The Asylum Read Online Free PDF

to work their way through the racks of T-shirts and basic summer shift dresses.
    Polly had clocked the simple nature of this particular fashion collection. Gotten the picture. Done it. Been there. She was too well brought up to simply about-face, so she instructed her assistants to go in search of a will-o’-the-wisp, a je ne sais quoi. Insane, yes, but who knows? Maybe one of those anxious acolytes might actually find “something.”
    Though she could be serious, imperious and filled with fashion gravitas, Miss Mellen also loved a good chuckle. My favorite memory of Polly is sitting with her and Carolyn Murphy at the Met Ball—back in the last century, of course—critiquing the couture of the attendees while simultaneously counting the number of times Donatella Versace and Kate Moss minced across the room for a potty break à deux
.
    Speaking of the Met . . . let’s talk about the most fabulous fashion dictator who ever lived, the woman who mentored Polly. Yes—Diana Vreeland.
    DV was a real empress’s empress. Her mission was to liberate women from humdrum convention and propel them into a world of fantasy by using electrifying edicts filled with shock and awe.
    Many of DV’s bossy pronouncements were of the you’d-be-mad-not-to variety, though her most memorable style tips took the form of inspirational
suggestions.
Cunningly framed as questions, these life-enhancing promptings were more powerful than if they had been simple direct commandments. I am referring to her famous “Why Don’t You?” column in
Harper’s Bazaar.
    Why don’t you . . .
    . . . waft a big bouquet about like a fairy wand?
    . . . use a gigantic shell instead of a bucket to ice your champagne?
    . . . cover a big cork bulletin board in bright pink felt, band it with bamboo, and pin with colored thumbtacks all your various enthusiasms as your life varies from week to week?
    . . . turn your old ermine coat into a bathrobe?
    . . . paint a map of the world on all four walls of your boys’ nursery so they won’t grow up with a provincial point of view?
    . . . tie black tulle bows on your wrists?
    . . . remember that little girls and boys look divine in tiny green felt Tyrolean hats—the smaller the child, the longer the feather?
    . . . wear violet velvet mittens with everything?
    . . . have an elk-hide trunk for the back of your car? Hermès of Paris will make this.
    . . . have a room done up in every shade of green? This will take months, years, to collect, but it will be delightful—a mélange of plants, green glass, green porcelains, and furniture covered in sad greens; gay greens; clear, faded and poison greens.
    Vreeland was the primordial muck from which all subsequent bossy emperors and empresses emerged. She begat Polly and André Leon Talley and Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele and Candy Pratts-Price and, yes, dare I say it—moi.
    I consider myself fortunate to have worked for Empress Vreeland. It was during her tenure at the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute. I was hired by DV in 1985 to design the displays for a Met exhibit titled
Costumes of Royal India
and spent four sequin-encrusted months szhooshing bejeweled saris onto mannequins. And, yes, there was no shortage of pink ones. (Vreeland once famously declared, “Pink
is
the navy blue of India.”)
    I have many happy memories of this period.
    I remember Vreeland, who was allegedly color-blind, forcing the painters to repaint the walls ad nauseam
until they got the “correct” shade. This persnickety obsession even extended to the gift shop: “Wrong! Not THAT gray. I want the gray of QUAKERS!” The painting and repainting went on for weeks. By the end of the show, there was so much paint clogging the walls that they had to cover them with fresh Sheetrock for the next exhibit.
    I remember DV engaged in a cold war with