Empress of Fashion (24 page)

F
or all the magazine's successes, and the reverence with which Carmel Snow was held in the wider world of fashion, senior executives in the Hearst organization began to worry about her in the mid-1950s. She was in her late sixties but declined to contemplate retirement. Richard Deems of the Hearst organization raised the question of her succession for the first time in 1955, but she rebuffed him and would not even acknowledge that the conversation had taken place. “The inevitable was coming, but she refused to face it,” writes her biographer Penelope Rowlands. “She seemed to think that by staring it down . . . it would somehow go away.” Part of the problem was that as she aged, she drank heavily and ate little. Her physical frailty became obvious to those beyond the staff of
Bazaar
. Geraldine Stutz, then an editor at
Glamour
, watched her at the Paris collections. “She had bones showing all over the place, little bird bones. She was a little unsteady, sometimes after lunch, and sometimes generally. Dick Avedon was the great cavalier of all time. He was ever attending, he'd put his hand under her elbow.” Avedon commented that at sixty-eight Snow already seemed like an old woman. “She was pickled in alcohol and that was sort of preserving her,” said her niece Kate White.

By 1956 there were new pressures bearing down on Carmel Snow. There were constant battles with the Hearst executives. As she flagged physically she became no less decisive but much more peremptory. The business side of the magazine became more invasive as printing and paper costs rose; and there were constant clashes with the Hearst organization over covers, in a push to drive up sales and increase advertising revenue. Though Snow fought hard to hold back the tide, advertisers were allowed to acquire more power. Penelope Rowlands notes that, surprisingly, the death of William Randolph Hearst deprived Snow of a key ally. Though they sometimes clashed head-on, and he detested most of the artists whose work she published in
Bazaar
, especially Bérard, whom he called “faceless Freddy,” he respected her strength of character and her successful touch.

By the mid-1950s Brodovitch, who had a troubled domestic life, was drinking heavily too. He had always had projects of his own beyond
Bazaar
. Frustrated by the increasingly commercial constraints at
Bazaar
, he reserved his most innovative work for elsewhere. The magazine managed to maintain its energy, thanks to good fiction publishing and its fashion pages, but it was beginning to lose its avant-garde cutting edge quality. Eventually the men of the Hearst organization took the matter of Snow's succession into their own hands and told her she had to go. The new editor they appointed was none other than Snow's niece Nancy White, editor of
Good Housekeeping.
Nancy had always adored her aunt Carmel. And Aunt Carmel was very fond of her niece but she did not regard her as nearly tough enough for the
Bazaar
job, and she was incensed at the decision and the way it was taken. The understanding was that Snow would hand things over to Nancy White during a transition period of several months in 1957, and that Snow would be gone by 1958, but it was anything but smooth. “The time that followed was an agony,” writes Penelope Rowlands. “Carmel refused to acknowledge her niece's existence, attempting to do her own work as if nothing had changed. And she didn't do so tranquilly.”

C
armel Snow was not the only person who was discontented. Diana would never have dreamed of proposing herself as a successor to Snow, regarding such a move as vulgar, but she was most unhappy at the way she was passed over, particularly since the fashion pages had held up so well while Snow and Brodovitch declined. “When Mrs. Snow got the word that she was no longer going to be editor, Diana Vreeland went in and said, ‘Was my name mentioned?' ” reported Dorothy Wheelock,
Bazaar
's long-standing—and long-suffering—theater critic. “Mrs. Snow said, ‘Your name never came up, Diana,' incensed at the very idea that Diana could take her job.” It has also been suggested that, once she was prepared to discuss the idea of her successor, Snow actively blocked any possibility that Diana should succeed her, arguing that she was too narrowly focused on fashion, and lacked both the judgment and the necessary business acumen to be editor. It was an assessment with which many on Seventh Avenue concurred. The disdain with which Diana treated advertisers was felt to be a particular problem. “She was impossible with advertisers. She snubbed all the advertising department—quite rightly. She was much too eccentric and really frankly original. [Hearst management] couldn't take it,” said one colleague.

