Fashion Show, or, the Adventures of Bingo Marsh Read online

  “A novel of style and wit by a man who personifies both.”

  —Gay Talese

  In this sparkling comic novel by one of the most “inside” of fashion insiders, journalist John Sharkey recounts his career under that legendary tyrant of the fashion press Bingo Marsh. Heady as champagne, arch and funny as the best dinner partner you’ve ever had, Fashion Show is a completely captivating romp through the elegant wilds of style.

  As founder and publisher of Fashion, Bingo wields the power to make or break a designer’s reputation with a single word. Eccentric, charming, infuriating, and wackily brilliant, with a wealth of anecdotes (always hilarious), information (often erroneous), and very definite opinions, Bingo is also used to getting what he wants. Fascinated by the widely reported rumor that John Sharkey, a frustrated young New York Times reporter, was sharing eighty-seven-year-old Coco Chanel’s bed at the Paris Ritz when she died—presumably of Sharkey’s amorous attentions—Bingo persists in offering him a job, and Sharkey gives in. Bingo gives Sharkey his own column, rechristens him “The Shark,” and they’re off: to Valentino’s palazzo on Capri, Alice Mason’s famous dinner parties, ballooning expeditions at Malcolm Forbes’s chateau, gossipy lunches at La Grenouille—and, of course, all the collections, where Bingo gives Sharkey an education in the fables and foibles of those who design the clothes, from Chanel to Cardin, from Saint Laurent to Lacroix, as well as the jetsetting luminaries who wear them and the glitz, gossip, and intrigue that surround them all. Along the way, almost without knowing it, Sharkey learns the business—and the business of a lot of famous people as well (including what Suzy and Liz Smith can’t tell); falls in love (with the remarkable Army officer Babe); and meets The Honourable Ames, Bingo’s elusive wife.

  It’s all great fun—until Marsh family politics capsize the magazine along with Sharkey and Bingo’s alliance. But as Sharkey eventually realizes, what matters in the end is what came before: the wonderfully unique and nurturing friendship—part father-son, part mentor-employee—that has helped him become the man he is.

  James Brady, a television commentator and columnist in both Parade and Advertising Age, is the former publisher of Women’s Wear Daily and Harper’s Bazaar. He is also the author of seven previous books, both fiction and nonfiction. He resides in East Hampton, New York.

  Praise for James Brady’s

  FASHION SHOW

  “James Brady has written a wicked, witty, irreverent, gossipy account of the fashion world that is guaranteed to offend some of fashion’s fanciest folk, as was, undoubtedly, its intention.”

  —Dominick Dunne

  “Fashion Show is the definitive roman à… CLAW”

  —John Weitz

  “It’s all about a stuffy Yale man who becomes the most feared and influential person in the fashion world… and there is much speculation as to who is who!”

  —Liz Smith

  “Take this book to bed, carry it onto the airplane, train, or car (if you’re not driving), hide it under your pillow: this one’s fun to read. Reading Fashion Show is like having lunch with the most entertaining person you know. Brady makes us laugh—and he does it with style.”

  —Walter Anderson

  “The rich and famous get down and dirty. Brady takes no prisoners in this dazzling, name-dropping exposé of haute couture hilarity.”

  —Swoosie Kurtz

  ALSO BY JAMES BRADY

  Superchic

  Paris One

  Nielsen’s Children

  The Press Lord

  Holy Wars

  Designs

  The Coldest War

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1992 by James Brady

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: October 2009

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-08620-2

  Contents

  Praise for James Brady’s Fashion Show

  Also by James Brady

  Copyright

  1 A matter of some delicacy.

  2 She suspected Chanel was trying to get her into bed.

  3 I noticed his curious gait.

  4 Oh, a worm!

  5 People will say it’s trash.

  6 As soon as I was suckled, she was off.

  7 When they shot Dr. King and then Bobby Kennedy… I decided to get out.

  8 Cheering and applauding, weeping and carrying on.

  9 “Mon petit Indien,” murmured Chanel.

