Please come by the Oyster Bay Historical Society on Sunday! @beckyaikmanauthor and I will be in discussion with @deniseevanssheppard , talking about the trailblazing women we wrote about in Empresses of Seventh Avenue and Spitfires. Also: Empresses is out in paperback!! @goldcoastbkfair
Betsy Pickering photographed by William Helburn for @harpersbazaarus , December 1958. She's wearing Capezios that look like a monk strap version of the spring 2026 jazz shoe from Michael Ryder at @celine , non?
Satin boot by I.MIller, dress by Oscar de la Renta, rings by David Webb. All very Ballets Russes. Photographed by Gianni Penati for @voguemagazine , August 1, 1968.
It's here! The paperback of Empresses of Seventh Avenue goes on sale April 7th. Like @ruthblue28 and @airmailweekly said, "Reads like a work of fiction, but remarkably it's all true." 😍
One of the early Diana Vreeland fashion shoot extravaganzas, from the October 15, 1966 issue of @voguemagazine . (Warning: It's all about fur.) Veruschka, Richard Avedon, Polly Allen Mellen, a sumo wrestler, and the rest of the entourage spent five weeks (!) in Japan with 15 trunks of clothes, multiple hat boxes, and mountains of photographic equipment. Avedon made endless long-distance calls to Vreeland in New York, which ran to $12 for three minutes, a huge expense in 1966. All in all, the kind of largesse that anyone who's worked in magazines lately can only dream about. "The Great Escape," as it was titled, ran to a whopping 27 pages. Those were the days!
Odile and Odette dresses by Muriel King, photographed by George Platt Lynes for Harper's Bazaar, 1937. According to Bazaar, "nice for twin debutantes at their coming-out party." Sure, of course... Modeled by ballerinas Daphne Vane and Elise Reiman.
Fantasy for Legs and Feet. Shoes + bodystockings + patterned tights. Photographed by Art Kane for @voguemagazine , February 15, 1965. @vintagefashionphotography
