Social Diary 8/16/04 - Ultimate Style

Ultimate Style

From Bettina Zilkha's Ultimate Style (l. to r.): Babe Paley; Duchess of Windsor; Grace Kelly.

Antony Todd and Nina Griscom held a reception for Bettina Zilkha and her book Ultimate Style (Assouline) at their shop on Job’s Lane in Southampton last Saturday night. The book, if you haven’t heard by now, is about the history of the International Best Dressed List which was started in 1940 by Eleanor Lambert, the fashion publicist.

Bettina Zilkha signs a book for Eric Javits

Just when you thought there was nothing more to be said about the Best Dressed List, Ms. Zilkha comes along with this totally intriguing coffee-table size volume full of beautiful images and fascinating details about the women who made up the list over the past six decades.

Mrs. Lambert, who died last October at age 100 started the list in 1940 as a promotion of the American garment industry after the war in Europe closed down so many of the Paris couture houses that had previously dominated American fashion.

Paris of course returned to couture prominence right after the war. In the period right after WWII, according to Zilkha, “approximately 15,000 women wore couture. Socialites like the Duchess of Windsor, Babe Paley, and Gloria Guinness would order entire collections at a time.” Today there are about 2000 women in the world buying couture and 60% of them are Americans, with, according to Zilkha, only about 200 regular customers.

Perhaps those facts are why the earlier members of the Best Dressed List have it all over most of the later members. There was either an artistry or a shrewdness (or both) to their objectives, greatly enhanced by the occasional genius of the designers.

Gloria Guinness

The Duchess of Windsor was on the list for more than four decades. When she married the just-abdicated King of England in 1937, her wedding trousseau included 66 dresses with matching accessories from Chanel, Mainbocher and Schiaparelli.

“When she found a particularly flattering dress,” Zilkha writes, “she often had it produced in multiple colors and fabrics, and each season she purchased 20 to 30 new outfits.”

Among her trademarks, Zilkha adds about the Duchess, “were mixing costume jewelry with precious gems.” Her attention to wardrobe was that she believed “a captivating personal style would please her husband and might compensate for her bold and striking but less than classically beautiful features.”

It would be difficult finding a woman today, among the Best Dressed ladies, with a similarly focused objective.

“Best Dressed” always meant more than that. It also meant prominent. Without prominent there was no way a woman could be elevated to the list. This was because women of prominence garnered press (now media) attention. It was and remains that simple.

The ultimate in terms of style, everyone seems to agree, was Babe Paley. I’ve heard descriptions of her costume from people who had only caught a passing glimpse, and read written descriptions in countless magazines and fashion papers.

Gene Tierney

Eleanor Lambert herself once told me that Mrs. Paley wore her clothes as if she were an artist creating a composition. She said that indeed if one were to look at any one of her ensembles laid out or hung on a rack, the composition would be perfect.

While her great style could intimidate even friends who were prominent and stylish themselves, for Mrs. Paley, they were probably just another aspect of her obsessiveness with the visual (i.e. appearances).

Perhaps under other circumstances she might have used that talent as an artist. In her case she employed it mainly to please her husband whose standards were demanding, not to mention competitively oriented. His first wife, Dorothy Hart Hearst (later Paley and then Hirshon), who was on the original 1940 list (somehow unacknowledged in this book), set the standards which he consistently (and often successfully) met and surpassed. His second wife, Babe, was imminently prepared to surpass both of them in the business of image. That was her genius.

Marisa Berenson

Mary McFadden

Blaine Trump

The early members of the list were either socialites or movie stars, just as they are today. And occasionally designers themselves. Chanel was on the list. So was Valentina Schlee, Anne Forgarty, Pauline Trigere, Sybill Connolly, Princess Irene Galitzine, Mrs. Adam Gimbel (Sophie of Saks), Mary Quant, Mary McFadden, Carolina Herrera. There were fashion editors too – Vreeland, Carmel Snow, Francoise de Langlade, Anna Wintour. And there were movie stars who, at least in the 1940s and 50s were possibly the most influential fashion images of all to most American women because of their public exposure. Rosalind Russell, Claudette Colbert, Gene Tierney were what today we call icons to women all over the world.

Click on image to order Ultimate Style

The Foreword to the book was written by Eleanor Lambert. In her forthright style she states that the list was started “as a publicity stunt in 1940 when the fashion world was in wartime chaos, and people had to think about clothes without buying more.” Such circumstances (“think about ... without buying”) is inconceivable in today’s consumer driven economy where there is more and more of too much. Which perhaps explains why so many women spend so much on clothes and yet most of the time look like they don’t care (or don’t know) how they look. (Men too, let’s not forget them.)

However, as it was in conception by the brilliant Mrs. Lambert, the International Best Dressed List, now the property of Conde Nast and Vanity Fair Magazine, remains exactly that – a publicity stunt, and a curiously fascinating one – as Bettina Zilkha’s book confirms and succeeds for the reader.

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Some of the fashionistas who turned up (and out) last May at Gotham Hall to celebrate the launch of Bettina Zilkha's Ultimate Style: The Best of the Best Dressed List