High Style Full Documentary

[Music] can I come back [Music] [Music] beautiful [Music] the exhibition is titled High style Betsy Bloomingdale and the oat Couture and it will celebrate the oat Couture the the highest level of custom-made clothing in the world all of these pieces for the otcouture came from Paris where they were custom made specifically for Mrs Alfred Bloomingdale we are injured dispersing amongst the Couture pieces some very high-end American ready to wear designers as well these are the American Couture these were people that dressed at the and made garments at a very high level but Couture itself we want to explain what what is dressing in the Couture I had no idea that I was collecting anything that was so important I never thought it would be important but my husband had suggested this he said look you have all these beautiful clothes that you bought in Paris and nobody seems to unders maybe understand Couture and I think you should give your things to the Fashion Institute or Design and Merchandising so indeed I I did she had been giving pieces to the collection over a 30-year time period and it was this latest donation from 2006 that that gave me the idea to host an exhibition talking about the old Couture explaining what it is to our students and researchers and using Mrs Bloomingdale as a case study because it's very unusual that a woman from Los Angeles would have such a very large collection of couture clothing that she wore over a 35-year time period the way the Couture has changed and that it's really now driven for media versus for individual client wearing it's a different world now and the the people who had lived in this world it was an it was an everyday aspect of their life that is fading away and the people are many of them are no longer with us so to be able to talk one-on-one with somebody uh is is fantastic and historically speaking very very important [Music] [Music] my earliest remembrance of my grandmother's fashion sense was when I was in second grade and she came I think the only time ever to what we had was grandparents day at school and I suddenly I remember a moment where I suddenly looked around and realized that my grandmother did not look like the other grandmothers at all and I was so proud you know of the way she looked and her style and you could tell that she was really set apart and I think it's great to hear the stories from her about the dresses and what they mean and where she wore them right I think it's wonderful yeah yeah we can go see them everything we haven't seen some of them and so to go see them and be able to have her be celebrated and remembered you know in part through these dresses is so exciting I mean and as much as we'd love to have some of them where I mean where am I going to put those foreign the way we dress today is really quite different from the time that we had all the Couture things you know and if you're interested in clothes or interested in the world of fashion to have this wonderful school in Los Angeles I thought was terrific to see in the Couture which you don't see anymore the way everything is hand done and that's why it got to be so expensive because the beaters don't really beat anymore and the ladies don't do all the sewing they have the machines now so it's a different world the Couture and I feel very lucky that I even knew any part of it [Music] well I was born in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles and in those days no one ever seemed to be born in Los Angeles they all migrated here but my father was a doctor and he was offered a job teaching at USC and so he was delighted to leave Boston and come out to the lovely country and warm weather and I've lived here all of my life my mother always said that whatever they entertained I always wanted to pass around the appetizers so I could put on my party dress and be a help I was an only child and so they were quite devoted to the only child and she got her way in a way so I love doing that I loved getting dressed up and so I think it's always been something for me from the time I was a baby [Music] I went to Bennett School which doesn't exist anymore and I went there for I think it was two years and after that I got married they married in 1946 she and Alfred Bloomingdale and started family they ended up with three children two sons and a daughter and Mrs Bloomingdale was involved in many Charities and events and various projects but it wasn't until the early 1960s before she actually started wearing couture clothing Jeanette spanier I love the name she was the directories of balma and she met my husband and she said your wife must be dressed by bound man you can't have her just wearing it she has to have beautiful clothes in Paris and so on and so forth and I picked out one or two dresses and I love them and so from then on I was interested in Paris Couture it was really in 1962 that her life in the Couture solidified because Alfred Bloomingdale was a Visionary businessman and was one of the principal founders of the Diners Club credit card which was the first independent credit card in the world credit was never ever heard of really in Europe and my husband he had a difficult time but a man called Jacques brouette who was the head of Dior at the time and he understood credit and he realized what my husband was doing so my husband said you buy your clothes at Dior and that's how I really started in the Couture [Music] Christian Dior looks today on the Avenue montane exactly as it looked when I started there which was some