I’ll Always Have Paris — Chapter 3

When I was somewhere in my 30’s and living in San Francisco, my dad sent me a gift that clearly showed not just some thought behind it, but some understanding, that he was thinking about me, about who I was, and what I would like, and that he got it. It’s a framed picture of a man of middle age, clearly not American, walking through a field of sheep. He wears a jacket and beret, carries a cigarette in one hand and a walking stick in the other and has what appears to be a bedroll of some sort slung over his back. He might be hiking through, which is quite common in Europe where public walkways traverse private property. I’ve walked portions in the South of England, through intricate gates that allow a person but not livestock to pass. But the man’s high boots, reminiscent of those Tommy Dale wore daily when I worked on his farm in Scotland, might mean he’s the sheepherder himself. Beneath the photo are the words, “I do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; I seek the things they sought.” So I’m partial to the traveler.

My father was not a great communicator, and we’d had our struggles pretty much all our lives since I was about twelve, the oldest Prince, butting heads with the King. To me the gift was acknowledgement of who I was and acceptance that I was not going to follow a path he might have hoped for — more straight and narrow that involved perhaps a jacket and tie or at least a daily routine. This had taken roughly 20 years. I had gone off to college, the first to do so from my particular family, enrolled in the architecture program. But between my freshman and sophomore year, I was having doubts about a career choice I’d essentially made in the 6th grade when the shop teacher had bent his halitosis-breathed face over my shoulder and praised my mechanical drawing plates. Grateful for the praise, six years later I’d applied only to schools (and only three schools which is what the family application budget allowed) with architectural programs, and which by necessity included my state university to which I ultimately won a free ride and a tailored scholarship program. I chose, however, another I was accepted to, Washington University in St. Louis, where I’d also qualified for a tuition and books scholarship, because it was another 150 miles from home and not a gigantic, Big Ten factory.

Anyway, that summer, I was home, doing my job at Ohmite, and reading Richard Farina’s “Been Down So Long It Seems Like Up to Me” in hardback. Finished it one night in August around midnight. Feeling existentially unsettled, I decided rather than sleep, I’d walk a couple miles to a local 24-hr. pharmacy and buy some cigars. It was a warm, humid, midwestern night, temperature still in the 80’s, and when I’d bought my Tiparillos and started one up, instead of heading home, I turned in the opposite direction and started walking. I like to think that prodded by the book, I thought deep thoughts as I tramped North, but to this day I can’t remember a moment or a thought until three hours and a couple of municipal borders later, I was picked up by the Wilmette police — a cop nicknamed “Rocky” no less — who wanted to know what the hell I was doing at 3:45AM. “Walking,” I said.

They kept me at the station an hour or two just for torture fun, then he drove me to the northern edge of my town and told me to get out. I lived at the southern edge, but he refused to take me home.

I slept a bit in a friend’s back yard and in the back seat of another friend’s father’s car. By the time I was trudging down my block it was 8:30. As I approached my house, my father loomed in the doorway, all 5’6” of him, looking for all the world like the shipping boss in the final scene of “On The Waterfront,” and though not beaten to a pulp, I didn’t feel a whole lot better at that moment than Terry Malloy after Johnny Friendly and his apes had worked him over. When I got to the doorway, I looked up and said, “Not now.” To his great credit, my dad stepped aside and let me pass and hit the sack.

But when I got up that afternoon, we had a hell of a fight, not so much because he and my mom didn’t know where I was; the cops had called them after picking me up. We fought about my having had a change of heart. I no longer wanted to be an architect; I was changing my major to English Literature. I wanted to write. My dad went nuts. “You’ll starve in a garret,” he actually yelled, blending both literary and architectural allusions. The photo I unwrapped twenty years later from the solidly-taped carton he specialized in seemed to say, “You haven’t starved; you’ve got your own apartment and are paying your own bills, and I acknowledge the path you’re on.” It hangs proudly today in my office, a cherished possession.

