Quest September 2014

Page 50

D AV I D PAT R I C K C O L U M B I A B R E A ST C A N C E R R E S E A R C H FO U N D AT I O N ’ S “ PA R T Y FO R P I N K ” AT T H E H OM E O F L I S A A N D R I C H A R D P E R R Y I N N O R T H H AV E N

Kelly and Dave Kasouf

That single phone call was all that this boy needed. By the time I hung up, I knew what I had to do. (The movie executive never bought that script, incidentally, nor ever had anything more to do with me.) Whipsnade’s, by then, had become very prosperous. I could see that if I focused intensely on the business, it had enormous potential. Offprice retailing was more than a fad. However, as much as I appreciated its success, it was never where my heart or interests were. I knew that if I became very successful at it and made a lot of money, I’d 48 QUEST

Sean Avery and Hilary Rhoda

Lisa Perry

never be a “writer” by profession. Money makes our lives comfortable in a way that can be difficult, even impossible, to reject. But I’d been a writer since boyhood when I stopped playing with toys and started putting those “stories” down on paper. It was my refuge and where I preferred to live whenever I could, and so I had to go. In the fall of 1978, I packed up my belongings along with my dogs and my cats (of which there were five), and I moved to Los Angeles, the City of Angels, to a new life, a new struggle, and a new career—my

Christina Addison and Heather Mnuchin

only career—not to mention a new style of dress and living. Today, the fashion of the West, specifically Southern California, is known worldwide and seen as totally American. Its roots are not only in the great changes that we witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s, but also in the decades of the 20th century that came before. By the 1990s, Southern California lifestyle and folkways (the results of the entertainment industry) have led the way in American fashion through media. This happened specifically with the

Maria Baum and Leonard Lauder

Larry Leeds

phenomenon of the Hilton sisters, Paris Hilton and Nicky Hilton, and, ultimately, with Kim Kardashian and her family, who took the Hiltons’ marketing mantra: visual publicity and more visual publicity. They ran with it and are still running with it. Running to where, you might ask? We’ll have to wait and see. After I decided to pursue a career as a writer, as the saying goes, I never looked back. Although I still check out the windows at Bergdorf Goodman to see where fashion is going and what it portends. u

PAT R I C K M C M U LL A N

Molly Sims


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