A small handful of photos and a drab narrative that wasn't fact-checked -- I'm not sure why Vanity Fair even posted this video. If you're going to do it, do it well, VF.
After great pain or tragedy is a strange and inspiring period.. Sometimes only noted or appreciated in retrospect. I remember rediscovering a passion for my personal style after a relationship ended suddenly. It was as though I needed style to revive me, to bring beauty and color back into sad days.. During that time I took dressing it to new limits, really becoming a girl people constantly commented to and complimented. I was proud to step out and be seen and needed that diversion to avoid the flip side of sudden solitude.
It's not just her clothes (which she did have an unerring eye for, in terms of what suited her), she's just an extraordinarily elegant, coolly charismatic figure, almost unreal. She seems incapable of a ungraceful gesture or movement. This isn't the sort of thing that normally interests me, fashion and all that, but Babe Paley is kind of eerie in being so perfectly what she "was".
@@koleyw932 No doubt. I did look up a little about her life, and it didn't surprise me to find that her children felt they had almost no relationship with her, and that her single-minded focus seems to have been attaining social status and keeping it. I do think she had a really unique charisma and remarkable sense of style, but probably not an interesting person to be around, except maybe at a party
@@koleyw932 It's known that she was really a rather timid person. Timid people usually are heavily armored emotionally. It was all she could do to deal with her husband's demands for utter perfection in everything she did. She was never known to spread malicious gossip, and she told Capote that the biggest heartbreak of her life was her husband's lack of love for her and his incessant philandering. She seemed always to be trying to win him, but he didn't respond to her at all until she was dying. The, he finally reached out to her. But she was done with him by then, which we can understand.
So did Jacqueline Onassis and nearly every other famous figure, along with tens of millions of ordinary people. Almost everyone smoked in the 50s and 60s. It was fashionable and when the news got out that it was lethal, which was in the mid-60s, no one believed it, and the tobacco industry did everything it could to suppress the research and deny it, even though the tobacco people knew it perfectly well in the early 50s.
I hadn't heard of Babe until more recently, but when I learned about her and her life, I immediately thought that they must have modeled a lot of elements of Betty Draper on her.
I enjoy following fashion and style, but can honestly say keeping up her perfect and magnificant style had to be exhausting. Bebe was a woman of her times. Put the same intense effort into education and a career today, and one could lose the philandering husband, or perhaps not marry him at all!
@@chicnoir29 Truman pointed out to her that she had no money of her own and had 4 kids, and advised to her to view being the wife of Bill Paley as a job. It was a pretty demanding job, too. Paley demanded that she present a perfect front at all times, and be not just perfect, but outstanding, whether as a fashion plate or a hostess.
Jackie, Babe, C Z Guest, and Wallis Simpson all made the 10 Best Dressed list. Babe was the fashion editor at Vogue, following Eleanor Lampert, who started the Best Dressed list. In the 1970s, Lampert named Babe as the Super Dresser of all time.
Barbara Cushing Mortimer Paley, was the ultimate WASP and epitome of what we now call a trophy wife. Being brought by a woman(my mother who Iived and still lives) her life in her own terms. I have empathy for her. Nowadays we are so easy to forget that women in those days didn't have the chances that later their sister would have in second part of the 20th century. So therefore who am I to judge her. That's the way she was brought and therefore that was her reality. I am sure that she paid a very high price as her husband was constantly unfaithful therefore she never knew happiness . She is an enigma for us, but wherever you are in heaven I sincerely wish she has been Happier than her live on earth.
And what about Dovima ???? And Suzy Parker ??? Suzy Parker was Mademoiselle Chanel favorite model.... Dovima was so chic so elegant...i do remember a photo with two elephants with each one paw up and Dovima wearing a haute couture outfit on the middle of the elephants....
With the exception of the comment(the dialect of style) preceding mine.Carefully worded and intelligent.Save yourself the insult of reading further derisive commentary.Few today can comprehend or even vaguely grasp personal style.Let alone understand gracious and reserved women like Babe Paley.