  10 Eating asparagus with their fingers and the butter running down their chins.

  11 Suppose someone came after him with a horsewhip?

  12 Have you noticed her liver spots?

  13 At this rate you’ll never bury the poor chap.

  14 The mandolin lady was very old and had whiskers.

  15 You know what they call him on Fire Island?

  16 Tell Sharkey about the Blue Train, Olivier.

  17 Stepping down to enter Dracula’s castle.

  18 Pinsky does not do donkeys.

  19 The creator of the New Look ate himself to death.

  20 I didn’t want to be laughed at.

  21 He’s a hundred years old and he has a girlfriend.

  22 Howling, cursing, singing, often in Gregorian chant.

  23 Terrible for the country. And Hart Schaffner and Marx.

  24 South of Rome you always carry your billfold inside your underwear.

  25 How can you find bad pizza in Italy?

  26 There was no one or nothing holding me in Paris.

  27 Tom and Huck, Damon and Pythias.

  28 Fortunately, I had a revolver in my stateroom.

  29 She had Paris, of course, and all its carnal arts.

  30 This is Count Vava… active in émigré circles.

  31 Vulgar people pretending to have taste.

  32 It’s historic: the long-anticipated return of the peplum!

  33 Call Roy Cohn… . Roy’s organizing everything.

  34 I wonder if Nunc wet the bed. I must ask him.

  35 Hush! That’s Lindbergh in his gallant silver plane!

  36 They’ll swim naked each morning and drink a lot of wine.

  37 Face of a monkey, mouth of a sewer.

  38 Was Moby Dick the man or the fish?

  39 So cheap he sends his socks to France to be washed.

  40 The macaw perched on his shoulder, where it subsequently enjoyed a small bowel movement.

  41 Calvin Klein, hiding in the men’s room.

  42 Please tie me to the bedposts.

  43 He makes these things up. I KNOW he does.

  44 He stroked a beautiful piece of cloth and wept.

  45 Park Avenue sucking up to the Black Leopards.

  46 Do we have a picture of Lucille Ball without a gin bottle?

  47 Everyone has a morgue folder somewhere.

  48 I suppose we’ll have to stare at her armpits all day.

  49 That’s when you called her a geisha girl?

  50 Are we in favor of the ozone layer or opposed?

  51 Go to work for Hitler or play piano in a cabaret.

  52 Go to Woody Allen and turn right.

  53 Surreptiti
ously urinating into the white wine.

  54 Olivier of Hollywood… had a nervous breakdown.

  55 Yale men trust each other.

  56 Don’t you turn first to the obituary pages of the Times? I know I do.

  57 Madama Butterfly! Bingo announced authoritatively. It was Bohème.

  58 My mother, who as you know, was shot down by Nazis.

  59 A sperm whale, perhaps sixty feet long, hung from the ceiling.

  60 Pillage and rape… spoils of war.

  61 Madonna’s our Grace Kelly.

  62 Pardon me, Pinsky…. I was in a bad chamber.

  63 Nude photos floating about. Right along with the Ivory soap.

  64 I’ll explain I’m a cross-dresser.

  65 What a dirty old man Wyeth is!

  66 Cruise the steam room and check out the priests.

  67 “Ah yes,” said Henry Kissinger, “we all serve in our own way.”

  68 He killed a man, you know, Claus von Bülow remarked.

  69 God belongs to everyone… even Episcopalians.

  70 Certainly no one has better manners than Princess Tiny Meat.

  71 Wait till you meet “Street Dog.”

  72 It would have been such fun visiting Clive in prison.

  73 … an Australian. The loud kind, a disheveled Errol Flynn.

  74 French workmen and idlers called to her.

  75 A Paul Profonde collection is a powerful mystical experience.

  76 Lunatics like Marsh and girls like me…

  77 The decline of decency and civility in America…

  78 Is Cristina Ford still around?

  79 Sows’ purses out of silk.

  80 They’ll cheat you, these lads, if they’re dead.

  81 “Didn’t Marsh sack you?” I asked Elegant Hopkins.

  82 Remember George C. Scott in Patton?

  83 The designer’s own wife wept openly throughout…

  84 A slap in the face of Bingo.

  85 A decent, God-fearing place with the finest modern plumbing.

  86 No more sucking up to Grottnex?

  87 Western values… and the ingenuity of American plumbing.

  This work of fiction is dedicated to John Fairchild of Women’s

  Wear Daily, who, more than anyone else, even the great

  Bingo Marsh, has over the past three decades illuminated and

  defined fashion journalism.

  And it is for my daughters, Fiona and Susan.

  1 A matter of some delicacy.

  WHEN George Bush was elected President and the cabinet lists came out without his name, Bingham Marsh III was crushed. He thought being a Yale man still counted for something in this country. As one Bourbon after another was nominated to posts in the new Administration, Marsh wondered if he should have sent the Bush campaign a more generous check, then agonized over the propriety of having sent a check at all.

  “Perhaps I committed a gaffe,” Marsh told his wife. “Bush was known at Yale to maintain certain standards.”

  Although Bush and Bingo Marsh had been a generation apart at New Haven, both men had been tapped for Skull and Bones, a senior society so secret that, ever after, if its name is even uttered, a Bonesman must leave the room. Marsh took such matters seriously, and I doubt very much that to this day he has ever discussed Skull and Bones with Mrs. Marsh.

  There was an innocence about Bingo much like that of people who have a touching belief in chiropractic.

  I can say that, despite my resentment of how Marsh turned against me, and it explains why, until now, I’ve never written about him, not even for Tina Brown at Vanity Fair, who wanted me to do the definitive piece on Marsh and his magazine. You know how in baptism we solemnly renounce Satan and all his works and pomps? That was what I’d done with Bingo. Like him, I once had dreams, and when they didn’t turn out quite as I expected, I cast about for someone to blame besides my father and what happened back in Ohio, the scandal and all, and settled on Bingo Marsh.

  It’s always more convenient to lay guilt on someone other than yourself, and Bingo would do nicely.

