“The world is divided into two groups, Artists and everybody else”, I told my friends in the early sixties, and sometimes my non artists friends got so angry at me and my elitist statement they wanted to hit me on the head. I could see it in their eyes.

Times have changed. Today the world is one, everything has changed as Earth is a smaller planet in the endless expanding universe and ART and its ARTISTS are spreading everywhere and joining forces as fast as the freedom demonstrators in this Internet ruled world.
Fashion and Art are also finally becoming one. I decided to join up with childhood friend and acclaimed New York painter, Ed Baynard to cover the New York -Paris art- fashion scene. Dear Ed named our collaborative blog, “NOODLE” after his New York City cat. His black and white found cat Noodle looks exactly like my New York alley cat Picachoo. We were meant to join up again.

Painter, print maker and photographer, Ed Baynard

Painter, print maker and photographer, Ed BaynardEd had designed my Paris dress shop Mia and Vicky, that opened in 1968 with now artist Mia Fonssagrives and actress-art collector, Elizabeth Taylor. He did our collectible, hippie Mia-Vicky poster and our nude greeting cards. We found each other last year on the Internet and I was enchanted with the direction of Ed ‘s new work, so much so that I want to make handbags from his hot pink and gold colored canvas.

I decided to write about, and Ed decided to photograph different art- fashion scenes, and share our thoughts and feelings. Ed began the first NOODLE with a list of three hundred galleries on 22nd st in Chelsea from which he chose ten. Ed has lived and painted nearby and he knows his patch.

We were welcomed as “insiders”. Ed Baynard is a celebrated painter and print maker, who has been showing paintings of flowers and still life since 1971. He is in many collections globally, The Tate as well as the Met, MOMA and the Whitney. He visits the Art Scene regularly and knows everybody and everybody knows Ed. Surprisingly, I was also known by the dealers for my Parisian dress shop and my thirty years in Bergdorf, and they actually came out of their posh modern offices to greet us. Some handed me a gift of their artist’s current book.

Anybody can walk into an art gallery. It is a free place to learn and to dream. Join us on our tour and become “insiders “with us and let’s have fun.

NOODLE……….Friday April 27th …..Ed and I met for breakfast in the local Westway Diner on 9th ave and he pulled out our gallery -list that we would visit today. I was wearing my latest Parisian silver lame patchwork tennis shoes with red, vinyl heels, a coral, melon and turquoise Hermes scarf, and a black vinyl jacket and slacks…I own twelve Hermes scarves, one for each month, 12 in all ….so French! Ed was in black pants …I told him the men in Paris wore coral pants and so did Robert Verdi on HSN TV, hosting with me the night before, as I sold my dresses. In one month, the coral pink pant has gone global!

Vicky Tiel and Julie Saul in front of the Jeff Liao photo of the Flat Iron Building. Photograph by Ed Baynard.

We started our Tour de Chelsea at Julie Saul Gallery. Julie was having a Brian Ulrich show with eye poping electric colors in the shocking neon painting “Candy Store”. I also swooned over the Jeff Liao photo of the Flatiron building, that houses my publisher, McMillian Press. It was a montage of 120 photos all photoshopped, no easy task. When I introduced myself, Julie mentioned that she loved Bergdorf, but had moved over to Uniqlo. Their clothing captures exactly the item you are looking for today and hooks you in with the 25 $ price tag……Of course you can’t wear it to a party or to marry your daughter.Vicky Tiel and Julie Saul in front of the Jeff Liao photo of the Flat Iron Building. Photograph by Ed Baynard.

The late Robert DeNiro, Sr.’s paintings from the 60′s were being shown at the DC Moore Gallery. His Matisse style corps et objects in happy colors reminds me of my mom’s oil paintings of that time and also reminds me of the incredible inspiration Matisse had on modern art, the color and the stroke as well as the composition.

Romare Bearden's, "Circe's Domaine"

The hot find of our day was in the back passageway of DC Moore, where I fell in LOVE with Romare Bearden’s, “Circe’s Domaine”. The color -block background of this naive dreamscape paper collage, his happy perfect world is the big movement of fashion color today. The color blocked pattern clothes and accessories are edged in black detail much like the late sixties, St Laurent’s Mondrian dresses. That color block look is here again in clothes, in decor, and maybe soon in cars! I now wear hot pink or lime green socks with my color block shoes and neon shoe laces (introduced by Chris Martin of Coldplay). I have also added a wide piece of purple silk cut velvet across the cushions of my chrome yellow couch in my mountain cabin, just to feel the joy of the shocking colors.

Robert DeNiro, Sr. Photograph by Ed Baynard.

A visit to Pace Gallery where Claes Oldenberg and his late girlfriend, Coosje van Bruggen presented works from Il Corso del Coltello performance art in Venice 1986, was a must see as he has not had a New York exhibit for 7 years. Claes was a leader in the world of POP ART and an BIG influence on Everything is Art, allowing many emotional artists who can’t draw to express themselves merely by calling attention to their art, often by its size. I do feel, coming from Paris (where my dress shop is in the middle of the art world on Rue Bonaparte) that smaller art is coming back.

Sheila Hicks wall hanging. Photograph by Ed Baynard.

