Word: parvenu
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...only beat the Brahmins, he joined them and established the Kennedy style: an irresistible fusion of the parvenu with a parody of the old-shoe aristocrat. As a movie-industry wheeler-dealer in the '20s, he introduced a bit of Harvard to Hollywood. But back East it was show business as usual, especially when he introduced his mistress Gloria Swanson to Rose. The high point of his social climb was undoubtedly the * ambassadorship to the Court of St. James's in 1938. "This is a helluva long way from East Boston," he told his wife during a weekend with...
...briefcase indicates an attorney's status: junior associates haul home thick wads of raw documents in bulky bags, while partners take away the distillate of that material: a few sheets in a thin leather envelope. He deftly sketches the ballets of protocol between august attorneys and rich parvenu clients, the ugly skirmishing between partners near retirement and their power-hungry successors, the condescension of smug lawyers toward everyone who works for them...
...people who live on Manhattan's Upper East Side, belong to the Knickerbocker and Colony clubs, send their sons to schools such as Groton and Yale (the author's alma maters), and consider the Rockefellers, who came into their billions less than a century ago, slightly parvenu. This time around, Auchincloss is concerned with the female of that rare and resplendent species: twelve women who met once a month, from 1908 to 1972, to enrich themselves still further by discussing a book. The narrator, Christopher Gates, is the decorator son of one of the dozen in the Book...
...described in this sturdy biography by Caroline Seebohm, a Vogue contributor who was given access to company files, Nast was not quite what he seemed. He was a parvenu from the provinces, raised in St. Louis, the second son of a ne'er-do-well speculator. Through a Georgetown University classmate, he landed a job at Collier's Weekly, and by 1909 had learned enough about publishing to buy an obscure high-society weekly journal. He improved everything-the paper, the fashion drawings, the photography, the writing-and within a decade Vogue became the nation's most...
...pulchritude wars began in earnest three years ago, when the longtime dominance of Ford Models, Inc., was challenged by an interloper from Paris. The parvenu, John Casablancas, had owned the biggest model agency in Paris and for years enjoyed an uneasy working relationship with "Godmother" Eileen Ford, trading les girls between continents as occasion and opportunity demanded. Then, in 1977, despite an unwritten agreement that he would not set up shop in the U.S., Casablancas descended on Manhattan. He promptly aggravated the assault by raiding some of Ford's most toothsome stars-10s or near 10s all-as well...