NEW YORK — A seaside English Manor estate is not the first place most people would think of to find a treasure chest of exemplary 20th-century fashion, but Doris Duke’s summer home in Newport, R.I., is about to offer just that.
“Jet Set to Jeans: The Wardrobe of Doris Duke,” which will be unveiled at her house Rough Point on April 14, traces the late tobacco heiress’ style decade-by-decade. By marching out the contents of her closets, the Newport Restoration Foundation aims to shed some light on Duke’s determinedly cloaked life.
To no surprise, there will be designer labels aplenty in the 80-piece exhibition — Balenciaga, Madame Grès, Mariano Fortuny and Yves Saint Laurent, to name a few. But more affordable pieces, including lace-up cross-country ski boots and a Claire McCardell daytime dress, will also be showcased, testimony to her more casual side. Visitors will get an eyeful of Duke’s democratic taste — from the Jantzen swimsuit she wore in the surf beneath the nearby cliffs to a Madame Grès silk crepe evening gown with ostrich feathers.
Originally built by Frederick Vanderbilt in 1889, Rough Point was bought by Duke’s father, James, in 1922 and was a favorite retreat of his daughter. In 1999, six years after her death, the property — prime real estate on Newport’s tony Bellevue Avenue — was deeded to the NRF, an organization she founded in 1968 to preserve Newport’s landmark mansions. Local lore suggests Duke made the gesture after police deemed the death of her friend Eduardo Tirella an accident. He was pinned by a car she was driving while he was opening Rough Point’s gates.
As soon as Rough Point changed hands, the late J. Carter Brown, a former NRF board member and past director of the National Gallery of Art, was interested in mining as much information about Duke as possible for the public. That remains something Rough Point staffers are striving for, said Bruce MacLeish, director of collections.
Nicknamed the “richest girl in the world,” Duke was born into great wealth, thanks chiefly to her father, the founder of the American Tobacco Co. and Duke Power as well as the benefactor of Duke University. Her personal life quickly became public property. The New York Times ran a sizeable story about her birth, and from then on the media took note of her, MacLeish said.
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At 6 feet tall, she was tough to miss, but Duke shunned her unwanted fame by wearing scarves and sunglasses. Later in life, she flew to Rough Point in a private helicopter to avoid the curious who flock to the wealthy.
“She was always followed by reporters and photographers. She learned by the time she was a teenager to keep to herself,” MacLeish said. “In some ways, we’re struggling to get to know her better. She didn’t write letters and there aren’t a lot of her friends who are still alive.”
Beyond the typical trails of research they followed for “Jet Set to Jeans,” MacLeish and assistant curator Michele Musto turned to Duke’s remaining friends and former staffers to fill in some of the blanks. However gilded her lifestyle appeared to outsiders, Duke liked a little penny-pinching, was the word from her former estate manager. When she would occasionally buy haute couture, “virtually the next day” she and a friend would drive to a shop in North Attleboro, Mass., to buy fabric — at wholesale prices — for accessories for her new ensemble. The pair formed an interior decorating business, but it wasn’t the most lucrative venture.
“They had some stationery and they bought wholesale. But they didn’t do any decorating other than at Rough Point,” MacLeish said.
It’s not as though Duke, who inherited $30 million in 1942, could not afford to foot the bill. By the time she died in 1993, the far-reaching philanthropist had turned her $80 million inheritance into a $1.25 billion personal estate. Along with art, which she traveled the globe to collect, fashion was a favorite indulgence. Visitors to Rough Point will get a taste of both.
The house tour includes such kernels as how the heiress once sheltered her two camels from a hurricane in her solarium. Like many of the vignettes in her life, there is a back story: While negotiating for a used 727 airplane with two Arab businessmen, she convinced them to throw in the animals as part of the deal.
Once visitors gather such anecdotes as they walk through the well-appointed rooms, they will find themselves in two galleries showcasing Duke’s clothes. Set up decade by decade, “Jet Set to Jeans” will highlight how her taste evolved over the years.
Her hankering for vivid and bold hues in the Forties, for example, smacked against the country’s somber World War II mood. But on the rebound from her first divorce, Duke was defining her independent life and sense of self, Musto said. Color was something she never shied away from, considering she wore a blue crepe ensemble for her first wedding and a green satin dress for her second. One of the more eye-catching outfits in “Jet Set to Jeans” is a Givenchy floral pantsuit.
“The colors really pop out at you,” Musto said. “There is black and white, but there is also goldenrod yellow, greens of various shades and, later in her life, a lot of magenta.”
Musto went to work sifting through 2,000 pieces of clothing that were rounded up from Duke’s closets at Rough Point, the 2,500-acre “Duke Farms” in Somerville, N.J., her “Shangri-la” hideaway on Oahu, her Beverly Hills home and her old Park Avenue apartment. After selecting 200 finds, she whittled down her choices to 80. Duke’s head housekeeper helped with the elimination process by cherry-picking which pieces Duke frequently liked to wear.
“Her wardrobe said she had a great love of high-quality clothes. Her style was classic, so beautiful and timeless. So much so that if I wore many of her pieces from the Thirties or Forties today, no one would know [how old they are,]” Musto said. “The general trend was casual, comfortable clothing. As soon as pantsuits were introduced for eveningwear, she was wearing them.”
She also didn’t hold back when go-go boots were the rage. In the late Sixties, Duke owned two pairs, including the Pierre Cardin white vinyl thigh-high ones that will be displayed. Shoes and bags, for the most part, were not her thing. The heiress preferred to be barefoot at home, and Musto found more sandals that “were worn to death” than designer heels.
Two of the exhibition’s more eye-catching pieces are the Martha Graham dance jacket given to Duke by the prized choreographer and a late 20th-century dance costume Duke wore for classical Indian dance lessons. One of Duke’s staffers told Musto about how Duke, a lifelong dance student and big-time supporter of the performing arts, was known to walk down the stairs at Rough Point backwards to practice balance.
Musto said it was tough to tell whether Duke was drawn to Graham, who was friendly with Halston, due to her interest in dance or her liking of Halston’s aesthetic. Duke was known to pal around with Halston at Studio 54. “His casual, comfortable, clean-lined clothing epitomized what Doris Duke looked for in clothing throughout her life,” Musto said.
While Duke reportedly worked as a photo editor for Harper’s Bazaar in Paris at one point, researchers are hard-pressed to define the trigger point for her interest in fashion. Perhaps it is best left to speculation. As Duke once said to a reporter in the Forties, “If you are going to live, you have to be a part of life.”