Bergdorf Blondes Read Free Page A

papers that I mind,” she moaned, “it’s that they got me in sweatpants! I can never be seen on the corner of Madison and Seventy-sixth Street again! Please come over?”
    Sometimes, when Julie says things like that, I think, well, it’s lucky she’s my best friend because if she wasn’t I wouldn’t like her at all .
    When I arrived at her apartment, the housekeeper sent me straight through to Julie. Hair and makeup were on standby, hovering in terrified silence in the bedroom, which is painted pale jade, Julie’s favorite color. Two antique Chinese mother-of-pearl chests sit on either side of the fireplace. The upholstered sleigh bed is an heirloom from Julie’s grandmother. Julie won’t get into it unless it’s just been made with sheets monogrammed with her initials in pale pistachio silk. I found Julie red-faced in the dressing room, frantically raking through the closets. As fast as she tossed clothes out and into a mountainous pile on the thick white rug, her maid put them back in the closet, so that the pile never increased or decreased significantly. Finally Julie dug out an understated black Chanel dress of her mother’s, kitten heels, and very large sunglasses. She was totally channeling CBK, as usual. An hour later, blown out and made up beyond belief, she strolled out of The Pierre, a confident smile on her face, and gavean interview to the waiting press in which she explained about the “mix-up.”
    The next Sunday a fabulously glamorous picture of Julie appeared on the cover of the New York Times Style section, with the headline BEAUTIFUL BERGDORF INNOCENT and an accompanying article by the Times ’s fashion critic. Julie was thrilled. So was her dad. She called me the following Monday to say that an antique bracelet had arrived from him with a note reading, “Thank you darling daughter. D.”
    “He’s pleased ?” I asked.
    “I’m so happy,” said Julie. “I’ve never been in Dad’s good books like this before. All that shoplifting heiress stuff, it’s been like the greatest PR for the store; sales have gone through the roof, especially of the sunglasses I was wearing. He’s recommended the board make me marketing director. I just hope I don’t have to work too hard.”
    After that, Julie couldn’t go anywhere without having her picture taken, all in the cause, she said, of raising Bergdorf’s profile, which she did, along with her own. She thought the publicity was very good for her self-esteem and was helping with her issues—issues being the hip term for the glamorous psychological problems of the type that afflict those living in New York and Los Angeles.
    Julie has issues with the receptionist at Bliss Spa who won’t book her vitamin C skin injections with Si-monetta, the top facialist there. She is encouraged byher doctors to explore her “childhood issues” and is “in a lot of pain” over the fact that her parents used to fly her business class to Gstaad every Christmas, when everyone else’s parents flew their kids first. Naturally, she has a catalog of “food issues” and once followed Dr. Perricone’s Wrinkle Cure Diet, which led to her acquiring “issues with potatoes and wheat.” She has issues about having too much money and she has issues about not having as much money as some of the other Park Avenue Princesses. She previously had issues about being a Jewish WASP, which she recovered from when her licensed psychologist told her that Gwyneth Paltrow also suffered from this affliction, being the product of a Jewish father and WASPy mother. After this issue was resolved, Julie then got another issue about her psychologist charging her $250 for information she could have gotten from Vanity Fair at a cost of $3.50, which, it transpired, was the place where the licensed psychologist learned of Gwyneth’s ethnic roots. When anyone disagrees with Julie it means they have issues, and when Julie disagrees with her shrink it’s because he’s the one with the real