Sheila Hicks works from the last 50 years were at Sikkema -Jenkins, a female artist that lives in Paris as well. Ed respects her art. He and other artists and critics petitioned MoMA to include many more women — taking their art from the permanent collection, and then installing them in the exhibition spaces. They felt the exhibitions presented too few women artist’s work. The history of art is no longer men’s history alone. And they made their point, as MoMA changed their curatorial policies. He was mesmerized by Hick’s multi-thread, multi-color, wall hanging, as I was by the grey sculpture made of fibers looking like a monster from The Thing. Hicks’ woven textiles in the small frames, were timeless textures, her colors changing with the times.

Claes Oldenberg at Pace Gallery. Photograph by Ed Baynard.

Polly Apfelbaum's "Flattened Funkytown". Photograph by Ed Baynard.

We both loved Polly Apfelbaum’s “Flattened Funkytown “at D’Amelio’s Gallery, a full floor based collage made up of crushed creme colored panne velvet that Polly hand dyed and cut out in organic pieces she placed as they exploded onto the floor. I can imagine tie-dyed, hippie, crushed velvet pants returning for fall. I want a pair, I want Polly’s look exploding on my thighs.

Brancusi photograph. Photograph by Ed Baynard.

A trip to see Brancusi was a must not miss…We ran over to 24thSt to see the Brancusi photographs at Bruce Silverstein. I remember visiting Venice as a kid and seeing Peggy Guggenheim’s home and the Mariano Marino sculpture in front of the Grand Canal; falling in love with him and Brancusi. Venice was the place to fall in love with CONTEMPORARY art, as it was so OLD and the art was so young! The woman in the photo, Lizica Codreanu, is wearing a modern fashion statement, pleats and safety pins and whatever it takes to shock and destroy the beautiful body for the sake of getting noticed. Amazed that she could wear it today.

Yves St Laurent's "Mondrian" day dress.

How many award winning dress designers do anything to be noticed, to get fame, yet sell next to nothing? Then we wonder why they self destruct! Fashion-Art is meant to be profitable.There are not many Yves St Laurent’s who could draw, sew, and understand the challenge to interpret art into fashion and sell it!

Late lunch was a stop at Poseidon on 45th and 9th. We ate Spanakopita, a Greek spinach filled light pastry and the owner made us real French expresso. Desert was homemade halavah, baklava, and a second coffee. I bought a prune filled pastry for tomorrow’s breakfast and jumped on a train to my mountain cabin.

We had Fun ….Tonite we are Young! ….join us again……

VICKY TIEL began designing clothes forty years ago in Paris and still owns a boutique there, as well as dedicated mini-boutiques in Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus. In fall 2010 she launched a line of cocktail dresses and special occasion wear sold through department stores nationwide. Her memoir, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DRESS: What I Learned in 40 Years about Men, Women, Sex, and Fashion was published by St. Martin’s Press in August 2011.

I will be the first French couturier to sell dresses on HSN!

My beautifully cut dress patterns that only were used in custom couture clothing will now be available for every woman. My first appearance on HSN will be in the evening of April 25 at 11 p.m. EST, and again at 2 a.m., when the HSN pros all shop.
Among the designs for sale are Elizabeth Taylor’s caftans, including a short version of the navy chiffon gown that in the recent Christie’s auction sold for $8,700, but now it will be available to all, in solids and a brightly colored French bubble print of grass green and turquoise.

Also for sale on HSN TV will be the caftan of her daughter Liza, inspired by a hippie scarf skirt Liza found at 16 at the Antiquarius Market on the Kings Road in London. I have been selling the “Liza caftan” since it first appeared in Henri Bendel’s in 1971, in beautiful kashmir prints and pastel ombré chiffons. The first clients were Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand. Then, it was sold for $450; now, in 2012, it will cost about $150 in the identical lime green, purple and pink kashmir print. Ladies can wear “the Liza ” serving summer dinners on their back deck, or at spring proms or beach weddings — unlike Elizabeth, who only wore it lying around hotel suites eating room service on silver trays.

I just had the delight of being invited to meet Retailer of the Year the amazing CEO of HSN, Mindy Grossman, at the March of Dimes Beauty Ball in New York. Mindy was the guest of honor at the Beauty Ball. I sat at Mindy’s table next to the beautiful blond hostess of the evening, Deborah Norville (from Georgia, she confessed, as I mentioned that I live in Paris and nearby Alabama).

At our table were the other HSN Celebrity Fashion Designers, Iman and Tommy Hilfiger. We dined in the ballroom of Cipriani’s and Le Toute New York in the beauty world was there in splendor… Beauty sells… As the Vicky Tiel fragrances in my sculpted goddess bottles have been selling for 22 years.

Mindy spoke on stage about the work accomplished for children today by the March of Dimes and then she sat next to me and handed me two old photos. I had made her wedding dress and later the dress she wore for the bat mitzvah her daughter. I had touched her life in a major way and now she was touching mine. After 48 years, Mindy would bring my Paris creations to all the ladies in America. Our collaboration was meant to be.

For decades I have been asked to manufacture less expensive clothing in China. Once, more than a decade ago, the still-dashing Oleg Cassini (at 85), asked me to discuss making clothes with his company, Hero Industries, and we met at the St Regis bar in New York. I turned down both his professional and personal demands after drinks, mentioning the Hero production quality was not up to my standards, and that I had a younger husband and would not consider breaking my marriage vows. Oleg was not used to being turned down.

