Lily Pad

March 29, 2006 The Chinese Government puts the kibosh on my underwear fashion show; Comrade Zhou Enlai to the rescue; The Underwear Revolution Will be Televised!

I awake in a semi-dark room, unsure of where I am and how much time has passed. The air is thick with the smell of burning opium. As I sit up and try to gain my bearings, I notice that the room is dimly lit by candles surrounding an altar made up of a Bodhisattva comically flanked by two ceramic Chairman Mao statuettes. I look over to my left and there is Lulu, snoring loudly while clutching an opium pipe in one hand and one of her handbags in the other. A few feet away from her is a young-ish Chinese man wearing what appears to be a high fashion version of a Sun Yat-sen jacket and a pair of Evisu jeans, and I realize it’s my dear friend and ex-fling, Comrade Zhou Enlai-Manchu the III…and the events of the previous day come flooding back to me….

Lulu and I had a disappointing meeting with an official from the Chinese Ministry of Fashion, where we were told that they had reversed their decision to sponsor our underwear fashion show at the Jade Buddha Temple. They were very sorry but they just didn’t think it was appropriate to have women dressed in lingerie parading around a Buddhist temple and it must have been a miscommunication, because the Ministry of Religion never would have approved something like that. Never mind that I happen to know that the “monks” at those temples are not real Buddhists at all, but merely paid employees of the Communist Party. So, we were without a venue and also without models because the Ministry of Fashion had formerly agreed to supply them. Distraught, I called the only person I knew with clout in the government—my dear friend and ex-fling, Comrade Zhou Enlai-Manchu the III, who is one of the more progressive members of the Communist Party.

“I will take care of everything,” Comrade Zhou promised me. “We find new location for show and I get you much better lingerie models. We do show outdoors in front of Peal of the Orient Tower in Pudong and I will hire Shanghainese showgirls to model.” From what I can remember, this all came together over dinner at a splendid Hunan restaurant somewhere near the French Concession….and after that, we spent hours on the dancefloor of Park 97, a fashionably louche Shanghai disco. I seem to recall doing the tango with the delectable Chinese pop star, Aaron Kwok.

And then of course I remembered that Comrade Zhou always knew where to get the most divoon opium, so here we are. Suddenly, Lulu starts wiggling and sits up with a start.

“Oh my head….where the hell am I?” She glances up at the quasi-Buddhist altar. “Oh no, not another Vivienne Tam store opening….at the last one she served martinis that I swear were made from gasoline!”

“We’re still in Shanghai, dear,” I say struggling to stand up so I can locate where my Balenciaga trench coat has ended up. “In the care of my dear friend, Comrade Zhou.” At the mention of his name, Zhou begins to stir and also sits up.

“I love this song! Lily, come dance with me!” He begins to stand and then collapses, knocking over one of the Mao statuettes with a loud clatter.

“My dear Comrade Zhou!” I exclaim as I rush over to help him up. “We’re not at the disco anymore…we’re in your delightful boudoir.”

“Ah yes,” he says, regaining his senses. “What a pleasure it is having you as my guest again…..and don’t we have a show to put on? An underwear extravaganza!”

“Oh no,” Lulu moans. “We’re not really going through with that nutty idea, are we?”

“Not only are we going through with it,” I admonish her. “But Comrade Zhou and I have decided that you should play the lead…..but we can discuss all this over dim sum—and then off to the rehearsal studio!”

After breakfast Comrade Zhou takes us to the ballet studio where we will plan our show….an all-underwear revue of “Red Women’s Troop”, one of the Yang Ban Xi, the 8 model works that were performed during the Cultural Revolution. Various female ballet dancers are positioned around the room, stretching and practicing dance moves. A clothing rack with lingerie - various styles of red bras and panties - on hangers stands in front of a row of mirrors.

“Let’s try this wig,” I say, as I pull a black bob hair piece over Lulu’s head. “Comrade Zhou, will you hand me those black eyeglasses…..yes, the Coke bottle ones…there we go…ta da!” Lulu glances at herself in one of the studio’s full-length mirrors and winces.

“What the hell is this look all about?” she whines. “I didn’t know Edith Head was a ballet dancer.”

“No, no, no, Comrade Lulu, don’t be silly,” I tell her as I twirl her around and begin holding up various sets of bras and panties in front of her body. “You’re going to be Jiang Qing—Madame Mao!”

Lulu stands in silent shock for a few minutes. “You are a madwoman, Lily Pad,” she says as her face flushes red. “And they are going to lock you up and throw away the key!”

