FANNY MURRAY EXCEEDS HER RIVALS IN FAME

By the late 1740's Fanny Murray was the most popular Courtesan in London, far surpassing her contemporary and historic rivals. Thousands of prints of her image had been made and circulated.

"Fascination with every aspect of her life, from her lovers to her wealth and beauty, was no longer the lone preserve of male admirers, and extended well beyond the world of gallantry.  As already noted, reputable women, who might not have wished to receive Murray in their homes, were none the less keen to follow her as a fashion icon and to copy her style. ..."

"Although Murray was thinking about withdrawing from prostitution at this time, and eight years had elapsed since she had first been acclaimed the toast of the town, she was still at the top of her profession, the very personification of style and an unparalleled arbiter of taste. Even after Murray had settled into marital respectability, magazines like the Centinel still presented her as a leading trendsetter and influential woman of fashion." (page 70 NaN0)

********************************

For the rest of her life, despite a marriage that endured, Fanny and her husband would never escape her past completely, kind of like what has happened to Monica Lewinsky, never a prostitute or a mistress or a courtesan, who's brief affair with President William Clinton as a young woman, has made her infamous, though she has lived many years past it.

I suppose the criticism and mockery that Fanny endured also says much about popular culture in Georgian England at the time.  For so many of the elite did buy sex. But as it is today, those selling it rather than those buying it are the ones who pay the highest price.  Missy

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including International and Internet RIghts
 

HER VOICE "EXTOLS MAXIMS AS FORMAL AS THE BANDERILLAS OF A BULLFIGHT

Mitzah Bricard first came to fashion designer Christian Dior with her expertise in hats, Dior explains that he examine's each dress as it is modeled before a show.

..."Fashion is above all a question of line; from the shoes to the hat the silhouette must be viewed as a whole.

That is why Mme Bricard and I now pore over the choice of the hat, whose shape has only vaguely suggested in the sketch.  The particular shape and size which will suit the 'line' of the dresses has to be decided.  Before me is a huge heap of assorted shapes which are to the hats what the toiles are to the dresses. As in the case of the models, the details will come later. At first, all that is necessary is that the hat should suit both the mannequin and the dress for which it is to be the complement. Sometimes the problem seems insoluble.  Twenty solutions are tried without success; sometimes in desperation one abandons the fruitless search among the existing shapes in order to create a hat which will suit the dress and the face, out of one's own head."

However, we should not think of her as isolated from the whole process of design to fashion show.

... "And he asks Mmm Bricard*, who is sitting beside him:

'What is that little thing that you've got in your hand? Yes. that.  Give it to me.'

'You can't do that,' she exclaims.

'Oh yes I can.'

The object now adorns the hat.  Perhaps the gloves are tried and retried over and over again, or the umbrella, which are put up, put down, put up again. Finally they are abandoned in favor of a muff. The voice of Mme Bricard extols maxims as formal as the banderillas of a bullfight. ..." (page 98)

*her surname is spelled Bricart throughout Dior's autobiography, but I will keep it as Bricard. Just as there are various spellings of her given name

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

THE DEMANDING MME. BRICARD IS WITH DIOR FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FASHION HOUSE : HER EXPERTISE IS HATS

This autobiography proves to me once again that the creative are rarely only good at one thing for it's an exciting read, conveying the back-room, of a couture house, the models and the fashion show, the creativity and the business that was Christian Dior's House of Dior.

Our subject for this month, Mitzah Bricard, was on the team for all of it:

Why Christian Dior had Mitzah Bricard join his design team.

... "Mme Bricard, who had helped Molyneau with his collection to great effect.  We had become great friends... In August she allows herself to spend a month at a fashionable watering-place in order that she may be seen in the square of the casino, but on the whole her love of the country and nature does not go further than the flowers with which she decorates her hats and her dresses.  Her high standards are inflexible; in fashion she aims immediately for the most marked expression of that indefinable, and perhaps slightly neglected thing called chic. (page 12-13)

At the birth of the House of Dior, Christian Dior reports that Madame Bricard was there.  Using a 'cubbyhole' of the workshop to show his first independent collection:  

"At 10:30, with the salons full to bursting, the first mannequin showed the first dress.  Marie-Therese, half dead with fright, stumbled at her first appearance, collapsed in tears, and was henceforth incapable of showing a dress.  Very soon, the entry of each model was accompanied by gusts of applause.  I stuffed my ears, terrified of feeling confident too soon; but a series of short bulletins from the field of battle confirmed to me that my star mannequin, the troops - led, flags flying, but my star mannequin, the inimitable Tania - had triumphed.