I continued to produce only couture and my handmade clothes have now been exclusive in Bergdorf and Neiman Marcus for more than 20 years. It was hard to imagine any change… however…

I found the dream company in the New York-based G111, owned by my couture dress clients, Arlene and Morris Goldfarb (as I also did their daughters wedding gown). Their manufacturing quality today is superb… for us Frenchies. They produce Calvin Klein dresses and in the past few years having built a several-hundred-million dollar dress house, bringing Calvin’s cool to the working woman.

Now they will have the Queen of the Bustiers (as People magazine called me), the queen of seduction. I learned the art of seduction from my glamorous stars and the powerful women I’ve had the honor to dress. How to seduce through clothing! I wrote a book about it that I will also sell on the HSN show. Now I will teach every woman my power secrets… so ladies give yourself a reward and tune in!

Vicky Tiel began designing clothes 40 years ago in Paris and still owns a boutique there. Her couture dresses are available in Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, and her perfumes are carried in Perfumania. Her memoir, It’s All About the Dress: What I Learned in 40 Years About Men, Women, Sex, and Fashion was published by St. Martin’s Press in August 2011.

Ed Baynard received it, too, and we both thought that this was too good not to share. I emailed Vicky back to ask if I could and she typed back, “Share away!”So if you’re not in Paris, here are Vicky’s observations on what the fashion elite currently are wearing and a few other anecdotes.  And if you haven’t read her book yet, you need to! It’s better than any reality show on TV!It’s Fashion Week in Paris and there are no cabs… The first day I hired a limo with a handsome young French driver who told me “France is Back! America loves us again. We won the Oscar!”
Today I did the fashion walk, from St. Germain de Pres across Notre Dame and the back garden down the Ile St. Louis across the Pont Sully, (where the king of Saudi Arabia tore down the Hotel Lambert home of the Rothshchild family and the most beautiful home in Paris to put in underground parking on the river), then up into the Marais, and back across the Pont des Arts from The Hotel de Ville. Here is the latest news…

Men are wearing lime green pants. Women have gone from tight red jeans to coral. Jeans all have cuffs. Ultra wide belts are worn over layered clothing. Shorts are back for daywear and they also have cuffs, worn with black tights, high booties, and faux fur vests over soft full sleeved romantic blouses. Chiffon granny print mini dresses are worn under skin tight black leather biker jackets and more black tights. Patchwork floral dresses with ribbons, coat and peasant dresses and floppy hats, with open toe booties or worn with sheer lacy socks. Patchwork lame print tennis shoes with red vinyl heels. Vinyl black tight hooker pants mixed with chic Burberry trench coats shortened into jackets in bright colors with large black Buttonsall cool men only wear brown shoes. It’s gone worldwide. (I just passed a hunky Frenchman with his wife wearing deep purple corduroy slacks with a sand suede jacket and the darker brown suede oxford shoe).

For the ladylike look, the new swing coat in bright solid colored silks, worn over black shifts, very Margaret Thatcher. I have been wearing my leopard taffeta cocoon puffy coat and suede booties with coral faux fur lining and turning heads. It’s a piece unique, the only coat in Paris. It’s a thrill to wear a one of a kind item in Paris and see the heads turn. My beautiful sixteenth century courtyard boutique of 44 years at 21 Rue Bonaparte in the 6th arrondissement has reopened under the management of my goddaughter Tullulah Rufus-Issacs and her partner Julia Van Hagan. The two beautiful 24-year-old Brits, much like Mia and Vicky 40 years ago have incorporated fashion and art, into The Space. There are also a bit of current Vicky Tiel, also vintage pieces, my book and fragrances as well as a mix of other artist’s pieces you can not live without. The Space is a fresh idea, soon to be franchised in London and Los Angeles.

Everything moves on. As the French say, “plus ca change, plus ca reste le meme.” The more it changes, the more it stays the same.
This is true for fashion as the look is the same as in 1968 when Mia-Vicky opened, except for the men in lime green pants. The swinging ’60s are back!For a special  treat I invited myself to an afternoon matinee of Jean Dujardin’s next film. After winning the Oscar, he stars in the just released Les Infidels. The waiters at the outdoor cafe next door to the theater on the Blvd. St Germain were complaining to me about the long lines to get in. They are losing their regular seated outdoor customers with the crazy frenzy of the wide long lines to enter the theater.

The movie was a sexy romp. Dujardin was naked and buff for a lot of the movie. The film was a series of vignettes, a study of the unfaithful French male and their picadillos, including bondage, cougars, and you have to see it to believe it sex. Will the film be allowed and acclaimed in conservative America? If so, Dujardin will have a bigger reputation than just being the only Frenchman to win an Oscar. He has managed to combine France’s two leading stars of the ’60s into one body, half Jean-Paul Belmondo, half Alain Delon. Plus ca change…

My husband, Mike woke me up at night to tell me the tragic news. The last time he woke me up was for the sudden death Princess Diana. My world of glamourous celebrities is not of much interest to my earthy, fishing boat captain husband, however these two ladies had obviously touched his heart.

I had mentioned to Mike that I had designed dresses for Whitney, as I had previously dressed her mom, Cissy Houston. Cissy and I had met in a dressing room in a posh shop in New Jersey; in the custom couture department. I was making her gown for the 1993 Grammy’s. Whitney was to appear, and Cissy was to sit with her at the row, as was Dionne Warwick, Whitney’s aunt.