“Oh don’t you fret, darling,” I say as I wrap a red push-up bra around her bosom over her blouse. “You’ll be a sexy version of her—think Madame Mao meets Bettie Page.”

“This is ludicrous! We cannot stage a Communist propaganda ballet in this day and age here in China—it’s preposterous!”

“The Yang Ban Xi is very trendy now,” Comrade Zhou informs her. “Many Chinese rock musicians are influenced by it.”

“See, Lulu? Listen to Comrade Zhou, he knows,” I say as I lift up Lulu’s leg and struggle to pull a pair of red panties up it. “Now, let’s go over your lines. After you pull out this toy gun and ‘execute’ one of the evil landowners, who will be wearing a pair of black low-rise briefs, you will get down on all fours—but do try to be sexy about it Comrade Lulu—and shout ‘I am Mao’s dog, I bite whoever he tells me to bite!’”

“Are you out of your mind?!” Lulu cries as I pull the panties up her other leg. “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever…”

“Comrade Lulu,” I say imperiously. “If you want me to get those woolly mammoth handbags of yours into the hands of the right celebrities next month, you will do as I tell you.”

“But that’s blackmail!”

“No, Comrade Lulu. It’s revolution,” I say quietly. “Now…get on your knees.”

March 17, 2006 While Lulu and I were recovering from our jetlag, we received this email missive from Michael Kleinmann, C.O.O. of Freshpair.com

Freshpair is one of my treasured men's underwear and lingerie clients. Michael sent me these marvelous digital images from his vacation in Uruguay and balmy Buenos Aires, Argentina. It brought back fond memories of the time I produced an outdoor Tracy Feith fashion show on the beach in BA, and Robert Duvall the actor--who relocated to BA sometime ago--was a guest of honor.

Michael reports that he and his partner Jason stayed at the glorious Four Seasons Hotel (Lulu claims to have once stayed there during her South American "modeling" days) and I was happy to see he followed some of my travel suggestions: He dined on the divoon beef that is served at the trendy Casa Cruz and strolled along the marvelous Avenue Santa Fe...I also have fond (childhood) memories of strolling along that splendid avenue, arm-in-arm with Tennessee Williams, a few years before his passing. A place that Michael highly recommends is Cluny, a stylish French bistro on El Salvador Avenue.

Michael's view at the Four Seasons - The Rolling Stones were staying in the suite above them! Luckily those old timers don't party as loudly as they used to!

Eviiiita! Eviiita! Michael visited the palace of the infamous and glamorous Argentinean dictator, Eva Peron. To the left is the balcony where the chic despot made her famed address. A little over to the right is a rumpus room where I once had a tequila-fueled indiscretion with a swarthy Marxist guerrilla. Don't ask me how we ended up in there--that's a story for another time, dear readers.

Ah yes, behold the tomb of the divine, despicable Evita. How I adore the melancholy grandeur of great leaders' resting places. And that concludes my vicarious report of Buenos Aires. Now if you'll excuse me, Lulu and I have a meeting with the Chinese Ministry of Fashion, to discuss the lingerie fashion show I will be staging at the Jade Buddha Temple in a few days!

xoxox

Lily

March 16, 2006 Lulu and I caught this Wacoal underwear commercial on our hotel TV - the ad is from Japan with Chinese subtitles

Wacoal is another one of my clients.

March 12, 2006 What kind of underwear did Madame Mao wear: Olga, Warner's or Maidenform?

 

"Why aren't we staying at the Grand Hyatt?" Lulu moans, as we enter our lovely yet dusty Art Noveau-designed room at the historic Peace Hotel on the Bund in Shanghai. "This place looks very shop-worn....and it feels deserted!"

"The Grand Hyatt is expensive! I knew I shouldn't have spoiled you with that first class flight," I admonish her as I throw my suitcase down on the bed, which causes a cloud of dust to erupt from the bedspread. "And there's a very specific reason I chose this hotel."

  "Don't tell me - you once slept with the owner and we're getting a discount," Lulu says as she opens one of her suitcases, only to find that it's been surreptitiously stuffed with Donna Karan lingerie in lieu of her personal clothing. "Oh bloody hell! I thought you had these damn bras and panties FedExed here!"

"Wow Lulu, you must think I'm made of money," I tell her. "And don't you worry about your clothes - we'll get you a nice cheongsam at one of the local markets. We'll give you a total Wong Kar-Wai makeover! Your wardrobe was starting to look a little dated anyway."