Now the last dress had been shown, amid a tumult of enthusiasm, and Mme Marguerite, Mme. Bricard, and I stood gazing at each other in the dressing room.  We were none of us able to speak,  Then Raymonde came to look for us, crying with joy, in order to propel us into the big salon, where we were greeted by a salvo of applause.  As long as I live, whatever triumphs I win, nothing will ever exceed my feelings at that supreme moment." (page 17 paperback)

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

 

ABOUT MADAME BRICARD and CHRISTIAN DIOR

From Ilya Parkin's book on the return of femininity to fashion after the masculinization of style due to the World War II demands on women...

In this book we learn that Dior's inspiration, in terms of his notions of femininity may have been his mother and memories of her, while his sister, who also had presence and impact in his work, had been part of the French resistance and had actually been arrested and put into a concentration camp. He had a nostalgia of femininity that had been abandoned in the War years. Perhaps he was even thinking of the Belle Epoque. He relied on a few women for their opinions - collaborations - with him at his workshop where he designed. One of them was Mitzah Bricard who he ever called "Madame Bricard," never getting on first name basis with her. She is portrayed as icy cold emotionally and yet...

Excerpt page 123

Dior's entwinement with femininity as a condition of his selfhood as a designer and celebrity can be most clearly seen in his very close working relationship with women over the course of his career. Unlike Poiret or Schiaparelli, Dior was not heavily invested in the image of the designer as genius who both found inspiration for and executed his craft entirely alone. Dior's work contains many references to the process of dress design as collaborative, as 'passionate collective research.'

Excerpt page 125-126

It is perhaps Dior's descriptions of Mitzah Bicard that are most telling, even if they do not have the same quality of incorporation that his discussions of Mms, Raymonde and Marguerite, the other members of his exalted triumvirate of women, have.  Like the others, he characterizes Mme Bircard as collaborator. But her role is never clearly specified. She functioned as a kind of muse, and certainly she had been memorialized as such. Her collaboration appears, in all of his portrait of her, to simply be, embodying elegance outside of time: 'Mme Bricard is one of those people, increasingly rare, who make elegance their sole raison d'etre.  Gazing at life out of the windows of the Ritz, so to speak, she is superbly indifferent to such mundane concerns as politics, finance, or social change." In Talking about Fashion, he says, 'if times are hard, she will ignore them, and troubles leave her unmoved.' Notably, it is Mme Bricard who inspires Dior's ideas; she catalyzes the process of creation. 'Her moods, her extremes of behavior, her faults, her entrances, her late appearances, her theatricality, her mode of speech, her unorthodox manner of dress, her jewels, in short her presence, bring the touch of absolute elegance so necessary to the fashion house.

Unlike Dior's smooth and harmonious incorporation of Raymonde and Marguerite, the relationship with Mme Bricard is described as tempestuous. He writes, "I knew that her presence in my house would inspire me towards creation, as much by her reactions - and even her revolts - against my ideas, as by her agreements.' It is a curious formulation, since what Dior values in Mme Bricard is ostensibly the same quality that is understood to be key in his success; an essential, almost inherited, understanding of the grammar of chic as something timeless, removed from the vagaries of history.  And yet he describes himself as being inspired by a motto he attributes to her, one which he struggled to apply to himself: 'I will maintain." What he takes from her is her compulsion to tradition. It is a compulsion that does not come entirely naturally for him, even if that traditional orientation is the trait on which his celebrity is bu8ild,.  Through Mmm Bricard, he learns to 'maintain,' to steadfastly carry on the timeless French traditions of chick and couture despite the vagaries of history and commerce.  In simply being, she fills an educational role in Dior's life, temporarily reorienting him to tradition and to the French past.

***

And yet... there are many an image of her in which she is not posing in an aloof or haughty manner, but smiling with warmth or as an active participant.  So, she is not just around posing at all...

C 2023  Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights. 

A DOCUMENTARY FILM ABOUT CHRISTIAN DIOR - MITZAH BRICARD APPEARS

THE WORLD OF MONSIEUR DIOR IN HIS OWN WORDS from 1949.

