Bergdorf Blondes (2 page)

Back in New York, the young Julie and I sat around at The Pierre ordering the hotel’s special hot orange cakes with chocolate sauce and maple syrup from room service. It was much more fun being an American little girl in New York than being an American little girl in England. New York girls like Julie got to be very spoiled and had Rollerblades and ice skates and makeup and facialists. They had wonderfully absent parents. Julie knew the geography of Barneys intimately by thirteen, and had actually shopped there. She was already a Bergdorf Blonde, even though we didn’t know about them yet.

Thanks to Julie, I returned to England that summer addicted to
Vogue
magazine and MTV and bearing a much-improved American accent that I cultivated by watching
High Society
over and over. Mom was totally freaked out by it, which meant it was really working.

All I wanted to do was move to New York and get
highlights that looked as awesome as Julie’s. To that end I begged Mom and Dad for an American college education. Please don’t tell a soul that I said this, but I honestly think the only reason I got the grades Princeton required was because throughout the algebra and the Latin and the Romantic poets, the thing that kept me going was the thought of the oxygen facials you could get in New York. When I got the place at Princeton, all Mom could say was, “But how could you leave England for America? How?
How?
”

She obviously had no idea about the oxygen facials.

It turned out there was a good reason Julie didn’t make it to Mimi’s. She’d been arrested for shoplifting from Bergdorf Goodman. People called late that afternoon to deliver the hot news, but when I tried to reach Julie her cell phone went straight to voice mail. I wasn’t surprised. Even though Julie swore to me she’d quit stealing when she’d come into her trust fund, it was the kind of crazy thing she’d do just because she was feeling bored for five minutes. Still, I was beginning to get a little worried when Julie herself called just after 7
PM
.

“Hey boo! It’s really funny, I’ve been arrested. Can you come get me? Bail me out? I’m sending my driver to pick you up right now.”

When I arrived at the 17th Precinct on East Fifty-first Street forty-five minutes later, Julie was sitting in the shabby waiting area looking impossibly chic. She was dressed for the chilly October day in skinny white cashmere pants, a casual fox fur jacket, and huge sunglasses. She looked ridiculously sophisticated for a girl in her mid-twenties, but all the Park Avenue Princesses are. An adoring cop was just handing her a Starbucks latte that he’d clearly gone out to collect on her behalf. I sat down on the bench next to her.

“Julie, you’re nuts,” I said. “Why have you started stealing again?”

“Because,
duh
, I wanted that Hermès Birkin, you know the new ostrich one in baby pink with the white trim? I felt so depressed not having it,” she said, all
faux
innocence.

“Why didn’t you just buy it? You could totally afford it.”

“You can’t ‘just buy’ a Birkin! There’s a three-year wait list, unless you’re Renée Zellweger, and even then you might not get one. I’m already on the wait list anyway for the baby blue suede and it’s killing me.”

“But Julie, it’s
stealing
and you’re kind of stealing from yourself.”

“Isn’t that neat!”

“You’ve got to stop. You’re going to be all over the newspapers.”

“Isn’t it
great
?”

Julie and I must have been there for at least an hour before Julie’s lawyer appeared and told us that he had managed to get the police to drop the charges. He’d told them that Julie always intended to buy the goods, she just never usually pays in the store, the bills go straight to her apartment. This was simply an embarrassing mix-up.

Julie was really very cheerful about the whole episode. She seemed almost reluctant to finally leave the precinct that night. Clearly she had loved the attention she got from the cops. She had charmed Detective Owen—who was obviously 100 percent in love with her the minute he arrested her—into letting her call in hair and makeup for the mug shot. I guess she was right to treat it like a fashion shoot. I mean, that picture could be reproduced for years to come.

The media went a bit nuts about Julie after the arrest. When she left The Pierre (where Daddy had generously bought Julie the other corner apartment) the next morning to go to the gym, she was faced by hordes of photographers. Julie ran back inside and telephoned me, wailing, “Oh my god! They’re all out there! Paparazzi, press, and they got my picture! Ugh! I can’t handle it.”

Julie was crying hysterically, but this happens all the time so no one did anything dramatic like call 911 or anything. I told her that no one would look at the
pictures, or even remember what had happened the next day. Really, it didn’t matter if she was all over the papers.

