Aronson Steven M. L. - Avedon something personal$nHorma Stevans & Steven M.L. Aronson

New Years Eve 1975. My husband and I were having a few friends over for a champagne toast. Martin was the worldwide creative director of Revlon at the time and had invited to drop byshould he have nothing better to dohis go-to photographer for big splashy four-color lips and matching fingertips ad campaigns (Fire and Ice, Persian Melon, Cherries in the Snow, Stormy Pink, Wine with Everything). A little before midnight Richard Avedonthe ne-plus-ultra arbiter of feminine grace and beauty, the ambassador of glamour, the epitome of chicburst through our front door bearing a dozen American Beauty roses, which he presented to me with romantic-comedy panache, fanning them out as if he were showing his hand in a card game. You shouldnt have, I said, but now I think Id be disappointed if you hadnt.

It was an entrancea performanceworthy of Fred Astaire. And why not, I thought, since Astaires character in the film Funny Face had been modeled on him. I remember what he had on that night: lavender silk shirt, skinny black knitted tie, dove-gray double-breasted suit fitted to his wiry frame. And behind the horn-rimmed glasses, those black mile-a-minute pinwheel eyes! And then the crowning gloryhis untamed mane of silvery hair.

After Id introduced him to our other guests, he pulled me aside and said, Ive got to talk to you. Where can we go?

I HAD MET RICHARD AVEDON for the first time in the late 1960s when I was a Mad Womanthe creative director of a small advertising agency. I worked on girlie accounts like Coty, Charles of the Ritz, and Monsantocosmetics, fibers, and fabricswhile aching to cut my teeth on bigger-budget stuff like cars and booze. One of my clients, Almay, was about to launch a hypoallergenic line to compete with Este Lauders Clinique, for which Irving Penn had produced a series of pristine still lifes that spoke to the products immaculate conception. There was only one photographer who could give Penn a run for his money, and that was Richard Avedon.

I contacted his longtime rep, Laura Kanelous, who asked right off the bat, Whats in the budget? When I told her, she said, Forget it. He wont work for that. I doubled the money. She said, Keep going! I said, Thats it. She said, Okay, but you only get six months usage, and she put me through to Avedon. Whats up? he barked. I was hearing that unmistakably New York voice for the first time. In my New York voice I told him how I saw the ad: clean, white, pure, nun-like. He said I got it and hung up.

The morning of the sitting I dressed expressly for himcream silk shirt, crisp blue blazer with gold buttons, designer shoes. I walked the few blocks from my office to the Avedon studio on East Fifty-eighth Street eager to meet the legend, and Im not embarrassed to admit that when he charged into the reception area to greet me I felt the electricity.

Over coffee he fired off a volley of personal questionswhere had I gone to college, what was I reading, what did I like to eat?but before I could get two words out he was directing my attention to one of his celebrated portraits of Marilyn Monroe that was propped against a wall. And before I knew it he was telling me how she had reached out to him from a phone booth in Beverly Hills just a couple of days before she committed sui because she needed him to know that he was the only photographer she implicitly trusted and that more people complimented her on the pictures he had taken of her than on the picturesthe moviesshed made. She confided in me an awful lot, he said. She even gave me the phone number she said no one else had.

SAM SHAW

DICK AND MARILYN, 1959.

HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL.

At that point the stylist appeared and said, Were ready, and the model, a Swedish beauty, emerged from the dressing room. Avedon approved her hair and makeup, and then back she went, to be dressed. But when she reappeared, she was swathed not in white organdy like the virgin Id envisioned but embalmed head to toe in rolls of Saran Wrap. He said to me, Dont you love this! I didI recognized it as something that had never been done before. No surprise there: Avedon was the photographer of so many firststhe first portrait of the First Family, JFK and Jackie; the first belly button in an American high-fashion mag, Suzy Parkers; the first bared breasts, Contessa Christina Paolozzis; the first mnage trois; the first fashion-mag cover boy, Steve McQueen; the first haute-couture black beauty, Donyale Luna; the first to shoot outdoors in Paris after the OccupationSo why not, now, the first hypoallergenic mummy?

He led the model onto the set, turned up the music (Ella Fitzgerald), and clicked away. When I presented the image to my client, they didnt buy it: they wanted something literal. I broke the news to Laura Kanelous, who said, No reshoot. And Avedon gets paid in full. This felt like the ending of Dick and Me. It was just the beginning.

THE NEXT TIME I encountered Richard Avedon, I had just married his biggest client. He sent Martin the following telegram: CONGRATULATIONS STOP YOU HAVE JUST WON THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT OF THE YEAR STOP YOU AND YOUR BRIDE ARE EXPECTED AT THE AVEDON STUDIO ON THURSDAY 10 A.M. LOVE DICK. I slipped back into my flowered black voile wedding dress for the occasion. Avedon took one look at me and said, Oh, its you! The Almay girl. The girl with white on the brain. Who I see got married in a black dress. This union is doomed, he said, laughing.

The celebrity hairdresser Ernie Adler was on hand to do my hair. When he was done, Avedon turned on the big-band music he knew Martin liked, and said to us, Dance! I did an arabesque holding on to Martins arm (I had once, briefly, been a bunheada baby ballerina). He said Fabulous! and clicked. It was over so quickly I had post-performance depression. Which lifted the minute he brought out champagne and caviar, crying, Eat! Drink! Later that week he sent us a complete album of wedding photographs, ending with a signed formal portrait: the first of the innumerable Avedons we were to own, and the most precious.