At about 3:35 you'll see Mitzah helping dress a fit model.  Those teeny waitlines! Around 13:35 again Madame Bricard with his other "collaborators."  Voluminous skirts.  Femininity. 

MITZAH BRICARD DRIPPING WITH RUBIES : AN ACCOUNT BY BILL CUNNINGHAM

Excerpt from Bill Cunningham's book Fashion Climbing

Page 198

Halfway through the Dior collection, Dior's Directress, Madame Bricard, entered. One of the three ladies who started with Dior sixteen years earlier and was now considered the dowager duchess of fashion, she was a raving beauty at the turn of the century, a very grand demimondaine whom kings, princes, and dukes, showered with jewels.  Madame made her appearance at the top of the grand stairway and magnetized my eyes for the rest of the collection, as this extraordinary woman, sparking with every conceivable device that forms the mystery of fashion, stood like a vision from one of the great French novels, the Madame Bovery of the 1960's  A tall baby-blue felt cone hat wrapped in yards of spidery black veil exposed marcelled black curls over each ear, which were hung with pearls and blood-red rubies from the hat edge. Over the right eye danged a brooch with a pearl the size of a nightingale's egg.  A pearl hatpin anchored the seductive veiling, which shadowed a face so preserved by the art of cosmetics, the yes lacquered and painted in silver fish streaks of green, dropped under the weight of inch-long lashes that served to shade the mystic sapphire blue of her eyes.  Everyone in the room was riveted to this fascinating woman, whose delicate mouth darted out like a lovebird.....

 CHECK ALSO GOOGLE BOOKS

http://thecoincidentaldandy.blogspot.com/2018/11/mitzah-bricard-christian-diors.html   Mitzah Bricard (whose birth-name was Germaine Louise Neustadtl),

FASHION CLIMBING by BILL CUNNINGHAM : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

 

 Bill Cunningham discovered he liked to wear girl's dresses when he was a boy and an errant parent tried to beat the girl out of him. What he loved was beauty. He was destined to work in fashion and his first preoccupation, circa the 1940's was to be a milliner - a designer of hats - which went on until 1960 when hats went out of fashion in favor of showing hair. By the time he died in 2016 at the age of 87, Cunningham was best known as a photographer who was on the streets of New York as well as anywhere fashion was being made, worn, modeled.  His overall work is sometimes thought of as "fashion anthropology," a documentation of that world and how it translates to the people. What no one knew as that he had been working on a memoir.  The writing was found after his death and "Fashion Climbing" is the result.

In life, he eventually worked for the New York Times : Let's link to what the New York Time obituary column had to say about him:

NEW YORK TIMES : BILL CUNNINGHAM FASHION DESIGNER - OBIT

Excerpt:  In 2008, Mr. Cunningham went to Paris, where the French government bestowed the Legion of Honor on him.  In New York, he was celebrated at Bergdorf Goodman, where a life-sized mannequin of him was installed in the window.

It was the New York Landmarks Conservancy that made him a living landmark in 2009, the same year The New Yorker, in a profile, described is On the Street and Evening Hours columns as the city's unofficial yearbook: "an exuberant, sometimes retroactively embarrassing chronicle of the way we looked."

***

The illustration on the cover of the book is one that Cunningham used to advertise his hats.  For years, even while inducted into the Korean War and stationed in France, he hand made highly original and creative hats, sensing trends years ahead of time.  As an artist he struggled to earn. His personal endurance is a story of both dogged determination and living by his wits, as well as having been the recipient of kindnesses. He also got ripped off in the fashion business and makes it sound like putting up with less creative types stealing is how its done. Buyers would return from shows with a few purchases and turn them over for mass production. He tells about the kind of women who could afford to pay, the women who got free clothing to advertise it, the women who were loaned clothing, the women who never intended to pay at all. The most conservative women, those who followed trends if the Duchess of WIndsor was wearing it, were too cautious to entertain wearing some of his creations, yet other designers and stores knocked off his designs.

Bill was not a designer of clothing but as an observer he was sensitive to cut and fabric, what made a dress move with the wearer and what made a dress obviously off a rack, and he was a valuable consultant to the owners of  the then only custom clothing house for the most elegant, Chez Ninon, who didn't become known until FIrst Lady Jackie Kennedy came calling.

As a keep observer, Bill Cunningham moved into fashion journalism and photography.