I would hardly say she was "so understated". Her outfits were very ostentatious and often gaudy. BTW, her own children stated she neglected them. Her daughter said she was almost non-existent as a mother because she was too busy being a socialite. That's far worse than her husband cheating on her. There's really nothing perfect or respectable about this woman. She's everything people should aspire not to be: vain, narcissistic, lived off other people's money and was never there for her children.
I don't understand people jockying about to be high in society, seems to be an empty ambition. People are fickle, you have to always worry about your standing, who needs it? I don't toss and turn wondering when I'll be rejected, cos it don't matter, honey, it will happen no matter what, eventually.
Babe may have been well dressed but she is one step above 'homely' as far as looks. She is not pretty....not even attractive. Great clothes........can't disagree with that.
I agree with you. She is much today as a lot of "so-called" Hollywood and music celebrities who are called beautiful but are of common or average beauty but have benefit of expensive clothes, $100 per hour make up artists, photo-shoped pictures, their own PR and TV/magazine reporters who can't see pass it or just report otherwise. If you passed any on the street under ordinary circumstances, they would be deemed ordinary. In my opinion only about 20 percent of Hollywood so-called beautiful women are actually so. They are just re-adjusted to look they way. Is this important? No. But as unimportant as it is for some reason it annoys me.
Many people who are beautiful in person or have some otherwordly kind of grace or charisma look unremarkable in photos, just as there are people who photograph really well but are lackluster in person. I agree that Babe wasn't much more than conventionally good looking, but this combined with having class and elegance in her demeanor may have caused her to be truly captivating in person.
Excellent points. Babe was reportedly extremely gracious in person and possessed a loveliness that could not be denied. This was a period where men and women cultivated their personal charm. Their manner of speaking, walking and being.They practiced the art of dialogue and discourse. All of these values have all but gone out the window. We now live in a world where the majority would be mystified if they met such a person as she.
Babe Paley's father was one of the greatest neurosurgeons of the twentieth century.
Babe Paley was 63 when she died, not "early fifties".
Someone should have caught that.
A small handful of photos and a drab narrative that wasn't fact-checked -- I'm not sure why Vanity Fair even posted this video. If you're going to do it, do it well, VF.
Babe Paley was in her early 60s when she died, not early 50s. I'm surprised someone didn't fact-check the narrative.
I was wondering since the last pic she looked sixty and super gray. Indeed she was
@@kirsten1007 She was born in 1915. She was in her early 60s and quite ill when those late photos were taken.
Babe died at 63.
After great pain or tragedy is a strange and inspiring period.. Sometimes only noted or appreciated in retrospect. I remember rediscovering a passion for my personal style after a relationship ended suddenly. It was as though I needed style to revive me, to bring beauty and color back into sad days.. During that time I took dressing it to new limits, really becoming a girl people constantly commented to and complimented. I was proud to step out and be seen and needed that diversion to avoid the flip side of sudden solitude.
Very true. If channeled properly, pain and suffering can lead to ambition, strength, clarity, and self-worth but also understanding and appreciation.
It's not just her clothes (which she did have an unerring eye for, in terms of what suited her), she's just an extraordinarily elegant, coolly charismatic figure, almost unreal. She seems incapable of a ungraceful gesture or movement.
This isn't the sort of thing that normally interests me, fashion and all that, but Babe Paley is kind of eerie in being so perfectly what she "was".
I don't trust picture perfect, lots of armor going on there. She must've been like the Queen of the snobs.
@@koleyw932
No doubt. I did look up a little about her life, and it didn't surprise me to find that her children felt they had almost no relationship with her, and that her single-minded focus seems to have been attaining social status and keeping it. I do think she had a really unique charisma and remarkable sense of style, but probably not an interesting person to be around, except maybe at a party
@@koleyw932 It's known that she was really a rather timid person. Timid people usually are heavily armored emotionally. It was all she could do to deal with her husband's demands for utter perfection in everything she did. She was never known to spread malicious gossip, and she told Capote that the biggest heartbreak of her life was her husband's lack of love for her and his incessant philandering. She seemed always to be trying to win him, but he didn't respond to her at all until she was dying. The, he finally reached out to her. But she was done with him by then, which we can understand.
