NEW YORK — Just like every dress Arnold Scaasi ever made, his latest book is designed to flatter.
Few designers have had as long and illustrious a career as Scaasi, whose signature house is approaching its golden anniversary, whose services have been required by four First Ladies and who has been around long enough to dress not only Nan Kempner, but also her mother, Irma Schlesinger. So he must have had some scandalous stories to tell among the 20,000 dresses and 500 collections — by his estimates — that have passed through the various studios he has called home over the years.
But the picture that emerges in “Women I Have Dressed (And Undressed),” coming from Scribner in September, is nothing less than a love letter to his clients, as told from the wide-eyed perspective of the 68-year-old Scaasi, who never lets the reader forget he was once just a young Jewish kid from Montreal, born Arnold Isaacs, now pinching himself at every state dinner at the White House.
Scaasi’s title, with its vague promise of sexual mischief, really is a reference to the rather clinical, service nature of his work — understanding a woman’s body requires its careful inspection, meaning some of the most famous women in the world have appeared undressed before the designer within a few minutes of their introduction.
In his recollections, Scaasi sometimes trampled on their vulnerabilities, most memorably in his directive to the opera star Joan Sutherland, “a tall, redheaded Brunhilde-type girl” — when she requested a black dress to make her look smaller. Scaasi writes that he told her, “But you’re enormous! I could never make you look smaller. No, we will make you look bigger, grander, bolder. We will make you look stupendous!”
Reflecting on his clients, as Scaasi did during the 18 months he wrote his memoirs, in longhand, he was often surprised by his own chutzpah and how far it got him in life.
“I did say things that perhaps other designers maybe wouldn’t say, but I think that’s what these women came to me for, to establish a look to make them appear better,” Scaasi said during an interview in his Beekman Place duplex here. He resides there in a lifestyle quite similar to those of the characters in his book: Scaasi in his classic navy blazer with gold buttons from Edward Sexton on Saville Row, framed by paintings by Léger, a large Louise Nevelson wall installation, a Monet over the mantle and a uniformed maid serving ice water. He didn’t get here, or to his homes in Palm Beach, Fla., or Quogue, N.Y., by soft-pedaling his talent.
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It was Scaasi’s confidence in his ability to make women appear better that made him so easily relate to them, accepting them not only for their physical flaws, but also embracing whatever the personality dysfunction. Of the notoriously difficult Barbra Streisand, whose “nose was prominent, but she had this little-girl smile and her figure was very good,” Scaasi describes her unerring quest for perfection as if it were a charming affectation — “I really didn’t mind, sometimes feeling the same way when I was working on one of my many collections and strove to have everything perfect.”
That drive toward correcting these women’s flaws by design helped create famous red carpet moments, and some of the happiest divas in society, politics, arts and entertainment. For Sutherland’s first appearance in New York, he put her in a huge tangerine silk cloak that the singer dramatically opened on stage to reveal a gown printed with apricot roses “and again the audience gasped as the flowered gown was revealed.”
Scaasi met Joan Crawford upon his arrival in New York in 1953 at his job interview with Charles James, where he worked for a couple of years. Once Scaasi had his own business and Crawford was “standing only in her bikini panties” in front of him, he writes, “I was amazed to see that she was built very much like a man.” After Scaasi worked his magic, taking a cue from the designer Adrian’s costuming camouflage by putting her in dramatic, pretty gowns to soften her image, she became “this absolute vision.”
Mamie Eisenhower, who confessed to having never worn a bra, “had a wonderful bosom,” so he put her in strapless gowns. The first time Barbara Bush undressed before him, she was wearing a slip, which Scaasi politely describes as a “nice, old-fashioned touch…I was surprised to find Mrs. Bush was not overweight and not really large-large, that she was quite well proportioned.” For Bush, there were better-fitting clothes to “flatter her figure and make her look trimmer and more modern.”