As it always happens, my nearly nude client in the dressing room unravels as I measure her and the sad details of her daughter emerge. The sorrows and joys that encompass the events of my customers always emerge and suddenly, I am listening to the story of Whitney’s derailment with her new lover, Bobby Brown; a hopeless coke addict. Her mother was totally against him, but could do nothing to convince her hardheaded daughter to leave him, she was used to always having her way.

I had my own story of hope to warm the heart of Cissy. I too, had been drinking too much French Champagne, overdoing pills and pot, and had a two years of sobriety at that point. Cissy asked me how I stopped and I told her the story I tell everyone.

After a year of raising my hand at AA meetings to declare my sobriety, I met some fellow addicts downstairs after a Paris AA meeting and invited them back to my apartment on the Seine to smoke some good California pot. They immediately informed me they would not join me, and urged me to go to the “other” meeting; the NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting, as I was clearly in denial. Drugs counted, and I had to stop raising my hand that I was sober.

The following week I went to my first New York NA meeting at St. Vincent’s hospital, with over one hundred people in attendance. There, a young, very large, athletic looking, black man spoke on stage and said his mother was responsible for his sobriety. He owed his life to her. After the meeting I walked over to him and asked him what his mother did, thinking I will follow her lead. He  simply replied, “She prayed to God.”

There is much said about addiction being a disease. That is true. We have choices in life, towards happiness or towards misery. Our sense of self gets in the way, our sense of power gets in the way. We want to be in control, especially the beautiful, the famous, the celebrated, the stars. They remember when they weren’t famous, they need proof of power every second of every minute.

To be rid of any addiction from drugs to sex to gambling one has to turn power over and pray. Sadly, people who can’t pray, who can’t turn it over to any “higher power”, have a rough go of it. It doesn’t generally work. The disease part stays and becomes another addiction, often an addiction to meetings! Happiness and the peace it brings is not achieved.

Whitney a few years later became my client. I dressed her just before she stopped touring. She was my favorite female singer. Her stylist told me the floor-length, skin-tight, mummy jersey dresses I made for her in many colors had to have long sleeves to cover her arms; to hide “you know what”. May she now rest in peace with the higher power she couldn’t find in life.

My life so far, has been a dream, a big pink and blue rainbow of a dream of, “I Can’t Believe That Just Happened Moments.” I had the pleasure of hearing Patti Smith on a makeshift stage in a posh restaurant singing on a plain wooden stool, telling her audience about her mother growing up and loving Elizabeth Taylor and Patti loving her too. She was dedicating these meaningful songs to Elizabeth’s family — the guests of honor at the dinner. I realized this was another of my “I Can’t Believe It Moments” that I could add to my long list.

The remembrance dinner was called “Celebrating Elizabeth,” and was given by photographer Bruce Weber and his wife, Nan Bush. They were devoted friends of Elizabeth since the departure of Richard. It was held at La Grenouille, the posh New York eatery made famous by Truman Capote, and the ladies who lunch.

Patti Smith was visibly shaken while starting her first song and had to stop — to explain how deep her feelings were and restart; her emotions had overwhelmed her and supreme silence enveloped the room as she held us captive with these words of apology and her guttural style of singing through pain, “I will keep remembering, the shadow of her smile.” How did she know that song was Richard and Elizabeth’s personal love song? I went into shock. It was from the film The Sandpiper — the film where I met Elizabeth and met my husband, Ron Berkeley. It was the film where it all started for me in Paris in 1964. I began my 20 years of living large with the Taylor-Burton family.

Many of the guests were from Hollywood. Joel Schumacher, Sofia Coppola. Some from fashion: Anna Sui, Carolina Herrera. Some from the arts: Most of them did not know Elizabeth, they were Bruce Weber’s guests. Some did not know Patti Smith’s music well, including Liza, her daughter — but they do now!

2012-02-10-sueB.jpgThe auction was a tremendous success, as was the preview to the auction. For days, women had lined up with the hard copy catalog viewing, “The Wandering Peregrini Pearl,” chewed up by Elizabeth’s white Maltese dog, Ofie, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, while Elizabeth filmed “The Only Game in Town.” The pearl, painted by Velasquez, worn by another Queen, was purchased by Richard for $37,000 and sold for $11,700,000, with a new elaborate attached diamond and ruby collar.

I was surprised at the popularity of the magnificent caftans and the beautifully displayed home wear, on white marble mannequins across a great show room without beds, as Elizabeth lived primarily in hotel rooms and brought caftans out of the Arab souk and into the boudoir and into the mainstream. My navy chiffon caftan that I had made for her in 1966 for about $200 (a month’s rent), was today sold for $8700. I had not planned it, but suddenly it came to me.

I decided to produce a line of Elizabeth’s caftans to join the first dress collection that I will produce for Home Shopping Network, with a fabulous production team who will produce them, who had previously worked only with major American stores, such as Macy’s and Lord and Taylor. I will be the first French couturier to sell on American TV a beautiful product from my original French patterns, which we can all wear and celebrate America’s favorite movie star. I know Elizabeth will look down from above, in a gorgeous lavender blue chiffon caftan and smile.

There are two types of people (in general): those Fearless and those Fearful. You know who you are! If you are fearless, find out what talent or work you are good at, whatever makes you happy, even later on in life, and do it!