“It’s not being in the papers that I mind,” she moaned, “it’s that they got me in sweatpants! I can never be seen on the corner of Madison and Seventy-sixth Street again! Please come over?”

Sometimes, when Julie says things like that, I think, well, it’s lucky she’s my best friend because if she wasn’t I wouldn’t like her
at all
.

When I arrived at her apartment, the housekeeper sent me straight through to Julie. Hair and makeup were on standby, hovering in terrified silence in the bedroom, which is painted pale jade, Julie’s favorite color. Two antique Chinese mother-of-pearl chests sit on either side of the fireplace. The upholstered sleigh bed is an heirloom from Julie’s grandmother. Julie won’t get into it unless it’s just been made with sheets monogrammed with her initials in pale pistachio silk. I found Julie red-faced in the dressing room, frantically raking through the closets. As fast as she tossed clothes out and into a mountainous pile on the thick white rug, her maid put them back in the closet, so that the pile never increased or decreased significantly. Finally Julie dug out an understated black Chanel dress of her mother’s, kitten heels, and very large sunglasses. She was totally channeling CBK, as usual. An hour later, blown out and made up beyond belief, she strolled out of The Pierre, a confident smile on her face, and gave
an interview to the waiting press in which she explained about the “mix-up.”

The next Sunday a fabulously glamorous picture of Julie appeared on the cover of the
New York Times
Style section, with the headline BEAUTIFUL BERGDORF INNOCENT and an accompanying article by the
Times
’s fashion critic. Julie was thrilled. So was her dad. She called me the following Monday to say that an antique bracelet had arrived from him with a note reading, “Thank you darling daughter. D.”

“He’s
pleased
?” I asked.

“I’m so happy,” said Julie. “I’ve never been in Dad’s good books like this before. All that shoplifting heiress stuff, it’s been like the greatest PR for the store; sales have gone through the roof, especially of the sunglasses I was wearing. He’s recommended the board make me marketing director. I just hope I don’t have to work too hard.”

After that, Julie couldn’t go anywhere without having her picture taken, all in the cause, she said, of raising Bergdorf’s profile, which she did, along with her own. She thought the publicity was very good for her self-esteem and was helping with her issues—issues being the hip term for the glamorous psychological problems of the type that afflict those living in New York and Los Angeles.

Julie has issues with the receptionist at Bliss Spa who won’t book her vitamin C skin injections with Si-monetta, the top facialist there. She is encouraged by
her doctors to explore her “childhood issues” and is “in a lot of pain” over the fact that her parents used to fly her business class to Gstaad every Christmas, when everyone else’s parents flew their kids first. Naturally, she has a catalog of “food issues” and once followed Dr. Perricone’s Wrinkle Cure Diet, which led to her acquiring “issues with potatoes and wheat.” She has issues about having too much money and she has issues about not having as much money as some of the other Park Avenue Princesses. She previously had issues about being a Jewish WASP, which she recovered from when her licensed psychologist told her that Gwyneth Paltrow also suffered from this affliction, being the product of a Jewish father and WASPy mother. After this issue was resolved, Julie then got another issue about her psychologist charging her $250 for information she could have gotten from
Vanity Fair
at a cost of $3.50, which, it transpired, was the place where the licensed psychologist learned of Gwyneth’s ethnic roots. When anyone disagrees with Julie it means they have issues, and when Julie disagrees with her shrink it’s because he’s the one with the real issues.

When I once suggested to Julie that maybe her issues would eventually be resolved she replied, “God, I hope not. I’d be so uninteresting if I was just rich and not screwed up about it.” Without her issues, she said, “I’d be a personality-free zone.”

Luckily it’s
très
chic to be neurotic in New York, which means that Julie and I fit in perfectly.

You can imagine Julie’s reaction to the e-mail about the glaring difference between our kind of Chloé jeans happiness and Jolene’s and K.K.’s and Cari’s fiancé happiness. We were having brunch a few days later at Joe’s, this super-unhealthy diner on the corner of Sullivan and Houston. Julie was way overdressed in that tiny new Mendel mink jacket that everyone’s gone nuts about. But then Park Avenue Princesses overdress for everything, even ordering in. I would too if I had that many new clothes every week. She was basking in her shoplifting triumph but frowned when I reminded her about Mimi’s shower.

