Greatest Hits: King of the Road

My recent visit to a Marfa Stance trunk show got me thinking about trunk shows, which got me thinking about my profile of Bill Blass, which I wrote for the New Yorker in 1993.

WHAT AMAZES Bill Blass is amazing. Last year, he was in La Jolla, California, and someone took him to a supermarket, which was somewhere he had never been before in his life: he found the supermarket, and especially the do-it-yourself ice-cream sundae bar, amazing. In Nashville, where I joined him recently for a trunk show—an in-store event, when a designer’s entire collection, and sometimes the designer himself, are on display—he caught me admiring a blazer, made by the designer Richard Tyler, that cost $1859; even though some of the ensembles in the Blass couture collection cost more than $6000, he found the price of the Tyler blazer amazing. He is someone who seems fascinated by something or other much of the time. He is a virtuoso of the high-pitched eyebrow and the fortissimo gasp. These give him a puckish air, without which he might seem irritatingly regal. Blass is classically good-looking in the manner of a country gentleman, with a wide forehead, a boxy jaw, a direct gaze, and a chest like a kettledrum. Almost any time you see him, there will be a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, bouncing like a little diving board. He usuallly stands with his hands poked into his pockets and his jacket hitched up around them. No matter where he is, he looks as if he might be standing on the deck of a big sailboat. He is now seventy-one years old, fond of candy, and settling into leonine stateliness; as a young man, he was long necked, blade thin, and so wolfishly handsome you could weep. I love to hear him talk. His voice is rich, gravelly, and carefully inflected, like a film narrator’s. He also has a wonderfully intimate and conspiratorial-sounding whisper. At times, he can sound like an American schooled in Britain, but in fact he is a Depression-era kid from Fort Wayne, Indiana, who came to New York at seventeen and has never left. Like all elegant people, he curses with charming abandon and to great effect. Like most successful, wealthy people, he knows how to deploy a sort of captivating brattiness, to which other people quickly yield. One of the funniest things in the world is to sit in his office at his showroom and listen to him bellow questions to his staff without moving a muscle, or even an eyeball, in their direction.

UNIVERSAL adoration is one of the reasons Blass goes on trips to places like La Jolla and Nashville. Most stores don’t buy a designer’s entire collection but will hold trunk shows, during which customers can see samples and place orders. There are trunk shows going on all the time, all over the country. Sometimtes the trunk show is brought to the store by a sales representative. Sometimes the designer sends along a model, who throughout the day will stroll around in outfits from the collection. Occasionally, the designer himself escorts the clothes, in which case the store often stages a fashion show and luncheon for good customers. After lunch, while the customers are trying things on, the designer may hang around and editorialize. This year, Bill Blass’s collection traveled with salespeople to Boston, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, St. Louis, Palo Alto, Midland, San Antonio, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Tulsa, San Diego, New Orleans, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh; he appeared with it in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, San Francisco, and Troy, Michigan. Couturew clothes cost a fortune, but they have a tiny market and seldom make any money. What they do is endear a designer to those customers whose clothing choices are newsworthy, and this in turn makes the designer famous. Then, when he is famous enough, the designer can sell other companies the rights to manufacture profitable items like underpants and perfumes under the deisgner’s name. Bill Blass was one of the first designers to travel with their collections, and he’s one of those who have done it the most. He is generally regarded as the king of the trunk show. His clothes are rarely thought of as artistic or trendsetting or remarkable, but his customers have never abandoned him; they turn out at the trunk shows, and the trunk shows have kept him famous, by fashion standards, for a remarkable number of years.

At a good show, he does a lot of business; two weeks ago, at a trunk show at Saks Fifth Avenue, he sold over half a million dollars’ worth of dresses, and that is the most any American designer showing at Saks has ever sold. He does bigger business, though, just selling his name and his designer’s eye. Blass licenses fifty-six products, including Bill Blass belts, ties, handkerchiefs, jeans, sheets, shoes, pajamas, outerwear, evening wear, watches, and window shades. For sixteen years, Ford manufactured a Bill Blass Lincoln Continental Mark IV; Blass chose the interiors, paint colors, and trim. Blass’s trunk show philosophy: “You don’t want to be on the road so much that the novelty wears off, but you want to get to know your customer and help move the clothes. If you are buying a Bill Blass dress for a couple of thousand dollars, I’d say it’s an added attraction to have Bill Blass there saying, ‘Babe, that looks great on you,’ or ‘Babe, that’s just awful’.”

