[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I'm Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City,

[00:27] Meg: where we still live and where we podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do ripped from the headlines, and

[00:32] Jessica: I do pop culture.

[00:34] Meg: I don't think that you have seen this headline because I know you've been really busy today.

[00:39] Jessica: Oh, it's a. Today headline.

[00:41] Meg: It's a. It's like breaking news.

[00:43] Jessica: Oh, my gosh. Okay.

[00:45] Meg: Guess how much money Trump owes Eugene Carroll.

[00:49] Jessica: Oh, dear.

[00:50] Meg: The verdict came in today.

[00:52] Jessica: Today.

[00:52] Meg: Yeah.

[00:53] Jessica: Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. 35 million.

[00:59] Meg: Try 83.3 million.

[01:01] Jessica: Shut up.

[01:03] Meg: All right.

[01:04] Jessica: Oh, God, it's the greatest. That makes me so happy.

[01:09] Meg: And this is a callback. I'm not only mentioning it because it's, like, fun and amazing, but also because it's a callback because the reason she was able to bring suit against him was because of the Adult Survivors act, which the Horace Mann survivors helped push forward. Also, it's a callback to our dear Dan Rather, who tweeted, guess we'll soon find out if he really is a billionaire.

[01:38] Jessica: Oh, Dan.

[01:40] Meg: Dang Dan.

[01:41] Jessica: Throw a danger. That is. So. I'm doing, like, a little tiny hand clap.

[01:52] Meg: I know we rarely talk about Trump, even though he was such an 80s person.

[01:57] Jessica: So it's kind of nice to, like,

[01:59] Meg: dribble him in here and there with good news like this.

[02:03] Jessica: Yes, we. We have mentioned him a few times. I actually was reading something this week which sort of made me gag. It was a. It was about him now, but talking about how he was perceived in the 80s and that some magazine described him as like a tab hunter, good looking, blue eyed blonde. And I was like, he called that in that bullshit. A publicist working overtime to figure out who is obscure enough to the current generation that no one's really going to go crazy about this.

[02:40] Meg: Well, actually, this is another callback. Well, not really, but Nikki Haskell, who you talked about just a couple of weeks ago, she lost all of her friends because she is a Trump supporter.

[02:52] Jessica: Yes, she did.

[02:54] Meg: So word to the wise, I mean,

[02:57] Jessica: I don't think that any of our listeners are like, gee, I guess I should terminate my deep abiding friendship with Donald J. Like, although also, funny enough, who is I? I was talking to someone today during a brief interruption in my otherwise bleak work, droning where we were. We were laughing about Melania's.

[03:25] Meg: That was me. You were talking to me.

[03:26] Jessica: Oh, well, you know what, I really, really, I really hope that you cut this because I remember that I spoke to you earlier today.

[03:35] Meg: Wow.

[03:36] Jessica: Now I do. Now it's coming back.

[03:37] Meg: You thought it was be better. And I was like, nope, it's be best.

[03:42] Jessica: And I fact checked you in the moment and you were correct. By the way, I'm Jessica Jones. It's very nice to meet you. Have we met before? Hi. Your name again? Myrtle. Lucille. Great to meet you. I had an uncle who called me Lucille all the time.

[04:07] Meg: Did you ever consider going to boarding school?

[04:10] Jessica: Yes, actually. This is a good story. Okay, so I thought about it for maybe a nanosecond, but I was not ready for that kind of thing at all. But I was having a really hard time at Nightingale sophomore year.

[04:28] Meg: Okay, so you were thinking of going for 10th grade.

[04:31] Jessica: I can't recall if it was for 10th grade or for junior year, I really don't remember. But my parents came to me and said, do you want to go to boarding school? And I was so offended. I was like, you want to get rid of me, you bastards?

[04:48] Meg: So you called their bluff.

[04:50] Jessica: I don't think it was a bluff. I think that it was like, is this something that would make you happier? Maybe. But I was so offended. I vividly remember the fit I pitched over that one.

[05:06] Meg: That's so funny.