This was not how Diana viewed the matter. She felt that she had been as good as running
Bazaar
during the last two years of Snow's reign, though others disagreed; and she had a low opinion of Nancy White, by all accounts an exceptionally nice woman but who lacked the flair of her aunt. “We needed an artist and they sent us a housepainter,” Diana said with uncharacteristic venom, for she generally did her best to keep the lid on such feelings, even with close friends. Early in 1958 White had to tell Brodovitch it was time to go. There was further unhappiness when his replacement, Henry Wolf, looked down Louise Dahl-Wolfe's camera during a shoot, causing her to storm out of
Bazaar
for good. Diana, too, looked around at other avenues of employment and even made contact with a search firm. By the end of 1958, however, she had begun to reach a modus vivendi with Nancy White. “She's . . . open minded, because she's emptied headed [
sic
],” she remarked to Richard Avedon later. “There's a hole there—so you can put
anything
in it.” She was rather more politic in a letter to Cecil Beaton. “I am slowly, I believe, coming out of my shock period and as no one has so far interfered with the clothes which is my business, I should be satisfied,” she wrote. “I've made up my mind that the devil you know is better than the devil you do not and that there is bound to be something wrong with every job.”

Carmel Snow still went to Paris on behalf of
Bazaar
as part of her severance arrangement, so there was no change to Diana's mandate. Beyond that Nancy White had more sense than to interfere with Diana's fashion pages, even if she did find their consistent lateness exasperating. Indeed Diana now found herself playing a more creative role, arguing fiercely for the integrity of photographers' work and frequently getting her way. “Vreeland had this annoying posture of superiority, but she was fanatically committed to her work, whereas the best Nancy White could say about a picture was ‘It's pretty,' ” the photographer Melvin Sokolsky said, maintaining that Diana saved him on almost every shoot.

There were other compensations too. Seventh Avenue listened closely to what she had to say.
Bazaar
's most interesting contributors stayed close to the magazine, including a freelance illustrator whom Diana found rather perplexing, called Andy Warhol. (Hired by Brodovitch in 1954, he invariably appeared with his drawings of shoes wrapped in brown paper and was nicknamed “Andy Paperbag” by
Bazaar
's staff.) Diana and Richard Avedon took on Hearst's senior executives and published Avedon's photographs of the non-Caucasian China Machado in the face of much bluster and bullying. And there was fresh talent to educate in the Vreeland way. Henry Wolf,
Bazaar
's new art director, recalled that Diana told him she wanted the green of a billiard table as the background to a shot. Wolf dutifully went off and returned with some billiard-table baize. Diana shook her head in dismay. “I meant the
idea
of the green of a billiard table, Henry,” she said.

I
n August 1960 Diana received a long letter from Jacqueline Kennedy. Her husband, Senator John F. Kennedy, was running for president against the Republican nominee, Vice President Richard Nixon. It was a very close race in which image played a critical role for the first time in U.S. history, because of television. Kennedy's camp grasped this, appreciating that his young, handsome face stood him in good stead in contrast to Richard Nixon; and by the middle of 1960 there was intense interest in his wife, too, who stood out by virtue of her charm, her educated tastes, and her beauty. “If her husband reaches the White House, Jackie will be the most exquisite First Lady since Frances Cleveland,” said
Time
in July 1960. But as soon as Jacqueline Kennedy's good looks and elegance were deployed as a weapon in her husband's campaign, her clothes became politicized. The attack was led by John Fairchild, who took over
Women's Wear Daily (WWD)
in 1960 at the same time as the Kennedy campaign began to pick up pace. Determined to make a splash with what had previously been a dull industry newspaper, he started adding a social angle and tart comment to
WWD
's editorial bill of fare. The timing of Jacqueline Kennedy's appearance on the campaign trail was a gift.

In July 1960 Fairchild proclaimed on the front page of
WWD
that Mrs. Kennedy, along with her mother-in-law, Rose, was running on the “Paris Couture fashion ticket.” They were spending fantastic sums of money on Cardin, Grès, Balenciaga, and Chanel—at least thirty thousand dollars annually by his calculations. Jacqueline Kennedy's protest that she couldn't have spent that much if she had been wearing sable underwear was swept aside in the ensuing storm. Spotting an opportunity, the Republicans wheeled in Pat Nixon to proclaim patriotically that she liked American ready-to-wear clothes and thought they were the best in the world. “I buy most of my clothes off the racks in different stores around Washington,” she declared. Meanwhile, both Alex Rose of the milliners' union and David Dubinsky, the powerful head of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, which had contributed nearly three hundred thousand dollars to Kennedy's campaign, lobbied the candidate about his wife's un-American fashion choices.

