The Power of Style
By Jesse Kornbluth
I was married to Annette Tapert during the years she wrote her
best-known books on stylish women. I read the text of "The Power of
Style" (Crown) as it came out of her computer, and I made the occasional
comment. When it was published in 1994, I thought it was one of the 10 best
books on style ever written. Time and change have given me some objectivity on
a very few things. Including this book. That is, "The Power of Style"
is still a knockout.
And now I'll tell you why, OK?
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
that 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 -- and 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 anymore. You know that life is deals. You may even
suspect that rich men aren't always so nice to their women. And so, reading
"The Power of Style" fresh, you can have a pure reaction -- some
admiration, to be sure, but also pity, also compassion.
Take 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 a.m. 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?
Jesse Kornbluth is a New York-based journalist and founder of Head
Butler.com, a cultural concierge site and free daily e-mail featuring
information on new and classic books, movies and music.
Jesse Kornbluth critiques more literature in The Enduring Legend of
Janis Joplin and Hunting With Hemingway.