[05:07] Jessica: That was the extent of my boarding school.

[05:10] Meg: But I will say, I think in other parts of the country maybe it's unusual to go to boarding school. Possibly in New York it's very, or at least in the 80s it was very normal. Like certainly coming from an all girls school. Lots of people were not going to stay there for high school. They were either going to go to boarding school or they were going to go to a co ed school.

[05:34] Jessica: Yes. And I think part of my indignation was also that you either went to boarding school because it was an excellent school, like it was really going to set you up, or because you were a discipline problem.

[05:47] Meg: Right. This is true.

[05:49] Jessica: And I think that like the people who I knew in college who were the boarding school kids were all east coast. There was, there was no one from

[06:00] Meg: the mid-80s who was going to boarding school. There's definitely a tradition of boys going to boarding school from New York, all boys schools, because lots of the all boys schools only go through eighth grade. And then you're expected to go to boarding school because they have fields. And if you want to do sports, you, you can go do sports in these places in Connecticut or Vermont or wherever.

[06:25] Jessica: What I'm just laughing that we're like, you know, it's not in Manhattan. It's Vermont, New Jersey, I don't know, some other place that's not on this island.

[06:37] Meg: Yeah, yeah, I know. Like, you know, if you're going to a California school where you already have like a huge campus, why would you bother to leave? Quite so the school, I mean, it's just what makes New York different.

[06:53] Jessica: Yes. I mean there are the hill schools.

[06:55] Meg: There are the hill schools. Right. We've talked about them. Horace Mann, Fieldston, Riverdale. But we're talking about boarding school where you actually go and you live there. You live there. Oh, and lots of these boarding schools were single sex. They were only boys schools until really the 70s, late 70s.

[07:16] Jessica: Were there also, interestingly, all girls boarding schools?

[07:19] Meg: I don't think so.

[07:20] Jessica: Interesting, interesting. Too much freedom.

[07:24] Meg: Well, and that's also why all the girls schools in New York go through senior year, because they weren't expected to go away. Also remember pre title 9, they didn't do the sports, the girls so much. So there was no reason to send them to campuses, I guess.

[07:40] Jessica: Yeah.

[07:41] Meg: My sources are Washington Post, New York Times and Newsweek. On April 23, 1984 at 1:35pm, Derek Otis's plane touched down at Kennedy Airport and he breathed a huge sigh of relief. He and his girlfriend Kathy Cohen had embarked on an epic adventure that gotten out of hand. And they considered themselves extremely lucky to be safely back on American soil. Derek and Kathy were seniors at Choate, one of the oldest and most prestigious boarding schools in the country.

[08:21] Jessica: And most soaked in cocaine, which 80s

[08:25] Meg: which boasts alumni, JFK, Edward Albee, Glenn Close, to name a few. Derek was a townie in Wallingford, Connecticut. His stepfather delivered vending machines and his mother was a public school teacher. She knew Choate would provide her son with a stellar education. So when he got in as a day student on full scholarship, she was ecstatic. In 1984, a day student would pay $8,000 a year to go to Choate, which by the way, was the same amount of money that Nightingale cost.

[09:03] Jessica: Really?

[09:04] Meg: Really. If you were a boarding student, you paid $11,000. In 2024 frightened day students at Choate pay 52,880 and boarding students pay 68,880 and Nightingale students pay 61,655. Oh my God.

[09:30] Jessica: That is criminal. Wow. Damn. That's a lot of money. I know, I know you know, I know you know. I. I am just, I am floored.

[09:41] Meg: But I will say when I typed it out.

[09:44] Jessica: It did. It hurt a little. It hurt a little.

[09:49] Meg: Derek felt out of place amongst the mostly very privileged students. After a parent's visiting day, the school paper wrote a story about all the cool cars that were parked on campus. Mercedes, Jaguars, Ferraris. Somebody's parents arrived in a helicopter. The article also mentioned a Dodge in the parking lot. Quote, these people must have gotten lost.

[10:14] Jessica: Ugh.

