distractions for me and Robbie.
While our mother took us to the finer restaurants where she could see and be seen by fashionable New York dining on her alimony with her perfectly matched blonde daughters sometimes with an equally fashionable beau in tow, Robbie and I probably ate out more often at Schrafft’s on Madison Avenue (usually with a nanny). Part of a chain started by the Boston candy company, Shrafft’s was a piece of old New York. The first had been opened at the turn of the century (when Mother’s spot might have been Delmonico’s) and by World War One they were all over the city. Schrafft’s was a sort of upscale lunch counter or diner with wonderful cake and it’s own brand of ice cream. So important was Schrafft’s to the image of New York that it is hard to find a novelist, short story writer, poet or playwright who worked in the city and did not at least mention it or set a scene there. James Thurber’s meek clerk plots murder there in “The Cat Bird Seat”. Wallace Shawn mentions it in his elegiac taxi ride monologue in “My Dinner With Andre”. And of course there’s W.H. Auden’s lovely “In Schrafft’s” which you can see if you follow the link to my friend Tom Beller’s wonderful New York Literary site, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood. http://mrbellersneighborhood.com/2004/01/in-schraffts
225 East 60th Street
Of course if Mother was with us, dessert or a treat after the park or ice skating would be more likely had at Serendipity. Opened in the mid-fifties by Stephen Bruce, it was famous and famously frequented by the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol from the very beginning. Our favorite thing was “Frrrozen Hot Chocolate” a drink so diabolically good that Jackie Kennedy tried to get the recipe so it could be served at the White House (she couldn’t). It’s somewhere between a milk shake and iced chocolate–a wonderful kind of chocolate frozen daquiri (without alcohol). They also served giant hot dogs and other fun things for kids that chic grown-ups like to have. And the inside was like a 19th century ice cream parlor in neon — what’s not to love?!