Little Edie, Big style: the unlikely fashion icon

The eccentric empoverished cousin of Jackie Kennedy, Edith Bouvier Beale was an American socialite, fashion model and cabaret performer, best known as ‘Little Edie’. The documentary film Grey Gardens by Albert and David Maysles - set during the time when Little Edie lived with and took care of her mother in their East Hamptons estate with dozens of cats, raccoons and opossum, as well as a soon to be released biopic where she is played by Drew Barrymore, have made her an unlikely style icon.

A tall, blue-eyed blonde with a superb figure, Edie was one of the reigning beauties of East Hampton society. John Davis, Bouvier family historian, said “[She was] surpassing even the dark charm of [her cousin] Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.” She was known around town as ‘Body Beautiful Beale’ and had a steady following of beaus. To the dismay of her father, she dabbled in professional modeling. One of her photos was displayed in the studio window of famed photographer Louis Bachrach. Another hung, unauthorized, in an elevator at Macy’s in Manhattan.

Though never married, it is believed that she had proposals from Joe Kennedy Jr. and J. Paul Getty. She once dated maverick Howard Hughes, however her one true love was Julius Krug, former US Interior Secretary. Her mother though apparently scared off every suitor Edie ever had for fear that she would one day be left alone with no one to care for her.

After the death of her mother in 1977, Edie moved around the country after finally settling in Florida to pursue a life of quiet isolation. Edie had been dead for five days when she was discovered by her nephew. A daily swimmer until her death, aged 84, she was probably wearing her signature scarf and a swimsuit.

Her transformation into a fashion muse

Little Edie Beale was indeed first discovered by fashion. Cashmere sweaters draped around her head, upside-down skirts, pantyhose sarongs and trouser minis are a few of her trademark staples that fashion designers, thrilled by her unconventional creativity, were quick to reinvent on the runway. Almost ten years after her death in 1997, Little Edie had reached the status of a very unlikely style icon.

Her influence was evident in Galliano’s (pictured left) spring 2008 R-T-W Collection and Marc Jacobs’ fall 2008 runway, with both collections featuring wools, cashmeres, chiffons and sequins worn, as Edie would have, in mismatched layers of leggings, skirts, coats, furs and turbans, all adorned by brooches. Edie’s new status as fashion muse has also lead to the new musical ‘Grey Gardens’, the Broadway version of the 1975 Maysles documentary that first exposed Beales’ fashion style.

A Fashion muse

‘Grey Garden’s’ costume designer Catherine Marie Thomas confesses: “Little Edie used what she had to make a very specific style for herself. We spent hours thinking about how she manipulates clothing. She is a genius draper of fabric.”

“The things she wore on her head had a lot of weight—sweater vests, heavy towels. How did she drape them so beautifully with only one pin? She also had this incredible sense of how to mix patterns. You would never know she had 10 pieces of clothing on.”

Little Edie never set out to be a style icon. Her style is based on instinct and a cert

ain disconnection from reality. With the inherent glamour of her past allied to the eccentric patchwork of her present, she wore what she could in her exceptional circumstances. Of her style she said: “I didn’t have time, taking care of mother, to get out and buy clothes. So I used what was left of mine and mothers in the attic”.

Now, as we stumble through economic recession, her make-do-and-mend approach p

roves even more relevant to fashion lovers, yet even billionaires such as actress Mary-Kate Olsen are drawn to her and her disheveled style. As with all great icons, it is her signature items that make her look.

Emulating her style is all about adopting a dressing-up-box approach to getting dressed: just play around with old clothes you’d stashed away, fur stoles included, and start every day like you have never heard of any fashion rules.

Why not begin by using brooches and various necklaces and bracelets, then add a white swimsuit (Edie wore hers not to swim but to dance) a turban and to round it all off, a smudge of red lipstick. It’s so wrong that it’s right.

Coco Chanel English lovers and their sartorial influence

Of all the well known Chanel designs, the tweed jacket is one of the most iconic. The definition of chic to the modern woman, the little tweed jacket has its origin in British country menswear. One of the reasons why the Chanel look owes so much to traditional British style is not foreign to Coco’s English lovers.

The first time Chanel was influenced by menswear was while she was the mistress of Etienne Balsan, a wealthy French racehorse owner. Desperate to set herself apart from the other kept women on the horse tracks, she borrowed tailored coats and ties from Etienne and his friends, adding a straw hat she made for the occasion.

It wasn’t however until she met Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel, an English polo player and business man who financed her millinery shop in Paris, that she would truly express who she was, rather than who she didn’t want to be.

In 1913, just before WWI broke out, Boy Capel financed her shop in Deauville and later in Biarritz. There she sold hats but also jumpers, jackets, jersey cardigans, knitwear and sailor blouses.

This modern and easy look proved easily adaptable to women’s new lifestyle thanks to fluid and comfortable fabrics, and her garments became the wartime staple of the well-dressed ladies. Interestingly, most garments and materials were influenced by mens- and workwear. Chanel’s talent was in adapting this type of clothing to women’s role in society, which notably required an increasingly female workforce.

Chanel always changed her look to reflect the lifestyle of her lovers, who mostly happened to be into sports. As a result, Chanel believed in being fit rather than relying on corsets and rejected anything that would infringe the movement of the body.

She started to design clothes for herself that were more fluid and would let her move freely. Her body image was very radical and modern for her time, and she would change her viewpoint throughout her career, always keeping up with the changing social norms.

Boy Capel, from who she borrowed blazers and jodhpurs when riding, had freed Chanel’s creativity. Of her designs she said,“I did not invent the sports suit because women were doing sports but because I was. I was not going out because I felt the need of making fashion; I made the fashion because I was going out, because I, the first, lived the life of the century”.

During her involvement with the Duke of Westminster from 1926 to 1931, Coco took up the quintessentially English country style but more importantly used the Duke’s own style for her collections.

A visit to one the Dukes’ tweed factories in Scotland gave her the idea of using this rough, resistant fabric for a jacket. The rest is history. There, living the typical British high life, complete with racing, fox hunting and salmon fishing, Chanel found many elements that charmed her and eventually brought them home to France to feature in her collections.

Her life with the Duke was essential to the making of the Chanel identity. It was during this time that Coco got the inspiration for her soft-belted coats, tweed jackets and blazers, sailor sweaters and cuff-linked shirts. True to her habit, Chanel borrowed from the Duke’s outfits on her outings. On his yacht, she wore the duke’s jackets, sweaters, pants and even shoes which caused quite a giggle but was simply what she liked to wear.

Back in London, Chanel continued to wear knitwear during the day but decided the simplicity of the garments required the contrast of sumptuous accessories.

She started sporting cascades of pearl necklaces, clusters of stones and the famous enamel bracelets, created for her by her new recruit at Chanel, Fulco di Verdura, a Sicilian duke who would soon make a career for himself in Paris, London and New York. The British society ladies at the time would never have thought of wearing such jewellery and even less so with knitwear.

Chanel’s genius as a fashion designer not only lies in her ability to make clothes that reflect social changes and shifting gender roles but to draw inspiration from her personal life. She not only designed for the wealthy but for herself. The fact that her look prevails to this day is testament to her talent, her unconventional life and the men she loved.