Finding Myself in Fashion by Jeanne Beker Page A

context, and as he struggled out of the restaurant on an unsteady gait, I realized he wasn’t well. I was overcome by a strange combination of emotions—a kind of awe and amazement, coupled with sadness. This gargantuan genius, this artistic innovator and romantic visionary who had so manipulated and nurtured our style aesthetic, helping to define an entire age in fashion, had returned to civilian life—a mere mortal casually dining at the next table with a friend and his dog in tow. I imagined how long he must have suffered for his art. And I couldn’t imagine him not suffering now that he was away from it. The following year, in June 2008, Yves Saint Laurent died of brain cancer. When I heard the news, I flashed on what the iconic British designer Vivienne Westwood had told me on the way out of the Pompidou Centre, just after Saint Laurent’s spectacular farewell. “He was the world’s greatest lover,” she’d said. “He made it easy for women. He’s probably the greatest designer that ever lived.”

HEART ON SLEEVE
    THE FASHION WORLD revolves around image. This notion both attracts and repels me. As much as I revel in fashion’s surreal landscape and high theatrics, I often ache for unbridled truth and honest passion. And that’s precisely why I adore the effervescent, forever youthful New York designer Betsey Johnson—one of my personal heroines—who, well into her sixties now, continues to grab life by the horns and not let go.
    â€œAnd at the very end, I’m gonna try doing my cartwheel right into the swimming pool! What d’ya think?” It was just before 10:00 a.m. on a sunny August morning in 2002, and Betsey’s blue eyes twinkled as she shared her secret surprise with me. A Raggedy Ann doll come to life, with her copper hair extensions bopping in the breeze, Betsey had opened her charming cottage in the Hamptons to four hundred of her closest friends and family, and for the first time, the media. The occasion was her sixtieth birthday, a day that also marked the twenty-fourth anniversary of her company. Three big busloads of models, dressers, hairstylists, and makeup artists had already made the two-anda-half-hour trek from Betsey’s Manhattan headquarters. Another busload of editors and photographers was scheduled to arrive at noon. By 3:00 p.m., the rest of Betsey’s guests would have made their way tothe sea-blue cedar-shingled house on Grape Arbor, which had been Betsey’s country home for three years. I brought along one of Betsey’s biggest fans, my twelve-year-old, Joey, to join in the festivities.
    There was a giant pink tent pitched on the property, and the gardens were a sprawling rainbow of blooms. Hip young women in turquoise tank tops, with the words “My Blue Heaven” scrawled in sparkles across their chests, were carrying cases of Pommery POP Champagne to various stations around the grounds. Perfect little flowerbeds sprinkled throughout the emerald lawns sported nursery rhyme signposts: “Little Bo Peep,” “Mary, Mary Quite Contrary,” “Little Miss Muffet.” The dreamy setting awaited the role-playing models, who, dressed in vintage Betsey-wear, would conjure memories of lost innocence. The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields” blasted from the kitchen as Betsey rounded up the girls for rehearsal.
    Inside, the two-storey house was a riot of chintz and tchotchkes, each antique-filled room camera-ready for the impending vignettes. From bon-bon-eating beauties and Snow White languishing beside a basket of rosy apples to a princess sleeping atop a tall stack of mattresses piled upon a pea, the theatrical stage was set for an experiential fashion show aimed at charming the little girl in all of us. On the deck off Betsey’s bedroom, a couple of steamy sirens were getting ready to frolic in a hot tub filled with rubber duckies. Upstairs, naughty lovelies clad in skimpy