The Glass of Fashion Read online

  ALSO BY CECIL BEATON

  THE BOOK OF BEAUTY

  CECIL BEATON’S SCRAPBOOK

  CECIL BEATON’S NEW YORK

  MY ROYAL PAST

  HISTORY UNDER FIRE

  TIME EXPOSURE

  AIR OF GLORY

  WINGED SQUADRONS

  NEAR EAST

  BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHERS

  FAR EAST

  CECIL BEATON’S INDIAN ALBUM, 1945–6

  CECIL BEATON’S CHINESE ALBUM, 1945–6

  INDIA

  ASHCOMBE: THE STORY OF A FIFTEEN-YEAR LEASE

  PHOTOBIOGRAPHY

  BALLET

  PERSONA GRATA

  I TAKE GREAT PLEASURE

  THE FACE OF THE WORLD

  JAPANESE

  CECIL BEATON’S DIARIES 1922–39: THE WANDERING YEARS

  QUAIL IN ASPIC

  IMAGES

  ROYAL PORTRAITS

  CECIL BEATON’S ‘FAIR LADY’

  CECIL BEATON’S DIARIES 1939–44: THE YEARS BETWEEN

  BEATON PORTRAITS

  THE BEST OF BEATON FASHION: AN ANTHOLOGY BY CECIL BEATON

  MY BOLIVIAN AUNT: A MEMOIR

  CECIL BEATON’S DIARIES 1944–8: THE HAPPY YEARS

  CECIL BEATON DIARIES 1948–55: THE STRENUOUS YEARS

  CECIL BEATON DIARIES 1955–63: THE RESTLESS YEARS

  CECIL BEATON DIARIES 1963–74: THE PARTING YEARS

  SELF-PORTRAIT WITH FRIENDS: THE SELECTED DIARIES OF CECIL BEATON, 1926–74

  THE UNEXPURGATED BEATON:

  THE CECIL BEATON DIARIES AS HE WROTE THEM, 1970–80

  BEATON IN THE SIXTIES:

  THE CECIL BEATON DIARIES AS HE WROTE THEM, 1965–9

  “[Cecil Beaton] possesses an exquisite sense of chic and fashion, what one might call beauty which passes, and this gift has made him one of the princes of english society.”

  CHRISTIAN DIOR

  “With Coco Chanel’s ‘race horse stride,’ Lady Diana Cooper’s ‘mannish nonchalance,’ and Diana Vreeland defined as an ‘autocratic crane,’ Cecil Beaton catches in a pithy phrase the essence of being fashionable.”

  SUZY MENKES, INTERNATIONAL EDITOR, VOGUE

  This edition first published in the United States of America in 2014 by Rizzoli Ex Libris, an imprint of Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

  300 Park Avenue South

  New York, NY 10010

  www.rizzoliusa.com

  Copyright © 2014 The Literary Proprietor of the late Sir Cecil Beaton

  Originally published in the United States of America by Doubleday & Company, Inc.

  Copyright © 1954 Cecil Beaton

  This ebook edition © 2014 The Literary Proprietor of the late Sir Cecil Beaton

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior consent of the publishers.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8478-4464-7

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-8478-4464-7

  v3.1

  To the affectionate memory of CONDÉ NAST

  in gratitude for his encouragement

  throughout the years

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Some of the sketches in this book are derived from well-known portraits, others are from photographs and press reproductions, whose authorship I have been unable to trace. But I should like to thank Mr. Boris Kochno for lending me his snapshot of M. Diaghilev, Lady Juliet Duff for a de Meyer photograph of her mother, Lady de Grey, and Mrs. Carmel Snow for permission to utilize some fashion photographs by Mr. Richard Avedon. I should like to thank M. Drian for giving me permission to reinterpret some of his early work.

  My gratitude also goes to the following people, all of whom were gracious and kind enough to provide me with specific material and anecdotes which appear in some of these chapters: Mme. Edouard Bourdet, Louise de Vilmorin, Mrs. Pauline Potter, Mrs. Reed Vreeland, Mrs. Carmel Snow, George Davis, Ellen McCoole, Mercedes de Acosta, Malvina Hoffman, Mme. Lopez-Wilshaw, Lady Juliet Duff, M. Michel Bongard, M. Balenciaga, and Lincoln Kirstein; also Mrs. Edna Woolman Chase, Margaret Case, and Baron Nicolas de Gunzberg of Vogue.

