Mica Ertegun’s Excessive Model Stands the Check of Time – WWD

Together with being a jetsetter, a New York insider and a working girl, who didn’t need to be, Mica Ertegun had fashion in spades.

The 97-year-old Ertegun, whose late second husband Ahmet championed such musicians as Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones as Atlantic Information’ cofounder, died Saturday at her house in Southampton, N.Y. After escaping Communism in her postwar Romania, she settled on a Canadian farm earlier than marrying, venturing into inside design, establishing herself as a mode arbiter, extremely regarded hostess and philanthropist. Her father, Gheorghe Banu, was a Romanian physician and politician. Her trend sense stands the take a look at time, based mostly on just a few of her interviews with WWD over time.

As an inside designer, Ertegun’s Manhattan city home embodied her eternal fashion – stylish, elegant and costly. Seven years into the MAC II enterprise that she began with fellow socialite Chessy Rayner, Ertegun stated buddies had been asking them to spruce up their flats. The founders had been in search of one thing to do they usually thought it could be “very simple,” selecting their very own hours and dealing with buddies. Not fairly – “We made loads of errors. I really feel slightly sorry for our first purchasers,” Ertegun informed WWD in 1976.

Earlier than marrying her husband in 1961, the Romanian-born magnificence lived in sweaters and denims on the Canadian farm. “Not the ruffle kind,” her affinity for pants carried over into eveningwear and afternoons within the nation. Her de rigeuer daytime apparel was primarily the tried-and-true slimmish-skirt-and-sweater mixture and favored cashmere sweaters and textured stockings in the identical shade. Off-hours, she was the consummate entertainer, internet hosting intimate dinner events, or catching personal screenings, theater openings and the occasional live performance.  

By her personal account, Ertegun stored only a few issues however her Madame Grès designs have been the exception, particularly togas. Her irreverent fashion may include black crepe pants with a parrot inexperienced toga and ropes of pearls wrapped round her wrists. In 1975, Ertegun clued WWD into the truth that she hated to put on one thing that everybody else had. A lot in order that she gave up her Cartier watch after seeing it on many others. An analogous state of affairs performed out with a Louis Vuitton satchel that she had seen throughout Paris. Her replacements have been a person’s wristwatch and an Hermès shoulder bag with slightly make-up bag tucked inside.

She noticed trend as a recreation that you just performed so long as it was enjoyable. Her intent was to look neat and her garments needed to be easy — seams straight and darts in the proper locations. (To maintain every thing simply so, she relied on a dressmaker behind-the-scenes.) Ertegun informed WWD in 1967, “In New York, all people acknowledges the place your garments are from, even in case you keep away from the season’s standing symbols. The enjoyable of the sport is to attempt to hold them guessing for slightly longer.”

To perform that within the late Sixties, Ertegun mined finds from downtown shops, uptown thrift retailers after which some “assurance-insurance” items present in Paris, London, Rome and Zurich. Large coats, gathered skirts and something cutesy or minimize out have been off-limits. Braemar, Biba, Adolfo, Pierre Cardin, Madame Grès, Fernando Sanchez, Invoice Blass and Chester Weinberg have been extra her pace. The best way she noticed issues, “One good coat a 12 months is the start of any wardrobe.”

A doer, not a primper, Ertegun’s make-up routine got here right down to cleaning soap, water, astringent and slightly lip balm. One other time saver was restricted hairdressing, since she preferred to swim repeatedly. Striving to — however not at all times assembly — a purpose of exercising 3 times per week, Ertegun stored her hair lengthy sufficient to drag again and wore headpieces at night time. Her fashion arbiters have been Francoise de la Renta, Annette Reed and Girl Keith — the classy sorts who learn, knew life and had no time for chit-chat. After noting how she was “fascinated” by Diana Vreeland, Ertegun stated, “She’s a doer, too…individuals who bore me, I simply don’t see.”

Progressive in her fashion, too, Ertegun appreciated versatility — as evidenced by the mink coat with a zip-off hemline, David Evans boots that fixed like stockings and pairing an Yves Saint Laurent “Smoking” with a nightdress styled to be a shirt that she had unearthed within the flea market at Marche Byron in Paris in 1967.

Along with her day job, Ertegun took a equally uncluttered strategy to adorning — simplicity, drama and non-matching colours. In one in every of her WWD interviews within the mid-Seventies, she described her husband as “amused however approving” of the enterprise. “In spite of everything, our husbands lent us the cash to begin the enterprise, or how else might we have now funded it.”

However Ertegun wasn’t precisely a beginner at inside design, having had a lifelong curiosity in adorning and a one-year stint on the New York College of Design. However faculty days bored Ertegun. “Their style and mine are so completely completely different. They have been speaking avocado and gold. I hope American style has modified.”

The well-heeled Ertegun and Rayner racked up purchasers like Saks Fifth Avenue, the Carlyle Resort and Jerome Robbins. And Ertegun took that function severely, by being dressed and able to go by 8 each morning. With out query, the socialite didn’t want the cash, however she informed WWD that she would hate to work and never earn cash. “It appears kind of dilettante,” she stated. By way of skilled recommendation, she praised Billy Baldwin’s counsel of “by no means to make use of something or to rent anybody low-cost to get worth for our buddies.”

Vogue and residential design have been simply accents in a full and diversified life. As she as soon as defined to WWD, “Most of my buddies don’t take themselves that severely. They’re extra pure they usually wish to have enjoyable. In spite of everything, if it’s not enjoyable, it’s probably not value it. Don’t you suppose?”