[10:15] Meg: I know. School paper. What? Well, Choate, right?

[10:19] Jessica: That sounds very classically Choate.

[10:22] Meg: It also sounds very 80s. That Dodge happened to belong to Derek's stepfather.

[10:26] Jessica: Well, I guess it's a good thing that he didn't show up in the delivery truck. Jessica. Okay.

[10:33] Meg: Derek did make a close friend, Matthew Holmes, who was, and this is in Derek's description, sort of awkward, insecure, not very popular. Now, Matthew's parents lived in Venezuela, and I couldn't find out why. I think there might be an ambassador situation there. Not clear.

[10:52] Jessica: You think ambassadors? And I'm like, Nazis. He was born of Nazis.

[10:59] Meg: All right, so Matthew, he goes and visits his parents in Venezuela. And when he started bringing back pot after school breaks, his star began to rise. In March of their senior year, 1984, the Matthew invited Derek to come home with him for spring break, and the boys brought 200 grams of cocaine back to school. Derek smuggled it in a bottle of baby powder. Quote, I felt I owed him. I hadn't paid for anything. The first time I did coke, it was with Matt and some folks. And I felt like hell. My heart was going a mile a minute, and I couldn't sleep. But the next day, I wanted to do it again. Derek and Matthew went to see Scarface and took a break in the middle of the movie to do lines in the bathroom.

[11:47] Jessica: It's so on the nose, really. I mean, that was not a pun I was really going for. And, oh, it hurts.

[11:54] Meg: That was so bad that April, Derek and his girlfriend Kathy, who was from a distinguished Little Rock, Arkansas family, decided to plan their own trip to Venezuela. This time, they collected $5,000 from 12 students, promising to bring back a big score. Matthew made the arrangements, and Derek and Kathy flew to Caracas, staying at the nicest hotel in town, the Hilton. According to a 1984 New York Times article about traveling to Caracas, all foreigners should be sure that travel documents are in order. Foreign visitors are sometimes stopped by Venezuelan immigration agents for real or imagined irregularities in their papers. And American business executives have complained recently about a rash of incidents wherein government employees demanded $25 to $50 in order to allow tourists and other travelers to enter and leave Venezuela just to sort of set the scene. That's what, that's what these kids decided to do.

[13:01] Jessica: Okay.

[13:02] Meg: Sitting in their hotel room, waiting for Matthew's drug connection to arrive, Derek and Kathy started having second thoughts. At 10pm there was a loud knock on the door. Derek answered and three men entered. One was short with a long, thick black mustache. He kept twirling between his fingers.

[13:23] Jessica: Oh, come on.

[13:25] Meg: Swear to God. He was flanked by two men with automatic weapons. The exchange took less than a minute, and the next day, Kathy and Derek were on their way back home. Just after they made it through customs, as they walked through jfk, Kathy and Derek were approached by two law enforcement officers. They took Derek into a private room and searched him. They tossed a bottle of baby powder from his luggage into the trash. But when they found baggies of cocaine in his pockets and asked where the rest was, Derek said glumly, you just threw it out. Facing 15 years in prison, Derek pled guilty to smuggling in 350 grams of cocaine worth $300,000 on the street.

[14:12] Jessica: Oh my God.

[14:14] Meg: And was sentenced in federal District Court to five years of probation and 5,000 hours of community service.

[14:20] Jessica: That's it.

[14:22] Meg: At his sentencing, Judge Daley said, I'm not going to send you to jail, but that is what I was prepared to do when I came here this morning. According to Derek, we were a white family and I hate to say it, but that helped in our fortunes.

[14:39] Jessica: Can I ask a question? Sure. Okay. So what happened in Venezuela? So you described, like, he. Where did the scent? Like, so the sentencing was in the United States?

[14:49] Meg: Yeah.

[14:49] Jessica: Right. So they, they were allowed to leave Venezuela because they had the coke confiscated and they just left.

[14:56] Meg: Oh, no, no, no. It was confiscated in Kennedy Airport.

[15:00] Jessica: They were out of.

