Butterfly (52 page)

ing. When Beverly had inherited Eddie’s wealth and realized what her true potential was,

she had decided it was in the best interests of her future to change her lifestyle. Wealth

was what she aspired to, and power. Those things could not be gotten by living in a vac-

uum, by keeping oneself hidden and cut off from society. To aspire to both she required

friends in powerful and influential places. She needed to build a solid reputation; she

needed to construct a stature that would be recognized by figures who held key positions.

After careful study, Beverly had sold her small Spanish-style house in the Hollywood hills

and bought a small Spanish-style house in Beverly Hills at five times the cost. She had

exchanged her Chevrolet for a Cadillac, and that for a Mercedes. She hired a maid, then a

gardener, and then a cook. She made friends with her neighbors: lawyers and doctors,

judges and politicians, writers and movie-industry types—people around whom the uni-

verse revolved. She tasted more champagne. She gave parties and served caviar. She enter-

tained people who could open doors for her; she made her name known. She was active

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in the Chamber of Commerce and served on several cultural committees in Los Angeles.

She kept a high profile. She was on her way.

A murmur ran through the audience and Beverly looked up.
“Mesdames et messieurs,

‘brief ’ is the byword for today’s sports-minded, competitive male,” Henri Gapin declared

as a sleek, tanned model came out onto the runway. “And
Bref
is what we call our newest

in men’s beach wear. The bikini need no longer remain solely the province of
les femmes,

as Pierre here so dramatically demonstrates for us…”

Dramatic was right, Beverly thought as the shapely and muscular Pierre strutted

before astonished/admiring/envious eyes. The bikini barely covered him.

“It’s indecent,” Maggie murmured next to Beverly. “I love it.”

Beverly stared up at the model. When he walked past her, he looked back over his

shoulder and winked at her.

“Did you see that?” Maggie whispered.

Beverly had seen it. And, in spite of herself, she had felt a reaction.

“This summer’s outfit will be seen at all the right events,” Henri continued as another

Gallic male beauty came out wearing a beige wool sport jacket and light flannel trousers.

But Beverly watched this model in something close to boredom. She could swear that

she had seen the same outfit in Chelsea and Rome. Cotton print shirt, broad silk tie and

matching handkerchief, tan leather shoes with crepe soles. Men’s fashion, it had turned

out, was the same no matter where she went. This wasn’t going to help her Beverly Hills

store. How could she compete with the established shops that already carried these lines?

Bringing Gapin and Courrèges into Eddie Fanelli’s wasn’t going to make the customers

come rushing in. Which was probably what Eddie had realized and tried to correct by

going the other way—offering something down-market.

“Hey,” Maggie said quietly. “Check this one out.”

“For the younger man,” Henri said, when a model came out wearing low-slung jeans

and a leather jacket, his long hair messy, his chest seductively bare. It was the old Mick

Jagger look, and it never failed to get one kind of reaction or another.

“I don’t care for it,” Beverly murmured.

“Not the outfit, the guy!”

So Beverly focused on the model and discovered that underneath the tousled, raunchy

look there was a very captivating young man. He had a way to his walk, a saucy step that

made his hips do nice things. And that smile! Strangely, Beverly found herself warming to

the clothes that she had just seconds before disliked.

“What a marketing gimmick,” Maggie said, tilting her head toward Beverly. “Look at

the faces on some of these women. They don’t really like the clothes, but they like
him.”

Beverly watched the model sashay off the stage and give the spotlight to a young man

in a tennis outfit.

“Great legs,” Maggie muttered, and Beverly glanced around at the faces of the women

around her. Like Maggie, they weren’t really looking at the clothes.

Maggie said, “You can’t tell me those shorts look one tenth that good in their plastic

wrap.” And Beverly turned abruptly to look at her.

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Kathryn Harvey

From then on Beverly was no longer bored. She paid close attention to the men mod-

eling the clothes and to the various reactions of the audience, noticing that the actual

fashions were inconsequential. And while she watched and studied, an idea began to take

shape in Beverly’s mind.

She took a careful look around the showroom, took in the refinement and chicness of

it. It was strange, but she hadn’t thought of it until now—that these fashion houses that

revolved around men, catered to men, and designed and manufactured men’s clothing

were all curiously feminine. And this large affluent audience, although here to look at

men’s clothing, was by far predominantly female.

Beverly now caught subtle interchanges between models and certain buyers. Those

men up on the runway knew they were good; they were con artists. It didn’t matter what

they wore, they sold their goods with a smile, a wink, a turn of the well-shaped buttocks.

Little gold pens jotted things down in little leather notebooks. Heads nodded in appreci-

ation; signals were made to Henri Gapin. A million dollars’ worth of sales was going on

all around her, and all because Henri Gapin had a special knack—not for designing

clothes but for knowing how to sell them.

Beverly Highland had just discovered his secret. He knew his market.

She settled back in her chair and folded her hands. She was anxious to get home now.

There was nothing more for them to do here. She knew now what she had to do to make

Eddie Fanelli’s the busiest men’s clothing store in Beverly Hills.

And it was going to work.

