Boy was she right! A thousand words! A thousand hours! A thousand sexual innuendos!
Please tell me you saw it! And don’t try to convince yourself you’re above it, because I know you—better than I know myself most days. If Mrs. Dulles still lets the maids keep that magazine stash in the silver closet, run tout suite and grab this month’s American Vogue. They gave Wallis Simpson an eight-page spread. We Brits didn’t give her so much respect—then again, she stole our king, so we shouldn’t have.
In fact, now they’re my problem, not yours. The happy couple plans to live here. Wallis simply adores the French—actually she loves the Nazis, but we won’t go there. There’s talk all over Paris of a Nazi lover who sends her seventeen red flowers each and every day. Enough about that . . .
Back to the dress!
The Lobster Dress. That’s what we called it during design and now it’s what everyone around the world is calling it. Hardly a surprise with a large lobster straight down the front. I say “down” because Dalí wanted it up. He wanted his large crustacean to snap up at Wallis’s private parts. Seriously, how disgusting can the man get? Schiap won that argument—along with a few others.
I worked on the bodice. Well, Martine did, but after hours we sat in her studio and worked together. Her workroom is my second home. It’s off the back of the salon and has incredible light. It’s large enough that Martine put a small bed in there to collapse upon when Schiap is at her most demanding and wants it NOW! The woman really has no patience. So more nights than is reasonable, Martine stays and sews late. I piled the bed with pillows she let me make from fabric scraps and shared with her all the city’s gossip. They really are gorgeous pillows, Margo.
Martine is fascinating to watch work. Nothing at all like when I used to mend our dresses. She’s a genius. She’s our age with three generations of dressmakers in her family, so I guess it’s in her blood. For the Lobster Dress, she fashioned the bodice from only two layers of tulle and thin supports the width of fish bones. That’s what undergirds the silk—created by the famous Sache, of course. The whole dress weighs less than a pound. And no wonder—look carefully—the waist is practically transparent!
Wallis Simpson came to the House last spring. We shut the whole place down for her, brought in champagne, and Dalí was his most charming. He found her especially alluring and practically drooled all over her. Everything has sexual connotations for the man. Telephones. Lobsters. Anything. Meeting Wallis brought it all to the forefront. There is something about her, even I’ll admit that, an instinct that’s both predatory and sexual.
She fell in love with the design, along with half the House. She outfitted her whole trousseau with the Lobster Dress as its crowning glory—besides Edward, of course. He’s the real crown, non? Dalí was apoplectic with delight, rubbing his hands together like a greedy child and pulling out the side of his mustache in nervous energy. I hate how he twists it around his fingers when aroused. It’s disgusting.
At first Schiap demanded his lobster follow Wallis’s hip line—I’m having trouble calling her Duchess—like she wears her leaf motif to emphasize her shoulders and hips. But Dalí won the day and, as I said, stuck the crustacean right between her legs. He won that round, but Schiap won the next and fanned the tail over her private parts rather than the snapping claws. It’s equally provocative, though not quite so aggressive.
Then there was the mayonnaise. You should have heard the uproar over that. It escalated into a yelling match of such violence, I locked the salon’s front door so no one could walk in. Schiap screamed she’d never work with Dalí again if he slathered the final dress with the huge jar of mayonnaise he brought to the salon. For once, he believed her.
Don’t share these details with Mother, please. I wrote her a very different letter this evening. One that won’t generate another lecture about the immorality of my work. Because it’s not immoral, Margo—it’s new and modern, and it’s the way we are meant to dress. Fabrics should skim the body like a living skin. We should be able to move, breathe, and live. Fashion isn’t merely about clothes—it’s about design, ideas, innovation; it’s theological, political, fundamental. It reveals the soul through draping the body. It’s about a woman making a statement on how she sees her place in the world and in eternity. I’m getting dramatic, and you hate that, but it’s all true. Besides, Mother is a hypocrite. She bought two trunkfuls of Schiap’s knitwear from the London salon. Should I remind her how free and comfortable she found all those soft knits?
The Lobster Dress started something new here, Margo. Schiap has always been daring, avant-garde, and fearless, but a new energy fills the air now. She and Dalí were thick as thieves last week, and this morning they called the whole salon together. I can’t even describe their new collaboration. It’s all white, red, pink, and brown. She called it the Tears Dress. I thought she meant tears, like drops of water from one’s eyes, and I envisioned a gorgeous ephemeral creation of blues and greens—water touched by light. Something perhaps less structured than the Lobster Dress, with more transparency. But she meant tears—like tearing meat. Grinding, chewing, masticating. I’m not kidding. The white silk dress has structured rips to expose red, pink, and brown layers, which will be sewn beneath as if you’re ripping through pearly skin into the animal, into the woman underneath.
A few of us squirmed in our seats as Dalí got overly graphic in his description. It’s daring, but Schiap won’t let it get out of control. She’s brilliant, but she’s also pragmatic. She knows what sells and what doesn’t. She knows which way the wind blows.
Dalí? He’s crazy. You’d hate him—most of us do. He has to be the center of every moment. You’ve never met anyone so in love with his own needs and so ready to pitch a temper tantrum like a five-year-old if they’re not met. You’d love his wife, though. Gala is capable, firm, ten years his senior, and, for the most part, manages him well—and tolerates his dalliances with a generous eye. But she isn’t always around and she wasn’t here when he described the Tears Dress. I really wish she had been because there are some images I’ll never forget and her presence might have tempered the show.