She isn’t even pretty. Dressing well does not make you beautiful.
I would love to dress that way, but sadly, elegant clothes don’t seem to exist anymore.
A shame about the smoking. I know someone who met her and said she reeked of cigarette smoke.
Wow, where did they meet?
Well that's not very elegant, maybe she should've switched to chewing tobacco and carried an elegant spitoon.
So did Jacqueline Onassis and nearly every other famous figure, along with tens of millions of ordinary people. Almost everyone smoked in the 50s and 60s. It was fashionable and when the news got out that it was lethal, which was in the mid-60s, no one believed it, and the tobacco industry did everything it could to suppress the research and deny it, even though the tobacco people knew it perfectly well in the early 50s.
At the opera in NY in the 1960s@@monamarlowe
Were I to have had a fashion idol, Babe Paley would have been mine. She was exquisite.
She's one of mine.
No she wasn’t.
Glad someone said it.
Sounds a lot like Betty Draper...
I hadn't heard of Babe until more recently, but when I learned about her and her life, I immediately thought that they must have modeled a lot of elements of Betty Draper on her.
I enjoy following fashion and style, but can honestly say keeping up her perfect and magnificant style had to be exhausting. Bebe was a woman of her times. Put the same intense effort into education and a career today, and one could lose the philandering husband, or perhaps not marry him at all!
Chiselnyc At one point Babe wanted a divorce but Truman talked her out of it.
You said it.
@@chicnoir29 Truman pointed out to her that she had no money of her own and had 4 kids, and advised to her to view being the wife of Bill Paley as a job. It was a pretty demanding job, too. Paley demanded that she present a perfect front at all times, and be not just perfect, but outstanding, whether as a fashion plate or a hostess.
@@chicagonorthcoast - SMH I believe the job was so demanding it led to the neglect of her children.
@@chicagonorthcoast - BTW are you excited for the F/X series about Truman and his swans?
They say Jackie Kennedy was the most best dressed women of her time? But ok I respect both
Wallis Simpson was the best dressed american woman according to me ....
@@bobduvar But she had the face of Bert Lahr lol
Lee Radziwill was the best dressed of she and her sister Jackie. Look at all those past pictures.
@@MegAplin - I love those photos of Lee and Jackie. They never looked overdone but always looked perfect.
Jackie, Babe, C Z Guest, and Wallis Simpson all made the 10 Best Dressed list. Babe was the fashion editor at Vogue, following Eleanor Lampert, who started the Best Dressed list. In the 1970s, Lampert named Babe as the Super Dresser of all time.
Barbara Cushing Mortimer Paley, was the ultimate WASP and epitome of what we now call a trophy wife. Being brought by a woman(my mother who Iived and still lives) her life in her own terms. I have empathy for her. Nowadays we are so easy to forget that women in those days didn't have the chances that later their sister would have in second part of the 20th century. So therefore who am I to judge her. That's the way she was brought and therefore that was her reality. I am sure that she paid a very high price as her husband was constantly unfaithful therefore she never knew happiness . She is an enigma for us, but wherever you are in heaven I sincerely wish she has been Happier than her live on earth.
Too much alcohol, too many cigarettes, and not enough food.
It was the times. The Era.
She was 63. VF is lacking in journalism.
Louise Brooks was better, but she reminds me of her in some angles. Bill had a type I guess.
And what about Dovima ???? And Suzy Parker ??? Suzy Parker was Mademoiselle Chanel favorite model....
Dovima was so chic so elegant...i do remember a photo with two elephants with each one paw up and Dovima wearing a haute couture outfit on the middle of the elephants....