"I don't know how you talked me into this trip," Lulu groans as she sticks her head in the minibar and starts rooting around like a pig digging for truffles. "Now tell me again why we're staying in this flea trap while Jack-the-struggling-freelancer is at a 5-star hotel."

"We're staying here at the Peace Hotel," I begin grandly, "because this is where Madame Mao and the rest of the Gang of Four where headquartered during the Great Cultural Revolution of 1966. Our mission, my dear fashion comrade, is to stage another kind of revolution -- an underwear revolution."

Lulu emerges from the minibar clutching a small bottle of Moet. She stares at me blankly and is silent for several long moments. "Oh. My. God. It's worse than I thought. You have lost your mind," she says finally.

"Don't be so dramatic Lu," I say as I pluck the mini-bottle of Moet from her grasp and begin unwrapping the cork. "It's called an angle. That's what we publicists do, okay? We create angles. If it weren't for my angles, you'd still be peddling those handbags on a blanket on St. Mark's Place."

"And if it weren't for your plastic surgeon, you wouldn't have any angles," Lulu retorts as she snatches the bottle of Moet back from me.

"Why don't you put that bottle down," I say, ignoring her cutting remark. "I need you to help me start unpacking all this underwear so we can hang it up and start steaming out the wrinkles. Then I need you to get on the phone and call the Minister of Fashion to make sure everything is set for the show at the Jade Buddha Temple."

"If you were a real Maoist, you wouldn't be treating me like a slave in the colonies," Lulu snaps, throwing herself down on a worn-out and chipped dragon head-adorned chaise. "I need a few hours and a few glasses of champagne to get over my jetlag. You and your Red Panty Brigade are just going to have to hold off on the revolution until I'm good and ready."

March 11, 2006 Arriving in Shanghai

March 7, 2006 X-Raying Oscar Fashions at the Academy Awards

  "A five hour delay!?" Lulu moans loudly, drowning out the sound of Melissa Rivers' guttersniping that is spilling from the overhead TV monitor in JFK airport's First Class lounge for Cathay Pacific. "I knew the Mercury Retrograde was going to throw a monkey wrench into our travel plans!"

"Lulu, what on earth are you complaining about?" I tell her as I reach for my bloody mary and prop my feet up on a nearby ottoman. "You should be thrilled by the delay - now we can watch the Oscars!" I for one am especially happy to be languishing in the airport lounge, enjoying the free cocktails and fancy grub. "Go make yourself another caviar and lobster taco from the buffet darling...and bring over a pitcher of bloody marys while you're at it. We might as well make the best of this. And besides - now we will be able to see which actresses are wearing the Fashion Forms, Sassybax, Spanx and Cosabella products that I FedExed to the Academy's swag central."

"Isn't the whole point of those things that you're not supposed to be able to detect that the wearer has them on?" Lulu says as she rises and makes a beeline for the buffet and bar. "If you want red carpet visibility, why don't you snag Van Cleef or Freddie Leighton as clients?" She picks up a plate and begins piling it up with chilled cracked crab and white truffle blintzes.

"This is why you need me to do your PR, dearie," I tell her. "The point is to establish visibility for the brands at the swag tent, and to get stylists, stars and press agents talking about them. And it's a lot cheaper than lending a pair of 5 million dollar earrings that you may never see again....Oh look, there's Nicole Kidman. I'll bet you anything that she's wearing one of my Fashion Forms Nu-Bras under that strapless dress!"

"I hope you sent some industrial-strength Sassybax Bralette Bras for Dolly Parton to wear," Lulu cracks. "And anyway, you should have sent one of my handbags to Reese Witherspoon! She's probably going to win and then the whole world would want to buy my damn bags!"

"Actually I sent your lookbook to Philip Bloch the stylist and he said your bags were 'cute' but not 'hardcore' enough for the Oscars red carpet," I say, trying to break the news gently. "But don't worry, we'll get those woolly mammoth bags on the red carpet at the Tribeca Fim Festival, I promise!" A few more actresses whisk by on the red carpet and I recite my mental list - aided by my fashion x-ray vision - aloud. "J-Lo is wearing a Cosabella thong, Jennifer Garner is clearly drunk and wearing a Donna Karan Solutions Bra....Felicity Huffman is wearing a Fashion Forms Ultimate Convertible Bra..."

"And a Baskit Mesh Jock," Lulu quips before shoving a baby potato smothered in caviar into her mouth.

"Very funny, Lulu...Jon Stewart should have hired you to write his jokes."

