Spot Chic

Best Dressed

Eleanor Lambert, New York-based publicist, introduced the International Best Dressed Poll in the U.S. in 1940. Now a fashion exhibition, "The Best of the Best-Dressed List," sponsored by Gucci at the Museum of the City of New York, will display the grandest garb of thirteen fashion icons from the Best-Dressed Hall of Fame. Beginning October 21 the public can rifle the closets of Diana Vreeland, the Duchess of Windsor, Jacqueline Onassis, C. Z. Guest, Babe Paley, Millicent Rogers (the late Standard Oil heiress), Paloma Picasso, Lauren Bacall, Claudette Colbert, Mary Martin, Mrs. Byron Foy (Walter Chrysler's daughter), Austine Hearst, and Mona Bismarck (the former Mrs. Harrison Williams).

Curator JoAnne Olian and her associate, Phyllis Magidson, will provide "costume drama" with a special video of the best-dressed women making drop-dead, knockout entrances at parties and fashion shows in Paris and New York. But the clothes themselves will be the main attraction. Look at (but don't touch) the First Lady evening frocks from Jackie O's White House days.

Both formal and fanciful is Paloma Picasso's heart-shaped flamencored wedding-party dress by Karl Lagerfeld. Paloma may even ship over her lipstick, just launched in Paris by L'Oreal, to be used on the mannequins.

The clothes of the late Mona Bismarck, the legendary jet-set figure who was the daughter of a Kentucky stable groom, will be a major feature of the show. Then there are her portraits, her detailed couture bills from Balenciaga, which span two decades, and her milelong shoe orders from Roger Vivier. Outstanding will be the 1939 Chanel tricolor organdy gypsy dress, which was the last evening dress presented by Gabrielle Chanel before World War II forced her to close her house.

Fashion empress Diana Vreeland has contributed her ruby-red Chanel dinner suit with peplum jacket from 1938. Vreeland sent along a few instructions on accessorizing her selections: "Very big ruby earrings and lots of neckwear. . .black stockings, lace or net ...with plain black satin slippers .. .Chanel bracelets with a big Maltese cross in white lacquer so that each wrist is identical, with the cuffs turned back."

Got that?

André Leon Talley