As for finance, have a good business plan, save or find some money for the basics, and build your business one day at a time. If you can not find any money you are not Fearless… then go get a job!

If you are Fearful, forget about it and don’t look back. Enjoy the benefits of a life of semi-security, while knowing who to kiss up to, because you must have the intuition to know who’s in your company, what team player’s power you can attach yourself to. You could make it to the top of the ladder if your quarterback completes his passes. The team players and company owners have two very different sets of skills.

I remember once in Paris having words with Nicole, the chef d’atelier of my couture boutique. I had been having words to the effect that I would have not left early the day before, as she did. Instead, I would have stayed and redid the beading of a wedding gown until it was perfect, as the bride was expected to come in shortly. Instead of saying, “Oui, Madame”, Nicole grabbed scissors and ran after me screaming, “I’m not you, I don’t own anything”. At that moment I realized we are all created differently — workaholics, perfectionists, and everybody else!

I recently spoke about fashion at the Art and Initiatives Conference on the color red with Zandra Rhodes and Anna Sui. Afterwards, we had a delicious lunch at ABC Kitchen in downtown New York. There we were — three survivors of our own fashion houses — one French, one Brit, and one American, all women owners.

Fashion is the only industry in all the arts that requires four collections a year, four possibilities of failure, four times a year. You and your ego, and your talent are put to the ultimate test. Will someone buy my work?

2012-01-22-vzander350.jpg

None of us three were worse for wear. We actually thrived on the challenge and looked as delicious as the food, considering our total age was closing in on the downside of 200!

Like myself, after a 40-year career, Zandra opened her own museum in London dedicated to fashion and textile. She had spent a life in fashion, as her mother had been a fitter at Worth in Paris, and Zandra went into owning her own design company in her twenties, by creating her own fabrics and sewing her first dresses in her unique prints.

In my recently published memoir, It’s all about the Dress, I explain what the challenges of owning your own business are. Owning your own business makes you the artist, agent, manager and publicist of your company. You often trade off being at the top of your field for being at the top of your own little world. Anna Sui’s little world grew into a huge multimillion dollar empire.

Except if you are Martha Stewart — who left a 15-year career on Wall Street to cater parties in her posh Westport, Conn., suburb. We all know she is fearless. She ventured into Manhattan and catered my opening party at Bergdorf Goodman. It was 1981 and she served sushi. Martha brought taste and the arts into the modern American home and on her first video she wore my beaded gown, black, on the cover; the same gown that Elizabeth Taylor had recently wore in white. Wearing the perfect power dress for fearless females, Martha knew where she was going.

Changing careers, leaving a secure job with little future, is often the case. My Parsons School of Design classmate, Mary Alice Orito (class of 1964), was an early stylist for music videos, a costume designer on Broadway and of daytime soaps (Search for Tomorrow), until the labor strikes of 1988.

She saw an insecure future in costumes, went back to college and became a psychotherapist. Today, continuing her personal art work has lead to her first solo show with The National Association of Women Artists in New York in March. Continuing her private practice, her lucky patients are often artists and fashion folk, who are grateful to have an understanding fellow designer to listen to their torments.

Melissa Skoog was the real girl Anne Hathaway portrayed in “The Devil Wore Prada”; the Vogue assistant we fell in love with, and who ultimately ended up heading publicity at Prada. After keeping her head on after working with Anna Wintour and Miuccia Prada, Melissa came away with the enough foundation in fashion advertising to launch her own namesake publicity firm in Chicago with a new husband, a new baby in her life, and a marvelous blog, “On My Plate.”

I recently ended my four-month book tour in Palm Beach, where Elizabeth Fago, a young, fabulous philanthropist and nursing home developer, threw a party to end all parties. The party included serving a recipe from my book, Sophia Loren’s Pasta. The event was thrown by a beautiful young party planner, who also left a career in advertising to open Beth Beattie Events in a town that throws about 10 parties every night. After seven years, Beth’s business is a great moneymaker — proof that a young beautiful woman with a fearless nature and a desire to be her own boss can succeed in a town known for beautiful women, who basically lunch and shop on their wealthy husbands’ credit cards. After work she dates a handsome race car driver!

An exception to my rule about working with your man, are the husband and wife team of Amy Zerner and Monte Farber, who left their jobs as fine artist and musician to write 46 bestselling books on spirituality — all illustrated by Amy. They became a “Mom and Pop” conglomerate. They have no children, their togetherness knows no end, as their team and their work is their baby. After many years, Amy created soft jackets with her art in panels on the back. In 1999 she sold a few handmade pieces to Bergdorf Goodman, and now has grown and added Neiman Marcus. She has also recently designed jewelry. She told me she has lived out Joseph Campbell’s mantra, “Follow Your Bliss.”

The economy today has no guarantee to improve. 2012 can be the year for the young generation to bite the bullet. As Amy Zerner told me, “For us, our bliss and our happiness has been our journey together on the path to making our life a work of art, and our art a work of life.”

As I took a train up the Hudson River, working on this story, I realized that I now had another life as well. I no longer lived in Paris raising my children, with a driver and a cook, or lived in my Manhattan brownstone apartment taking yellow taxis to Bergdorf’s to measure my couture clients. Today I had to drive myself, drive up a snowy mountain to my writer’s cabin, to my new life, writing, lecturing, and sharing the lessons learned of a life well lived.

