Guest Article: 'Stephen Tennant – Sartorial Young Thing' by Imogen Reed

In times past, I've toyed with the idea of guest writers to diversify this column's content. I'm glad that I didn't often persist, as it impelled me to research the different areas I was interested, but not knowledgeable in. Consequently, my connoisseur's guide to pornography will see print any day now; the internet should really know the difference

Imogen Reed, on the other hand, is more the persistent type, having gotten in touch during my last AWOL period to craft the sort of article she believes you Paraders would like. Her portfolio revealed a variety of subject matter, as well as a tendency to guest on the blogs of others (why she does not have her own is one of those unanswerable ponderables, I suspect); her biography revealed aspects I've sometimes wanted for myself, such as full-time writing and a period spent living in New York. And so, this is her highly unedited article on renowned Bright Young Thing Stephen Tennant, a fellow for whom I've long felt ambivalence, despite his MP-friendly sensibilities; something - many things - about his lifestyle always struck me as being surfeited with little but vapidities; a lightning rod for the self-justifications of much less interesting, would-be Des Esseiteses (reportedly, one of his great ambitions was to rival the beauty of his sister Claire). On the other hand, I do appreciate that for far too long, Tennant suffered from the unique difficulties and megrims that are sadly forced on one by mental illness

But who knows? Imogen might make a believer out of me yet. His biography is now in my Amazon list; I've always liked its title

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Stephen James Napier Tennant (1906-1987). A constant and nefarious work in progress, he was born in a time of great social and cultural upheaval.  He lived through some of the most daring and outspoken decades in the 20^th century and indeed created many of his own stories and headlines by being famous just for being, well, “Stephen Tennant”. Apocryphally, he is said to have spent most of his later life in bed at the family home, Wilsford Manor. 

Auspicious Beginnings

The son of Lord Glenconner and his wife, Pamela (formerly Wyndham) he was the youngest of five children.  The most notable and upsetting event of his childhood was the death of his elder brother, Edward (affectionately known as “Bim”) who was killed during the First World War.  At the tender age of four, he is alleged to have gone into the family garden in the company of his nanny and stopped dead in his tracks when he came face to face with the beauty of the "blossom of a pansy." This moment was said to be a defining one in terms of his life path.  Always dedicated to the arts, fashion and literary matters (though ultimately producing little of his own to add to any of these canons) he was devastatingly attracted to colour, form and beauty in all shapes.  He was a fine artist and sketcher and had one unfinished and unpublished novel to his name “Lascar”.

He was, and remained for much of his life a sickly human being.  An early case of Tuberculosis in his teens rendered him quite weak and after various trips abroad for sea air, rest and recuperation his health failed to improve.  However, this didn’t stop him from exploring nightlife, from visiting theatres and generally living it up – all of course, done with his customary verve.   

Bright Young Thing

Sartorial elegance, louche living and artistic altruism in one effete, beautiful package. 

During the 1920s, in his heyday Tennant – along with his friends Ceil Beaton, Rex Whistler, Siegfried Sassoon and The Mitford Sisters became society’s hottest property.  For many years he and Sassoon were engaged in a relationship which had a lasting impact on the both of them after it ended.  Today, they would be front page of all the glossy magazines.  Back then they were known as “The Bright Young Things” and Stephen was at the very forefront of it.  Along with such other society luminaries as The Right Hon. Elizabeth Ponsonby and Brenda Dean Paul these people attended parties and did little else, living on allowances from their parents and never having to worry about credit cards or relying on balance transfers. But they did it fabulously, darling…

Alabaster in Human Form

Tennant was the most beautiful, picture perfect alabaster sculpture ever formed.  His portraits, mostly taken by his friend – the aforementioned Cecil Beaton show a delicate frame; Marcel waved blonde hair – sometimes dusted with actual gold to make it more ethereal and photogenic, his features were almost supine.  Rarely smiling, often looking into middle distance, his perfect rosebud pout and piercing eyes were apparently enhanced by a little application of Vaseline before photos were taken.  The idea is often put forth that the greatest work of art of Stephen’s life was himself.  This notion is supported by his infinite interest in clothes and make up and jewellery.  In 1927, after a very famous “Bright Young Things” event, The Daily Express were quoted as saying: “Stephen Tennant arrived in an Electric Brougham, wearing a football jersey and earrings”.  He cared little what people thought of how he dressed.