I recently finished an article in The New Yorker about our “unled lives,” the lives we don’t wind up leading but often conjure as possibilities — possibilities that are not wild-eyed and fanciful, but alternatives had we taken other paths, the other fork in one or multiple roads. I certainly have had my share of possibilities, but this hardly makes me unique. Quoted in the article, from his book “The Interpretation of Cultures,” the anthropologist Clifford Geertz says that “one of the most significant facts about us may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one.” For myriad reasons, we all have lives we didn’t live. Had things gone differently at Kenzo, I might have actually wound up in Hong Kong, though I have no idea if they ever actually moved their knitwear manufacturing there. If I’d gone to Israel to meet that Italian girl I met on Santorini, who knows how that might have turned out? Certainly being Jewish would have meant a different relationship with “place” in Israel than any other tourist location, but then the kind of “Jewish” I was then is far from the kind I am now; oddly, in particular for many of my Jewish friends, I’ve still never been to Israel.

Many of my high school friends went on to get graduate degrees. Several are lawyers. Two are scientists who’ve won the Nobel Prize. There are doctors, college professors, designers and architects. Some went into private industry and had long and successful careers at various levels, from store managers to corporate VP’s. A few college friends went into business for themselves. My college girlfriend and her best friend became fashion designers, heading to New York right out of school. How long would I have stayed at the St. Louis Welfare Department if I’d passed the six-month trial and not gotten fired? Not long. I was headed to Europe and would have taken that Icelandic flight for $165 (or whatever it was) had not The Ugland Management Company come through. Do we have a destiny and is where we find ourselves ultimately it? One of the great metaphysical questions.

The other American in our Jungle Jap family, was Gilles’ wife, Carole. She was black, an established model, paper thin with the longest neck, and beautiful. Naturally contentious, she projected a Queen-of-All-She-Surveyed attitude, which may come more naturally to successful models, who knows, but was not something I was used to. She seemed to believe she had power to give orders and reason to expect them to be obeyed, given her relationship with both Gilles and Kenzo. We got into it more than once. I remember nothing of the particulars other than I took the time at some point to sit down and write her a letter detailing my point of view. The next day, Gilles entered the atelier, extended his arm to me with a sealed envelope, and said, Vous echangez des notes. A cool détente was achieved, although neither side, as I recall, renounced first strike options, not that I possessed the slightest bit of ammunition; she was one boss’s wife, and the other’s muse. I was a guy who made up cartons, sold a few frocks to buyers, and got a fistful of francs from time to time.

The retail outlet for JAP was an adorable little space in the Passage Choiseul, one of Paris’s renowned covered shopping arcades or passages, and half a block over from where we worked on Rue St. Anne in L’Opera, the Opera District (the Opera being just up the street at, what else, Place de l’Opera). The Passage was apparently falling into disrepute when Kenzo resurrected it by opening “Jungle Jap” there in 1970 after moving from Gallerie Vivienne, another covered passage in a less-trafficked corner of the 2nd Arrondissement. The success of the store attracted other retail, and soon Passage Choiseul, built between 1826–1827 was once again humming as a shopping destination.

I soon learned the word “Jap” had caused no end of consternation in the U.S., where we Americans are equal opportunity in the any-word-can-be-an-ethnic-slur department. I understood, and I wasn’t discounting World War II and the unconscionable internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, but if it didn’t bother Kenzo who was, after all, Japanese, it seemed unnecessary to my 24-year old mind. Jews take a back seat to no one when it comes to umbrage, but historically, until quite recently, the standard Yiddish greeting when running into a landsman on the street was, Vus macht a Yid? Literally, “How’s the Jew doing?” Still, I have to admit this has not burnished the word “Yid” for acceptable commercial purposes, and I’ve yet to see a “Jew” boutique (what would it sell — angst and punch lines in a jar?). Maybe Ivanka Trump will go down to West Palm Beach and open a boutique called “Jewess” and free us all once and for all. Wouldn’t that be something?

Kenzo’s clothes were colorful and anything but sleek. He was all about the fun. “Jungle Jap” sounded like a fun name for a business, and in France — and pretty much everywhere else — there was no problem. But to avoid controversy, which had apparently including picketing, Kenzo had to use his own name in the States, and inevitably, everywhere. If there is an industry more dedicated to eponymous naming than the fashion biz (other than, of course, the one-family industry known as Trump), I haven’t heard of it. Kenzo was a very modest man, and to me seemed almost reclusive. I don’t think we said two words to each other in four months, not that he’d be seeking my input on hem or sleeve lengths. He spent most of the day ensconced with Atsuko, his pattern maker and a part owner as well, and just seemed fine all the time. I never saw or heard of him losing his temper or even raising his voice.