years ago but the interior is completely different and uh the way the whole way everything was done was so different in those days we would have a lot of fun with friends we could have lunch and then we'd go to the Couture shows at three o'clock did you go have you seen bound math have you been to Chanel and this and that the other thing where all the girls were talking and it was a whole different era [Music] I would go whenever my husband had business then I had friends from New York who went all the time and it used to be fun now now maybe it's fun again I don't know because I haven't done that for I think about 10 years [Music] when you would go into the entrance you were seated later on your name may be a bit on the chair as they got bigger but when they were first in the house of Christian Dior on Avenue montane you sat in a little chair they were told you to say there was no particular might be background music and there would be somebody saying it was number so and so a number such and such and you wrote it down it was very quiet very low-key [Music] this was the sort of old-fashioned way because the vondos that you were assigned to in the early days and when you sat at the at the house itself on the little chairs she would come up afterwards and say what can I show you would you like to try something oh I can't I have to go or whatever it is if you didn't like it and if you did you would say well could I see number four whatever it was I can remember in Dior very carefully they had a hallway with three compartments of a curtain that pulled across and some of the rooms would be taken but you would be trying something on and you would see something going past and you would think ah could I try that one you know and Mark Bowen was the designer at the time everything that he did was so for me it was for me it was it fit beautifully it was pretty [Music] this is foreign foreign [Music] [Music] to work with Mark was really very special he was a wonderful man and I was very fond of him and the same thing but much smaller Uber would come in and say brilliant yes I think that's very good or you need it longer or you need it shorter well he was just a very special man personality is [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] velocity is activities [Music] took over his creative director for Christian Dior and you can see a transition from Mark Bowen's clothes really being real clothing into jean-faco vare's designs which are more theatrical those clothes were not mine John Franco ferret beautiful Fabrics but I felt that those clothes wore me I didn't wear them [Music] salero I never really knew I had met him and had lunch with him or something but I never knew him because he was he was more apart he was kind of he's more a quiet man you know he had a health problem since but he was a genius absolutely so a land losinghausen who was the directories of Saint Laurent she knew all the customers and she made this Wednesday that's good for you that's not good for you Yves Saint Laurent was you usually wasn't around there a lot I think Salomon was a man who was special very special human being very reserved with an extraordinary eye on people and events we were all in awe of him and on the same time because he was fragile we all had an extremely soft spot for him so I think to to keep his own autonomy and to be um his own person he had to be left apart from people he couldn't be bothered and shouldn't have been bothered with details of the daily life he was an artist that's the difference I do remember courage I would arrived in The Plaza atene Hotel and a woman walked around the door she had on the best looking thing I'd ever seen and I stood in the lobby where I was just checking in and she had this kind of wonderful thing that looked like I don't know like a v-shaped and I had to find out and she said oh it was courage and I had never seen courage and a lovely lady called Drita melee she's still a very close friend of mine in Paris and she was the directories there and she said Betsy you must have this and that and the other thing so that's what we did and I loved quresh at the time [Music] wanted to attack America before France he did the contrary he was amazed by the American so I did for courage 25 boutiques for him in America and people were buying like mad they were buying the the courage so all the clients were rushing with courage and in in New York it was unbelievable you know but he pushed fashion in such a way and he said in the future everybody will be dressed the same and I said but Andrea can tell you tell me that now okay in China they all dressed the same in Japan they always the same and I'm sorry but if you look in the street everybody is dressed the same so he was right he had a vision of the future and it's great that he called that kutio future because it was exactly that the man was a genius foreign just such a sweet darling man and still is and he was always so helpful and he did my daughter's wedding and uh his Adolfo originally I think was known for hats [Music] I did want to do something in fashion so I started to make hats ladies hats but I didn't really like to do that I did like to make women's clothes so little by little I was able to uh to to get into to start to make clothes which I have I learned to do them in Paris I met Missy Bloomingdale in the L in the late 60s and we became friends right away and Mrs Bloomingdale I remember like today she bought a wide organic skirt on the top and she told she took it to Beverly Hills and she wore it and a couple