Because Bill Blass is popular and fashionable, I expected him to have a drifty attention span, but he is actually quite dogged. In Nashville, for instance, after declaring the price of the Tyler blazer amazing, he pulled it off its hanger, inspected its seams, and pinched the fabric, and said he thought the cut and workmanship were amazing; then he asked me to try it on and told me I should buy it. This was at Jamie Inc., the Nashville store where the trunk s how and a luncheon were being held. The show had juyst ended, and dozens of women were milling around the racks, placing orders. When he was able to tear his attention from the blazer, he remarked that he found the women’s ardor and stamina amazing. Then he turned back to being amazed by the blazer. He got everyone walking by to stop and take a look at it, because it had him so amazed. When I saw him several weeks later, in Manhattan, he asked me how I’d been and then immediately asked me if I had bought the Richard Tyler blazer. His enthusiasm made me feel that I should have done whatever it took to find a spare eighteen hundred dollars. He looked utterly crestfallen when I told him no.

IN NASHVILLE, what he found amazing, to start with, was walking through the airport, looking at people’s clothes. We had just gotten off the plane and were heading down an endless concourse, and I was following his gaze. He gestured with his chin at a man and a woman walking toward us. He said, “My God, have you ever noticed how Americans dress? They dress like it’s summer all the time.” The man and woman were both wearing pale T-shirts and acid-washed jeans sutured with lots of useless-looking zippers. Blass stopped and watched them walk by. He was dressed in his usual bespoke double-breasted English suit and a loosely knoted tie, and he had a topcoat tossed over his arm. The acid-washed couple passed. Behind them was a heavy woman wearing a short red dress, red satin pumps, and a red fez. Blass lifted his eyebrows, shifted his coat to his other arm, and said, “That’s an outfit.” As she ambled by, he said, “I was the first designer to really go out on the road with my clothes, and I’ve done if for years and years, while the other designers were rushing back the minute they could to go to New York parties. I didn’t do that. I’d stay out on the road for days at a time and meet people and keep my name out there. It allowed me to see what’s out here. And I can tell you that, no matter what anyone thinks, there’s a huge part of this country that still loves print dresses.”

Pink gingham Shantung silk outfit, probably from the 90s

Mrs. Jack Massey, a friend of Blass’s with whom he would be staying in Nashville, called me one afternoon before the trip. “Sunday night, when you arrive, we’ll be going to dinner at the Johnsons’. It will be just a little informal gathering of friends, so you can wear—oh, little velvet pants, something like that. Monday night is dinner here at my house, Brook House, and that’s not formal, either—it’s not black tie or anything, so you can just wear dressy pants or a little silk dress. At the luncheon and fashion show, you could wear a nice suit. During the day, you can just knock around in a sweater set and pants.” Pause. “You know, of course, that Bill Blass is just the most entertaining man to ever walk down the pike. Everybody adores him. He is absolutely the best company in the world.”

Bill Blass had never before gone to Nashville with his collection; in fact, he had been in Nashville only twice: in 1985, when he spoke at O’More College of Design, in nearby Franklin, Tennessee, and eighteen years beofre that, when he was the honored guest at Nashville’s fanciest annual social event, the Swan Ball, to which many women in Nashville wear his dresses. There is a picture of him on page 51 of a book called Reflections: Twenty-Five Nights at the Swan Ball. The text says, “And then Bill Blass, the talented, sociable, and just-too-darn debonair designer, brought the clothes and paraded them around for everyone to die over while dining on shrimp and filet de boeuf.”

Blass’s own recollection of the visit: “The Swan Ball is a good event, but, my God, it’s always on the hottest goddamn night of the year.”

A GRAND, formal, larger-than-life-size portrait of Mrs. Massey hanging in one of her parlors at Brook House depicts her in a draped gown of ecru pleated silk with a petal-pink cummerbund, her blond bob swept back, her face set in an idle smile, her fingertips dandling a string of pecan-sized pearls. The portrait was commissioned by her late husband Jack, who was the venture capitalist behind Kentucky Fried Chicken, Hospital Corporation of America, and Volunteer Capital Corp. It was painted by Aaron Shiler, who has also painted Ronald and Nancy Reagan and Gloria Vanderbilt. The dress in the portrait is by Bill Blass. I know this because while he and I were walking around Brook House on the evening of the dinner in his honor, he stopped in front of the portrait to remark on how pretty Mrs. Massey looked. Then he interrupted himself with a gasp. “My God, I think that’s one of my dresses!” he said. I honestly think it is. It’s one of my dresses.”

