The new paperback edition of Chanel is out today! And it’s being featured at the Hudson News Store in all your favorite airports! Perfect for vacation reading!
Both the photo of my mother, Georgann Rea and the one of me and my sister Robin were taken by my late step-father, Oliver Rea. The new edition also includes the first chapter of the sequel, Heart of Glass due out in March 2016!
Happy Summer! Happy Reading!
Fresh from the publisher! My first copies of the new Chanel paperback which includes the first chapter of the sequel Heart of Glass! The books will be available two weeks from today and will be featured at Hudson News in airports all over the country! I think Gallery did a lovely job. And I absolutely love the Tiffany blue. That’s my mother on the cover and Robbie and I in the inset photo. I hope you like Chanel and will look forward to Heart of Glass which is being published in March, 2016.
This is an early proof copy of the new paperback cover for Chanel due out this summer! The reissue will include the first chapter of the sequel, HEART OF GLASS! That’s my mom on Lyford Cay with Robbie and me in the inset. The photos were taken by Pop, my once-upon-a-time stepfather Oliver Rea (note the misspelling of his name on the credit). Should be out in July in time to take to the beach!
Okay, I don’t have any pictures, but we were there. One of the hottest nights in my memory, as if a garbage filled blow-dryer was pointed at your face. It was NYC, 1974, Robin and I in our long Laura Ashley dresses, getting drunk on champagne while Mother and Pop Bossa Nova’d and didn’t pay attention to anyone else. Listening to “Midnight at the Oasis”. Later, I passed out in the taxi. My first faint. Stay cool out there this summer.
Years later, in a strange, worlds collide, my husband and I were living in Hell’s Kitchen and we’d just had our first child, Harry. We lived in Manhattan Plaza, a building for people in the performing arts. An old lady named Mrs. Valentine who had been Toscanini’s secretary lived a few floors down from us and knitted booties for Harry. Her husband, Harry Valentine had been the Maitre ‘d at El Morocco until his retirement in the early 80s and probably poured us all into the taxi!
Mr. Chow was the first Chinese restaurant I ever went to. And the first occasion was my 16th birthday party. It was lunch for about a dozen of my friends and my sister Robbie and it was truly wonderful–glamorous and fun. I can’t remember the food but I do remember that my friend Matt Backer gave me the Rolling Stones live album “Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out” and began my life-long love affair with the Stones.
Mr. Chow was opened in Knightsbridge in London in 1968 (outposts in Beverly Hills and New York City followed in the next decade) by Michael Chow the son of Peking Opera Grand Master Zhou Xinfang. It quickly became a place to be seen and to see and introduced many to a Chinese cuisine which may not have been the most authentic was was certainly the most glamorous at that time. There are now even more Mr. Chow restaurants in Malibu, South Beach and Tribecca to name a few. And while Beverly Hills’ is my closest, the true Mr. Chow will always be the one in London about which Alan Richman of GQ wrote, “It is an establishment that can not be defined by customary standards but must be appreciated for its sheer fabulousness.” Mais oui.
Matt Backer’s love of rock-n-roll persists, he is a successful guitarist and songwriter who works frequently with Julian Lennon. And in a very small world coincidence, Michael Chow’s daughter China acted in my husband’s first movie, Head Over Heels.