A shame how Dovima’s life at the end SMH.
With the exception of the comment(the dialect of style) preceding mine.Carefully worded and intelligent.Save yourself the insult of reading further derisive commentary.Few today can comprehend or even vaguely grasp personal style.Let alone understand gracious and reserved women like Babe Paley.
Thank you so much for the upbraiding. Jeez.
Great women of these eras married board rooms; they had no other access.
"Babe Paley had one fault, She was perfect otherwise she was perfect" - Truman Capote
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Fantastic clothing fantastic photography jewellery stylists on a very average looking woman!
She has Class ..
She kind of lacked spark.
Totally agree.
I would hardly say she was "so understated". Her outfits were very ostentatious and often gaudy. BTW, her own children stated she neglected them. Her daughter said she was almost non-existent as a mother because she was too busy being a socialite. That's far worse than her husband cheating on her. There's really nothing perfect or respectable about this woman. She's everything people should aspire not to be: vain, narcissistic, lived off other people's money and was never there for her children.
I don't understand people jockying about to be high in society, seems to be an empty ambition. People are fickle, you have to always worry about your standing, who needs it? I don't toss and turn wondering when I'll be rejected, cos it don't matter, honey, it will happen no matter what, eventually.
Her granddaughter just wrote a article. Her grandmother Babe, was magical. Let's not believe everything we watch....it might not be 100% true.
A shawdow that falls, huh? Probably caused by all the cigarette smoke - 5-6 packs per day.
Possibly to keep her weight down, do you think?
@@Chiselnyc nervous, calming habit. To soothe. (They thought).
I see her as vein and self-absorbed. Elegant - yes. Interesting as a person - not at all.
Nice doggie sit! _[Voff!]_
Babe may have been well dressed but she is one step above 'homely' as far as looks. She is not pretty....not even attractive. Great clothes........can't disagree with that.
I agree with you. She is much today as a lot of "so-called" Hollywood and music celebrities who are called beautiful but are of common or average beauty but have benefit of expensive clothes, $100 per hour make up artists, photo-shoped pictures, their own PR and TV/magazine reporters who can't see pass it or just report otherwise.
If you passed any on the street under ordinary circumstances, they would be deemed ordinary.
In my opinion only about 20 percent of Hollywood so-called beautiful women are actually so. They are just re-adjusted to look they way.
Is this important? No. But as unimportant as it is for some reason it annoys me.
Many people who are beautiful in person or have some otherwordly kind of grace or charisma look unremarkable in photos, just as there are people who photograph really well but are lackluster in person. I agree that Babe wasn't much more than conventionally good looking, but this combined with having class and elegance in her demeanor may have caused her to be truly captivating in person.
Excellent points. Babe was reportedly extremely gracious in person and possessed a loveliness that could not be denied. This was a period where men and women cultivated their personal charm. Their manner of speaking, walking and being.They practiced the art of dialogue and discourse. All of these values have all but gone out the window. We now live in a world where the majority would be mystified if they met such a person as she.
mellenpolly I really wish we could return to those days. Now everyone seems to be in a race to bottom.
@@chicnoir29 People walk around dressing like they just washed their car. Best foot forward, it's nice to look nice.
None of the Swans were exceptional. They had money and they had stylists. Their faces were nothing noteworthy. None of them.
A less lisp speaking narrator would have made this so much more....afterall Babe.was perfect....the narrators voice grating.
Have you ever heard Truman Capote speak.....?⁷
@@karrinwilley8079 🤣
Not exactly best dressed women of all time if you don't go beyond the 20th century or Western countries.
Exactly. The average Nigerian woman is better dressed
than Babe (and I'm an American white male).
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Cautionary tale?
What?
Don't marry a rich guy?
Don't marry a cheater?
Don't smoke?
Don't be beautiful?
Silly narrative.
poorly written
What a sad, wasted, vapid life.
Esposa trofeo 🤔💛💙❤️