I was always fascinated by the absurdities and the luxuries and the snobbism of the world that the fashion magazines showed. Of course, it’s not for everyone. Very few people had ever breathed the pantry air of the house of a woman who wore the kind of dress Vogue used to show when I was young. But I lived in that world, not only during my years in the magazine business, but for years before, because I was always of that world—at least in my imagination.

Condé Nast was a very extraordinary man, of such a standard. He had a dream. Condé decided to raise the commercial standard of the American woman. Why, he decided, shouldn’t they have the best-looking clothes? He gave them Vogue. The best-looking houses? House & Garden. And don’t forget Vanity Fair! Why, Condé decided, shouldn’t Americans know about writers, entertainers, painters—that Picasso was painting extraordinary paintings; that a man named Proust was writing an extraordinary book? Why shouldn’t they know... about Josephine Baker?

I knew about Josephine Baker. I’d seen her in Harlem. I was never out of Harlem in the early ’20s. The music was so great. Josephine was simply the only girl you saw in the chorus line. Her eyes were the softest brown velvet, loving, caressing, embracing—all you could feel was something good coming from her. But her eyes were full of laughter, too. She had that...thing—that’s all.

One night I was invited to a Condé Nast party. Everybody who was invited to a Condé Nast party stood for something. He was the man who created the kind of social world that was then called Café Society—a carefully chosen mélange... no such thing as an overcrowded room, mind you—mingling people who up to that time would never have been seen at the same social gathering. Condé picked his guests for their talent, whatever it was—literature, the theater, big business. Sharp, chic society. Why was I asked? I was young, well dressed, and could dance. And also, Condé was a good friend of mine. I was exactly the same age as his daughter Natica. We saw a great deal of each other when I was growing up in Southampton. From the time I was fourteen, Condé used to talk to me as if I were exactly his age, so I was touched, years later, when I got to Vogue and they gave me his old office in the Graybar Building. It was so big you could have roller-skated in it! Anyway, when I was older, he’d invite me to his parties. And this one was the Night of the Three Bakers.

This is who walked into Condé’s party that night: first, there was Mrs. George Baker, the wife of the great banker, who was the best-dressed, most attractive woman in New York and a great hostess, with the most beautiful houses. Then...we had Edythe Baker, who was the cutest thing in town. She came from Missouri, was rather small, and had an absolutely sublime gift for the piano. In the Cochran revue she played a huge piano which seemed literally the length of the entire stage. At the keyboard was this little doll, her fingers running up and down as she played and sang “The Birth of the Blues.’’ Gee, she was cute. That was Edythe.

Then, into their midst walked... Josephine Baker. Now that was historic: we have a black in the house. Her hair had been done by Antoine, the famous hairdresser of Paris, like a Greek boy’s —these small, flat curls against her skull—and she was wearing a white Vionnet dress, cut on the bias with four points, like a handkerchief. It had no opening, no closing—you just put it over your head and it came to you and moved with the ease and the fluidity of the body. And did Josephine move! These long black legs, these long black arms, this long black throat... and pressed into her flat black curls were white silk butterflies. She had the chic of Gay Paree.

That was the Night of the Three Bakers. I was so thrilled to be asked. There was no living with me for days. The Night of the Three Bakers!

One night in Paris a few years later, a friend and I went to a little theater above Montmartre to see a German movie called L’Atlantide, with a wonderful actress in it called Brigitte Helm, who played the Queen of the Lost Continent. It was the middle of July. It was so hot. And the only seats in the theater were in the third balcony, under the rafters, where it was even hotter. There were four seats in a row, and we took two.

We sat there, the movie started... and I became totally intoxicated by it. I was mesmerized! I have no idea if I actually saw the movie I thought I was seeing, but I was totally seduced—totally absorbed by these three lost Foreign Legion soldiers with their camels, their woes...they’re so tired, they’re delirious with dehydration. And then you see the Fata Morgana. That means if you desire a woman, you see a woman, if you desire water, you see water—everything you dream, you see—but you never reach it. It’s all an illusion.

Then.. .a sign of an oasis! There’s a palm.. .and more palms. Then they’re in the oasis, where they see Brigitte Helm, this divine-looking woman seated on a throne—surrounded by cheetahs'. The cheetahs bask in the sun. She fixes her eyes on the soldiers, and one of them approaches her. She gives him a glass of champagne and he drinks it. Then she takes the glass from him, breaks it, cuts his throat with it...

And etcetera.

This goes on and on. I hadn’t moved an inch. At some point I moved my hand... to here... where it stayed for the rest of the movie. I was totally spellbound because the mood was so sustained. I was simply sucked in, seduced by this thing of the desert, seduced by the Queen of the Lost Continent, the wickedest woman who ever lived... and her cheetahs! The essence of movie-ism.