[15:02] Meg: They got out without a problem.

[15:04] Jessica: Oh, that was a Kennedy. Yeah, That's a mistake. Okay.

[15:09] Meg: No, they were almost home. As for Kathy, she was from Little Rock. And what does that mean to you at this point in time that she's

[15:19] Jessica: going to be sentenced in.

[15:22] Meg: Well, it's interesting. No, because you're talking about jurisdictions now and I'm glad you brought it up because it was a little weird. They were like.

[15:30] Jessica: Because I was thinking like, okay, I know where, what her residence is, but if it happened at Kennedy, then that's the nexus. So she should have a New York.

[15:39] Meg: It should be a New York trial. But then it's also a federal crime. So is it going to be the federal court? Is it going to be New York State court? Or, or is it Going to be Connecticut because the school, the school and the kids who gave them the money, I mean, Connecticut had an argument for wanting the case as well.

[16:00] Jessica: Okay. But Arkansas, they didn't throw their hat in the ring.

[16:02] Meg: She just happened to be from Arkansas. And her lawyer, William Wilson, was defending Roger Clinton on federal cocaine charges. No, Roger was the brother of the governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton. Bill had asked William Wilson to defend his brother since William was a longtime Clinton campaign contributor and legal colleague of his wife Hillary. When New York D A John Santucci tried to extradite now 19 year old Kathy, who had gone home to Little Rock, he wants to extradite her to New York to face the music. Bill Clinton said no.

[16:45] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[16:47] Meg: He refused to sign her extradition. He argued that New York's stringent felony drug law that carried a mandatory prison sentence of 15 years without parole was unconscionable. Clinton personally negotiated with Santucci, personally called him on the telephone and got the charge reduced so that Kathie faced two to six years if convicted. Eventually, New York charges were dropped because federal prosecutors in Connecticut decided they wanted to handle the whole thing.

[17:23] Jessica: Wait, so when Derek. When Derek didn't get any jail time,

[17:27] Meg: like both of these trials are happening at the same time, he. So I just told Derek's story first, and now we're going back to Kathy's story.

[17:35] Jessica: Got it. Okay.

[17:36] Meg: They both ended up being prosecuted by federal prosecutors in Connecticut. If they hadn't been, if they had been prosecuted in New York, they were going to jail, no question, mandatory. And that at that period of time, that's when Clinton was like, oh, no, you can't have this little girl.

[17:59] Jessica: I like, I like the accent that went with it. That was good.

[18:02] Meg: And Kathy, like Derek, pled guilty, got probation and only 1000 hours of community service. 14 additional Choate Juniors and seniors were expelled within a month of Derek and Kathy's arrest. At first, Choate claimed they knew nothing of a drug problem at the school anything about the heist before authorities informed them. President of Choate, Charles Day, gave a cantankerous interview to 60 Minutes defending his school, claiming drugs were a nationwide scourge rather than a problem particular to Choate. But it was revealed years later that the school administration had gotten wind of the plot and tipped off the feds. At the time of Derek's sentencing, his stepfather James, told the press, I'm so ecstatic, and no, we will never send another child to Choate. I don't think they'd be too welcome.

[19:01] Jessica: There's so Many details at the very end that are all mind blowing.

[19:06] Meg: I love how Clinton comes into it.

[19:08] Jessica: I mean, I have to admit what I was wondering when Clinton entered, when he came on stage, I was like, how did Meg find the story? Like, were you looking for Clinton? Were you looking for. No. Were you looking for Cho? Like, what was the.

[19:23] Meg: I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I started Googling all the names of the children who were expelled. Now, most of them were minors, so we don't know their names. We do know the three names. We know Kathy and Derek and Matthew Holmes. Right. So I did Kathy, and it didn't take long to find out about what happened with Kathy because Clinton kind of later on when he was running for president, people brought it up. They were like, why did you get so involved in this one case? You extradited tons of people all the time. Why were you so involved in this? It's like, well, he was personal friends with the lawyer who defended. So it's also a very typical Clinton story where it's like, oh, I just. If you are besties, you know, if you're besties with the Clintons, it's. It's a good thing and he will reward you.