of weeks after that and this is true A lady called me and she said oh you know I saw Mrs Bloomingdale with that can I order one and another lady called and another lady called me and that's then I became a very well-known in Beverly Hills thanks to Mr Bloomington he had the most love I was on 57th Street I remember so well and I never could wait to quite get up there it was just because everything he had was like you know Candy you know and that that that and of course he was well he was just a very special man I was very sorry when he retired they've all retired on me that's the thing [Music] galanos always had the most beautiful clothes and he to me was like French clothes you can turn his clothes inside out of there beautifully on the inside beautiful on the outside Amelia Gray I think was the first person to have Jimmy uh and that's where I I met him I got to know uh Mr Bloomingdale because of Amelia and um and I I was very pleased because I knew her reputation I've seen her and how elegant she looked and how well she dressed and you know I nearly had them all she they would come to her too because she she could cater to them in a very very private and special way and they love coming to her and they can get things where they couldn't get it anywhere else I mean she had those wonderful ladies on their own they all had great figures and they were very prominent and that started it [Music] I didn't know anything about making clothes or what have you until I you know started to get into it and when I started I started at the top uh even at our price range I made the clothes look like they were expensive I was adamant about the quality and about the workmanship and that's what the what the buyers saw and the pretzel they turned their clothes inside out and they were amazed oh he looked at these beautiful clothes and the fabrics and the way they were made Jimmy was the one who could get the beautiful Fabrics he used to go abroad buy the fabrics and he really was I think the great great designer [Music] when I think of my grandmother and her Couture I think of red Valentino well I was going to say the same but I think we probably all have different a different dress in our heads different brands you know but a different one which is typical of her she loves the Valentino Reds Valentino came into my life then and he had of course wonderful Couture but his ready to wear was so beautiful and has pleased me so much that uh I didn't really have anybody left in Paris that I was desperate to have the clothes up because Valentino made the fill and then also I had the Los Angeles things like gallanos and and Oscar de la Renta has beautiful clothes Ralph Lauren and Carolina Herrera are my favorites today [Music] it's long time it was my pleasure desire to work with with Mr Oscar de la Renta and this man I love him so much is very chic he's very Talent for me I think there is not more after Oscar de la right what I have always done is extremely very feminine clothes so perhaps today my business I know is far stronger than it has ever been we like to associate a sense of luxury with money but it it's not money because you can be fabulously well dressed on little gray skirt and a little gray sweater you know it's the discipline of how you put it together and how you do it and this is the kind of woman that this is you know she has always been that way when you approach designing clothes you have to think of make clothes that the woman is going to fall in love with you know and you know if she really wants that she's going to get it basically I try to make clothes that were really beautiful and elegant I mean in my mind if if it satisfied me I said if I like it I'm not ashamed to show it someone else's judgment whether they like it or not so that we leave that to them we were dressing ladies who were accustomed to could you so obviously they wanted the best and they wanted to be perfect so we always thank heavens and if ever there was a problem and it wasn't quite the way they wanted it or the way we thought it should be on her we changed it we canceled it we never never sold something that someone was not happy with I really didn't like to change a designer's ideas I made one I noticed it was a dress that Mark Moen did and it was a short dress to begin with and I decided I wanted it as a long dress well it didn't work as well as a long dress it was better as a short dress so I decided then let them the way they've done it is fine you know once you start manipulating that that dress and saying well I don't want this leave this this way I want it this way and you start because could your houses do that they adopt two designers to to the customers whims and you know and sometimes and so you lose the essence of what the creation actually was my sort of usual thing on those days was maybe two daytime things and two night time things and maybe you didn't find what you wanted or you know or maybe you found more than you wanted to buy it's not like going to a department store where you've got the price tag right there you would talk to your Von does about the price and it might be whispered in your ear but the price might be different coming from your vonders versus the woman across the room who's interested in the same dress because of the value that you have to the Couture house whatever price they gave you particularly if they wanted you to wear their clothes the price was always right it wasn't the kind of thing that you uh bargained with in my case I would never do that but it could happen I never