"Well, from the sound of it, he needs all the help he can get!" Lulu hollers. Dolly Parton begins performing her song from Transamerica and I shush Lulu. "She has such a great voice....but it's difficult to get her to wear any of the underwear I send to her office. Her designer, Robert Behar, builds all of her foundations directly into her garments."

 

About 4 hours, 24 bloody marys and 300 gown critiques later, Lulu and I somehow stagger onto the plane and hunker down for the 18-hour flight to Shanghai that lies ahead.....

March 1, 2006 Just Another champagne lunch in Manhattan: Jerry Torre of Grey Gardens, the incorrigible Lulu Guinness, and Amy Sacco's cleavage

The view from my table at Bette was a quintessential Manhattan vista: To my left, Graydon Carter having lunch with Fran Lebowitz; to my right, Judith Regan screaming obscenities at her waiter, into her cellphone and at her dining companion; and right in front of me - Amy Sacco's scenic cleavage.

"Lily, your OnGossamer event was da bomb!" Amy enthuses, as I notice an OnGossamer mesh bra -- which were given away in the gift bags -- peeking out above the neckline of her slinky Rick Owens dress. "And I simply must have a pair of the mesh boyshorts!"

"Actually, Lulu is up at the DKNY showroom now and OnGossamer is near there," I tell Amy as I pull my cellphone out of my Lulu Guinness handbag. "I'll call her and tell her to stop by there." Amy smiles and returns to her table-hopping duties.

"Lu, it's me, I need you to make another stop while you're up there," I say as soon as Lu picks up her cellphone. "Can you also stop at the OnGossamer showroom and...." I'm interrupted by a stream of obscenities that would put Ms. Regan to shame. "Lu, I just need you to do these favors for me, ok? My entire staff is still in Las Vegas! Now, be a good little girl and I'll make sure there's an ice cold bottle of Dom Perignon waiting here for you." As I click off, Amy has returned to my table with a bohemian-looking gentlemen in his fifties.

"Lily, I'd like you to meet Jerry Torre - the Marble Faun."

"Oh my god, you were the young man who was in Grey Gardens!" I trill. "I was just reading about you this morning in The New Yorker! I loved the story about you dancing in a jockstrap on the bar at the Anvil!"

"Yes, and he took Jackie Kennedy there, couldn't you just die?" Amy says as she sheppards the Marble Faun into a seat at my table. "Why don't you two chat while I go check on Judith's steak tartare order...she sent it back three times because it wasn't raw enough."

"You were so marvelous in that film," I tell Jerry, before a brilliant PR idea dawns on me. "Do they need any underwear samples to give out at the cast party for the new Broadway musical version of Grey Gardens? I do PR for a top internet underwear retailer. What kind of underwear did Mrs. Beale wear? That could be our tie-in."

"She wore Olga as far as I know - at least that's what she said," Jerry says politely. "But Little Edie was the fashion plate - she wore tights with a large scarf wrapped around her waist as a skirt."

Before I can gush about how much I loved the loopy fashion statements in the film, Lulu comes bounding into Bette, loaded down with several shopping bags stuffed with Donna Karan and DKNY underwear. "Oh Lu, finally. I was beginning to worry about you."

"Sure you were. I had to make a pitstop at my favorite fabric store, Triumph of the Twill, and pick out some swatches for my fall line."

"Lu dear, shouldn't your fall line already be done? What are we going to show Suzy Menkes when she stops by my office next week?"

"My fall line would be done if you weren't sending me on Seventh Avenue panty raids like some kind of blackmarket bra mule, you self-absorbed harridan!"

"Lulu, how lovely to see you!" This was Amy Sacco. "Lily was telling me all about your woolly mammoth bags and I simply must have one! I'm going to the unveiling of the new Rem Koolhaus hotel in Siberia next month and it will be the perfect accessory!" Lulu regains her composure in the club queen's presence.

"Oh, you look so divoon in that Rick Owens dress!" Lulu purrs. Before she can continue her brown-nosing, the waiter brings over a bucket of ice and bottle of Dom Perignon. "Yay, lunch is here!" Lulu says, lighting up the room.

"Ok Lu, sit down and get a load off," I tell her. "Then it's back to the office so we can sort out these samples and get them ready for the show in China."

"Does the word 'intern' have any meaning for you?" Lulu tells me. "Craig's List is not only for finding tickets to Rolling Stone concerts and 'dates' for Friday nights, you know."

"Never you mind, we have a lot of work to do," I reprimand her. "Oh, and I forgot to tell you.....we're going to Shanghai for the underwear event!" Lulu reaches for the bottle of champagne and begins chug-a-lugging.