Laura Bush, being more modest, never undressed before him, but Scaasi admired her legs and was still proud of pushing her to shorten her skirts and lower her necklines.
“I’m sure some people will think that I did not write about them very nicely,” Scaasi said in the interview, though it is more likely to be his competition than his clients that will take offense — he revives the charges that Oleg Cassini copied French designs for Jackie Kennedy, alleging Cassini brought models to the White House to service the “horny young president,” and derides Michael Faircloth’s inaugural wardrobe for Laura Bush as making her look “dumpy.”
“I liked all the women I dressed,” Scaasi said. “I just wrote what came into my head. I didn’t plan to write it nice or not nice. I’m just not a vicious person.”
Throughout the book, Scaasi compliments his customers, and even more after they appear in his dress. He takes a certain delight in pointing out his strict policy of making customers pay for gowns, except where it cost him the chance of dressing Mrs. Kennedy in the White House, “the dumbest decision I ever made in my life,” he emphasizes. But he is most enthusiastic in describing the interchange of ideas between designer and client that led to the many unusual, yet beautiful, creations that highlight his career: Streisand’s 1969 see-through pajamas for the Academy Awards, a chinchilla-lined coat of vintage shawls for the artist Nevelson, a gown of silver, black and white feathers to match the streaks in Elizabeth Taylor’s hair, even habits for an order of Catholic nuns in Pennsylvania who have their own chapter.
“At one point, I said to my assistant, ‘I think we’re putting too many exclamation points into it,’” Scaasi said of his book. “But then I left it up to my editor.”
Scaasi is so loyal to the women he dressed that at some point in recent history, conspicuously around the same time he stopped doing big runway shows, about six or seven years ago, he feels fashion went bad. Scaasi remains committed to about a dozen clients, designing special pieces for them, but not entire collections each season.
“I’m not excited about clothes right now,” Scaasi said. “There really is a lack of self-esteem in our country. Certainly, older women who have always dressed well continue to do so; they’re not going to change that. But all kinds of women, up to the age of 60, I would say, who might have dressed well before, don’t dress well now. They might not feel it looks young or trendy, but they try to look trendy and they end up looking tacky — to me, that’s depressing as a designer, so I’m not really interested in designing clothes right now.”
Scaasi, up north for the summer, spends his long weekends in Quogue and weekdays in the city with Parker Ladd, his partner of the past 40 years, whom Scaasi has proudly included in more than 35 references throughout the book, including the dedication. The other night, they were out at an upscale restaurant in the city, and both were appalled when Scaasi concluded, “There wasn’t one pretty dress in the place.”
“There were a lot of pretty women, but their hair was dirty and they didn’t look pulled together,” he said. “I see enormously fat people walking around in restaurants — and not cheap restaurants — in Bermuda shorts and flip-flops with big stomachs sticking out. We’re in a time where people don’t have much self-esteem, because how could they go out looking like that?”
As he said, he is not a vicious person. He is appalled simply because his work ethic and sense of propriety come from another time, when there was a real rapport between designer and client, and customers sought out his personal advice on how to slim their hips or appear taller or smaller or just less plain. He may even be right that the absence of originality comes from a lack of self-esteem, but then, that’s something upon which Scaasi has no personal experience from which to draw.
With no sense of humility, Scaasi writes in his book that he called Laura Bush’s office twice prior to her husband’s election, attempted to enlist the aid of her mother-in-law and sent a congratulatory fax in his quest to dress her, and then dedicates the next chapter to Hillary Clinton. On the upcoming election, he claimed to remain undecided last week, waiting it out to see President Bush and Democratic candidate Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry debate. But then on Monday, he said he had decided to vote for Bush after seeing the president and first lady on “Larry King Live.”
“A lot of people are afraid of trying to get close to these women, but either they like your clothes or they don’t,” he said. “If they don’t, they don’t. If it doesn’t work out, it’s not a slap at your ego. So they tell you ‘No.’ At least you’ll know.”