Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [249]
Zipkin befriended the Governor’s wife’s staff as well as her social set.
Nancy Reynolds, the daughter of an Idaho senator, was his favorite, which meant she was not exempt from his unsolicited fashion critiques. “One time 4 0 0
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House when we were in New York, I wore a sweater that I just loved, and he said,
‘That is the most awful thing that I have ever seen in my life! Are you going to a Mexican fiesta?’ It had bright colors, which is why I liked it, but I never wore it again.”34
According to Reynolds, Nancy Reagan knew that Zipkin was not universally liked among her friends. “She definitely was very defensive of him.
She just loved him, and she looked forward to his calls. I think she really relied on his judgment and followed his advice. She learned a lot about New York and a lot about Europe, which she didn’t really have much knowledge of, from Jerry. And Jerry entertained Ronald Reagan, who was delighted his wife had that friendship she could count on. The Reagans felt he was a hundred-percenter, and in politics there are very few hundred-percenters.”35
In January 1968, Nancy Reagan was named to the International Best Dressed List, coming in ninth out of twelve, ahead of Princess Alexandra of Kent and Faye Dunaway but behind Gloria Vanderbilt Cooper, Charlotte Ford Niarchos, Lee Radziwill, Lauren Bacall, and Lynda Bird Johnson. The list, started in Paris in 1922 and taken over by New York fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert after the war, was based on the votes of two thousand “fashion experts, designers, socialites and other observers of the international scene.”36 A place on it became so coveted in café society and jet-set circles that Lambert found herself being offered bribes of as much as $50,000 to jigger the results.37
Nancy was named again in 1971, and by the following year she was in second place; the Begum Aga Khan led that year’s list, which included Parisian hostess São Schlumberger, designer Carolina Herrera, Cher, and Twiggy.38 In 1974, having been on the list the requisite three times, she was elevated to the Hall of Fame, “the Valhalla of clotheshorses,” as the society columnist Suzy wrote, “may they dress in peace.”39 Nancy had finally caught up with Anita May, who made the Hall of Fame in 1964, and Betsy Bloomingdale, who ascended in 1970. It took Jerry Zipkin until 1985 to get on the men’s list.40 (I can still hear the shrieks from some of the fashion editors who determined the final cut over lunch at Lambert’s apartment every year whenever his name came up: “Those horrible bright linings he has put into his suits!” “Those big vulgar cuff links!” “So what if he’s the First Lady’s best friend!”)
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Sacramento II: 1969–1974
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In January 1969, the Reagans attended the inauguration of Richard Nixon, who, according to Barry Goldwater, made a point of snubbing them.41
They had barely arrived back in Sacramento when the Governor was confronted with a strike at Berkeley called by the Third World Liberation Front, a newly formed alliance of student radicals and outside agitators who demanded that the university set up an autonomous college for black, Asian, and Mexican studies. On February 5, after two weeks of escalating violence, including numerous attempts to firebomb university buildings and assaults on students trying to attend classes, Reagan declared “a state of extreme emergency” and sent in the California Highway Patrol. “Those who want to get