[20:20] Jessica: Clearly. Again, like, I don't think I've ever asked you this before. Did you. Did you find this story because you were just going down a rabbit hole of some variety. Did. Trying to find, like, drugs at boarding school? Like, what?

[20:33] Meg: Oh, why did I hit drugs at

[20:35] Jessica: boarding school on this topic?

[20:37] Meg: Oh, Lord, I can't remember.

[20:39] Jessica: I mean, I'm fascinated. That's why I love this story. It's such a good story. Choate knew about this?

[20:46] Meg: Yeah.

[20:46] Jessica: And he sold the kids out. Do you think it was an effort to rehabilitate their own image? As. I mean, I remember Choate as being referred to as coke.

[20:56] Meg: And this is.

[20:58] Jessica: I'm serious.

[20:59] Meg: And this is 1984 and 85. I feel like Choate had a cocaine reputation before that.

[21:08] Jessica: And. And afterwards. I mean, I got to Kenyon in 87, and a whole bunch of juniors and seniors who were from Choate were like big cokeheads.

[21:18] Meg: That's so wild. You should see. I watched the interview with the then president of Choate on 60 Minutes. He is being such a dick. He is like, how dare you ask me these questions? Roger Mudd or whoever it was, who is interviewing him? Like, I know that's so good, but he's so defensive. And I'm like, dude, all you have to say is, we're devastated that this has Happened and we'll do whatever we can to clean up the school instead of going, how dare you suggest that we have a problem. It's like, clearly you have a problem.

[21:59] Jessica: Don't you think that like acknowledging responsibility is, was definitely, that's like, that's a newer concept for a certain type of,

[22:10] Meg: let me just say, social echelon, that if Clinton had been the president of Choate and had given that interview, I think we would have come away being like, oh, he's going to take care of everything and there's never going to be any coke there ever again. This guy should not have given the interview.

[22:29] Jessica: I totally get it. I can't wait to watch it. But it just seems so. Just in keeping with the super entitled demeanor that was fostered at Choate and some of these other top tier boarding schools.

[22:46] Meg: I did do as much of a dive as I could. Derek Otis, he's talking a lot. None of the rest of them are at all. Matthew Holmes kind of disappears off the radar after a mention about America having trouble extraditing him because guess where he went to as soon as it all broke? Venezuela.

[23:10] Jessica: I'm getting the hell out of there. Hit the bricks, kid.

[23:14] Meg: So, I mean, maybe he's still there. I don't even know. And none of the other names were made public because like I said, they were minors. But there is one suggestion in one of the articles that, you know, they're like doing fine. They're the head of so and so bank and so and so.

[23:31] Jessica: They didn't go to jail. Of course they're fine.

[23:33] Meg: Yeah, you're right. Yeah. No, they, they got expelled. And do you remember there was a girl who came back to Nightingale from Choate around this time and I look, I can't remember the exact year. Yes.

[23:49] Jessica: Short blonde hair.

[23:50] Meg: Oh my gosh, yes.

[23:50] Jessica: Okay. Yeah, I, I, the minute you said it, I had the visual and I'm

[23:55] Meg: like, and I think it's around this time. Do I know if it was because of this particular issue? The point is that schools in New York, day schools in New York, when all those kids got expelled, they were like, it's okay, you can come back here.

[24:09] Jessica: Interesting, interesting. There, there's another person I can think of that we both know from Nightingale who was, who is absorbed from a boarding school.

[24:20] Meg: I remember a friend of mine who I met in college but who had grown up in New York, went to boarding school, got expelled for smoking cigarettes, if you can imagine. Absolutely ridiculous.

[24:33] Jessica: That's insane.

[24:34] Meg: Yeah. Came back and got absorbed. There's probably A period of time, maybe they still do, where they keep a few slots open for ne' er do

[24:44] Jessica: wells who need, who need to be

[24:47] Meg: reprogrammed for last minute placement.

