Marylou, it’s so wonderful to connect. We have known each other for many years, and there are so many questions I have been wanting to ask you. What sparked your interest in fashion and how did your fashion career start?
In 1953, as I was working on my sixth week at the Des Moines Register, the managing editor, Frank Eyerly, told me I was to be the new fashion editor. When I told him I couldn’t – that I didn’t know a thing about fashion – he said, “You’ll learn.”
What was your first lesson on the job?
Going over photos of the Paris haute couture collections with the soon-to-retire fashion editor Peggy Hippeee, the niece of legendary Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Carmel Snow. She would show me a design by Jacques Fath and I would blink for a second because I thought his name was Jack-wees Fath. Then she showed me Christian Dior’s tulip silhouette, and I literally tiptoed through the tulips, pretending to see what she saw but never for an instant understanding the connection between the dress and the flower.
After agonizing over the fact that 525,000 readers (the circulation of the paper at that time was posted on the side of the building) knew I didn’t have a clue about what I was writing, I told Mr. Eyerly I had to resign.
He told me to go back to my desk and if I felt the same in three months, we “would talk.”
He sent me to New York to cover what was known as public relations queen Eleanor Lambert’s “Fashion Week,” held twice yearly at the Pierre Hotel. And that was the beginning of my fashion education – sitting in the hotel’s ballroom, at a table lavish with snacks and coffee, watching the clothes of Lambert’s designer clients go by.
You have been to many fashion shows. What are your three all-time favorite ones and why?
Yves Saint Laurent’s first collection for Christian Dior in 1958 after the death of the founding designer. It was historic – a 21–year-old replacing a legend.
The Chanel show of 2014. The supermarket setting was not just the biggest fashion show site I had ever seen, it was notable that all the products – real, edible products, all labeled Chanel –were given later to charities.
The Sonia Rykiel show of 2009 was the first time models not only smiled and laughed on the runway but talked their way through the show.
You didn’t ask for a fourth favorite, but here goes anyway. It was the first show ever in a real, functioning New York subway – the station at 42nd and Sixth. It was Yeohlee’s 2005 collection and it featured real fashion celebrities including CNN’s Elsa Klensch.
You have met many, if not all designers. Which meeting or interview was most memorable and why?
After years of being “excommunicated” from Women’s Wear Daily, then considered the fashion industry’s bible, Geoffrey Beene decided to speak out. My favorite quote from that interview with me for my International Fashion Syndicate was when Beene called John Fairchild, the WWD editor, “John UnFairchild.” It was memorable because Beene was the only designer with the courage to challenge an industry god with a comment that was both amusing and en pointe.
Did any designer ever give you a valuable life lesson?
I had just written an article about Stan Herman, then of Mr.Mort, for the Los Angeles Times. It was in the early ’70s. In that article, I described him as “short,” a description that gave him a conniption and incited him to call me to complain. Maybe scold is more accurate.
“You never describe Givenchy as tall, do you?” he asked, accusingly.
Truth to tell, I had written about Givenchy’s 6’6” in presence.
The life lesson is that it’s not necessary – in fact, it is journalistically irrelevant –to equate size with …anything! (Unless you’re doing plus size/curve clothes.☺)
To set the record straight, Herman is the giant force who led AIDS research to new heights. A designer who has, through his uniform licensees and his years of breaking loungewear records on QVC, arguably dressed more women, and men, than any designer in history. A tall order from a tall talent.
Did I mention that he and Fern Mallis put American fashion on the map by founding the Bryant Park shows?
Of all the revelations, which one personally surprised or shocked you the most?
The quote that surprised me the most is the first one in the book. It is by Coco Chanel. In it, she excoriates Yves Saint Laurent, as in “Fashion fades. Only style remains. Only those with no memory insist on their originality. Yves Saint Laurent has excellent taste. The more he copies me, the better taste he displays.” Chanel’s quote is also my personal favorite because it was fearless. No dress-for-quote swap. No quote for Marylou’s book even though I don’t believe it.