  My thanks are also due to the editors of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and The New Yorker for allowing me access to their past issues. To Mr. Waldemar Hansen I am indebted for his patience and help in research work, and generally in editing and contributing so much to this book.

  For this handsome new edition, it has been a great pleasure to work with Alessandra Lusardi, senior editor at Rizzoli, publisher Charles Miers, and the book’s designer, Andrew Prinz.

  HUGO VICKERS

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Praise

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  FOREWORD

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER I TAKE ONE HUNDRED LARKS

  CHAPTER II A LADY OF FASHION: MY AUNT JESSIE

  CHAPTER III FOOTLIGHTS AND POWDER

  CHAPTER IV THE DEMI-MONDE

  CHAPTER V CHANGING WORLDS

  CHAPTER VI ARABIAN NIGHTS

  CHAPTER VII MRS. LYDIG

  CHAPTER VIII THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED

  CHAPTER IX CHANEL NUMBER ONE

  CHAPTER X THE LADY FROM CHILE

  CHAPTER XI LOW BAROMETER

  CHAPTER XII A VOYAGE TO THE INTERIOR

  CHAPTER XIII THE AGE OF ANXIETY

  CHAPTER XIV CABBAGES, KINGS, AND FOREIGNERS

  CHAPTER XV KING PINS AND NEEDLES

  CHAPTER XVI THE GALLIC TOUCH

  CHAPTER XVII VARIETY SHOW

  CHAPTER XVIII VELVET GLOVE

  CONCLUSIONS

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  CECIL BEATON was nothing if not an arbiter of fashion, so it is entirely appropriate that he should have tackled a personal and individualistic book on the subject, bringing to it his many and varied talents as an anecdotal writer, photographer (in the English edition), and draftsman. In his long and varied life, he had succeeded in creating a unique persona for himself, aloof, confident, and sometimes disparaging. As Truman Capote pointed out, Cecil was that rare creature—“a total self-creation.” He succeeded in rising to a position in life where his opinion was sought and respected—especially in matters of taste.

  Cecil did not lack conviction and he could be immensely rude about other peoples’ taste. “Retina irritant” was a favourite dismissive comment on anything he disliked—from the colour of a dining room to the light fittings—and he once condemned the theatrical impresario, “Binkie” Beaumont, in a letter to Enid Bagnold: “I cannot believe you have much respect for Binkie’s appreciation for literature or the arts of decoration (see his Essex cottage).”

  In The Glass of Fashion, Cecil is in a more positive frame of mind, “praising” rather than “burying.” He was attempting something that had never been tried before. He related the changing fashions in the first half of the twentieth century to those who had created them and those who had inspired them. He examined important influences, often people like Madame Errazuriz, who were not household names but nevertheless had a quiet and vital impact on areas of taste and design. It was an ingenious and successful formula and, as with many of Cecil’s ideas, it has been copied in a variety of ways since, usually with rather less style.

  The title of the book was taken from a play in which Cecil’s father had performed in the 1890s—The Glass of Fashion, a comedy written in 1882 by Sydney Grundy (1848–1914).

  Cecil filled the book with illuminating anecdotes, noting, for example, that Diaghilev was responsible for the revival o
f Orientalism in European taste due to the influence of the Russian ballet. He discussed the great couturiers, from Schiaparelli and Chanel before the war to Christian Dior and the New Look after it. He portrayed the great beauties of the age, such as Lady Diana Cooper, and he did not omit the legendary demi-mondaines, such as Lantelme, Polaire, and Forzane. Here, too, was Syrie Maugham with her white interiors, Gertrude Lawrence smoking cigarettes “with a nuance that implied having just come out of bed and wanting to go back into it,” and a host more. It was an opportunity to celebrate the influences that Cecil had observed so closely in a life led at the epicentre of fashion. He adorned the book with his photographs (regrettably not in the American edition) and with line drawings. It was a happy collaboration of his talents.

