Designer Trash Bag

Makes me smile, as ridiculous as it is. It may have been part of a display on Greene Street, I was harriedly in a hurry and didn't spot—I mean stop—to check it out.

Sad couture tales from artice by Francine Du Plessix Gray

From my catching up with old copies of The New Yorker, here are portions of an article by Francine Du Plessix Gray about Christian Dior and Yves St Laurent (November 4, 1996). It's sad about both gents, but particularly sad about Dior. I certainly didn't know . . . .

. . . Outsiders, though, noticed little change in Dior beyond his expanding waistline. Only Perrotino [Dior's chauffeur who was a long-discarded lover of Dior's youth]knew Dior's darkest secreat: Diro had had two mild heart attacks since 1946. ANd there was another secret: over the previous decade Dior's love life had been disastrous. Numerous desireable young men had refused to offer him anything more than devoted friendship. Finally, in 1956, a handsome youth of North African descent, Jacques Benita, returned Dior's affection. The consummately formal Dior became so besottedly enamored that he was seen holding his lover's hand in public. It was in order to be more desireable to his sweetheart that in the late summer of 1957 Dior planned a trip to Montecatini, Italy, to take a thinning cure.

In mid-September, Mme Delahaye [Dior's clairvoyant]saw bad auguries in his cards and was vehement that he cancel his travel plans. Dior was equally resolute about taking his thinning cure, and, for perhaps the first time in his life, he acted against his clairvoyant's advice. He was accompanied to the spa at Montecatini by his chauffeur, Mme. Raymonde [his directrice], and a young goddaughter. On the tenth day of his stay, in the after-dinner hous of October 23, 1957, Dior collapsed and died, shortly after a canasta game. This genial, prolific, much-revered man was fifty-two years old. His career had lasted barely a decade.