Then... the lights went on and I felt a slight movement under my hand. I looked down—and it was a cheetah! And beside the cheetah was Josephine Baker!

“Oh,” I said, “you’ve brought your cheetah to see the cheetahs!’

“Yes,” she said, “that’s exactly what I did.”

She was alone with the cheetah on a lead. She was so beautifully dressed. She was wearing a marvelous little short black skirt and a little Vionnet shirt—no sleeves, no back, no front, just crossed bars on the bias. Don’t forget how hot it was. And of course, the great thing was to get out of this theater we were in. The cheetah, naturally, took the lead, and Josephine, with those long black legs, was dragged down three flights of stairs as fast as she could go, and that’s fast.

Out in the street there was an enormous white and silver Rolls-Royce waiting for her. The driver opened the door, she let go of the lead, the cheetah whooped, took one leap into the back of the Rolls, with Josephine right behind, the door closed... and they were off!

Ah! What a gesture! I’ve never seen anything like it. It was speed at its best, and style. Style was a great thing in those days.

NIGHTS AND KNIGHTS

What a generation that was! It was the martini era. In those days, people would get out of the car to see you home, and they’d weave around a bit and fall down on the sidewalk. You’d walk into your house; they were out there on the sidewalk; inevitably the chauffeur or the taxi driver would come after them.

In 1931, right in the middle of all this, I’d come back to New York for a few days without Reed, my husband. I’d fallen in love with a place called the Abbaye, which was what used to be known as a “bottle club.” That meant you’d be admitted by someone looking at you through an eyehole in the door; you’d go down a long, very dark flight of stairs, bringing your own bottle, which would then be served to you in bouillon cups... people in those days drank bouillon by the quart.

It was after the Crash, but it was still a very opulent time in New York. None of the friends I went to the Abbaye with that first night seemed to be affected by the Crash, and when I tell you who they were you’ll understand why: Tommy Hitchcock—the greatest polo player of all time—and his charming wife Peggy; Averell Harriman; Sonny Whitney and his divine wife Marie—the polo group—and a few extra men, one of whom I’ll tell you about in a minute. So we arrived... the richest, swellest group—I’m talking about money in the bank rich, not stockbrokers—and everyone was beautifully dressed for dinner. I was nuts about the Abbaye—the size of the room, which was very small, the music...and, of course, there was a certain element of danger, because we were in a speakeasy, doing something that was against the law, which didn’t really interest me, but you can’t deny its appeal. It was chic and amusing, and I thought it was all very, very attractive. In there, in this small room, were the best of all worlds, and the worst—a delicious balance if you really like night life, which I always have.

So in the Abbaye we were drinking bouillon, bouillon, bouillon ... there was no end to the bouillon... and one of the extra men, a charming Irishman called Jim—I can’t remember his last name—decided to get good and loaded. Don’t think this wasn’t attractive. He’s since disappeared off the face of the earth, but he was always loaded and always divine. So that night, he looked across the room and said, “Do you see what I see?”

What he saw was a girl with straight red hair to her shoulders, bangs in front, sloe eyes, a beautiful red dress. He crossed the room to ask her to dance. He was completely gone, but he could stand and walk and all that, so he kept talking to her because that’s how you handled a pickup in those days. You kept at it even when she’d say, “Oh, that’s so sweet of you, but, you see, I’ve just developed this terrible migraine ...”

“Really, Jim,” I said, when he came back to the table to get himself resupplied, “you’ve got to contain yourself. Have you any idea who’s sitting there with her?”

“What the hell do I care who’s sitting with her?” he said. “That’s the girl for me.'’’

So he went over to the table for the second time, and the man beside the girl stood up and his goons stood up—and there were guns, guns, guns. It was Legs Diamond, and the girl was his famous moll, Kiki Roberts. Legs opened his coat. There on his chest were two guns in their holsters. He patted them. Beautiful timing. The elegance of the gesture! His friends all looked up. Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd...I can’t remember who they all were. But I did know that night. So did my friend. He came back very quietly and sat back down at the table and had himself another bouillon or so.

The next night we all went back to the Abbaye—this same little precious crowd of ours—and all the gangsters and the Mafia of the town were in there too, except this time no one from our table bothered them. We knew better. We were sitting there, roaring with laughter, having the time of our life... it may have been half past two, it may have been half past three—at that time I’d stay out all night and never know what time it was—when suddenly all the lights went out. They came back on again...then out—black. Then on again...then black. Now we all knew what three blackouts meant—the cops! So all the flasks disappeared, the bouillon was gulped down, everything was suddenly terribly comme il faut—we were all in there having a little dinner. There were three cops standing in the middle of the room. “Ladies and gentlemen,” one of the cops said, “there will be no checks issued—just go quietly. And when I say ‘quietly’ ”—all three cops had machine guns pulled— “I mean quietly."