chose the ones that were all beaded because the beating was very expensive [Music] thank you I would kind of embroidery [Music] how kind of embroidery he's trying to get out the classical embroidery material news and there is no limit we have used muscles and seashell it could be a chocolate paper what say it can be anything foreign [Music] was made for the dress some other designer the dress has made for them some designer like my boss they come they say I want to be the first to see you in your collection and I hope you didn't show that to anyone I was aware that I'm making expensive clothes and yes I'd like to make something that was different in many ways because I wanted to be different from the other designers and within my collection I made big collections in the old days I hadn't managed 250 models I did it to satisfy my ego obviously you know if I got onto something I liked it I would make variations and so forth and so on but it's redundant because no one can absorb all those things a lady who buys old is a lady who has time and a lot of money a very beautiful blouse can take 55 hours of work so a long dress sometimes takes 70. some take more but it's impossible to say what because it's it's a lot of work anyway there's no limit for anything no limit none the sowing in those days was all done by hand and I don't think people realize how a little snap and it is all done by hand and I would be amazed at everything the most luxurious materials were used the most luxurious trimmings and embroideries were used but also that it was fitted to you even though there might be other women that ordered the same dress everything was done to your specific measurements so these are made to measure clothes [Music] um [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] this is a work where you put a lot of emotion into it and sometimes it's very difficult once I distance myself from a collection I can look at it completely in a very different way but while I am working in the collection is very difficult for me not everybody cared about it I guess but you had an original dress that was made by some wonderful designer and it was sewn so carefully and beautifully and the little hem and everything you don't see that anymore it's just it's a day that's gone but it was lovely to be able to look at and see what people did at those times foreign my grandmother loves to now kind of hear about what kind of designers that we're into and Tom Ford I remember her telling me I met someone named Tom Ford the other night and the next day he sent her the exact skirt she had been talking about and she said now I have this skirt that Tom Ford did that's right just wonderful so she's always keeping up John Galliano who's now the big star at Christian Dior I met when he was at shivoshi before he went to Dior and I said oh this is wonderful and then I looked down and he was barefoot with the brightest red toenails and one was purple and one was red some other so I thought oh my God this is the designer of this but anyway he was and then he was and he's been the designer and very successful at Dior the things that he puts on the runway are really run away things because today those fashion shows like Chanel are really stage shows and they're really wonderful and fabulous they're not about what you're going to wear really and so he had all these incredible things that came out on the on the runways but that's not what you go in to buy or to get this is a very exciting time to be creating clothes because never in the history of time there had been a woman as in control of her destination as a woman today everyone has to wear what looks well on them and and uh you find somebody that you like and it's just you know it's you have to figure out what looks best on you [Music] yeah but they actually always knew exactly what was right for her which is a key to to dressing well today fashion is global and a woman who dresses well dresses well everywhere she has a great International look she could be a French woman or an English woman but more than that she's an American woman and she has gray gray style any designer would would love to have her because she's tall number one she's I think stocking feet she's like five nine and she's very willowy and very slim you know and she was very consistent with her look she was very slick slim she wasn't frou-frou she just knew Mrs Bloomingdale is a lady one can only admire she is impeccable her hair is lovely her clothes are well and she always looks the best for us that she can and I think that's Elegance I wish that I had more style like my grandmother I would say definitely because whenever I see what she has on I think oh she looks amazing my grandmother was so smart with her dresses and she would often have a photograph attached to them so she could look back and remember where she wore the piece and the date of the piece so I loved going through and seeing okay she wore this to this event and this is how she looked in it and going through and just feeling the fabric of the pieces and imagining her in it and she also has on the right outfit for the right event yeah exactly she didn't make mistakes in dressing she knew exactly what to wear so I never saw her not well dressed never [Music] stories that Mr Bloomingdale has mentioned to me is so funny she was at Blenheim Palace which is an incredibly beautiful Estate in England we went out in the country and it was one of these fabulous old houses and then the time was coming for the everybody to leave and I thought oh I'm not going