 |
Cathy
Hardwick and Cece Cord
|
|
After
lunch, a number of us went across the Park and up
to the Met where there was a memorial for Eleanor Lambert in
the Grace Rainey Rogers auditorium. Eleanor passed
away a little more than a month ago and only two months after her
hundredth birthday.
There were several speakers including her son Bill Berkson,
the poet; Harold Koda, director of the Costume Institute
at the Met; Oscar de la Renta, John Loring (from
Tiffany), Hilary (Mrs. Galen) Weston, Elsa
Klensch, Joe Cicio and Nadja Swarovski.
After the speakers, Eleanor’s grandson Moses Berkson,
who has lived with his grandmother for the past eight years, screened
a “video presentation,” part of a documentary work in
progress on his grandmother’s life.
There were several hundred present. It was not an emotional memorial,
although Bill Berkson’s reading of his poem written for his
mother on her centenary was touching and sweet. Eleanor lived longer
than most of us ever will. She certainly experienced some of the
vagaries of old age but luckily she never lost her mental facilities.
She was ambulatory with difficulty in the past few years but that
didn’t stop her in the slightest. She worked her entire adult
life, almost to the last day. I saw her the day after her hundredth
birthday in Swifty’s where she was meeting a friend for lunch.
The friend was late so she just got started without her. Undoubtedly
she had other things on her schedule for that day because she was
still working! At 100!
 |
Standing
on the top of the steps at the Met last Monday,
while making a meager attempt to get photos of
the guests at the Eleanor Lambert memorial,
I took this shot of the southeast corner of 82nd
Street and Fifth Avenue. Benjamin Duke and
his younger brother James (father
of Doris) founded American Tobacco.
Mr. and Mrs. Duke brought the house in 1901 and
later sold it to James who lived there until he
built his marble palace down the avenue at 78th
Street where his daughter and widow continued to
live until the 1950s. The Benj. Duke house was
until not long ago still occupied by Dukes and
the Biddle relatives.
|
|
So
the memories shared with the crowd at the Met were
ones of great fondness for this woman who helped many many people
professionally — many of whom went on to great fame and fortune.
She came to New York from the heartland, the same state as Cole
Porter (Indiana) and Bill Blass, whose
career she graced profoundly. She wasn’t a glamorous figure
or a monumentally charming personality and yet she presided over
a business of fantastic glamour and personality. She was a work-a-bee
and in reflection, we can see that is everything.
She basically created what is now called the Fashion Industry in
New York (and America). That sounds like so much hype (and hype was
also her business), but in this case it was true. I met her only
fourteen years ago when she was in her mid-eighties, and for all
the years after that, she engaged me in business with her clients
all the time. It was an incomparably brilliant career. At the end
of the hour I was left with the sense of this enormous presence filling
the room, too big to leave yet now paradoxically, strangely absent.
Thanksgiving Day in New York was typically
gray and cold. This is the least pretty
time of the year, which is the glass-half-full way of
looking at it. Except for the holiday decorations that
soon pop up flashing and splashing the avenues with reds,
whites, greens, silver and gold.
 |
Carving
the freshly roasted bird at The Four Seasons
|
|
A few years
ago my Thanksgiving took on a new tradition: dinner at The Four
Seasons restaurant, guest of David and Helen Gurley Brown,
along with Alice Mason. The Browns book a table
right by the pool. We arrive at four for dinner. The sleekly cavernous Philip
Johnson-designed restaurant is elegantly cool and now
classic. They were booked solid with tables of two or twenty — families,
singles, couples, friends, of all ages.
People
dress for the occasion – the way a Sunday dinner looked in
New York a generation ago. After our cocktails (champagne) and
first course – David had oysters, Helen, Alice and I had
the butternut squash and pumpkin bisque – they wheel the
cart with the freshly roasted bird right up to our table to be
carved and served.
After a lively conversation (and always very informative in the company
of those three), dinner and dessert (Alice and I had a Grand
Marnier soufflé, David and Helen had the pumpkin pie),
about 5:45, we departed stuffed and now overfed, and damned lucky
to be. Thankfully. |
Among
the attendees at the Eleanor Lambert memorial at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday, November
24.
• Michelle Ateyeh
• Stephen Attoe
• Mouna al-Ayoub
• Jeffrey Banks
• Geoffrey Beene
• Aimee Bell
• Mark Birley
• Bill and Deeda Blair
• Mario Buatta
• John Cahill and Anne Slater
• Mike Cannon
• John Cantrell
• Robert Caravaggi
• Graydon Carter
• Mr. and Mrs. Sal Cesarani
• Amy Chan
• Carol Cohen
• Amy Fine Collins
• Cece Cord
• Kitty D’Alessio
• Carmen Dell’Orefice
• Beth DeWoody
• Jody Donohue
• Dominick Dunne
• Ahmet and Mica Ertegun
• Joe Eula
• Marilyn Evans
• Pamela Fiori
• Gray Foy
• Bob Goldstein
• Henry Grethel
• Miranda Guinness
• Bette-Ann Gwathmey
• Ki Hackne
• Cathy Hardwick
• Rose Hartman
• Kathleen Hearst
• Joan Helpern
• Reinaldo and Carolina Herrera
• Gene Hovis
• Roz Jacobs
• Betsy Kaiser
• Joan Kaner
• Hilary Knight
• James LaForce
• Kenneth Jay Lane
• Lionel Larner
• Nina Lerner
• Naomi Leff
• Fern Mallis
• Mary McFadden
• Sarah Medford
• Aileen Mehle
• B Michael
• Bernardine Morris
• Enid Nemy
• Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos
• Carroll Petrie
• Mary Ann Restivo
• Lyn Revson
• Zandra Rhodes
• Caroline Roehm
• Jackie Rogers
• Jill Roosevelt
• Cynthia Rowley
• Gloria Sachs
• Fernando Sanchez
• Anne Marie Schiro
• Betty Sherrill
• Peter Som
• Leslie Stevens
• Geraldine Stutz
• Kristina Stewart
• Isabel and Rubin Toledo
• Anna Maria Tornaghi
• Guy Trebay
• John Truex
• Matt Tyrnauer
• Adrienne Vittadini
• Sir Mark and Lady Weinberg (Anouska Hempel)
• Alannah Weston
• Galen Weston
• Saundra Whitney
• Lynn Yaeger
• Bettina Zilkha |
|
|
|
|