“Are you trying to give me another issue? Eew! How could you! It’s beyond!” she cried tearfully.

“How could I what?” I said, pouring maple syrup onto a silver dollar pancake.

“E-mail me that whole thing about, like, everyone but me having a fiancé. It’s so unfair. I’m happy but I’m not
beyond
happy like K.K. and Jolene. You’ve got to be in love for that.”

“You don’t have to be in love to be happy,” I said.

“You only think that because you’ve never been in
love. God, I feel so unhappy and so un-
chic
! I heard they all look
amazing
now that they’re engaged.”

Underneath all the issues and the drama and the clothes and the vitamin C injections, Julie is hopelessly romantic. She claims to have been in love more than fifty-four times. She started young—acquiring her first boyfriend at seven—“but that was before the oral sex epidemic hit,” she always says. She actually
believes
love songs. Like she really does think that love lifts you up where you belong and seriously fell for the Beatles’ crazy idea that all you need is love. Most of her love-type problems have been caused by Dolly Parton, who inspired her so much with “I Will Always Love You” that Julie says she genuinely loves all her exes, “even the ones I really hate,” which her shrink says is a “
huge
issue.” She thinks “Heartbreak Hotel” refers to the Four Seasons Hotel on Fifty-seventh Street where she checks in every time she rows with a boyfriend. If I could afford a suite at that divine place, I’d break up with a man every two weeks, too. Julie was convinced the only way she could be happy was to be in love and have a fiancé on her arm like everyone else.

“I have all the Vuitton bags Marc Jacobs ever made, but what’s the point if my other arm doesn’t have a fiancé supporting it? And look!” she gasped, pointing at my legs under the table. “You’re wearing fishnets! Are fishnets in, too?
Why didn’t anyone tell me?
”

Julie flopped her head dramatically onto the table
and wiped her tears on her mink, which I thought was a really spoiled princessy way to behave, but this is totally in keeping with her personality so I shouldn’t be too shocked, I suppose. After a few minutes she calmed down and her face suddenly lit up. Julie’s mood swings are so unpredictable, sometimes I think she’s schizophrenic.

“I’ve got an idea. Let’s go fishnet-stocking and fiancé shopping together!” she said excitedly.

Julie honestly thinks fiancés are as easy to come by as hose.

“Julie, why on earth would you want to get married now?” I said.

“Eew! I don’t. I said I wanted a fiancé! I’m not necessarily going to
marry
him right away. Ooh, I can hardly wait. We are going Prospective Husband hunting,” she continued.

“We?!” I exclaimed. “Isn’t America supposed to be a modern country where career girls don’t need things like fiancés?”

“Everyone wants to fall in love eventually. Fiancés are
so glam
! Tell me this, who was CBK before JFK Jr.?”

“Julie, you can’t get engaged just to look glamorous, that would be selfish,” I said.

“Really?” exclaimed Julie, her face growing brighter. (Every week Julie’s therapist tells her she’ll be happier if she’s more selfish, not less. Judging by most people’s behavior, everyone’s therapist in New
York must be saying this.) “I’m so excited! Okay, I gotta go home and not eat. I’m putting on weight just looking at the napkins in this place,” said Julie.

Before she left, Julie made me promise to help her out with her “PH campaign”—her way of referring to the Prospective Husband hunt. She would acquire the fiancé just as easily as the fishnet stockings. I was sure of it. Julie is a shining example of the Park Avenue Princess ethic at work. She doesn’t let anything stand in her way.

Julie headed back uptown and I rushed off to a work appointment. God, I thought in the cab, Julie’s PH hunt could be stressful. Sometimes the perfect party-girl life is as exhausting as boot camp. Sometimes, I thought, I could be doing something less exhausting, like living the perfect non-party-girl life somewhere relaxing like the British countryside. Okay, so I wouldn’t have any nice shoes, but there
are
other benefits to living in a Manolo-free zone. None came to mind right away, but I was sure I would think of something positive.