‘Dream’ stirs a passion for Paris Patty Rhule
Even if your summer travel plans don’t include a stroll on the Champs-Élysées, you’ll always have My Paris Dream.
Kate Betts became the youngest editor of Harper’s Bazaar at age 35, but this book is the prequel to her storied career. Fresh out of Princeton in 1986 and yearning to break free from her splintered family, Betts packed her acid-washed jeans and gold hoop earrings and moved to the city of dreams to cover the fashion industry.
It wasn’t all madeleines and miniskirts. Betts lands a job at the influential Fairchild Publications, led by the imperious and impetuous John Fairchild, who sends her to the French countryside to cover boar hunts and “run through the lavender fields” of Provence. (We should all be so lucky to get this assignment.) His 24/7 demands will remind some of The Devil Wears Prada’s editor-in-chief.
Besotted with France and the French, and despite her feelings for back-home boyfriend Will, Betts falls in love with Hervé, an insurance salesman who provides an entrée to French life and a comfortable home for the workobsessed reporter. Her Paris friends teasingly dub Betts La Grosse Americaine.
Betts finds herself and her passion in Paris, where she lands interviews with U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and befriends such fashion boldfaced names as Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld and a young shoemaker named Christian Louboutin.
Known for helping to bring street fashion and hip-hop stars to the fashion pages, Betts comes off as hard-working and slightly conflicted over using her journalism skills to cover fashion rather than heading to the front lines of, say, the war in Iraq.
Student protests, terrorist bombings, the AIDS crisis, a troubled Yves Saint Laurent and fashion’s new wave of deconstructionist designers all make appearances in Dream.
Don’t expect much nasty dishing about fashionistas here. Despite a sharp portrayal of Fairchild, Betts appreciates what he taught her about fashion. She is also complimentary of Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, where Betts worked before Har
per’s Bazaar; her break to go to the rival Harper’s in 1999 was seen as a betrayal on a level of Brutus to Caesar, or Joan Rivers to Johnny Carson.
As light and refreshing as an ice cream cone from the legendary Berthillon, My Paris Dream evokes the sights, sounds, smells and styles of 1980s Paris.