  The Glass of Fashion was published in 1954 in Great Britain, the United States, and France (translated by Denise Bourdet, with a preface by Christian Dior and a profile of Cecil by Violet Trefusis). There was a Japanese version (back-to-front naturally, with some of the letters of the English title obscured on the dust jacket). Since then it has been reissued in Great Britain in 1989, and in Spain in 1990, the latter with a foreword by the Catalan painter and art historian, Joan-Josep Tharrats (1918–2001).

  The book has always enjoyed success and has become essential reading for those who study fashion. Although written sixty years ago, it has lost none of its zest and allure. It is as fresh today as it was when first published. This is possibly because Cecil reminds us that fashion is an ever-evolving reflection of the times in which we live. He captured an era that he knew well. He would be just as interested in today’s trends. As his collaborator, Waldemar Hansen (1915–2004), put it: “Cecil had his stethoscope on the heart of society, and when there was a change in the beat, he wanted to know why.”

  Cecil was demanding in what he required of the trendsetters. He wanted only the best. You did not have to be beautiful to appeal to him, but you had to have personality. He did not care for vapid beauties, but he loved individual ones. Equally he was fascinated by the eccentric Edith Sitwell with her huge rings and strange hats, and with the haunted syphilitic face of Isak Dinesen, neither of whom could be described as beautiful. He eschewed the conventional and admired the original. He relished the so-called Peacock Revolution of the 1960s—the Rolling Stones in their flared and ripped jeans and multicoloured jackets. He responded well to clarion calls from Diana Vreeland to “celebrate the nose.” He brought to his later photography the influences of the past. And since his death, many of his poses have been copied over and over, notably his 1948 photograph of the Charles James dresses. Annie Leibovitz even posed Queen Elizabeth in the Admiral’s boat cloak, an image of Her Majesty first used by Cecil in 1968.

  Demanding he was, but it was all done with wit and humour, and this is a notable feature in The Glass of Fashion.

  Writing in the French edition, Christian Dior was interested that Cecil treated Chanel or Vionnet with the same gravity that art historians wrote about Watteau, Ingres, or Renoir. Dior observed: “He possesses an exquisite sense of chic and fashion, what one might call beauty which passes, and this gift has made him one of the princes of English society.” Dior worried that certain serious people might be annoyed by Cecil’s passionate interest in a relatively frivolous subject such as fashion, but, as he said: “Too bad for them! Cecil Beaton is right to write with conviction. If you believe in it, you can make a book. If you don’t, then don’t write it.”

  The Glass of Fashion was generally well received on publication. The British dress designer Digby Morton hailed it as “Mr. Cecil Beaton’s most important opus so far.” Anita Loos, described in the book as “the embodiment of cuteness,” was an old friend of Cecil’s. She had taken him with her to Hollywood in December 1929. She reviewed the book for the Herald Tribune:

  Cecil Beaton was always witty, and his eagle eye has always caught every nuance of everything. But the record he has put down this time goes far beneath the surface. The illustrations, delicate as they appear, are full of profound and humane comment.

  The Saturday Review hailed the book as “essentially a work of social history, made entertaining by the author’s flair for vivid characterisation and revealing anecdote, and abundantly illustrated by his vigorous drawings … a record of constantly changing tastes, both æsthetic and social, an appraisal of various forces to which taste has responded, and a cavalcade of individuals.”

  Anita Loos also pointed out: “My personal reaction is one of amazement over the growth of his talents, both as an artist and a writer.” Here she may have hit on Cecil’s Achilles’ heel. The book is indeed elegantly written and there are many classical allusions. But some of these were the handiwork of Waldemar Hansen, of whom Cecil wrote: “His knowledge about science, philosophy, literature, music and general matters is such that my head spins and I realize how abysmally ignorant and undedicated my life has been.” You can be sure that references to the Baltic philosopher, Hermann von Keyserling, are more Hansen than Beaton, as likewise to “the celebrated Taoist dictum” or a throwaway line about “the golden age of Plato and Phidias.”