There were twenty-eight guests in the house at the time. They had been having cocktails in the vast horseshoe-shaped room with French doors that looked out over a brook and a stone fountain (boy with frog) and a big guesthouse and some clipped lawns and hedges, and now the guests were done with cocktails and were brushing past us toward a wing of the house which was too far away to see, but I could hear the scrape and chatter of chairs being pulled out, and I was starting to smell dinner. Several butlers were shooing people toward the dining room, and one of them hesitated behind us, gesturing with a silver tray and murmuring, “Dinner is ready in the east room, sir.” Blass went on eyeing the portrait. After a moment, he shook his head and said, “Well, I’ll be damned. It is one of mine. I remember that dress.” He popped me in the ribs with his elbow and said, “Say, that was a good dress, wasn’t it?”

JAMIE Stream, the woman who owns Jamie Inc., had met us at the airport with her limousine and a driver. Jamie is snappy and blond and forty-eight. She opened her store twenty years ago, when Nashville was on the outer edges of the fashion frontier. “We pioneered Oscar and Bill and all those people in Nashville,” she once told me. “When I moved into town, I really didn’t know what I’d find here. I come from the ranch country in Texas, where everything is pigskin, Hermès, and tweed.” I asked her why she thought that Bill Blass had managed to remain fashionable for so many years, and she said, “Well, this isn’t a glamorous thing to say, but Bill Blass is just….so….appropriate. Don’t you think? Isn’t that a compliment in this day and age, to say someone is always appropriate? And no one can take a little satin skirt and a little cashmere sweater and make it as glamorous as Bill Blass can. You know what I say? Bill Blass clothes have good bones.”

In the limousine, Jamie was telling us about picking up Yvonne Lopez, the Blass fitting model, and Craig Natiello, of the design staff, who had arrived in Nashville a day earlier. Yvonne and Craig had brought the collection with them on the plane. It filled thirteen trunks. Jamie said, “I had the two of them over to the house for drinks. I said, ‘Come over, but I’m warning you, I’m just wearing a sweatsuit.’”

“In which she looks adorable,” Blass added.

“Well, that’s what they were seeing me in, anyway,” Jamie went on. She turned to the driver and called out, “Basil, can you turn up the air-conditioning back here? It’s beastly.” She squinted out a window. We were driving down a four-lane road in Nashville rimmed with fast-food joints and muffler shops. It looked as if it was about to rain. Jamie said, “Oh, I think we’re going to have a loblolly. If it lasts for days, it means I’m going to have to hire some parkers for the luncheon. We’ve invited seventy-five people and I’m being very tough—all of them have to already own Blass. That’s what I’m telling people who are calling me, because I can’t just be throwing invitations around. It’s a legacy luncheon for the real Blass devotees.”

Blass said, “It’ll be intimate. Ten tables of heavy hitters.”

Jamie nodded and then said, “I’m telling you, this limousine is a wreck. It’s our work car. It’s just like a truck. We just use it like a truck when we go up to our Adirondack camp in the summer. When we come home, we just load this thing up to the rafters with everything under the sun.”

We passed an enormous pillared building sitting back from the road. Blass sat forward and said, “What’s that? What’s that building? My God, that’s something.”

“That’s the Parthenon,” Jamie said. “It’s the world’s only full-size replica of the Parthenon.”

“My God, I’d want to see that. If there’s a full-size replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, I think that’s something to see, don’t you?”

Jamie pursed her lips and said, “You’ve got dinner at the Johnsons’ tonight, and the fittings for the models are on Monday, and you’ve got an appearance on a local television show, and you’ve got dinner at Mrs. Massey’s on Monday night, and the lunch is on Tuesday, so I don’t really know when you’re going to go.”

Blass pushed his hand against the ceiling and said, “My God, I haven’t been in Nashville for years, and already I’m so busy that I don’t have a goddamn minute to breathe.”

MONDAY, 12:30 pm, at WTVF, Channel 5: “Mr. Blass, I’m Debbie Alan, one of the hosts of the show. We’ll be talking about romance and clothes. We have a good time on this show, so just cut loose, okay? The other segments are Thanksgiving centerpieces and a guy with some great hair-care products. Hey, would one of you tell the hair guy I’m going to ask if conditioners really cure split ends, and if we have time I’ll touch on one of the other products, like maybe the curl enhancers.”

A production assistant in front of us is wearing fawn-colored twill jeans, a white poor-boy sweater, and brown moccasins. Blass looks at her and says, “My God, those look like my jeans. Call her over. Those are my jeans.” The woman turns and comes over to him, looking embarrassed, and says she hadn’t known he was going to be on the show, and didn’t wear the jeans on purpose. Blass is examining the jeans and doesn’t answer. “That’s a nice fabric, that twill, isn’t it? It’s a nice finish. It looks like suede.”

