Walking with the Muses by Pat Cleveland

Author:Pat Cleveland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria / 37 Ink

chapter 26

A STAR IS BORN

Anne Klein show at the Plaza Hotel. They said, “Do what you feel,” and so I did.

Courtesy of Roxanne Lowitt.

The Coty Awards, which were sponsored by Coty Fragrances and recognized the work of American designers, were the Academy Awards of fashion. Eleanor Lambert, the fashion publicist who created the Best-Dressed List (which was pretty much the goal of anyone who cared passionately about clothes), was the force behind the awards. The girls who usually worked the ceremony were a group known as “Seventh Avenue models.” These were models who worked mostly for designers in their showrooms, as opposed to the glamour-girl photography models who made their living by appearing in glossy magazine spreads. Except for maybe Twiggy or Jean Shrimpton, there were still no supermodels who moved easily between these two very different spheres.

The Seventh Avenue models were the real workhorses of the industry; if they’d been dancers, they would have been the chorus girls. These girls were pros through and through, and I liked them immensely and was always eager to learn the tricks of the trade from them, whether it was how to stuff my bra, or keep my shoes from falling off, or just how to be patient and respectful. (They were so nice that I was shocked when, later in the business, I met a lot of models who were out for themselves and didn’t care whom they hurt.) I wasn’t really aligned with either camp, but Eleanor Lambert suggested to a few of the top designers that they use me for the 1970 awards ceremony. She was very high on Stephen Burrows, as were most of the New York designers who knew of his work, and she wanted to help him and his gang in any way she could. It was a huge break for me.

With a few exceptions (such as my wonderful Jacques Tiffeau), the French thought that Americans had no taste. Consequently, most of the elegant women in the social elite went to Paris to buy their clothes from the established couturiers there. Here in the United States, designers like Donald Brooks, Geoffrey Beene, Chester Weinberg, and Bill Blass (who was himself on the International Best-Dressed List and whose name was already on products ranging from car upholstery to sheets and perfume) were beginning to put this country on the fashion map. And these were the designers for whom Coty and Eleanor Lambert created the awards.

So off I went to meet Bill Blass at 550 Seventh Avenue. I had to wait for him, of course, and when he finally did show up, he seemed to appear out of nowhere, through one of the farthest doorways of his showroom. He was a tanned, ruggedly handsome man dressed in a tweedy English country-style sports jacket with a silk ascot around his neck, like someone from a fifties movie. He held a cigarette in one hand, and its long curls of white smoke danced around his face, which wore a “seen it all” expression.

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