  Waldemar Hansen was impressed by Cecil’s knowledge, his fecundity of ideas, but was concerned that he tended to overload his sentences and was afraid he would exhaust the reader. He helped Cecil put it all in order. Hansen had no reservations about Cecil’s overall approach: “Fashion (that which creates an age) was his cocaine. He could make it happen. He sought the eternal in fashion, true fashion, not the comings and goings. He was interested in the high practitioners of it—like Balenciaga and Madame Errazuriz.”

  Cecil was a young boy, a larger boy with an ugly face had menaced him and stuck pins into him, and was soundly caned for so doing. It is no surprise that in later life there remained a lingering antipathy between Cecil and his erstwhile tormentor, Evelyn Waugh. Waugh mocked the book in a letter to Nancy Mitford: “You may also be surprised to learn that the great leaders of fashion were Alice Obolensky, Phillis de Janzé, Diana Vreeland and Cecil’s Aunt Effi (a new character) [he meant Aunt Jessie]. There are gross historical misstatements on every page.” Waugh’s opinion is of no value. He knew nothing about fashion and took every opportunity in life to bait Cecil, a mantle later assumed by his son, Auberon Waugh.

  These occasional pinpricks did not harm the book at all. It has acquired additional gravitas as time has passed. It has become a bible of fashion.

  HUGO VICKERS

  February 2014

  INTRODUCTION

  IF AN ANGLO-SAXON decides to write a personal record of fashion and the minor arts, he may find himself accused of being a propagandist of frivolity. He will certainly discover that, both in England and America, fashion is viewed with a jaundiced eye, feminine enthusiasm notwithstanding.

  To those serious critics who would denigrate fashion, one can only reply in terms of paradox. It was Oscar Wilde who observed that we cannot afford to do without luxuries, thus making a variation on the celebrated Taoist dictum that only those knowing the value of the useless can talk about the useful. But among the Western nations France alone seems to have taken this wisdom to heart and has always laboured to elevate both fashion and les arts mineurs to a degree of perfection comparable with the purity of its literature and painting.

  When we talk about fashion or the minor arts, we really mean the whole art of living. Its practitioners, like roof thatchers, are a disappearing race in our modern world. Perhaps it is because of an innate dislike of leisure that we Anglo-Saxons are so niggardly in praising this art. In cookery, for example, the English or Americans, unconsciously imbued with Benjamin Franklin’s notion that time is money, might find it absurd for a Frenchman to spend many hours in the preparation of a single sauce. But a Frenchman, who has been criticized for being mercenary, has never been willing to stint on the time involved in a creation simply because the results are ephemeral.

  As for history, that spectre which is always being raised as a criterion, it might be pointed out that fashi
on, the ephemeral, shares the last laugh with art, the eternal. Quite realistically, art is the only thing that outlasts all other forms of human endeavour. But art cannot help reflecting the fashions of its age, and though empires have risen and fallen, we can re-create, with astonishing accuracy, the fashions of an age simply by studying its ornaments and art.

  When Marcel Proust was at work on Remembrance of Things Past, he sent for information as to what coloured feathers a certain lady had worn on her hat ten years previously. Proust knew how much the fleeting expression of fashion or fancy can reflect something beyond its limited time, something haunting that whispers of the nostalgia of human impermanence and mirrors man’s tragic destiny.

  Any number of contemporary critics have devoted volumes to Picasso or Stravinsky, Le Corbusier or James Joyce, but little has been said about those people who have influenced the art of living in the half century of my own lifetime. This book is a subjective account of them and their achievements, as well as of the current of fashion against which they more often than not swam. If they were, or are still, fashionable, in many cases it is because they could not help being so. Some of these personalities are famous, some infamous, some outrageous; but all, in their own way, represent the styles of the past fifty years. Since the point of view is my own, the reader is more than likely to find lacunæ and omissions. But I have scarcely intended a compendium of latter-day taste: we may, indeed, be too close to the subject matter for such a work.

  One could perhaps divide the hierarchy of fashion into three ranks: those who play fashion’s game and are the sheep; those who play the game and are the leaders; and lastly, the real shepherds, who, though they avoid or eschew active participation, cannot help being fashionable because of the authority with which they express their tastes. All of these people appear in this book. If the shepherds dominate, that is only natural; they are far and away the most interesting and rewarding subjects.