[24:50] Jessica: As you were talking about Venezuela, because all things really do come back to either prep school or college. I was a sophomore and a boy came for his freshman year to Kenyon. He rode onto campus and came right up to his freshman year, all boys dorm, on a motorcycle with a leather jacket, like really serving exactly what you think.

[25:19] Meg: Oh, honey.

[25:20] Jessica: He turned out to be the head of Venezuela's opposition party, Leopoldo Lopez.

[25:24] Meg: Oh, okay, that's legit.

[25:26] Jessica: Yeah. So Leo Lopez went from being like, hey, I'm James Dean and every other bad boy ever, to being like, no, I really care about my country and I'm gonna go to prison. And we're like, oh my God, we're so proud of him. Of course he never discusses Kenyon in the press, only that he went to Harvard for graduate school, whatever. But Leo Lopez, and he's very good looking.

[25:50] Meg: He is very good looking.

[25:51] Jessica: He's a very handsome guy. So he certainly captured the hearts of international press. But Venezuela, it doesn't seem like a safe place.

[26:01] Meg: It wasn't in the 80s. We know that still is. That's what we know.

[26:05] Jessica: But fascinating. And I wish we could find out what Holmes's situation was, why his family was there, because that's got to be some wackadoodle kind of story.

[26:17] Meg: Yeah, I feel like I saw somewhere something about an ambassadorship, but I don't want to say that without knowing for sure. So I'm just gonna throw it out there, like a hint.

[26:26] Jessica: Look, I'm all for throwing out, you know, let's see what the comments say, let's see what comes back in.

[26:32] Meg: I just tried another search and did find that Matthew Holmes did come back to New York from Venezuela. He surrendered himself and he pled guilty to one count of importing and causing to import cocaine. And he was freed on a thousand dollar bond pending sentencing. And that was in February 1987. I don't know what his sentence was.

[26:59] Jessica: I love the phrase causing to import cocaine. Well, it sounds so genteel. It's like I wasn't quite involved. I might have set some wheels in motion.

[27:10] Meg: I'm kind of imagining they wouldn't have given him any more than they would have given Derek Otis, who actually did it.

[27:17] Jessica: Oh, agreed.

[27:18] Meg: Right. So he probably also got community service and a fine. But I'm glad to see that he didn't just sort of disappear that he came back to face the music.

[27:28] Jessica: Yes, sure, sure. It speaks, speaks volumes for his character. He's a child. I'm. Look, I'm just laughing. You can't hear this story and not kind of have a giant, like it was the 80s kind of eye roll.

[27:47] Meg: I mean, and is a 20 year old a child is.

[28:01] Jessica: Okay, so here's the engagement question. Okay. When you think of shopping of like glamorous shopping in the 80s in New York, where would you go?

[28:14] Meg: Burgdorfs.

[28:16] Jessica: Well, actually that's a very good answer, but we're going to talk about Barneys today. Oh, yes. So do you have a good Barney's memory?

[28:25] Meg: No, I wish I did. I think I only looked at it longingly from outside. I don't think I ever darkened the door.

[28:33] Jessica: Funny that that's what you should say. Looked in longingly from outside. So that's a very good segue to our topic today. I loved Barney's. Loved, loved, loved one. And what was so great about Barney's is, yes, of course, first off, everything cost like a ridiculous amount of money. And but the, the cachet of being in there. And it was so glamorous and it was, and it wasn't the glamour of like, you know, Truman Capote's Swans, which is what Bergdorf is. It was really like hip and cool. And if you had something from Barney's, you were like cutting edge, so neat. And this funny enough, like, I was looking around at some of the stuff in my completely crowded apartment and I realized, like, even to this day, I still. My wallet and one of my favorite tote, like a leather tote bag from Barney's. In fact, another bag that I just thought of. And the, the ground floor was jewelry, cosmetics. You went downstairs for more cosmetics and lots and lots of bags and hats. So if you were not willing to spend $30,000 on a very special sock, just the one, you know, the, the, the floor of bags and accessories was perfect. But it was. And they also had, I think it was the chopped salad at Fred's, the restaurant in there that was like really well known and. Yeah, like really delightful. And what a place for like see and be seen. Because it was all of the women, like the Park Avenue ladies who thought they were super cool, but maybe were still really Bergdorf Park Avenue ladies, like hanging out there. And there were a lot of publicists who would go there. So it was kind of, it was dazzlingly weird and marvelous. So anyway, Barney's, Barney's, the store declared bankruptcy in 2019.