So we walked out... out in the front, over three men, lying there on the stairs, bleeding to death. Apparently they’d been shot by guns with silencers—we hadn’t heard it. But there was no other way to walk out. We just stepped right over them.

I can remember exactly what I had on that night—a white satin dress and white satin slippers. Of course, one always dressed in those days. You dressed if you went to Harlem, you dressed if you went to a bottle club. Well, to walk home with blood-spattered white satin slippers.. .I’ve never forgotten it—the Night of the Abbaye.

FOOT NOTES

"Unshined shoes are the end of civilization." Mrs. V. explains why any old shoe just won’t do

If your feet and what they’re in are correct, you have elegance. If you haven’t got the right foot—forget it. I mean, you can have on Ground Grippers, if that’s your line of country, or you can have a foot problem, but there should be something absolutely correct about the foot.

Elegance is everything in a shoe. I can’t wear ready-mades. It couldn’t be otherwise—I have a short, fat foot with a high instep like a Spanish dancer’s. Therefore, all my shoes have to be made to order.

This is a serious subject with me. At last...we’re on a serious subject. This isn’t fashion stuff—this is the real thing. I always say, “I hope to God I die in a town with a good tailor, a good shoemaker, and perhaps someone who’s interested in a little quelque chose d’autre"—but all I really care about is that shoemaker. Everyone should have a shoemaker they go to the way they go to their doctor. I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve always had the best shoemakers in the world.

Budapest used to have wonderful shoemakers. In Paris in the ’30s there was a great Italian shoemaker I was mad about—Padova. And his wife, a blonde so ravishing—she made Mistinguett kind of musty, if you know what I mean. She was behind a cash register on the rue de la Paix: “Bonjour, madame,” you know the type. She was in there so he could keep an eye on her. He made me low-heeled shoes—the kind I still wear—when everyone else was in high heels. I’ve always thought high heels were the end, though they do arch the leg if the leg is sufficiently long.

Dal Có, in Rome, was marvelous to me in the ’60s. They had a man there who never looked me in the face. He only looked at my feet. That’s how absorbed he was in what he was doing.

Then there is my darling Roger Vivier, whom I’d known from before the War when he worked here in New York. The shoes he made after he’d gone out on his own in Paris are the most beautiful shoes I’ve ever known. In the “Vanity Fair’’ show at the Metropolitan Museum, I put some of them beside eighteenth-century French shoes —shoes of his made entirely of layers of tulle, shoes of peacock feathers, shoes embroidered with tiny black pearls and coral, all with exquisite heels of lacquer —and the level of quality was identical. We’d spend four and a half hours adjusting his narrow, built-up heels. And no one ever got a sole as flat—as flat as tongues—as old Roger Vivier. You should come and study my shoes of his one day. It’s a lesson in perfection.

These shoes have been awfully good to me. I’ve been wearing some of them for twenty years—that’s how well they’re made. Also, I happen to be very light on my feet because of my ballet training. And when it comes to shoes I’m a nut on maintenance.

Unshined shoes are the end of civilization. It happens that all the men in my life—my father, my husband, my two sons, my two grandsons—have been big shoeshine boys. Reed had shoes of Russian calf, and in London he had our butler polish them for five years or so with a rhinoceros horn until they were the essence of really good leather. Only then.. .did he wear them. I don’t know if Russian calf still exists, but don’t forget—everything we did in those days was for forever. And it was a very normal thing for English gents to use a rhinoceros horn on fine leather. Leather is alive, and lives as it is kept.

For years my maid Yvonne used the rhinoceros horn on my shoes. A highly emotional French lady, she wouldn’t lift a finger to polish the furniture, but she meticulously stained and polished all my shoes after each wearing—including the soles. Why, I wouldn’t dream of wearing shoes with untreated soles. I mean, you go out to dinner and suddenly you lift your shoes and the soles aren’t impeccable... what could be more ordinary?

And footsteps! I can’t stand the vulgarity of a woman who makes a noise when she walks. It’s all right for soldiers, but when I was growing up the quintessence of breeding in a lady was a quiet footstep. Well, it is to me still. Do you know that I let a brilliant worker go at Vogue because of the way she walked —the clank of those heels! She went to live in Paris after I talked to her. I said, “I can’t stand your footsteps. I can’t!” But, of course, what it was with her was anger; it is a form of anger if you can’t control the foot. I promise you, the heavy tread is a form of anger. You ought to wear a little lower heel—no question about that! Or else just take the trouble to walk a little more carefully. And if you can’t do that, you have to go to Paris.