  Then some months ago, a friend sent this clipping from the Paris Herald Tribune about Marsh, a man we both knew well, and in my Manhattan apartment on a bleak night, I read it over a darkly swirling glass:

  Fashion buyers from New York and the international fashion press were mystified during last week’s Milan collections when longtime fashion magazine editor Bingham (Bingo) Marsh abruptly changed hotels. Without explanation, Marsh departed a favorite haunt, the Gallia, in the middle of the night to check into the Principe et Savoie, inspiring animated speculation in a fashion community ever avid for gossip.

  Asked why he’d abandoned the Gallia in what was described as a huff, Marsh declined to respond, saying it was “a matter of some delicacy.”

  Several sources, including a leading Italian designer with whom Marsh dined, quoted the editor as complaining, “I arrived on the late plane and was going to have a nice bath when I found a pubic hair in my tub. I phoned down instantly for my bill and left. You really shouldn’t have to have pubic hairs in your bath, should you?”

  A spokesman for the hotel, one of Italy’s finest, remarked, “And how can Signor Marsh be certain it was not an eyelash, perhaps his own?”

  There were reports the hotel might sue Marsh for slander and that he was considering countersuit for “deprivation of services.”

  Harsh words had apparently been exchanged as Marsh exited the hotel and one eyewitness suggested a blow may have been struck.

  I scoffed at the idea of blows. Bingo was both Episcopalian and anal, which may be the same thing and certainly explains a tantrum over the condition of his tub. In recent years he’d turned down millions in advertising in his magazine simply because he refused to accept fragrance inserts. I can hear him still, his protest a refrain:

  “I won’t have my magazine smelling like a house of easy virtue!”

  Everyone in fashion had such stories about Marsh, dining out on them. I had my own accounts of his tics and oddities, collecting them over the years for my private pleasure, a practice which drove Babe Flanagan, before she left me, to protest:

  “He’s absurd. And you’re obsessed by him.”

  “I’m not obsessed. We just work in the same place.”

  But violence? Blows exchanged? Not the Bingo Marsh I knew, no matter the provocation, regardless of what some “wop” hotelier (as Bingo surely would have phrased it) might have said. That Bingo fled confrontation much as others of us fled commitment.

  When your parents die young, you grow up wary, unwilling to share yourself fully with anyone else, lest you lose them, too. I’d forgotten that, had let down my guard and shed caution with Bingo and got hurt. Which was why now I balled up the Herald Trib clipping and tossed it into the basket, pouring myself a fresh drink, rid of Marsh forever, long past caring anything for him, his works and pomps.

  How pleased Babe would have been to see me so crisply slam the door on memory.

  In the morning, sober and recalling happier days and foolish, never-to-be-forgotten moments, I retrieved the item from the wicker and smoothed it carefully before pressing it between the pages of a favorite book, the way forsaken lovers save old flowers from the dance.

  2 She suspected Chanel was trying to get her into bed.

  BINGO MARSH and I met perhaps ten years ago. I was working in Paris for The New York Times and had to be in New York on some dreary business or other.

  I’d been in Paris since 1970, at first living with a fashion mannequin in a drafty old apartment on the rue de Boulainvilliers and hanging about with Coco Chanel, about whom I would write a little book that against the odds sold very well. It wasn’t really important just how I got to Paris, but I did. Reporting from Vietnam for the UPI and winning some journalism awards played a part. So did my late mother, a Canadian from whom I had a slim French. The girl, Gillian, worked as a mannequin chez Chanel and asked me to accompany her one night to dinner, as she suspec
ted Chanel was trying to get her into bed. Gillian was eighteen years old and very beautiful, and there may have been something to her concern because a lot of people kept trying to get her into bed. Anyway, I went along that first night and Coco and I hit it off and I would write the book about her that had the enormous good fortune to be published the week she died in January of ’71, a coincidence of event which got it on the best-seller list and me on the “Tonight Show” exchanging pleasantries with Johnny Carson.

  It was that book which drew Bingo’s notice and which he remembered when finally we met.

  3 I noticed his curious gait.

  THERE were cocktails at River House, my book publisher’s flat, the usual slavering of the literary crowd over an Englishman who’d just perpetrated an “important” book. The book was about T. E. Lawrence and the occasion promised novelty, or at least the opportunity to meet a New York girl. The Englishman was plump and wore a “siren suit,” a one-piece coverall of the style Winston Churchill donned in the war whenever Karsh of Ottawa was going to photograph him for Life magazine.

  The Englishman was quite drunk. When we were introduced he said, “Let me see the palm of your hand.”

  When I turned it up he said smugly, “Obviously homosexual.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, but he’d already reeled away and was scrutinizing someone else’s palm. Other men, as drunk as he, shouted protest or told him, “Fuck off!” offering to take him outside. My publisher beamed, sensing an item in tomorrow’s tabloids. There were women at the party, and they giggled, taking pleasure from the familiar spectacle of men being ridiculous.

  I didn’t know Manhattan well, but I’d seen parties deteriorate in other towns and when the author began checking hands a second time, I found my coat and left. Marsh shared the elevator with me.

  “Hullo, how are you?” I murmured out of politeness, not caring one way or the other.

  “Splendid,” he responded. “I sleep well and enjoy a regular bowel movement. You?”