[30:38] Meg: I know.

[30:39] Jessica: And Then disappeared. And that was a terrible thing because Barney's began in the 1950s and was managed from the 1950s through to its dissolution by the Pressman family. And then, of course, other companies bought in and they tried to expand it, which, of course, everyone wants to do that for their business. But. But Barney's is a perfect example of. Is of a particular place. And it's just. It doesn't have the same judge when it's not in New York. Yeah. And it was originally Barney's with an apostrophe S. And to get cooler and hipper, they got rid of the apostrophe. Ooh. When it went bankrupt, GQ did an interview with the youngest of the Pressmans and his breakfast. He was eating breakfast during the interview. And I think it says everything that his breakfast, as every day, was a pastrami sandwich. What I know, totally insane. What he said about the store was that they weren't really a department store. They didn't have departments. They had cutting edge designers who were adjacent to one another. And that it was designed to really be a destination and a place where cool came to live. And it was done very consciously. That was the strategy. And he said at one point that what he would have liked is not to have windows that had stuff in them, but that the windows should have been looking into the store because the store was the point. Oh, that's nice.

[32:26] Meg: And that's nice.

[32:27] Jessica: Right. So to your point, he said something else that I thought was really, really interesting. Just about business and, you know, how everything now is franchise to the hilt. I thought this was very interesting. He said great stores reflect the cultural life and aesthetic priorities of a city. It's hard not to see Barney's slide from coolness and the astronomical rent in that light. The rapid gentrification of New York and the cultural sameness that has come with it even extends to the way we shop. Barney's was as much a part of New York culture as vanishing bookstores, restaurants and cobblers. It flung New Yorkers together. He said, we had the customers that wanted to go on the adventure with us. He later wrote a book called Chasing Cool, in which he explained that, quote, corporations try to chase cool rather than build relevance, because if you build relevancy, then maybe the corporation will become cool. Cool is the outcome, not a strategy.

[33:28] Meg: Ah, so true. Right?

[33:30] Jessica: But then I started thinking windows. Everyone knows that the Barney's windows were where it was at. Like, it was amazing. So do you know about the Barney's windows and the store, like, why they Were what? They were.

[33:44] Meg: Tell me.

[33:44] Jessica: Well, first off, did you know that there's an association of window dressers?

[33:48] Meg: That doesn't surprise me.

[33:50] Jessica: I was surprised by that because I always thought of it as kind of like, in house.

[33:55] Meg: Yeah, whatever.

[33:56] Jessica: In house, like, you've creatives who, for the most part, probably come and go and.

[34:01] Meg: But it's such a big deal in New York.

[34:04] Jessica: Yes, but they're so. Like, the. The look of it is so connected to the store's identity. Right. And of course, like. No, I don't think anyone goes, we talked about this. Already looks at the Christmas windows anymore.

[34:17] Meg: Sure they do. Absolutely. Well, stop.

[34:22] Jessica: I don't. So it must not be happening. But they're. They're like a Sax window. Looks like a Sachs window.

[34:30] Meg: Yes.

[34:31] Jessica: Right. Well, that's what was so great about Barney's is that eventually it became a Barney's window. But it started out of sheer madness. Let me talk a little bit about store windows, because I found out that, you know, window dressing, obviously, has been a big thing for a very long time and precedes the 20th century. And, in fact, there's a really great book about the advent of department stores called Just Looking, which I highly recommend.

[34:59] Meg: You know, Rhoda was a designer of that character, Rhoda.