However, the retelling of his stories is lighthearted and sometimes truly funny and had me LOL. So while this book is about his place in the fashion world,  it strikes me that he has no bitterness, and I can imagine him laughing as he wrote those passages himself.  I'm reminded that there are rewards besides money and that to remain true to oneself requires sacrifices.

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All RIghts Reserved including Internet and International Rights

BETTINA By GUY SCHOELLER : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

SIMONE MICHELINE BODIN -  "BETTINA" - THE FIRST SUPERMODEL and MISTRESS OF ALY KHAN - A JET SET ERA MISTRESS  was our June 2015 Mistress of the Month. You can find that month in the archives and it may be fun for you to simply search for the word 'fashion.' Recently I found this small fashion memoir by Guy Schoeller.

This short but sweet book is mostly full of black and white photos of Bettina as a model, some of her in her personal life, some from her heyday - from 1944 to 1990. Her career spanned about twelve years and she twice abandoned it for love. At a time when holding a pose stiffly and haughtily was the way one modeled, Bettina was loved for her movement and her lack of pretense. She came from an ordinary background in Normandy but came to Paris with the ambition to model at eighteen. She dropped everything at 30 to be with Prince Ali Khan but he died five years later. I'm struck by the expressiveness of her hands, the way she used her arms, her bearing.

What I did not know: That in 1952 she helped Hubert de Givenchy launch his couture house.

That she created a first knitwear collection for Jacques Heim in 1954. That in 1969 CoCo Chanel created a collection inspired by her. That in 1972 she became Couture Director for Emanuel Ungaro. In 1974 she was in charge of public relations for Valentino in Paris.

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

GRACE CODDINGTON'S MEMOIR

  I listened to this audio book, read by the author Grace Coddington, with her British accent, and thoroughly enjoyed hearing her tell her own tale of leaving home at 18 and giving modeling a try.  Her first assignment was nude, though she didn't understand that was the case when she showed up, but she went with it.  Coddington is well known as Vogue magazine Editor Anna Wintour's sidekick, both included in the documentary called The September Edition. She's the red haired one, if you haven't guessed, the one who actually can speak to Anna candidly. According to Grace, it was the film "The Devil Wears Prada," a fictive account, the human devil said to be based on Anna Wintour, that brought Anna - and then Grace - to infamy.  It was that film and all the commentary, and her true relationship with Anna, that lead the normally publicity shy (OK, we'll try to believe her) Grace to go ahead and speak up for herself, her life, and her profession and write her book.

One of the things I appreciated was that she didn't do much introspection and certainly no apology for her life or rise in fashion but as I also read other audio memoir type books this past year by British women, I'm beginning to think there is something British about it. Certainly this woman must have faced competition and made some enemies along the way, but her own perspective is that she went from event to event, opportunity to opportunity, almost as if it were all fate or a done deal. But believe it: she worked her butt off.

C 2018 Book Review Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  Originally posted.

THE CHIFFON TRENCHES by ANDRE LEON TALLEY : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

 

He was six foot seven and followed a dream. Doors opened for him, one especially held open by Diana Vreeland, so that Talley, who went to college in love with all things French and aimed to be a writer in the fashion world could succeed, though a Black man from the South, and often the singular representative of his race. 

Talley has passed since this book was published. Born in 1928, he died of a heart attack at age January 18, 2022. The man was considerably obese as a result of food addiction and compulsive eating.  In this book he talks about how he got so, the interventions by his friends, the attempts to lose the weight, and eating as a substitute for ever having a partner. Lap band surgery did not work for him. Because of his weight, he took to wearing caftans and big coats over custom made suits. In that way, he accepted himself as a man of size and became known outside the closed world of the great designers. 

Although interviewers and the press seemed to focus on his professional and personal relationship with Vogue editor Anna Wintour revealed in this book, there is quite a bit in this book about his relationships with other designers and the fashionistas, such as Lee Bouvier Radizwill, First Lady Jackie Kennedy's sister, who he calls a best friend, and his long time professional and personal relationship with designer Karl Lagerfeld.

He is forthright and dishy, and can't help but drop names, after all these were the people he worked with and knew personally. Anyone who adores reading around the world of luxury will find this memoir a page turner. One may find themselves longing for just a taste of what it is like to have friends so rich that they can send you over to Paris on the Concorde or gift you thousands of pairs of shoes over the years.