“I love them,” she says.

“She’s got herself up nicely, hasn’t she?” he says to me. “That’s a good look.”

The show begins, and Debbie Alan announces that the internationally famous designer Bill Blass will be coming up after the commercial. Then she giggles and says, “I have Bill Blass underwear and perfume, because that’s all I can afford, and I’m not going to tell you if I”m wearing either of them.” Blass, now perched on a tall director’s chair, hands in pockets, lets out a beefy chuckle. Once the commercial is over, Yvonne Lopez comes out wearing a slim-cut white jumpsuit piped in blue, followed by a model in a white-gazar-and-black-lace strapless gown. Debbie says, “Will someone scoop this up for, say, the Swan Ball?”

Blass says, “I hope so, Debbie.”

Now the model is wearing a Prince of Wales plaid pantsuit overlaid with black lace. Debbie asks whether women in Nashville dress differently from women in other parts of the country. Blass says, “There are wonderful-looking women all over this country, Debbie. I truly have a variety of customers—active, busy women who work or, like Alyne Massey, who are involved in charities and so forth, and live all over the country.”

A few more outfits are shown: a boyish blazer in a granite-print fabric, a floral tiered minidress, and a long gown in the same floral fabric with black illusion sleeves and neck. Then the segment is over. Debbie thanks him for coming. Blass says, “Thank you, Debbie, and enjoy your underwear.”

A FEW OF the Nashville models had gotten their breasts done. No one had anticipated this. The models had been discussed before our trip to Nashville: Craig had wanted twenty, but he and Jamie settled on eleven. Blass had said that because they would be local girls he expected them to be “a little plumpy”. As it happened, the Nashville models were not particularly plumpy, but they did have big breasts, one pair quite recently enhanced. When we got to Jamie’s store on Monday, Craig was fitting them into the samples and doing cleavage checks while three workmen were building a little runway in the store. The luncheon would be in the front room, which has a crystal chandelier, thick taupe carpeting, gilded molding, and plate-glass windows looking out on a small parking lot and then on Hardin Road and across to a Kroger’s and a strip mall. The rest of the store is broken into separate nooks for different designers; there is also a shoe nook, a fine-jewelry nook, and a lingerie nook. The center of the store is a living room elegantly furnished with an ottoman, a coffee table, and two side chairs. Jamie was saying, “There just aren’t any shops like this anymore. Martha in New York—gone. Lou Lattimore, in Dallas—gone. Isabell Gerhart, in Houston—gone. In Nashville, I’m it. Let’s face it: In the past, we all used to fly our own planes around and spend a fortune on clothes, and we’ve all had to cut back. I still wanted to make this a special place. And that takes a little something. Those chairs for the living room—they’re oversized French fauteuils with needlepointed leopard upholstery—cost thousands of dollars, but I think it’s worth it, don’t you? It gives it a homey feel, don’t you think?”

Craig was helping one of the models into a gray and white chalk-striped sweater and morning-striped pleated skirt, saying, “Your cleavage, dear.” Blass rummaged around in a box of accessories on a counter, pulled out a little shoulder bag, and said to the model, “Put this on. Across your shoulder. Across. Yes. That’s good. That’ll jazz it up. Craig, use more of this goddam stuff to jazz it up.” He murmured to me, “I would never use a bag in the New York shows. I also left out a few of the pieces I showed in New York and added some from the resort collection—flowered things that I think will be big here. A lot of these customers go to Palm Beach for the season, so they need that sort of dress. Everything in New York has to be goddam severe. Of course, in New York they dislike everything anyway, so you give them as little to dislike as possible.”

Joyce Preston, Blass’s sales representative, walked in and stood next to Jamie, and Jamie said, “Joyce, I’ll be disappointed if we don’t do a hundred and fifty thousand at the show. Most of the big people are coming, but we’ve got two Fortune 500s who are out of town and are going to miss the show. So that’s disappointing right there.”

