Money has brought more than influence and respectability. Designers now have Gulfstream jets (Klein and Lauren) and houses in all the right places. In 1987 when the Duchess of Windsor’s jewels were auctioned, Klein bought his preppy new wife two pieces. When the queen of England dined at the White House, Blass was in attendance. Arnold Scaasi, among the first to market the connection between fashion and society, has for years posed in his ads with the most famous of his well-heeled Ladies. Now Carolyne Roehm, herself a social star, simply poses alone, as does the beautiful daughter of Carolina Herrera.
No longer are there immutable standards by which to judge ourselves. Image has overtaken reality. —Barbara Goldsmith, “The Meaning of Celebrity,” 1983
In 1961 when Jackie Kennedy watched her husband take the oath of office, she wore a Halston pillbox hat and a sable muff on the advice of Diana Vreeland, and every woman in the country had to have both. For the first time, Americans had a national standard of taste and style but no generally agreed-upon standard of society. American society, particularly as embodied by the Kennedys, was increasingly about glamour and wealth and ambition. And when the old guidelines—the Social Register, the Junior League, the Episcopal Church—are rendered virtually meaningless, people are forced to find new ways to identify themselves as people of consequence; to create, in other words, a new image of importance. And in a world in which image is all, the image maker is king.
The image maker’s power has been best illustrated by the phenomenal rise of the vendor. The right florist, caterer, decorator, and hairdresser have risen to heights of social stardom. All are indicators of a social correctness vital to those Edith Wharton once referred to as the Invaders. But no one has gained as much power as the fashion designer. Without a proper old guard to grant an imprimatur, the designers—the clothes themselves—provide one. Halston said, “You are only as good as the people you dress.” He also knew that you are only as good as the designer you wear.
First, the right designer gets you into the right columns. Everybody in Manhattan today knows that a real estate agent named Alice Mason wears Galanos to her famous dinners—and not because they know Alice Mason. Suzy (Aileen Mehle) is on hand to tell us, just as she told us in the sixties that “Gloria Guinness is already in New York sweeping around town in her Givenchy midi skirt.” For those just coming out into society, at whatever age, this attention is especially important, and a serious dress is the most direct way to be seen and mentioned. Even the august Katharine Graham needed a designer to aid in her debut as a player. In 1963, when she emerged from her late husband’s shadow to run one of the country’s largest media empires, she was a shy middle-aged woman who needed a look. She found one in Halston, and at his memorial service earlier this year she delivered a heartfelt eulogy. “Before Halston,” she said, “I was one of fashion’s one hundred neediest cases. . . .By the time he closed the doors at Olympic Tower, I had come to rely on him so greatly. . . that I found it difficult to move on.”