I will now fearlessly move on and reinvent myself. I will soon sell my beautifully made dresses on Home Shopping Network. For the first time a French couturier will present her bestselling creations for everybody.

It is a whole new world. It’s time to reinvent yourselves too! Be Fearless.

Elizabeth Taylor’s New Year’s Eve at Home, during our “fun years” in the sixties, consisted of family, fashion, and food.

Family consisted of her four kids, Michael, Chris, Liza and Maria; a few of Richard Burton’s Welsh Jenkins brothers and their wives; his daughter Kate; the dogs, Richard’s orange Peekenese, En’so, and her white Shitzu, Ofie (Ofie is the one who stole the La Peregrina Pearl that just sold in auction for $11.8 million); and whoever from her entourage wanted to ski the Alps. Gstaad was Elizabeth’s preferred New Year Eve location. Any leftover bodies that could not fit into her “Chalet Ariel” (bought during her Eddie Fisher moment) were stuffed into the Palace Hotel next door, at her expense.

Richard was happy simply to have a dozen good books for the holidays, but ET (ET was the nickname for Elizabeth that my husband Ron Berkeley, the Burtons’ makeup man, came up with long before ET was from outer space) was always ready for a crowd to “Party.” The crowd consisted of all of her loved ones gathered in one spot to eat glorious foods flown in from all her favorite restaurants in the world.

New Year’s Eve was no exception, even if she were not going out to Maxim’s or Taillevent in Paris, where an entrance gown was “required.” Fashion as usual was foremost; what jewels go with what pajamas in a ski chalet? Actually, a caftan was the solution; one could dress it up with jewels better than pajamas.
In the late sixties, I brought the perfect fashion solution back from Jerusalem, the Bedouin Arab caftan. The fabric was black velvet, with red orange and gold jeweled stripes, and it became a go-to-ski resort look. I sold these caftans in my shop in Paris and I was photographed wearing one by Elle Magazine in my rustic cabin-style studio on Rue du Dragon, and after that the Arab Caftan took off!

As for food, there was the ultimate New Year’s favorite: caviar and more caviar, and something posh and delicious to wash it down, such as Dom.

Elizabeth always called her favorite caviar “Grey Babies.” Grey Babies are the Iranian belugas sold in light blue six-inch containers. They are giant, pale grey beads like pearls. The dark smoky ones and small black ones are real gourmet no-nos. The bigger and paler, the better.

Ron told me of a night many years earlier at Debbie Reynolds’ house after Elizabeth “stole” Eddie Fisher. Ron was doing Debbie’s makeup for the powerful role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. The character she played made a fortune mining in Colorado, but Debbie herself was crying in Beverly Hills that night for her loss. Ron would soon leave America to work with Elizabeth on The Sandpiper in Paris.

Debbie had bought a very large tin of caviar (not Grey Babies) and had set it on the table in front of Ron. Friends of Debbie’s were at her home for cocktails. Debbie was pouring her heart out to Ron and then got angry at him for eating too much caviar.

Ron told me, “Debbie had no chance of keeping Eddie when Elizabeth decided she wanted him. Elizabeth was much too generous a person to not get any man she laid her eyes on. Elizabeth would have given me my own caviar tin!”

When I remarried twenty years later, I introduced my new husband, Mike Hamilton, to Elizabeth Taylor’s “New Year’s Eve Dinner” for the Millennium New Year while we were in Paris.

Wearing a pink chiffon pleated caftan, we first watched the midnight fireworks display over the Seine and the Eiffel Tower from the window of our apartment on Quai Henri IV. Then, we retired to our bedroom where we laid out three trays of caviar sandwiches, champagne (for Mike), pastries from Cafe Milles Feuilles on the Rue de Buci, and delicious pastel strawberry and pistachio macaroons from Laduree and watched all the New Year’s celebrations from around the world on French TV.

This is the sexiest candlelight supper to enjoy with the one you love!

Elizabeth Taylor Caviar Sandwiches Recipe:

Use large Idaho potatoes. Prick the skin of the potatoes, then rub the outsides with cooking oil (not olive oil), and bake at 350 degrees for one hour.

After removing from the oven, cut the potatoes in half lengthwise. Scoop out the insides, leaving only a little white potato clinging to the skins (save the insides for whipped Crème fraîche and butter mashed potatoes for the next day).

Fill one potato half with Crème fraîche and top with two or three giant tablespoons of Iranian Beluga Caviar “grey babies,” sprinkle on finely chopped white onions, and put the other crispy half of baked potato skin and close sandwich. Eat the sandwich with your hands in bed, off a silver platter. Share with your beloved and a glass of champagne.

Vicky Tiel began designing clothes forty years ago in Paris and still owns a boutique there. Her couture dresses are available in Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, and her perfumes are carried in Perfumania. Her memoir, “It’s All About the Dress: What I Learned in 40 Years about Men, Women, Sex, and Fashion” is published by St. Martin’s Press.

When I needed to find a new husband, I put on a RED dress, a red leather strapless mummy dress. “Red is the color to wear to get men,” I’ve been telling my customers for almost forty years.

The  power of Red was first revealed to me by Fred Hayman, who owned Georgio’s of Beverly Hills. Fred and his beautiful wife Gale first came to me to buy my dress line in Paris in 1971. Fred saw my show and was horrified. I only offered my then infamous draped jersey Torrid gown in black and pastels.