The opening of Fanelli of Beverly Hills, on a balmy May evening in 1975, was catered

by Richard, the “in” caterer of the moment. Those fortunate enough to have received

engraved invitations to attend the opening found themselves confronting a buffet that,

even for this jaded social set, was something to talk about: small cooked-in-a-flash pizzas

smothered in prosciutto, feta, and mozzarella; black-bean-and-chorizo quesadillas;

almond deviled eggs; baked Brie; Latin-style clams; Greek meatballs; and the expected

guacamole. For the sweet tooth, strawberries Bavarian, orange ambrosia, individual crys-

tal cups of English trifle, and old-fashioned fudge brownies. All served on elegant black

Bennington plates. Waiters passed among the crowd with fluted glasses of champagne,

mimosas, or Perrier. There were three types of coffee, an herbal tea as well as Earl Grey,

and spicy after-dinner mints from Blum’s.

A great deal of the success of the turnout was due to Roy Madison. Not only had he

passed the word among his Industry friends, gently hinting that this was going to be one of

the
occasions of the year, but advance press kits announced that he would be present at the

opening of Fanelli, and Roy Madison was a man a lot of people wanted to get a look at.

He appeared in his trademark “look”: jeans and blue work shirt, cowboy boots and

Western belt. His sandy hair was still worn long; his handsome, once-Fabian face was

etched with suntan lines and character. And he was now one of the highest-paid stars on

television.

Ann Hastings and Carmen and Maggie had all arrived early, turning their cars over to

the parking attendants of Fanelli’s private lot. Beverly arrived at the last minute in her

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225

Rolls, and she spent the hectic afternoon and evening acting as the friendly but aloof and

mysterious hostess. Not a few people went back to their homes in the hills that night

wondering for the first time about the beautiful, elusive Miss Highland.

Roy Madison gave out autographs to those who asked for it; Ann Hastings saw to the

smooth execution of the fashion show; Maggie played hostess, greeting luminaries and

answering questions; Carmen stayed behind the scenes, overseeing the caterers and keep-

ing a close eye on the new sales clerks; and Bob Manning remained in the back changing

room, supervising the models.

The models, of course, were the hit of the evening.

This was something no one had expected: a constant show of Fanelli’s fashions and

accessories on models who were handsome and sexy (Roy Madison had personally

recruited them for Beverly), and who strolled among the partyers as if they were guests

themselves, smiling and confident, with no annoying narration over a microphone telling

people what they were looking at.

Well, there was no need to tell these people what they were looking at—the guests at

Fanelli’s opening were well acquainted with Cardin and Lauren, with Courrèges and

Gapin, with Mr. Harry and Bohan. These people already knew fashion and style; the idea

was to get them to
buy.
And buy they did. Under the influence of excellent and plentiful

food and champagne, the crowded company of tuxedoed and evening-gowned aristocracy

became drunk with materialism. They started spending. When Paul, Roy’s old friend who

had acted the part of the man Danny Mackay had raised from the dead, strolled through

the store in a black wool Cardin sportcoat and glen plaid pants, and smiled and winked

intimately at some of the female guests, six orders for the outfit were placed at once.

When he reappeared fifteen minutes later in a red velvet smoking jacket over gray silk

pajamas—looking so startlingly out of place among all the “dressed” people—eight

women placed their orders.

And so it went all afternoon and evening. The big cars pulled up in front of the store,

the valets whisked them away, and the women came in, many of them unescorted. They

demurely accepted the champagne, eyed the sumptuous buffet, thought about their diets,

accepted small plates, and slowly walked around the new store, casually inspecting the

merchandise while casually inspecting the crowd to see who else was there.

No one was disappointed in the evening. They came out of curiosity and found a very

pleasing atmosphere in Fanelli: there was a somber elegance to the decor—it was a men’s

store definitely, but it was not a
man’s
store. The elegance was feminine; there were hints

of masculinity in the dark wood walls and brass coatracks and red leather chairs, but there

were flowers everywhere, and the boudoir-style powder room came as a pleasant surprise.

From her place near Accessories, where glass counters displayed matching ties and

socks—a novel idea of Ann’s that seemed to be well received—Beverly greeted her guests

with graceful reserve and watched the robust, healthy birth of her newest child. From the

moment she had conceived the idea, in Henri Gapin’s house in Paris, Beverly had not had

a moment’s doubt that she would be successful. To design a men’s clothing store for

women. A store where women went to buy gifts for their husbands, boyfriends, brothers,

and fathers. They would come to be catered to—a flyer in the press kit stated that free

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Kathryn Harvey

refreshments would be available at Fanelli—and they would come to see the male models,

a unique feature of Fanelli that, the press kit assured, would not be reserved just for spe-

cial occasions but would be a regular store feature. Women could look at handsome mod-

els and imagine those outfits on their own boyfriends and husbands, or they could

imagine that such beautiful men
were
their boyfriends and husbands.

Beverly watched her guests with pleasure. She saw how they enjoyed her buffet, her

champagne, her store, and themselves. They would go away with a positive impression of

Fanelli. They would tell their friends. They would come back and purchase her Cardins

and Mr. Harrys. Fanelli was going to be
the
men’s clothing store in Beverly Hills. Because

Fanelli was fantasy.

Shortly after the sun went down and the spring twilight lapsed into evening, the guests

were invited outside to witness the first lighting up of Fanelli’s sign. And once again they

were not disappointed. No ordinary sign for this store—its name wasn’t even displayed.

There was just a single simple symbol, a logo, expertly crafted in wrought iron and painted

white gold. A lone floodlight illuminated it, and when the switch was hit and the logo

glowed softly on the plain wall, everyone murmured in appreciation and curiosity.

It was a butterfly.