SUZY
Byline: Aileen Mehle
Patty Hearst Shaw is just back from Paris, where she spent three hectic days being fitted for her little strut down the runway on March 16. That’s when she’ll model two “very wild” creations by Thierry Mugler, when he shows off his new collection at the Winter Palace. The dresses are divine — a long black and white evening dress embroidered with jewels and flowers, the other short and seductive, as in terminally sexy. The fittings went smoothly; it was the shoes Patty had trouble with. She wears a 6 12, teeny-tiny compared with most models’ feet, which go on forever. She was falling out of the gunboats provided, so Patty’s shoesies had to be custom made.
The on dit is that wildness will prevail at the House of Mugler — wild headresses, wild platform shoes, wild corsets. Thousands of people are expected to see the show, which will also star such vintage stunners as Verushka, Jerry Hall and Julie Newmar and such current showstoppers as Linda Evangelista and Kate Moss. Patty is very taken with Mugler, a designer, she says, who “loves women and makes you look like a real one.” Her first entrance is planned as a spectacular surprise. A secret, of course, until someone leaks it.
Speaking of shoe sizes, Diana Vreeland used to tell me that nothing received so much retouching in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar photographs as models’ feet, shod and bare. “We give them arches and heighten their insteps,” she trilled, “and straighten their toes and make them smooth and beautiful.” Judging from what one sees now in many magazines of style and beauty, it’s a lost art.
More on dit has Princess Stephanie of Monaco marrying Daniel Ducruet, her lover and the father of her two children, in June in the cathedral in Monte Carlo. Prince Rainier, who always hated the idea of Ducruet, seems to have bowed to the inevitable and lightened up. But he and Steph are still butting heads. Proud of Ducruet, she wants a big wedding, with all his relatives and friends invited. Rainier, considering that his rebellious daughter has been living in sin for years and has two illegitimate children tugging at her skirts, would rather keep it small and discreet. Whatever, it will be a cathedral wedding with a cardinal officiating. Will Stephanie go so far at to want white and a big puffy veil? Maybe the House of Dior should keep its lines open.
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