Vanity Fair 

A naturally vain man however, he is alleged to have uttered: "My tongue is already flickering like an adder, lest one iota of foreground is denied Me," upon learning he was about to have his picture taken with a group of his friends. 

A photo-shoot for his birthday in 1927 reveals an otherworldly creature; he wears a dark pinstripe suit, striped shirt, silk tie and over the whole outfit threw a black leather mackintosh with chinchilla fur collar that he had fashioned himself.  When the prints of the shoot arrived, in his own shy and retiring style he commented: ''I'm nearly crazy at their beauty'' 

1927/1928

“London's Bright Young People have broken out again” wrote the Daily Express. All the guests to the party had to come as someone well known. Tallulah Bankhead came as Jean Borotra the famous tennis player of the era.  Stephen went as the queen of Romania. A group photograph of Stephen, Tallulah and other members of the party was featured in The Tatler with Stephen's costume easily the most beautiful. Evelyn Waugh was notable by his attendance. Indeed, this party was the inspiration for his novel “Decline and Fall” and it’s subsequent follow up “Vile Bodies”.  Characterisations of Stephen carried on, even appearing in the form of Sebastian Flyte in “Brideshead Revisited”. 

By 1928, people were beginning to tire of the antics of Stephen and his illustrious band of friends.  The biggest causal factor was “The Depression”.  Many people throughout the country were suffering.  Unemployment was at a high, workers were striking and the cavorting and game playing of a group of seemingly over-privileged twenty-somethings was seen as frightfully self indulgent. 

Stephen’s society swansong and indeed the end of the Bright Young Things came that very year with a final flourish at a “Bath and Bottle” Party arranged at St George’s Swimming Baths on Buckingham Palace Road.  The invited parties drank and danced to the strains of an orchestra.  For the occasion, Stephen wore a pink vest and long blue trousers…

Inauspicious Endings

Stephen outlived nearly all of his contemporaries.  Elizabeth Ponsonby died young (1940), possibly as a cause of her alcohol and drug addictions acquired during her years of partying.  Brenda Dean Paul eventually died in 1959 of a heroin overdose in her flat – for years she had survived on a steady diet of salted peanuts and Brandy cocktails.  He also outlived the two most cherished people in his life, Cecil Beaton (1980) and Siegfried Sassoon (1967). 

Living mostly as a recluse (though a rather decorative one) he retreated back to his childhood home, Wilsford, until his death at the age of 80.  Desperate to recreate the fond memories of holidays he had had in the Mediterranean he imported twenty two tons of silver sand and had it liberally spread on the lawns to evoke his French dreams.  There were Chinese fan palms planted, and tropical birds and lizards let loose to cavort in the grounds. 

He had many tales to tell of his years as a Bright Young Thing that were only finally realised by the author Philip Hoare in his wonderful biography of Tennant’s life “Serious Pleasures”. A louche life less lived. 

Design Lust Object No.6 - George Nelson's Pretzel Chair

George Nelson, born 1908 in Hartford, Connecticut, studied architecture at Yale University. A fellowship enabled him to study at the American Academy in Rome from 1932-34. In Europe he became acquainted with the protagonists and major architectural works of modernism.

He joined the editorial staff of Architectural Forum in 1935, where he was employed until 1944. A programmatic article on residential building and furniture design, published in Architectural Forum by Nelson in 1944, attracted the attention of D.J. DePree, head of the furniture company Herman Miller.

 

Shortly after this, George Nelson assumed the position of design director at Herman Miller. Remaining there until 1972, he became a key figure of American design, also convincing the likes of Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi and Alexander Girard to work for Herman Miller.