to make that two-hour ride back to London on the bus where's the ladies room and the ladies room they told me it was like up in the attic and I went up there and I had to get out of this dress and Mark Bowen had put it together for me and when I came down they said where were you where were you there was one seat left for you come on come on and I was holding the bus up but I had to get out of the whole dress and put it back on Old couture clothing can be challenging to wear they're not easy to to hook and snap and loop and button and close on your own if you don't have somebody helping you I never forget that terrible I was invited its 60th birthday of Johnny Spencer the earlier Spencer who was the father of Princess Diana and it was his 60th birthday and I went and I got this wonderful off-white dress from Dior and a coat oh he has a coat because it was March and it would be cold long coat beautiful coat and in the reception they took the coat off and hung it up and I never saw the coat again until I left and put the coat on went back to London and so I realized I spent all that money on that coat and I would never wear it in California maybe in New York that white coat only went to that dress and it was a long coat to the ground so I always regretted that [Music] one of the last great balls in Paris must be late 60s and I'd never seen anything quite like that and everybody was dressed to the nines the ball Oriental really has become legendary and Betsy fondly remembers going to this ball she has always considered it very amazing that she got invited by the bear and Alexis de rade who was an estate he was a Dandy he was a very wealthy individual who through incredible parties everything was Perfection and I needed something to wear [Music] I have this wonderful thing of Jimmy galinos and I went to Halston who did the headdress for me this was a an evening pant outfit at a time that it was inappropriate for women to wear pants in public in the evening and the bra top itself is one layer of silver lace with one layer of nude chiffon lining so it's semi-transparent it was a perfectly fabulous bowl and when you walked into this fabulous place on the eel Center we they were live elephants in the courtyard and they were all with parasols and all and all the way up the staircase where men all nude from up here and wearing big pantaloons and all greased up and they stood on the doorway as you went up to the stairs and your name was called out and then you went into this fabulous room and it was well everybody looked so sensational [Music] the best dress list I guess they have a meeting and they all met at Eleanor Lambert's apartment in New York the people who were assigned to best dress that's the way they tell me it was done and I got on that dress list somehow Betsy was first nominated uh to the best dress list in 1964 and in 1970 she was inaugurated into the international best dress Hall of Fame which really has solidified her with with a number of individuals who still maintain an influence for young designers today then I went on to doing lectures everyone's Style everyone has it and if you want to develop it you can kind of thing I was always amazed they paid me has it and if you want to develop it you can kind of thing I was always amazed they paid me for stalking and I went to the most amazing places Betsy has always been a very active creative type personality and she got into strangely enough you might think designing house codes if you have to go to the market I mean today everybody puts their blue jeans on but in those days you put on a little housecoat and you know zip it up and go to the market or whatever you had to do and so I did them in short and long my living room that you've seen in here has all the bamboo I did a design for that and and I enjoyed it I had I had fun doing it but then blue jeans came in and that became the style Mrs Bloomingdale participated in mini charity events and there was one particular that that she's always remembered because it was with her friend Nan Kempner who was a very famous New York socialite Nana and I were doing a charity show and to get the girls to model Nan myself and quite a few others they gave us the dress that we picked out well I hated my dress a nan hated her dress so we exchanged and we found out that we loved our dress the dress that Ashi wore was great for me and vice versa the two of us were so happy to get each other's dresses after the show foreign [Music] was inaugurated president in 1981 Mrs Bloomingdale and Alfred Bloomingdale went to the inauguration ceremonies and to the balls afterward I would wore the blue satin of Mark Bowen with the jacket that was quilted it was cold of course at that time velvet and quilted of matching blue and I could wear the jacket with a short dress or a skirt or something but it was really made to go over the long blue strapless dress strapless I don't wear anymore but but it was pretty [Music] Mrs Bloomingdale has been very good friends with Nancy Reagan for decades now what's really funny is that there were a number of instances Where Mrs Reagan and Mrs Bloomingdale actually dressed similarly uh the royal wedding in 1981 Where Mrs Bloomingdale commissioned a peach-colored Mark Bowen for Dior Couture Ensemble with a beautiful green suede belt and a very large Straw Hat her dress was Jimmy galinos and my address was Mark Bowen and it happened to be the same color but we didn't really we didn't check with each other because Jimmy was doing hers and Mark was doing mine it really shows the