Books |
The World in Vogue: People, Parties, Places
edited by Hamish Bowles and Alexandra Kotur
By
Published: Dec 17, 2009
Category:
Art and Photography
Even the greatest hostess, it is said, is forgotten when the last of her guests dies.
That’s as it should be. What’s more ephemeral than a dinner party? What fades faster than the perfume of flowers at a gala? What ages worse than this season’s fancy frock?
That understanding is not available to those looking at the party with their noses pressed against the glass. They never see the jostling for position. They can’t begin to imagine that the trophy wife eats balls of cotton to fight the hunger pangs. And, most of all, they wouldn’t believe who’s sleeping with whom.
What is amazing is that this persists, even in an age of video-equipped cell phones, tiny digital tape recorders and all the media outlets that pay waiters and hairdressers for dirt. Celebrities get 24/7 colonoscopies in the media; Society escapes unharmed.
The aging hostess and the dying guest are staples in Dominick Dunne’s final book, Too Much Money. Written while he was dying — and knew it — this is a book about older people, Society figures from Dunne’s novels of the 1980s and 1990s.
There are some new elements. On a radio show, Gus has shared a piece of gossip about a Congressman who’s a suspect in the disappearance of an intern; just as Dunne was by Gary Condit, Gus has been sued for millions. The editor of Park Avenue Magazine assures Gus that the boss will cover his legal fees, inspired, no doubt, by a promise that Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter reportedly made to Dunne. And Gus confesses to his lawyer that he’s bi-sexual, though he has been celibate for decades.
If you didn’t read Dunne’s first few novels, think twice — you’ll have a hard time figuring out who’s who here, to say nothing of what they’re fighting about. But for the millions who loved his sleek prose, inside dish and deep skepticism about the rich, Dominick Dunne’s exit interview is surely necessary reading.
Vogue’s big photo books — and The World in Vogue: People, Parties, Place serves up 300 gorgeous pictures — are ruthlessly edited experiences. They buy the glamour myth, and they chart it over time. Their aim is manicured, buffed, air-brushed beauty, life the way it oughta be.
Old people? Never happened. Which makes it disconcerting to see photos of people you know — or knew, because many have gone on to that place where Vogue can’t be delivered — in the full blush of youth.
Truman Capote’s “swans”, beautiful people in the Hamptons, Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall in Mustique, Valentino’s country house, palaces, gardens — almost every photograph and most excerpts from the profiles that accompanied them have the same effect. That is, they make you want to be rich. And thin. And young.
And that’s the way it goes for 400 oversized pages. Vogue is the InStyle of the upper order; it’s one big wet kiss to the people it photographs. Which isn’t to say it’s unappealing — it’s nice to get all your jealousy from one thick source.
I do note one factual error. The editors claim that, in 1990, “Georgina Howell found Carolyne Roehm exemplifying the spirit of the Working Rich.” Yes, she did. But she wasn’t the first. I recall a New York Magazine cover story about Roehm called "The Working Rich: The Real Slaves of New York," published in January 1986. The author, I believe, was Jesse Kornbluth.
