Word: duchess
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Braudy has stitched more than 1,000 interviews into this dismal tale, and she offers her readers some delicious tidbits: Ann in India, ready to stalk tigers in 120 degrees weather, appearing in a wool hunting outfit lined with chinchilla. At a dinner honoring the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, a footman passes potato chips and onion dip with the cocktails. Unfortunately, Braudy's arsenal of adjectives is limited. Families tend to be "wealthy," living in "opulent homes." And there are some unfiltered howlers -- the Duke of "Marlboro," for one. After a while, without the leavening of irony, one begins...
SOMEHOW, when he wasn't producing elaborate Mainstage productions like The Duchess of Malfi and Dreamgirls, when he wasn't swamped with responsibilities as Adams House Committee chair, when he wasn't throwing the most outrageous parties at Harvard, when he wasn't playing the piano at Boston's Club Cafe or Adams House's Club Mardi, when he wasn't club-hopping with his army of close friends, when he wasn't cavorting through the Harvard Yard snow wearing a pink fur coat and nothing underneath, when he wasn't chewing 20 sticks of Cinnaburst at once...
...their ability to enchant and arouse, to dazzle and intrigue. He created shoes that were walking fantasies. But at the same time he was a craftsman who understood how a pair of ill-fitting shoes can ruin a day and how a pair of clunky shoes can make a duchess feel dowdy...
Ferragamo was both couturier and courtier. The exhibition features many pictures of the natty shoemaker on bended knee, cradling the foot of one of his glamorous customers, like Sophia Loren, the Duchess of Windsor (who, he said, had perfect feet) and Ava Gardner. He was an artist for hire who worked for the new royalty of the 20th century: movie stars and socialites. Such clients tested his ingenuity. To fulfill the request of an Indian princess, he once fabricated a shoe of hummingbird feathers. But Ferragamo asserted that he was designing shoes not for the personality of the customer...
...Windsor -- and American divorce Wallis Warfield, Winston Churchill growled, "Why shouldn't the King be allowed to marry his cutie?" Playwright Noel Coward shot back, "Because England doesn't wish for a Queen Cutie." Today many Britons want a taste of soap opera in their royalty. Sarah Ferguson, Duchess Cutie, proved very suitable -- if only temporarily -- for that...