Fred, with the authority of a fashion professor, proclaimed to the astonished French model, “Vicky, the first color that I sell a gown in is black, because women in black look the skinniest, the second color is RED, so women can excite the men, the third color is white, for their tans and their weddings, and the last color I sell is a great blue. This year it’s turquoise… and forget the rest!”

I will be speaking next week at Initiatives in Art and Culture 13th Annual Fashion Conference, in New York this year, on the color RED and I learned about RED from the best; Mr. Rodeo Drive.

At only 26, I was asked by Jean Rosenberg, fashion director under Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel’s, to join Jean Muir and Zandra Rhodes (who will also speak at the RED fashion conference) at their store. Bendel’s innovative “shop of shops” became the number one go-to fashion destination in New York in 1970.

The first collection for my boutique on the second floor’s opening European collections was a new notion… leather dresses for day and chiffon for night. Upstairs on the third floor was Steven Burrows, also with a new boutique; silver-studded black leather mod sportswear. With the launch of my Bendel’s dress-leather line, I added a novel idea; a leather jumpsuit in red.

My first big name client to order the jumpsuit was Barbra Streisand. She ordered it first in navy, then came back and ordered it in red. When Barbara wore the red leather jumpsuit in public she changed her image. Sporting a new chic Paris fashion look, a change from her hippie thrift shop granny style she was known to wear, she attracted a different male. In her new sleek, sexed up look she suddenly dated actor Ryan O’Neal and hairdresser, Jon Peters… Hollywood Hot Men.

The very first catsuit (a skintight body with a foot) ever made for street wear was in snakeskin cashmere for Ursula Andress in What’s New Pussycat. This one piece pant combined with a top garment with a zipper was now called a “jumpsuit” by the the fashion press. One piece pants had been worn before as overalls, but never for evening and never for sex.

I ordered a red leather jumpsuit for myself and wore it on the set of X Y and Zee in London, a film with Elizabeth Taylor, the backer of my shop in Paris. My husband, Ron Berkeley, was doing her makeup.
Seeing me, Elizabeth squealed, “Oh PLEASE, Vicky, make me a red jumpsuit too! RED is the color of the Welch flag, and it would really please Richard.”

The idea of Elizabeth Taylor’s stupendous breasts encased in red leather and crushed inside a giant zipper was hard for me to imagine, but I told her, “I’ll make one for you as soon as possible.”

I never saw her wear it in public, but Richard made comments to Ron. “My wife’s gone kinky on me! She comes on to me in this red leather outfit and slowly undoes the zipper… ” I could picture the whole scene. Elizabeth loved sex and games.

Several years later I was wearing my same red leather jumpsuit when Richard arrived from Switzerland with his new wife Suzy Hunt. Suzy was a model from South Africa, five-nine and blonde, quite the opposite of Elizabeth. Richard had met her on the ski slopes after his separation. Unable to stand being alone, a quick romance led to a quick divorce from her race car driving husband James, and a quick marriage to Richard.
When Suzy saw me in my red leather jumpsuit she took me aside,” =Love, I have to have one. Rich will love it, since RED is his favorite color and it stands for Wales”.

Oh my God, I truly had a designer moment. Should I let wife number four wear the same red leather jumpsuit as wife (two and three)? Richard and Elizabeth had married each other twice; I gave in. Of course, I’ll make you one next week.” I promised and hoped Elizabeth would forgive me.

And so I made it and Suzy loved it, owned it, and wore it everywhere with Richard.

Elizabeth never said a word. We stayed friends. Her generous nature understood my my fashion designer’s dilemma.

Richard’s marriage to Suzy Hunt lasted six years. She met a man in Puerta Vallarta, a friend of all of ours, and left all the movie crazies to settle down with him in Mexico and help manage his hotel.

Sally Hay was next. She had been a production secretary for Richard during the filming of Wagner in Austria. Sally was a medium size, normal looking brunette Englishwoman. She looked like Richard’s secretary and was very eager to change  that  image by having me design some French high fashion for her, including one RED leather jumpsuit.

For more on the  conference on the conference.. RED, Allure, Style, Significance (Dec 2 and 3) visit www.artinitiatives.com. Telephone: (646) 485-1952.

With my partner, Mia Fonssagrives (daughter of Lisa Fonssagrives, top model and stepdaughter of photographer Irving Penn ), I left Parsons School of Design in New York for Paris in May 1964. Wearing our own designs, dresses and coats, often in leather and suede, always worn three to four inches above the knee, and worn with printed tights and matching T Shirts, we made the world press by July of 1964. Paris fashion photographers couldn’t get enough… I have always been awarded singular credit for inventing hot pants and beaded lace bras worn on the street (as nobody wanted credit for that look but me).

In the early 1960′s, Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn and the Givenchy shift dominated fashion and the world’s skirts were just covering the knee. Pearls were part of the chic “love me, but don’t touch me” look and bras were thick cotton and ironed into torpedo points. That look was not going to get me this hot man.