It takes creativity, vision, fortitude, and business savvy to make it to the top of the fashion trenches and there are a few - Diane Von Furstenberg comes to mind - who seemed to have gone away but made it back again. Talley takes credit where it is due, and he gives credit where it is due. Both Lagerfeld and Wintour were capable of jettisoning people who were no longer useful to them.  It was his displeasure to be ghosted.

On page 93, Talley says,  "At Chanel's haute couture show in January 1998, inspired by Misia Sert, a true friend of Mademoiselle Chanel, I said to Anna (Wintour): "We must stand up and applaud Karl."  Karl (Lagerfeld) had returned to the famous rue Cambon salon and we were packed in like sardines.  I bolted to my feet and Anna Wintour sat there, as she was expected to do, as editor in chief of Vogue.

A note to my readers:

MISIA SERT : THREE MARRIAGES - THIRD TO TO JOSE MARIA SERT : THE ACCOMMODATION OF A YOUNGER WIFE   was the subject here at Mistress Manifesto for July 2019

DIANE VON FURSTENBURG was Honorary Mistress of the Month for December 2018.

Check those out in my archives!

C 2022 - 2026 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

PS: The Documentary film The Gospel According to Andre is also worth seeing!

A HOLIDAY EDITION WITH A LITTLE FOCUS ON FASHION

Hello Sweeties!  Happy Holidays! 

I just looked into my closet and well...    

Are you one of those people who finds fashion challenging?  Do you perhaps buy only one good dress or suit for the winter season, knowing that you need to splash out a bit during the holidays?  Or are you a fashionista with a great sense of style and an impressive budget to spend on clothes, perhaps with a special closet just for your shoes and purses?  Or maybe you're into sewing your own clothes.  Or you are one of those who are concerned about our ecology and don't like fast fashion?

How aware are you of the fashion world?

I love watching the fashion shows, especially those in Paris, in which top models parade the latest fashions designed the most interesting and esteemed designers, each a personality. Like many of you, I have to watch these on film. These creatives and their crews influence all that there is to wear every season, planning well in advance, so the truly fashionable can anticipate and adjust their wardrobes seasonally. However, much of what I see on the runway would not work for my lifestyle and seems extremely unpractical to me.

Over the last several years there has been a trend to sustainable fashion and against what is called "fast fashion." This is an eco-fashion trend which emphasize buying quality items that last and usually that means that the colors and designs are not influenced by the runway displays or the inexpensive throw-aways that are derivative of them, but clothing that will last, can be worn for years, is well made and comfortable, and will not take a couple hundred years to decompose in our landfills.

There is a store near me that has clothes of this type that I love, though all casual wear, and the salesclerks there have told me that stretchy fabrics are the worst, taking near forever to decompose in land fills. There goes tights and skinny jeans! 

This month I hope you'll be inspired to a bit of an upgrade of your appearance so that when the new year begins there will be, maybe not a whole new you, but a change that readies you for it.

An eco kind of thing you can do is throw a clothing trade party. Each of your friends go through their closet and pull the things that they have not been wearing, clothing that is still in good condition, and bring them over to your place. You serve drinks and some appetizers, and each of you takes a turn and selects one item from the pile until everything brought has a new owner.  After that, the item might need a revision, by its new owner or a seamstress or tailor. Perhaps you have talent that I do not, and everyone can also have fun refiguring the clothes. Sewing machines, needles and thread, patches, whatnot, available, it brings a whole new dimension to the term "Ladies Sewing Circle." (You can turn pants into shorts, dresses into blouses, and sew (!) on.)

Now, be it that you are a socialite who will be out at parties through the holidays or a stay-at-home person who just wants to be alone to read a good book, I have some book recommendations for you that will help you to think fashion!

Missy

JUST A TRIM

LOVE LUCY by LUCILLE BALL : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT BOOK REVIEW

Did you know that comedic actress Lucille Ball was a Shubert Girl (like being a Ziegfield Follies girl) at 17?  

That she went a little hungry and modeled in Hattie Carnegie's fashion showroom in New York City?  (And might have been wasting away from hunger?)

That she became a Goldwyn Girl in Hollywood in 1933?

That she moved into reading scripts for RKO radio and signed with that studio and made more films?