In the 1950s, George Nelson and his New York office developed an individual and expressive range of seating pieces, several of which have long since achieved classic status. In 1952, even before the famous Coconut Chair or the Marshmallow Sofa, Nelson designed a chair made out of bent wood that was initially referred to, simply, as the Laminated Chair. The bold yet elegant curve of the single wooden piece forming the back and armrests soon inspired the nickname Pretzel Chair. Bent laminated wood is used not only for the backrest and its twin supports, but also for the four legs that cross underneath the seat. The downward taper of the legs contributes to the chair's slender appearance. Due to insufficient manufacturing techniques, the Pretzel Chair was removed from the market after only a few years, which makes it highly valued among collectors today.

His collaboration with Vitra began in 1957. From 1946 onwards Nelson also ran his own design office, creating numerous products that are now regarded as icons of mid-century modernism.

Nelson's office also produced important architectural works and exhibition designs. George Nelson died in New York in 1986. His archive belongs to the holdings of the Vitra Design Museum.

From Vitra

The Week's Inspiration

Shepherd check three piece suit plus cane, homburg hat, gloves and overcoat circa the 1930s, as rendered by renowned fashion plate illustrator Laurence Fellows, patron saint of all i-trads and i-dandies everywhere

Hello, Toto

   I recently became intrigued by the one-time model/actress/socialite Catherina "Toto" Koopman, whilst perusing a biography of the industrious newspaper tycoon Lord Beaverbrook. This was a woman who was a visible biracial beauty in a time where it was decidedly not fashionable to be so; moreover, this elegant half-Dutch, half-Chinese luminary led quite the intriguing life, from her upbringing in Java to her education in Holland and England; from her work for Chanel to her poise and poses in photography shoots by Edward J. Steichen and Hoyningen Huene 

   More interestingly, she was involved with both Lord Beaverbrook in 1933 or '34 and later, his son, Max Aitken, from 1935 to 1939. Lord Beaverbrook was incensed and troubled by Max's involvement - apparently due to sexual jealousy and distaste at the idea of a Javanese daughter-in-law - to the point that he gave them sums of money and a flat in Portland Square off Oxford Street to remain unmarried, whilst perennially desiring to break them up. She was also pursued by Viscount Castlerosse, incensing his wife to the point of threatening to have Koopman named in their long-mooted divorce case

   Matters become more interesting and opaque still regarding her wartime activities. Koopman is thought to have performed as a go-between for British intelligence in Italy, until she was double-crossed, compromised and interred at Ravensbrück concentration camp for two years, during which time she performed heroically, whether by trying to save those marked for death or smuggling food to her maltreated fellow inmates. Even after such a harrowing time, she continued enriching those around her by running the Hanover Gallery with her lover and fellow war heroine, Erica Brausen. Amongst the careers they guided was that of one Francis Bacon

   Not entirely lost to history, Koopman is recognised as one of the early lights of the modelling world, as well as an arbiter and a saver of lives, with an enviable fortitude to handle anything that was thrown at her. We should all have girlfriends this tough

It really was another world. One dressed not to please men but to astound other women

Inspiration Illustrated

Via Esquire

   Thanks to the diligent dandiacal detections of Matt and Charles at Fine And Dandy, I recently learnt a little about a favoured illustrator of mine, John E. Sheridan, who produced a cornucopia of fashion plates for Hart Schaffner & Marx during the Gilded Age, as well as covers for the Saturday Evening Post and propaganda imagery for the United States' World War I campaign

   Although his male subjects were less openly dandified than those of his contemporary and my favoured sartorial sketcher, JC Leyendecker, they connoted the fine tailoring ideal that HS&M wished to impart upon the world with a rarefied aplomb. These fictional men were depicted as carrying themselves with a certain perfection, as well as an athletic gait; unsurprising given Sheridan's background in college sports advertisements. And pleasingly, some of the 1920s designs look covetous today, as evidenced in places like Junya Watanabe Man's Spring/Summer 2010 Paris presentation

   A little sporty elegance goes a long way