Front Row by Jerry Oppenheimer Read Free Book Online

say, ‘It’s the rudest thing, no civility’ And my mother
loved
Anna. I confronted her. ‘What is it with this not saying good-bye?’ And she said, ‘Well, there’s no point, is there, really? We’re finished talking. How can you feel bad about that?’ And I said, ‘Nobody else does that. If you want to make friends with people, they’re going to think it’s odd. You’re the
only
person I know who does that.’ She didn’t care.”
    There were even worse slights that left Lasky hurt and with a sour taste, both about herself and their friendship. Unlike Anna, Lasky was an eater, and Anna gloated over the fact that she always stayed thin. For instance, Anna bought little gifts of clothing for Lasky. But there was always one major hitch. Everything was thoughtlessly too small, including a custom-madeRegency ball gown with lavender and white stripes that Lasky could barely squeeze into.
    “My mother noticed these things. She always used to say, ‘How could your best friend buy you something and it’s always a size too small?’ That dress Anna bought me, I couldn’t get into the damn thing because the arms were so tight.” Another time, Anna bought Vivienne an expensive patchwork quilt skirt at Liberty’s, one of the grandes dames of London department stores. “Like everything else, it didn’t fit,” she says, “I think I squeezed into it once.”
    Lasky’s mother was a Prussian former ballet dancer and model, an exotic cross, according to her daughter, between Audrey Hepburn and Greta Garbo. Brigitte Lasky, who converted to Judaism for her Jewish husband and became a U.S. citizen, was a fashion plate with whom Anna bonded, spending almost more time with Mrs. Lasky than with her own plain-Jane mother, who was preoccupied with her social work. “Anna was especially crazy about my mother,” offers Lasky. “She thought she was the cat’s meow and saw her as a role model.”
    Nevertheless, Brigitte Lasky felt that Anna bought the small sizes purposefully and maliciously to tease and taunt her daughter. Unlike Vivienne Lasky, who was a tad plump, Anna was skinny, but she was big-boned and usually had to buy larger sizes for herself and have them taken in. While Lasky thought Anna looked “great” in certain things, such as later in Chanel, she felt she looked “awful” in evening dresses then and now, “because her elbows, wrists, and knees are too big. She’s like Calista Flockhart and Lara Flynn Boyle. It can look
painful.”
    Anna knew that juicy, thick lamb chops were her pal’s favorite. She even taught herself to cook them to Lasky’s taste, so she could gloat while she watched her clean her plate. “Anna would make my favorite food. Then she would just sit there and watch
me
eat. She wouldn’t eat, or she would just pick, and she’d point out that I was ‘pleasantly plump.’ I said, ‘Well, Anna, I don’t want to be a model,’ and she said, wagging her finger, ‘You know, Vivienne,
we
don’t want to get
too
pudgy’ My mother says I would always come home from those dinners feeling a lack of self-esteem. She said I didn’t come back confident and smiling.”
    Anna hurt her friend’s feelings by making fun of her weight and putting her on the spot by demanding, “Why don’t you have more self-control?”Lasky’s meek response was, “ ‘Life is too short . . . dieting all the time makes me crotchety.’ Well, that sends a message. I wasn’t so stupid. My mother always said, ‘Anna invites you to dinner, makes your favorite food, buys your favorite cheesecake, and she’s flitting about, but did she eat anything?’ I said, ‘Mom, you
know
she didn’t.’ My mother thought she was malicious. I’d say, ‘I don’t believe that of her. She loves me. She’s my best friend.’”
    As one of Charles and Nonie Wintour’s favorites on the
Evening Standard’s
staff, Alex Walker often socialized with his editor. He was invited to their cocktail and dinner parties—Charles