Elsie de Wolfe
opens a decorating shop in New York in 1904. In the 40s in Los Angeles, Elsie (and her husband Sir Charles Mendl) discover Tony Duquette who flourishes under their patronage, doing costumes and sets for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, interiors for Mary Pickford and Buddy Rogers and "meuble" for Lady Mendl.
Who doesn't love branches painted to look like coral? As both Tony and Elsie (and Stephen Tennant) and no doubt so many other clever creative people throughout history have discovered, nothing says elegance and good times like well-arranged marine life. They dress up the commonest cigar box as Victorian ladies discovered, and along with modern technology in the form of glue guns, 'Bedazzler'(TM) kits and gold spray paint, faux coral is but one aspect of Tony Duquette's style which inspired the splendid windows at Bergdorf Goodman this year and which New York Social Diary presents to better advantage than I can possibly do in my quick impressionistic snaps taken in the snow.
Simon's "green" windows at Barney's are terrific too, but Bergdorf's -- in conjunction with the book on Tony by Wendy Goodman and Tony's partner Hutton Wilkinson -- are not to be missed. You look at them and remind yourself that real magic is something you create. Enchantment, as we all know from "A Streetcar Named Desire," is sometimes just a matter of a scarf draped artfully over a lamp.
And after all, how many of us, looking around at a friend's pied a terre, have said (to be helpful), paraphrasing Elsie de Wolfe, "Get me a staple gun and enough yardage, and I'll turn this place into Versailles." As Elsie herself did with the Villa Trianon.
Tony's Shangri-la mansion in the Malibu Mountains [named "Sortilegium" -- which he said was Latin for enchantment, but which I'd say also had a bit more of the medieval soothsaying and witchcraft divination about it too, which to Tony may have been the same thing] burned in the '93 Fire, yet the Bergdorf windows recall its transient glamour, a little bit of L.A. recreated in New York, reminding me that more ties these two places together than my simply having lived in both. Good friends and good times on both coasts!
Speaking of glamour and beauty, may I just add that the waiter staff of Glorious Food New York are The. Best. Looking. Ever. True story. Like being offered a canape by the Dolce & Gabbana perfume model but he had more clothes on. Breath. Taking.
And a final thought on shells and sea motifs: with the passing of Elizabeth Hardwick, I was moved to read Robert Lowell's "The Dolphin" -- his poems which chronicle their relationship and divorce, when he moved on to Lady Caroline Blackwood. Like so many of us, Elizabeth was drawn to men who treated her badly. Lowell quotes her letters to him in his poems. Painful, some of it; he was unquestionably a real bastard. And yet --
"I fear my conscience because it makes me lie," Lowell writes in the poem, "Symptoms." He is having a bath and notices that --
"Three dolphins bear our little toilet-stand,
the grin of the eyes rebukes the scowl of the lips,
they are crazy with the thirst. I soak,
examining and then examining
what I really have against myself."
Who doesn't love branches painted to look like coral? As both Tony and Elsie (and Stephen Tennant) and no doubt so many other clever creative people throughout history have discovered, nothing says elegance and good times like well-arranged marine life. They dress up the commonest cigar box as Victorian ladies discovered, and along with modern technology in the form of glue guns, 'Bedazzler'(TM) kits and gold spray paint, faux coral is but one aspect of Tony Duquette's style which inspired the splendid windows at Bergdorf Goodman this year and which New York Social Diary presents to better advantage than I can possibly do in my quick impressionistic snaps taken in the snow.
Simon's "green" windows at Barney's are terrific too, but Bergdorf's -- in conjunction with the book on Tony by Wendy Goodman and Tony's partner Hutton Wilkinson -- are not to be missed. You look at them and remind yourself that real magic is something you create. Enchantment, as we all know from "A Streetcar Named Desire," is sometimes just a matter of a scarf draped artfully over a lamp.
And after all, how many of us, looking around at a friend's pied a terre, have said (to be helpful), paraphrasing Elsie de Wolfe, "Get me a staple gun and enough yardage, and I'll turn this place into Versailles." As Elsie herself did with the Villa Trianon.
Tony's Shangri-la mansion in the Malibu Mountains [named "Sortilegium" -- which he said was Latin for enchantment, but which I'd say also had a bit more of the medieval soothsaying and witchcraft divination about it too, which to Tony may have been the same thing] burned in the '93 Fire, yet the Bergdorf windows recall its transient glamour, a little bit of L.A. recreated in New York, reminding me that more ties these two places together than my simply having lived in both. Good friends and good times on both coasts!
Speaking of glamour and beauty, may I just add that the waiter staff of Glorious Food New York are The. Best. Looking. Ever. True story. Like being offered a canape by the Dolce & Gabbana perfume model but he had more clothes on. Breath. Taking.
And a final thought on shells and sea motifs: with the passing of Elizabeth Hardwick, I was moved to read Robert Lowell's "The Dolphin" -- his poems which chronicle their relationship and divorce, when he moved on to Lady Caroline Blackwood. Like so many of us, Elizabeth was drawn to men who treated her badly. Lowell quotes her letters to him in his poems. Painful, some of it; he was unquestionably a real bastard. And yet --
"I fear my conscience because it makes me lie," Lowell writes in the poem, "Symptoms." He is having a bath and notices that --
"Three dolphins bear our little toilet-stand,
the grin of the eyes rebukes the scowl of the lips,
they are crazy with the thirst. I soak,
examining and then examining
what I really have against myself."
Wow. Great post, old boy! i"m glad you took my suggestion to heart and looked up the Bergdof's windows. I may have a shot at visiting Tony's Beverly Hills house, Dawnridge, for a photo shoot i'm coordinating. pray for me that i do. lovely to see Isadora Duncan mentioned on the site, too.
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