That she avoided marriage to an already married executive who fell in love with her at RKO? (Her friends called her a "dope" and told her that now she'd never make it at RKO because his wife would have all the other Hollywood wives blacklist her. (page 109)

In 1938 she dated a director who was 20 years older than her for two years with "no demands" on either side.  Soon she was successful enough to buy her first fur for herself and got a personal maid who she kept for year.

No, don't expect to read this book and have Lucille tell you how she lost her virginity or when. Let's just say that the woman who has been considered one of the funniest comedic actresses, and is a mainstay on reruns to this day, went around the block. She might not use the term feminist on herself but she was living life a whole lot like women do now back in the day.

She met Desi Arnaz in 1939 when she was 29.  He was slightly younger than she.

They talked for hours and thought long and hard about marrying and decided they were too different.  They were right about that in the long run but they married anyway.  He was the romantic.  Also an astute businessman.

They were head over heels in love.

By 1942 Lucille Ball was one of the highest paid stars on contract with RKO at $1000 a week but she saw that RKO was going downhill.  So she went to MGM and made more B movies.

In 1944 the Lucy and Dezi were headed for divorce.  Once again they decided to make a go of it.

In 1949 Lucille was nearing 40 when she had her first child.
Both of her children were delivered by C section.

She became the first woman to own her own studio.

She was introduced to her next husband Gary Morton by friends.  He was a comedian. They married and stayed married  until her death; they were married longer than Lucy and Desi ever were.

The manuscript for this book was written by Lucy and put away unpublished.  Her children found it and decided to publish it.


C Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot
All Rights Reserved

COVER GIRL MODEL CAROLE MALLORY

NAILHEAD STUDDED PLATFORMS

GRACE by GRACE CODDINGTON : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

  I listened to this audio book, read by the author Grace Coddington, with her British accent, and thoroughly enjoyed hearing her tell her own tale of leaving home at 18 and giving modeling a try.  Her first assignment was nude, though she didn't understand that was the case when she showed up, but she went with it.  Coddington is well known as Vogue magazine Editor Anna Wintour's sidekick, both included in the documentary called The September Edition. She's the red haired one, if you haven't guessed, the one who actually can speak to Anna candidly. According to Grace, it was the film "The Devil Wears Prada," a fictive account, the human devil said to be based on Anna Wintour, that brought Anna - and then Grace - to infamy.  It was that film and all the commentary, and her true relationship with Anna, that lead the normally publicity shy (OK, we'll try to believe her) Grace to go ahead and speak up for herself, her life, and her profession and write her book.

One of the things I appreciated was that she didn't do much introspection and certainly no apology for her life or rise in fashion but as I also read other audio memoir type books this past year by British women, I'm beginning to think there is something British about it. Certainly this woman must have faced competition and made some enemies along the way, but her own perspective is that she went from event to event, opportunity to opportunity, almost as if it were all fate or a done deal. But believe it: she worked her butt off.

C 2018 Book Review Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

RAGS TO RICHES

Copyright Newsweek

Used For Educational Purposes

Diane was her own best model in her twenties.

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG - TRUTH IS HER RELIGION : HONORARY MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

BOOKS  DIANE VON FURSTENBERG - A LIFE UNWRAPPED by GIOIA DILIBERTO



and  THE WOMAN I WANTED TO BE by DIANE VON FURSTENBERG

This is going to be a Diane Von Furstenberg December as I'm, electing her as Honorary Mistress of the Month.  Long the companion and partner and wife of Barry Diller, now a woman who could be said to have everything - wealth, fame, fulfillment, love - and the will to lift other women up, Diane persisted through times in which she was unsure of her direction, overly influenced by the current main man in her life, times in which she had to admit failures, beg for help, even give some nasty business back so she could survive.  

It is especially refreshing to hear her admit as much in the audio book, The Woman I Wanted To Be. She admits to uncertainties, fears, and that bright ideas sometimes fail, while her warm and generous spirit allows her to complement others for their roles, not wasting too much time and energy on condemning. Can anyone actually control their lives totally, especially in the mercurial fashion business?  She made decisions spontaneously, sometimes deliberately, often hiring and surrounding herself by others to move her vision along, sometimes loosing that vision.  She sees life as a series and variety of events.  Her nature has been experimental, and she has reached out to help other women.