IT HAD RAINED all day and all night, and then sputtered to a stop just moments before women began arriving for the luncheon. The runway was ready, and tables set with linens, silver, bushy centerpieces, and Bill Blass, Ltd., pencils were now arranged in a semicircle around it. Jamie was dressed in a sharp-looking black wool crepe Blass suit from this fall. Mrs. Massey arrived wearing a suit from the same collection in red. Mrs. Johnson, who had had us over for dinner Sunday night, arrived. Mrs. Hunter Armistead, of the Tennessee Armisteads, and Mrs. Jimmy Bradford, of the J.C. Bradford brokerage Bradfords, and Mrs. James Cheek III, of the Maxwell House Coffee Cheeks, and Mrs. Neil Parrish, of the National Life and Accident Parrishes, and Mrs. Pamela Iannacio, a pencil heiress, arrived. In all, sixty-four guests were there, most of them wearing good Blass luncheon suits, with trim silhouettes, big buttons, smart details. The women were pearly, well coiffed, unglamorous, but timelessly good-looking; there were some mothers and daughters and probably a good span of generations, but for a million bucks I couldn’t have guessed anyone’s age. Mrs. Massey was seated at our table, next to Blass. Waiters circled the room and placed a papaya stuffed with lobster at each place, and after a few moments the show began. Yvonne came out in a black faille puff-sleeved jacket and morning-stripe pants. Mrs. Massey leaned over to Blass and said, “That’s very correct, very fun.”

Blass said, “That’s a good suit. Those are good-looking pants. That’s something you ought to have.” Mrs. Massey made a note on a pad of paper. Then out came one of the buxom Nashville models, in a floral suit. Mrs. Massey glanced at Blass, and he whispered, “You should have that, babe. That’s very you.” She picked up the pencil again.

The next model wore a short black lace dress with black lace stockings. Blass pointed at her legs and said, “Love those stockings. Two hundred bucks a pair and goddam fragile.”

Mrs. Massey snorted, and said, “Darling, never.”

As soon as the show ended, the women popped up from their seats and headed for the next room, where the sample racks were lined up. Mrs. Massey was at Blass’s elbow, saying, “I need something for Palm Beach. Not too severe, because it’s for Palm Beach.”

People buzzed around the racks. A woman standing near Joyce said to her, “I’m giving something for the Super Bowl. What can you put me in?”

A young woman with a light brown ponytail emerged from one of the dressing rooms wearing an iridescent, mousseline strapless gown that cost $6,040. She said, “I can’t breathe. I can’t talk. I can’t move, but I love it.”

Blass looked her over and said, “It’s very good.”

She sucked in her breath and said, “I think I’ll buy it.”

I was bumped into one of the racks by someone grabbing my arm and saying, “There was the cutest little girl waiting on me who was Kappa Kappa Gamma at Vanderbilt. Do you know where she is?”

At this point, every dressing room was full, and Joyce, Craig, Jamie, and Jamie’s sales staff were bounding from rack to room with the samples. By two o’clock, they had written orders for eighty-five thousand dollars’ worth of clothes. Mrs. Massey had picked nine outfits, including a gown for the Swan Ball; they would all be tailored and delivered in a few months. Then she kissed Blass goodbye and left for Brook House.

A few minutes later, the phone in the store rang. Joyce took the call. After hanging up, she said to Blass, “That was Mrs. Massey. We have to protect her. She wants us to protect her especially on the gown and also on the suit.” Blass grimaced, and Joyce said, “Bill, we have to. I promised her no one else would have that at the Swan Ball.” To herself, she said, “I’m going to have to pull that plaid suit with the lace overlay, too. I could sell six, I’m sure, but I’ve already sold two, and this town is too small for another one.”

WHEN THE TOTAL of orders approached a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Blass decided he could sneak out to see the Parthenon after all. We called for a limousine. It had a new driver. Mr. Blass looked at him and said, “Good-looking man.” The driver, Jim, opened the glove compartment and handed Blass a photograph of himself modeling suits for a local store.

“Very nice,” Blass said. “I think we should go see the Parthenon.”

“You should go see Opryland,” Jim said. “The entertainment business is to Nashville what a pinkie with a diamond ring is to a hand.”

Mr. Blass settled into the seat and lit a cigarette. When we got to the Parthenon, Jim told us to be sure to look inside at the statue of Athena, because it was the largest indoor sculpture in the Western world. When we saw it, Mr. Blass stopped and stared in amazement. The statue was chalk white, and was wearing a peplos, sandals, and a military headpiece. After a minute, Blass said, “Well, that’s the biggest goddamn fake job I’ve ever seen. My God, it’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything so awful in my life. Have you ever seen anything so awful?” We went down to the gift shop, where he admired a T-shirt and then told the cashier that her printed-silk bomber jacket was amusing and asked if it was for sale. She said it was. He took a second look and said, “It’s a good jacket. It’s amusing. But it’s really not for me.”

-end-

This story was first published in The New Yorker magazine December 20, 1993. It is also included in my collection The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, published by Random House, 2001.