the kind of charming tie that they have with each other that they might end up going to the same event dressed very similarly even though they had not planned to do so [Music] we did a special evening dress for people at Buckingham Palace the night before the wedding and it was a beautiful really marvelous dress and Mrs blumen there were a PR you know they are them and some particular lady would rather disagree will say why did she wear that it was ridiculous The Tiara belonged to Mrs Bloomingdale's mother who was a English woman so I don't see why did she have to criticize it so I was very put up and she was totally wrong about it [Music] she told me she said that Princess Diana came and told her she said you had the best dress in the in the room and and I must say Mr Bloomingdale was a great fun too because he has the greatest taste you know and he always okay everything that she bought I was very fond of him he was a gray friend unfortunately though her husband Alfred Bloomingdale was not very well at that time he had been diagnosed with cancer and it was only a very few months later that he passed away I remember that Alfred and I gave a lunch forgotten where it was now princess Grace came and I have the note that she sent me as a thank you for that lovely time for the lovely and I came across it the other day too but because I keep a box of letters that the children either one of the children would want but whatever but the most amazing one was and that I was sitting at my desk upstairs and I was one side Lisa was the other side and the mail came in and it was a note from Princess Grace who had just died that weekend in that car accident and she was sending me a sympathy note for Alfred's death so [Music] thank you [Music] the last dress that I bought in Couture which was John Franco foray just before Bernard Arno bought or took over Christian Dior and brought in the current designer and um that that dress it was the last dress it's a very beautiful piece and she remembers it kind of in a Bittersweet way because her lifestyle had been changing and she no longer was needed to attend various functions I in in Utica close so she stopped buying at the Couture actually my granddaughters are always interested in the clothes too because it's such a generation away that that they're now very interested in it she gave me this Adolfo sweater that was Navy and I was allowed to wear Navy sweaters to with the uniform and I wore it to school but it had kind of a white gardenia on it and piping and it did not go with the uniform code and then someone said I didn't even know what Adolfo was but I had the tag in the back and someone said you can't wear that and I said it's a dolpho you knew it was special I'm so lucky to have a grandmother whose clothes that not I covet to wear which I don't think anybody else does which I think still holds true I don't think there are many people who see their grandmother in something and think oh I wish that I had that to wear the Couture today is very different and is not really a lifestyle for most people she finally remembers the old Couture but it was something that no longer was needed in her life and so she simply said goodbye to it when it was time thank you [Music] I thought the exhibit was remarkable what a privilege to have all that stuff made for you she looked amazing wearing them then and I think if she were to wear some of those exact same outfits today she would also look amazing well I know a lot of those dresses I've I've seen her in them that one dress with all those little buttons down the back I said how many days did it take her to get into that little number you can tell what the time period is but some of them immediately you can look and say okay I know she wore that in the 80s yeah yeah you look at the date and see it to be giving this retrospective to people today who have no access to it I think it's phenomenal superb it's very elegant tonight now we know why this school is here to bring this back and more [Music] she just kept smiling actually she read every single text panel she wanted to see all of the videos and she was in awe because it is so beautiful and she said that the students here at fidm will actually understand what she got to go through in the Couture which was really kind of the biggest compliment that she could have given to us because as an educational institution we wanted to bring that world to our students and to our visitors and it's something that we knew was really important because it's a world that is fading away and we had the people here that we wanted to document them we thought that that was really really important and so now is the time to do it this is Bloomingdale live [Music] a Couture garment from an average ready to wear garment these pieces are very special they are all done by Couture designers who will go down in history as being the most famous of the 20th century [Music] all of it all of it all of it was a special world and a special time uh but it used to be fun and I used to have a good time doing it and friends and all that so it's all part of the aura there was but it's not was not bad for me anymore it's a different kind of different clientele and different world and different everything and and I think those days if you could have these beautiful clothes made it was a wonderful thing and I was very lucky foreign [Music] foreign

Channel: Gene Lebrock

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Length: 47min 14sec (2834 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 06 2023