The truth is that the creation of the worlds first mini was over a MAN. I fell in love with a charismatic blue eyed blond folk singer, Steve Denaut in Greenwich Village. He was wearing the first skin tight black leather pants I’d ever seen, with no underwear and a matching sleeveless black vest. It was not him but a life size POSTER standing in front of the Playhouse Cafe on MacDougal Street in early October 1961. I went inside that night and heard Steve sing “Daddy Ball Em” while strumming his guitar. Having loved Elvis, this was a new sound, folk singing. I fell in love with the man and his music. I had moved to New York from posh Chevy Chase, Maryland to attend fashion school at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and in an instant I knew I had to move to the Village, I had to have Steve, and I knew that a special dress would do the trick.

In the fall of 1961, I bought four soft black leather skins and made a vest to match Steve’s, but fringed the bottom, with a scissors and pushed up multiple colored beads into the fringe. I made a matching shoulder bag with fringe and beads. There was a tiny bit of leather left over and I made a skirt stopping two inches above my knee, which I kept cutting shorter and shorter, thus the birth of the mini. I shortened the leather until he was MINE.
I was soon hired as a “pass the hat girl” for the Playhouse Cafe and collected money for my folk singers, Bobby Zimmerman (Bob Dylan), Ritchie Havens, Fred Neil, and Steve, who renamed me “Peaches Latour”. Steve was married, had a daughter Lisa, (Rosanna Arquette), and was recently separated from his wife, Brenda, who had been a nude model for artists. I had some serious competition.

In my village apartment, I continued to sell leather clothes for men and women and used the money to move to Paris.
Mia and I showed our short leather clothes in the couture shows in Paris July 1964 after having been “discovered ” by couturier, Louis Feraud. Our four inch above the knee dresses were called ‘YeYe’ fashions by the press, not minis. In London in the same summer, John Bates the designer of the house of Jean Veron, one of the first English ready to wear houses, designed above the knee dresses in Pop Art style. He would put these dresses on Diana Rigg, a Shakespearean actress playing the first modern power-woman on TV in” The Avengers”. She was recently named one of the top one hundred sexiest women in film. In 1965 she wore skin tight plastic jumpsuits for street wear, as her formidable character, Mrs Emma Peel.

Mary Quant and her husband publicist, Alexander Plunkett Green, opened a dress shop in London, called Bazaar. In the summer of 1964, he publicized that she invented the miniskirt giving the short skirt a name Mini, after her favorite car, but hardly inventing it as, Mr Bates had previously shown the length, the first above the knee dresses shown in England.

Mia and I could hardly care less as to claim inventing something as we were creating so many new clothes while doing movie costumes, being photographed au natural for our shopping bag, and signing multiple licensing contracts of printed and lace stockings, clogs, thigh high boots, bedroom slippers for shoes, the ‘Pussycat’ one piece jumpsuits in cashmere snakeskin worn by Ursula Andress… and of course the no bra worn under lace tops and matching lace tights over black leather, which takes me back to how I closed the deal and really got Steve to fall in love with ‘Peaches’ in the Village. Today I still possess my last mini, made at Feraud in Winter of 1965. It was in black couture wool, fourteen inches from waist to hem. Today the mini is back and it takes a special woman to wear that length, a strong shapely leg and a stronger sense of personal power.
The wrap dress was first designed in 1946 by a great American designer who died way too young. Claire McCardell’s first wrapped around dress was a wide sleeved cotton striped dress with one large pocket in the front and side ties at the waist and she called it “The Popover”. Millions were sold.

In the early 1962 I met Mia Fonnsagrives at Parsons in Manhattan. I had charmed Daddy to let me transfer schools so I could live in Greenwich Village. I entertained the folk singers in my floor through pink brownstone apartment on Jones Street with parties called “happenings”, and Mia happened to walk in one night with an orange fake poodle fur coat she had whipped up, over an orange wool wrap around skirt that was four inches above the knee and tied to the side.We perfected that skirt as designers in Paris when we made the wrap dress that tied at the waist in snappy bright pink rayon prints for Joan Arkin for Bloomingdales and the dress made the windows. It also made Redbook magazine In May1967. We used it that year in the movie “Candy”, where Ewa Aulin seduces Ringo Starr, wearing the wrap dress in mint green. It became a staple in fashion in Europe soon afterwards in many Milanese sportswear collections. Then in 1971 it is “invented” by Diane Von Furstenberg, who probably had assistants who designed with her and probably didn’t realize that design was already out there. She certainly popularized it, as did Mary Quant with the mini. They did not invent these designs.

The fashion industry has a tremendous number of suicides, one of it’s artists Alexander McQueen is the most recent. My Parsons graduating class had a suicide of our most promising female designer. It’s an industry with an unusual amount of pressure to succeed season after season. I have been working until now since 1968 without a break. There are four seasons to fill up the stores with new clothes, that must SELL. I lecture young students to work as hard as they possibly can but to not take any criticism to heart. Just learn. Often the worst students, like myself at fashion school, have the most novel talent and a talent that is hard for older teachers to visualize. Artists must fulfill their creative needs and not worry or fret about who is INSPIRED by their work… just create and be happy every day, happy to not have a paperwork job, for being an artist is a great gift.

Before her death, I sat at at the glamorous Rita Hayworth Alzheimer’s Ball, something I rarely do anymore, with Eleanor Lambert, the doyenne of the fashion publicity world, who established the Best Dressed List. The grand dame spoke, and all artists should listen to her brilliant advise. She told me as I was discussing the MINI wars and who did what first and she quietly said ” Vicky, it doesn’t matter who did what first, the only thing that matters is that you are GOOD and that you LAST.”

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