I've been fascinated with this woman who says that TRUTH IS HER RELIGION  and that ALL MARRIAGES SHOULD BE OPEN for some time.  But it was the quote in Gioia Dilberto's book that convinced me that she belongs in the posts/pages of MISTRESS MANIFESTO.

IN THIS QUOTE SHE SAYS SHE WOULD LOVE TO BE A MISTRESS... and she knows that this is an attitude that is more European, that American woman might not understand.

Diane is thought by some in fashion to not actually be a designer but more of a producer.  I credit her for figuring out what she could do well and sticking to it, though in her career she has taken departures and had to reassess several times.

Diane Helfin was born in Belgium, the daughter of Holocaust concentration camp survivor, Lily.  She considers her birth to her mother, who came out of the camp emaciated, about a year later, as a miracle. Her parents became well off enough to send her away to private boarding school and in her early womanhood she began to socialize with wealthier people than they were. Her mother also told her to never be ashamed of sex and well, she wasn't. She had love affairs and sex with both men and women as did the man she married quite young, Egon Von Furstenberg, a German and Italian Prince.  (Her daughter Tatianna had an affair with another woman and stayed friends with her, considers herself part of the tribe.) These two sexual adventurers were a hot couple around town in New York City for some time until a magazine profile made them see themselves and their lives more critically.  Diane was a huntress and has no apologies. When they split she was determined to honor the name and the allure of having been married to a Prince but also to make it on her own. 

It was the 1970's. She invented the "wrap dress" that made her rich.  She learned as she went, and the things that made her dress so important, besides capturing the imagination of women from diverse life experiences, was that it was reasonably affordable, the fine fabric manufactured in Italy on which her designs were printed, and the colors and patterns were bold.  The dress looked good on a variety of figures and it moved well and held up well after a hard day of work as a new era of feminism and the sexual revolution accelerated so that you could wear it to work or out of dinner.  She posed for her first ad on a mod white cube, the ad saying, "Be a Woman, Wear a Dress."  Her forays into cosmetics and a perfume named after her daughter went only so well, and she struggled to understand and stick to her own brand.

About her husband Barry Diller,: their relationship wasn't exactly off and on, it was sort of on in some way no matter who else was going on, and some people think he's gay but for Diane.  Unified as a couple and family with her children and grandchildren, the two of them have a fortune that is not just about fashion, but perhaps more correctly pop culture and technological innovation.

C 2018  All Rights Reserved Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

MODELS of INFLUENCE by NIGEL BARKER : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

MODELS OF INFLUENCE - 50 WOMEN WHO RESET THE COURSE OF FASHION by NIGEL BARKER.  (Can you identify the models on the cover photo?)  There are do many good pictures of the models in the book, but it's a wonder the editors could even choose which photos to feature!  Author Nigel Barker features a series of mini bios capturing the essence of each model and her contribution to the evolution of fashion, or perhaps that's fashion photography!

This book names fifty models who as the subtitle says, "reset the course of fashion," and you may be surprised when you read it that you know so many names and faces.  Is beauty a requirement?  Well, no!  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Presence - something that captivates others - is more important!

Some of these woman are of personal fascination to me, so I'll name them! 

DORIAN LEIGH started modeling at the old age of 27 and had already lived a "full" life, married with children unhappily, and some say her whole life was tormented.  She was able to emote so many emotions silently.  She was modeling from about 1944 on and worked nonstop, never shunning lingerie in those days way before Victoria's Secret, when to do so was considered slumming.

BETTINA GRAZIANI, who was our Mistress of the Month in June of 2015, also makes the list and I'm going to do a little "update" on her start page excerpting from this book!  JERRY HALL, who was out Mistress of the Month in April 2011, also makes this list; did you know she was discovered when wearing a hot pink crocheted bikini?

DOVIMA; you must have seen the classic photo of her in a sleek evening gown and long while gloves with the two elephants.

CARMEN DELL 'OREFICE is a woman with almost prenatural beauty because she managed to keep it though into her natural gray hair.  She admits that she worked more in her old age than she did in her 1950's modeling days, and considers herself "still a work in progress," when modeling at age 82!

LINDA EVANGELISTA, who according to this book never wanted to do anything else but model and never has, "no skin care lines, no acting, no television shows, no tell-all books..." (page 27 of 125 on the e-book.)

STEPHANIE SEYMOUR, who went to Europe and where "two auspicious relationships mixing business and pleasure would change the course of her life.  First in Paris, at just 16 years old she started seeing Elite's owner John Casablancas who was tw3ice her age and married... (page 82 of 175 of the e-book.)

