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By
Published: 2006
Category: Non Fiction [4]
Disclosure: I was married to Annette Tapert during the years she wrote her best-known books on stylish women. I read the text of 'Power of Style' as it came out of her computer and made the occasional comment. When it was published in 1994, I thought it was one of the ten best books on style ever written. Time and change have given me some objectivity on a very few things. Including this book. That is, 'Power of Style' is still a knockout.
And now I'll tell you why, okay?
We look at actresses and society figures and comment on their plastic surgery and their expensive clothes and remember that it wasn't so long ago they were pig-tailed girls growing up dirt poor in the back of beyond --- we say they're "self-invented."
Like we aren't.
Self-invention is the great American tradition. Madonna was born with a last name. Ralph Lauren was once Lipschitz. And if my mother hadn't been in love with FDR and wanted her sons to go to Groton, his old prep school, I would not have attended Milton Academy and Harvard --- I might never have discovered khakis and boat shoes.
In 'The Power of Style,' writer Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins, then curator of photography at Conde Nast, have created a short history of self-invention --- specifically, the transformation of English, French and American women into society figures and "style icons." You may know nothing about most of these women except their names: Daisy Fellowes, Rita Lydig, Millicent Rogers, Pauline de Rothschild, Mona Bismarck, Elsie de Wolfe. Others you know mostly as auras: Diana Vreeland, Coco Chanel, the Duchess of Windsor and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Good. The less you know, the better.
Why do I say this? Because if you have your nose pressed against the glass at all, you see only the woman in a dress --- not how she got there and the price she paid to get what she thought she wanted. In other words, you see someone who, if you're honest, you might like to be, just as you once fantasized about being a princess. But you're not a kid any more. You know that life is deals. You may even suspect that rich men aren't always so nice to their women. And so, reading 'Power of Style' fresh, you can have a pure reaction --- some admiration, to be sure, but also pity, also compassion.
Daisy Fellowes, for instance. She married a prince, who "did her the favor of dying during World War I." (They'd had three children. One was like her husband, Daisy said. The other was "like me but without guts." And the third "was the result of a horrible man called Lischmann." Pretty blunt, huh? But then, seeing a pretty child in the park, she asked the nanny, "Whose is that?" The nanny replied, "Yours, Madame.") On her yacht, she liked to hurl dinner overboard, shouting "Oh my, it's gone bad!" What was great about her? Her fashion sense. Whatever she wore, others wanted --- even the necklace she had made of corks. And she could write: "Isn't it time you let your furs out for an airing?" And her baubles were so brilliantly designed that jewelers would go to the opera and train binoculars on her neck, then rush home to make copies. But then there were human qualities. Her husband went broke; she quietly replenished his funds. She paid for cosmetic surgery for less rich friends. When she wrote a book, an orphanage got the royalties. A complex woman.
Or Diana Vreeland. We recall the one-time editor of Vogue for her ludicrous pronouncements --- "Pink is the navy blue of India" --- but almost no one knows how loyal she was to her husband, an empty suit who couldn't make a living and had a keen eye for other women. She pretended she was rich; in fact, she desperately needed to work. Her entire life was thus an act, and she was a brilliant performance artist, a kind of society impersonator. Which begins to suggest her extraordinary discipline. She had her shoes --- including the soles --- shined every day. She injected herself with vitamins. She famously arrived at her office at noon; in fact, her phone calls started at 8 AM. When she was fired, she kept her mouth shut. "I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity," she said. Complex, again.
These profiles are addictive; you want to read them, pen in hand, to mark the great bon mots, the gems of wisdom, the unbelievable stories --- and Ms. Tapert's sage conclusions. You will also savor the photographs, many never seen before; they are full of good ideas that today's designers would be shrewd to copy. Mostly, you will gain a deep appreciation of these social butterflies as professional women, careerists of a special kind.
A book of cautionary tales. A dream book. A chronicle of parallel lives. It's the same book --- but each woman will find her own meaning in it. Who would have thought that something as shallow as Society could have such depth?
To buy "The Power of Style" from Amazon.com, click here. [5]