Jacqueline Kennedy bowed to the pressure and wrote to Diana for help. Diana's taste and knowledge of the American market were regarded as second to none, and there was also a personal connection. Diana had arranged for Richard Avedon to photograph the stunning Jacqueline Bouvier for
Bazaar
in the year of her debut; Jacqueline Kennedy's sister, Lee Radziwill, had worked briefly as Diana's assistant; and she was a friend of Freck and Betty. Betty and Jacqueline Kennedy had been friends when they were students at Vassar, and they met again after Freck and Betty's marriage, when they moved to Washington and Jackie was one of the few people they knew.

In the late summer of 1960, decisions about clothes were complicated by the facts that Jacqueline Kennedy was pregnant (and wearing elegant maternity coats from Givenchy); that she was a committed and knowledgeable Francophile in matters well beyond fashion; and that so many top American designers simply made copies of French clothes anyway. But that was not the point. “I must start to buy American clothes and have it known where I buy them . . . there have been several newspaper stories . . . about me wearing Paris clothes, and Mrs. Nixon running up hers on the sewing machine. . . . Just remember I like terribly simple, covered up clothes,” she wrote. “And I hate prints.” She needed a look that was in some way “American,” that played to her strengths, and that was simultaneously of the moment and conservative.

Diana applied herself happily to the task, keeping in touch throughout her summer vacation. “It sounds as if you know exactly the right things—you are psychic as well as an angel,” Jacqueline Kennedy wrote back on September 7, 1960, from Hyannis Port. The first step was to choose five or six pieces for a press release in October, close to the moment when Mrs. Kennedy would be too pregnant to appear in public for very much longer. But there was also something much more secret to consider—the inauguration ball gown: “About the Big Eve! I feel it is presumptuous & bad luck to even be thinking about it now—But it is such fun to think about—I would be imagining it if my husband were a garbage man—But don't tell anyone as Jack would be furious if he knew what I was up to!” Once again she wanted to be very covered-up. “I hate all those Cabinet Ladies exposing wrinkled poitrines.” The gown, she thought, should be very simple: “I also thought no beading—but you can decide that.” And the material should be of the most “fantastic” quality. “I suppose its undemocratic to wear a tiara,” she wrote, “But something on the head.” As to color, Jacqueline Kennedy thought, “White as it is the most ceremonial.” She circumnavigated tempting fate by deciding she was going to have the dress whatever happened. “I will just have to get it anyway & wear it to watch TV if things dont work out!”

Diana responded by suggesting clothes from sportswear designers Stella Sloat, Ben Zuckerman, and Norman Norell. In spite of Jacqueline Kennedy's injunction that she should not appear to be unduly influenced by Paris, all three designers suggested by Diana had a strong French bias. Even Stella Sloat had Givenchy copies in her portfolio, while Hamish Bowles points out that the purple Zuckerman coat Jacqueline Kennedy then ordered was a “line for line copy of a Pierre Cardin coat in purple wool.” Nonetheless Jacqueline Kennedy was delighted. “You really chose me the very best places,” she told Diana. “In your travels up & down 7th Ave you might tell the same designers to send me spring sketches—as I definitely want to stick with them.” She asked Diana for more advice about accessories to go with the purple Zuckerman coat, and wrote that Diana's idea of a fur jacket to go over the inauguration ball gown was wonderful, apart from the expense.

Before long, however, Jacqueline Kennedy was mired in a different kind of political complication—other people started piling in with advice about her wardrobe. She suddenly became anxious that Diana might be offended at the unexpected involvement of fashion public relations guru Eleanor Lambert. She had no intention of taking advice from anyone except Diana, she wrote. “I wont consider any clothes except from Norell, Zuckerman & Sloat—& the ‘big Eve' if it ever happens—will be all you & me.” Diana and Jacqueline Kennedy continued discussing the inauguration ball gown in secret. Jacqueline Kennedy tore out pictures from magazines, writing that she wanted to modify the bodice of one idea “so it doesnt look like a Dior of this season—something more timeless.” There was no question that at this point Jacqueline Kennedy regarded Diana as the person in charge of the dress, which was to be made in the custom dress department of Bergdorf Goodman, headed by Ethel Frankau. “Why dont you work out with Miss Frankau & the designers something you like?” wrote Kennedy. “They could send me another sketch of a velvet dress that you design completely yourself.” She also wanted advice on a headdress for the ball: “The smaller the better—as I really do have an enormous head.”