Gilles was another story. Flamboyant guy on the make, he had bigger ideas for retail. Gilles was the minority business partner, but pretty much ran things, leaving the design end to Kenzo. Comfy in the limelight, great with and for the press, he liked to hit the clubs and the discos. I don’t know to what extent he and Kenzo had to agree on large scale plans, but during my brief time there he went all out on a new store at 4 Rue de Sèvres — and doing it I later found out by borrowing money they did not have — a tony corner in St. Germain. (now a Kipling store — casual handbags, backpacks, and accessories) No expense was spared, and I’m sure it had been a long time in the works. The opening party was formidable!. The aftermath, not so much. We all eventually found out the hard way that this expenditure was the final financial nail in what everyone assumed was going to be the brand’s coffin, but Kenzo seemed always on the verge of extinction for one reason or another in those days. That was the way we rolled.

This is not to say that unilateral decision-making was confined to the French half of the partnership. One day at work, sewer pipe-size bolts of fabric from Japan came walking through the door. They were gorgeous — tigers perched on mountain cliffs, Samurai warriors, swords raised in stylized threat — the colors insanely vibrant and the quality obvious even to someone who lived in t-shirts and denim. Kenzo had designed and apparently ordered them from Japan without telling anyone or paying for them. They were laid down, stood up, and generally dropped wherever they could be in what little open floor space remained. Unlike Bendel’s and Bonwit’s, there would be no sending this back, and I’m sure the Japanese had too much honor to demand it. Where that fabric went on the impressionistic document known as the Jap balance sheet, who knows. Were they ever used to actually make clothes? No idea. They added a bit of both obstacle and flair to our cozy space and I’m sure a few gray hairs to Barbara’s head.

I can date two marvelous events to sometime in November: one small but choice, one large and glorious. The third Thursday of the month is Beaujolais nouveau Day in France. Can’t say I was waiting for this day, having never heard of it, or frankly, the wine. I knew, and still know, little about wine, though I must say I found the bring-in-the-empty-and-fill-it-up-yourself bodega concept in Barcelona very much to my liking. Served after a very short fermentation period, Beaujolais nouveau had become by the ‘70’s, the very big deal that I totally missed.

If I had to say who invited me, my money would be on our secretary, Sylvie, whose husband was a long-haul trucker and was gone for a week at a time. She once invited me home for dinner when he was in town — the first time I rode the RER — the Metro system that I discovered ran below the regular Metro, out to the suburbs. She had a delightful five-year old, Natasha; I have a picture of her somewhere wearing my sunglasses. Priceless. Anyway, she took me to a bar nearby that was pouring the new wine. I remember when they filled my glass, it was like staring at a petit waterfall of liquid rubies. And the fresh and fruity taste was, I can only say, delightful. I was smitten. Years later, I found a French restaurant on Polk St. in San Francisco — now long gone, and the name escapes me — that every year got in little kegs of Beaujolais nouveau. I was a regular each November for many years in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

That wasn’t so much an event as special — a moment –Beaujolais nouveau where they grow the grapes and make the wine. The other event was an event: The Jap Spring Collection Show, at Salle Wagram. The Spring and Fall collections are the big deals in the fashion world, and there I was, right place/right time, to be part of one. Models were being ordered like ornaments out of catalogues and flown in from all over Europe and beyond. They’d stop by the atelier in their grungy best to get familiar with the clothes and have Kenzo and Atsuko decide who was to wear what. I’d be kidding you if I didn’t say this was a high point of the Kenzo stay. Salle Wagram, in the classy 17th, is this amazing exhibition space that was built in 1865. (Great to be in a city, by the way, where so much of it was still there from so long ago.) A decade after I left, it was listed as an official historical monument by the French Ministry of Culture. Google it; it’s worth seeing. Open in the middle, it has an elevated mezzanine all around the perimeter and been used for everything from international political conferences to boxing matches. We had a wide runway platform built that projected out into the room from the stage, and all around and on the mezzanine there were round tables circled by bentwood chairs. It gave this wonderful hall the feel of a large French Café. Only photographers knelt at the platform, while buyers sat at the tables on the main floor and mezzanine.