CLAUDIA SCHIFFER, who has done over 1000 magazine covers, with a bit of a resemblance to Bridget Bardot.

KATE MOSS, who is credited for "taking the snobbishness out of fashion," and is known for keeping her own counsel - despite her high living.

I could go on, because this book does include some of the latest, youngest models who are making their careers hot right now...


C 2018 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved

MICHAEL GROSS' book FOCUS - THOSE NAME MODELS! : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

Makeup Artists (Bill King), Photographers (David Bailey, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Patrick Demarchelier, Editors, Models (Lauren Bacall, Dovima, Janice Dickenson, Jacqueline Bisset, Christie Brinkley, Gia Carangi, Nastassja Kinski, Miley Cyrus, Gigi Hadid), Department Stores (Henri Bendel), bookers (John Casablanca, Eileen Ford), Designers (CoCo Chanel, Christian Dior,  Clair McCardell, Perry Ellis, Halston, Givency, John Galliano), Stylists (OK, I'm doing a LOT of name dropping here but these names are just a few mentioned in the book!)  You may be surprised by how many of these professional's names you recognize, simply because you read the fine print on some of the ads in fashion ads in magazines. 


 


Michael Gross's book is on the evolution of the photographers and how they and the models they worked with evolved themselves and in and with fashion and the way this was part of and promoted the sexual revolution. This book focuses on the give and take - perhaps the balance - between the fashion photographer and the editor who places limits on what will be acceptable for the magazine layout and the models.  Sometimes the models went past their limits responding to the photographer. Sometimes a model became an inspiration or a muse. Sometimes a photographer had a whole posse of models the preferred to work with - and visa versa. It's about the days of analog fashion imagery, beginning with the 1940's, the "game changers" in those days before reality television and Internet media stars made the magazine and the inner layouts.  The book moves into what's happened because of digital photography and processes such as Photoshop, that can create scenes that never took place. 


"An open secret in the business is that magazines often dole out "pages" and "credits" based on the purchase of advertising pages and that photographers regularly shoot "musts" garments chosen by major advertisers.  But accepting these compromises has compensations.  Powerful magazine editors and stylists have long functioned as de facto agents for photographers recommending them to advertisers for higher paying jobs as a perquisite offsetting enough editorial payments and limited creative freedom."
Chapter, "Welcome to Terrytown,"  (regarding Terry Richardson, a photographer)
pages 50-51 of the e-book


In the epilogue, pages 114-115 of 120 of the e-book, there is a quote from Carey Franklin: "Fashion will pretend it's art instead of calling it what it really is - porno objectification of women all stylishly dressed up as womenswear marketing.  But then, women have gotten so used to seeing themselves with their legs wide open and their fannies hanging out, they have normalized it for themselves! What he (Terry Richardson) does behind the scene however is simply unethical."


Do magazine editors and fashion influencers only want beautiful women?  According to this book, Vogue magazine, when Diana Vreeland was the editor, chose models she preferred that photographers called "Vogue Ugly!"


Hey, there's a lot of mistress name dropping in this book too!  William Helburn was one of a few men who claimed they were sleeping with hot model Jean Shrimpton, "the shrimp," during the mods and rockers era.  In his case, Helburn was "dumped by his mistress Elsa Martinelli," for his involvement.  (Chapter "A Tableau of... in US pages 12-13 of 25.)


What made some these photographer's who became famous for fashion photography click (if you'll pardon that expression!) so that their work dominated.  Many of them were not sexually attracted to women. Some of them were S and M players who enjoyed making models do "edgy" things, such as when Helmut Newton had Jerry Hall lick the cowboy boots of a male model riding a horse (Chapter "An Intolerable and Mendacious Factor, page 26 of 37).


Then so many photographers, designers, fashion executives, and make-up artists and hairdressers, and a model or so, such as Gia Caragi, started dying of AIDS before it was understood, and until the late 1980's not even discussed. The cause of death was concealed even as insiders knew.  Photographer Bill King's extreme life style is rather detailed here, S and M and cocaine, and for all that he would not admit to being gay.  Yes, my readers, it was in that chapter that I became shocked.


This book is certainly worth of your fashion-conscious consideration as we here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot read up on fashion!


C 2018 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights