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Monthly Archives: October 2013

The Marbella Club

October 31, 2013

Mother’s Summer Hideaway

The Marbella Club on Spain’s Costa del Sol was, at first, a large old farm purchased in the late 40s by Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and his father Prince Max as a family retreat. But their hospitality was so generous and their guest list so long that by 1954 Alfonso had converted the place into a super swanky exclusive resort hosting the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Lawrence Olivier and Ava Gardner.

When we were living in London in the early 70s, Mother would ship us off to camp in Switzerland for the entire summer and then go hang out at the Marbella Club. She once judged a bull fight in town. After camp one year, Prince Juan Carlos (later King Juan Carlos) of Spain taught me how to play backgammon at the club’s pool. He was incredibly dashing and funny and kind to give away his afternoon to a sunburned American tween while her mother cruised the bar for bigger game.

The London Hilton

October 30, 2013

The London Hilton on Park Lane

The London Hilton on Park Lane was not a hotel we ever lived in. But we did spend a fair amount of time there for two reasons: Mother’s best new friend in London, Mary Broomfield, was the hotel’s upper class consierge and Trader Vic’s was in the basement.

The hotel was built in 1963 in the swanky Mayfair section of London and towers over Hyde Park (it remains the tallest hotel in London). In 1967 the Beatles met the Mararishi Mahesh Yogi there and in 1975 the IRA bombed the place killing two and injuring 63 including Mary who lost hearing in one ear. Trader Vic’s was the faux Polynesian bar chain (which originated in San Francisco, I believe) whose big, colorful, fruit-garnished drinks and Tiki mugs were an irresistible draw for teen expat wanna be grown-ups like me and Robbie and our crew from ASL (The American School in London).

The Croyden

October 29, 2013

Our newstand in the lobby of the Croyden.

After Mother had our place on Park Avenue packed up and before she announced we were moving to London, we lived at the Croyden Hotel at 12 East 86th Street just off 5th Avenue for a few months. This little newstand (and its candy) was the hotel’s highlight for Robbie and me. We bought Tiger Beats and Chunky Candy bars and tried to avoid troubling questions like why did we leave our old house and where were we going from here.

Hotels!

October 28, 2013

The Ritz-Carlton Boston

I used to say, after my mother divorced my step-father, that we changed addresses the way other people changed storm windows. An important part of this peripatetic lifestyle–sublet flats and leased apartments and houses from Park Avenue in New York to Sloane Square in London to Fresh Pond Parkway in Cambridge–was the hotel. Hotels were a bridge into new cities and countries, between addresses within cities. Sometimes they would serves us as an address or home and other times as a reminder of what a home could be–an oasis in an unfamiliar, often foreign, world. I sometimes feel that I feel more at home in hotels than homes because no matter where they are–Morocco or Omaha–or what kind of place–four star luxury or Best Western–they have, at a minimum, a bed, a bath and clean towels.

The original Ritz Hotel in Paris–the cornerstone of what would become the Ritz-Carlton chain–was founded by Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz and chef August Escoffier in 1898 overlooking the Place Vendome in Paris. Proust, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Edward VII, Coco Chanel and Marie of Roumania were just a few of the wealthy, royal and famous who stayed there. The chain (named also for the Carlton Hotel in London) expanded into the United States (New York, Philadelphia and Atlantic City) in the early 1900s. My step-father Oliver Rea was born at the Ritz-Carlton in New York in the twenties. The Ritz-Carlton in Boston (overlooking the Boston Common) was not originally a part of the chain’s expansion. It was a 1926 real estate development that was originally begun as the luxury Mayflower apartment building but was finished, thanks to the persuasiver personality of Boston’s mayor James Michael Curly, as the 300 room Ritz-Carlton hotel and opened in 1927.

We did not live at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, but we spent a fair amount of time there. Mother would meet “ladies” there for tea or beaus for cocktails. Our fairy-ex-stepfather would stay there when he came to town to get us settled or “fix” some problem (before the final fall-out) and sometimes we would just go for supper or tea to feel at home in a strange new city.

We used to see an old woman there dressed in Victorian mourning clothes. She lived in the hotel and ate supper by herself every night. I imagined that, like me, she felt that even living by yourself in a hotel you are never alone–a comforting thought.

I’ll be talking about hotels all week this week but I’ve already posted about one special hotel in which a fun scene from Chanel Bonfire was set: The Hotel Sydney Opera. Here’s a link to that March 11th post!
http://chanelbonfire.blogspot.com/2013/03/hotel-sydney-opera-in-pairs.html

Jaeger

October 25, 2013

Another of Mother’s London clothing obsessions was Jaeger knitwear. Already a classic English brand founded in 1884 by Lewis Tomalin and named after German zoologist Dr. Gustav Jaeger who advocated the benefits of clothes made from animal fibers, Jaeger became chic on the same late 60s knitwear craze (some say begun by Arthur Penn’s 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde”) that influenced Ossie Clark’s reimagining of Chanel’s 1930s suits. Mother couldn’t get enough of it — the classic lines and form-fitting cut of Jaeger’s sweaters looked fabulous on her–sexy not stuffy and perfect for everyday.

Ossie Clark

October 24, 2013

Ossie Clark (left) with his wife Celia Birtwell and Royal College of Art friend David Hockney (right)

When Mother moved us to London and she began her wacky expat divorcee phase, her wardrobe expanded and in some ways exploded with the flamboyant free flowing fabrics and radical cuts of Enlgish designer Ossie Clark (The King of King’s Road) and his wife, textile designer Celia Britwell. She may have seen his clothes at Henry Bendel in New York (they bought his first collection) but she fell in love with them in London.

His work came of age in the 60s and became the look and style of the 70s influencing Yves Saint Laurent, Anna Sui and Tom Ford among others. His classic lines done for Radley are still worn by Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell and, of course, by me and Robbie and our friends in the Chanel Bonfire party.

Adolfo

October 22, 2013

Nancy Reagan wearing Adolfo in her Pedro Menocal portrait

Adolfo (Adolfo F. Sardina), the Cuban born designer (and cousin of society portraitist Pedro Menocal) was one of mother’s favorite designers in late 60s New York. After graduating from the University of Havana in 1948, he emigrated to the U.S. and served in the navy. His fashion career started when he became an apprentice milliner at Bergdorf’s in the early 50s and then moved to Balenciaga in Paris and also Chanel –primarily as a milliner or hat maker. He moved permanently to New York in the earlier sixties and opened his own millinery salon, winning a coveted Coty award for his designs. Soon he began to design clothes which grew in popularity and surpassed his success with hats. In the late sixties, inspired by Chanel’s cardigan style suits of the 1930s he began a long line of knitwear suits with increasingly sensational adornments that captured the favor of the likes C.Z. Guest, the Duchess of Windsor, Nancy Reagan and Mother. His clothes are in the collections of the Met, the Smithsonian, LACMA and other museums. He retired at the top of his game in 1993 to the dismay of many of his clients.

Astrud Gilberto

October 18, 2013

The record that introduced the voice of Astrud Gilberto

The last icon of my New York City childhood is not a visual icon but a vocal one. Astrud Gilberto, a young Brazilian woman, came to the United States in the early sixties with her husband the guitarist Joao Gilberto and legendary songwriter, arranger and bossa nova stylist Antonio Carlos Jobim at the invitation of sax player Stan Getz to record an album of new jazz samba that would sell millions of copies and become one of the most well known jazz albums of all time and an iconic sound of the 60s. Astrud had never sung professionally but was pressed into service to sing “The Girl From Ipanema” because she was the only one of the Brazilians who could speak English. The low affect of her voice was the perfect counter-point the emotional inflection of her husband’s guitar and Getz’s hushed sexy-voiced saxophone. The record resonated from tropical wood stereo speakers in living rooms lit by the soft green lights of Harmon/Kardon receivers all over America. Astrud became the female voice of the 60s of my mother’s generation — the epitome of cool, adult sophistication. She left Gilberto for Getz in the mid-sixties and continued to record and sing until an unofficial retirement in 2002. Mother saw her in the late 60s in New York and I can still remember falling to sleep on Park Avenue to the clinking of classes, the laughter of grown up conversation and the soft voice of Astrud singing.

“Corcovado”

Holly Golightly

October 17, 2013

Holly Golightly aka Lula Mae Barnes

Eloise was an icon that symbolized my childhood in New York–unsupervised, wild and crazy, lonely, but always, somehow safe and frequently fun. Holly Golightly was the symbol of my mother’s time in New York. The Georgann Rea of the Dakota and Park Avenue, with charge accounts at Bergdorfs and Bendels and Bloomingdales and tables at La Grenouille and Lutece was a creation of my stepfather and his taste and money and also of my mother and her aching desire to have the perfect life she’d always dreamed about–glamourous and romantic and important. She’d glimpse it, grab at it and hold it in her hand like the exquisite jewelry my stepfather bought for her but she’d never be able to hang onto it. Underneath her frosted hair and her little black Italian silk cocktail dresses, mother would always be the Iowa orphan (Loreta May Gronau) and abused little girl from Kansas City (Georgann McAdams) looking for unconditional love and a sense of belonging.

The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups)

October 16, 2013

The Original Poster for The 400 Blows

It may seem strange that an eight or nine year old girl’s two memorable fictional icons are Eloise and Antoine Doinel the boy in les quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) but there you are — my childhood in New York was not usual or often appropriate. I do not remember the year exactly (’68, or ’69) that my stepfather rented Andy Warhol’s house in South Hampton but I do remember that in addition to whip cream fights and swimming and other exercises to introduce Robbie and me to his children from his first marriage, he showed a series of Truffaut movies on a screen in the living room. Mother and Oliver’s relationship was already quite volatile and would get much worse, end and then get better but I remember watching the troubled Antoine as he listened to his mother and stepfather fight and feeling that I knew how he felt. The film ends with a freeze-frame of his face at the beach and it stuck with me through that summer and forever — even as I finished the final scene of Chanel.