I started out pretty much a spectator in the main room. I have to admit, when the first line of girls strutted out onto the runway in short little sun dresses and pastel-colored, bowler-style hats, with the flashbulbs popping and the applause ringing, it was damn fucking great! How could you not love it? But I quickly got called backstage to help out, which meant throwing clothes on models, as they came in and quickly disrobed — braless, down to their culottes — adjusting tape to hold in place new garments ready to fall off as they switched shoes and hustled back out… It was such a frantic production line I honestly didn’t have time to appreciate all that naked sexiness swirling around me. Every two minutes, here they came, some of the most beautiful women in the world — the kind you look at in magazines and wonder, what do they look like in just their underwear? Turns out, depends on your ability to focus.

When it was over, I actually got invited by a Dutch model named Dickie back to the apartment where she was staying. She was 19, adorable, pixie-cut blond hair, 90 pounds if an ounce, but it turned out to be just for tea and talk. When she got on the phone to her boyfriend back in Holland, it was way too much déjà vu for me. I said my good-nights and caught a cab to La Coupole in Montparnasse, one of the great see-and-be-seen brasseries in Paris, where we had a post-Collection table reserved. Our group was center cut, and as soon as I arrived, I was immediately and once again high as a kite from all the excitement. I mean it was just so silly: me, Paris, Kenzo, Spring Collection, naked models, photographers, La Coupole… While they scooted over and found me a chair, and someone handed me a glass of champagne, I strutted around the long table describing my ensemble as if I was on the Salle Wagram runway myself. Everything I wore was the low-rent shit I’d either left Chicago with fifteen months before or had bought at the local flea market — “Veston, marché aux puces,” I pointed out, and ending with my shoes, et les chaussures, Wolinsky et Levy, Chicago.”

It got a big laugh, and I mean half the room not just our table, but people at the other tables actually applauded. The whole place knew who we were with Kenzo at the head of the table, and where we’d just come from. Fashion runs in Parisian blood. I took an exaggerated bow, and briefly felt I had bonded completely not just with the moment, which, as ridiculous as it was in my mind, included the fashion business, for which I still cared nothing but now appreciated, but all those people as well — my people at Jap and all the French in the room. I had been so totally accepted that they embraced my silliness because I was with Jungle Jap, and we were silly along with brilliant, and I had pitched in and contributed and was part of it all. It felt like that moment at the end of “My Favorite Year,” where Peter O’Toole who has just saved the day from real gangsters bent on killing Joe Bologna, a Sid Caesar-like star of a live, 50’s TV show, on a studio stage, is being applauded and adored for what everyone thinks is an act, because that’s who he was and that’s what he did. The producer hits him with every camera he has and it’s slow motion closeup after closeup as he just luxuriates — in his element — in the audience’s applause — their blissful ignorance of the true circumstances immaterial.

That’s how I felt, though I did not luxuriate, because it wasn’t who I was and wasn’t what I did. But at that moment I understood just a smidgeon of what had gone down that night, the enormous amount of work that had gone into that extravaganza we had just pulled off — the inspiration, the organizing, the drive, the camaraderie, the years of striving — I being no more than the tip of the “e” in “we.” I was not in my element, and I’d had virtually nothing to do with Kenzo’s success, but for a moment, in a city that could be as lonely as it was romantic — and I had known that feeling too at times during those months — I had done just enough to feel deeply integrated, integrated into an old and singular and in many ways superficial and silly society that still made a point of not letting you in. I sat in the chair that had been squeezed in for me, ordered, explained quickly to someone about Dickie, and to someone else the reference to the Chicago shoe store, Wolinsky and Levy. I was really there, part of the family, the American cousin, who was going to Hong Kong and would soon be living across from the Louvre, spending a summer month in St. Tropez, all places others only dreamed about, and soon enough there would be models who didn’t have boyfriends back home, or for whom that mattered not. Et Voila!

(To be Continued)