[35:04] Jessica: Oh, I love that. I did not know that. I just thought that she lived in the same building as Mary. I didn't know she had enough of a backstory that she had her own show in New York. Okay, okay, okay, crazy lady. I already had, like, a senior moment

[35:18] Meg: earlier today, and she was a window dresser.

[35:21] Jessica: Like, my penance to Valerie Harper has to be that I. I now watch an episode of Rhoda.

[35:27] Meg: Such a great show.

[35:28] Jessica: YouTube. I go. But I read in one of these articles about window dressing that Bonwit Teller made a very big mistake in 1939 by hiring Salvador Dali to do a surreal set of windows. And he did something that they found offensive. They had. He had a bathtub lined in curly Persian lamb fur and a nude mannequin in it. And it was just enough to be, like, confusing and maybe a little sexual. Weird. They came in to veto it. And he had such a fit. He pitched such a fit and started throwing things that he broke the window and fell out on the street.

[36:15] Meg: No.

[36:15] Jessica: Yes. You could look it up. That's crazy. So I loved that. And so then I was thinking about, okay, Barney's windows and crazy people. Well, that takes us to my favorite person, truly. And he's such a good writer and so funny. Husband of the ever present Jonathan Adler.

[36:35] Meg: Yes.

[36:36] Jessica: I knew you were going to say this. Simon Doonan. Yay. Who started doing the Barney's windows in 1986. And he did it until Barney's closed. But he.

[36:46] Meg: And he became more than that. Wasn't he the head of.

[36:48] Jessica: He was the creative director.

[36:49] Meg: Yeah. Yeah.

[36:50] Jessica: And quite rightly, I mean, genius guy.

[36:53] Meg: Jonathan Adler went to Brown.

[36:55] Jessica: He did.

[36:56] Meg: And he does needlepoint pillows. Callback from last week episode.

[37:00] Jessica: Oh, my God. Well, funny enough, Simon Doonan did a window about Mario Buara where everything was the same chintz pattern and. Yes. So it all comes back.

[37:13] Meg: It really does.

[37:14] Jessica: Simon Doonan is one of the most hilarious people in the world, and his books are. I, like, I had to stop reading them on the bus or the subway because I was just crying, laughing. He started out in the United States doing the windows at Maxfield in la. And what was so great about it that wound up carrying into the Barney's windows is that he had zero budget. So everything that he did was found objects. And he was just allowed to do whatever because there was barely any money in it. He didn't have a budget to make anything. It was like, okay. Maxfield was like a weird, you know, avant garde kind of store. They're like, you know what? Go for it. Like, one of his Christmas windows, the whole window is filled with white packing peanuts and, like, just had a head emerging from it, like a mannequin with a Santa hat on. Like it was drowning in snow. And just always kind of weird. And then he got to Barney's and really pulled out all the stops. So I'm just going to talk about a few of the windows that created what we think of as the look of Barney's. I neglected to say that one of his other very famous windows at Maxfield was. Remember when a Dingo Ate My Baby Came out?

[38:33] Meg: Yes.

[38:33] Jessica: He had children being abducted by one. Wolves.

[38:36] Meg: Oh, my God.

[38:37] Jessica: In the window. Which I thought was fabulous. But when he got to Barney's, again, he didn't really have a budget. So it was all imagination and ingenuity. And he realized that he had the opportunity to comment on his favorite thing, which is popular culture. And so his first big window that made a splash, it coincided with the Reagan exit of the White House.

[39:04] Meg: Okay.

[39:05] Jessica: And so he did Nancy Reagan from behind because he said he couldn't get her face right. It was so hideous that he couldn't let her. He couldn't let her face out. And he filled the window with things that she was known for. So like there were, you know, tarot cards and crystals and King Charles Cavalier spaniels, and everything was red, which was her signature color. And so he started tweaking the nose of people who were famous. So next he moved on to Margaret Thatcher and he put her in S M gear because she was a bit severe, as we know. True. Yes. And so he would do these, like, giant oversized heads of these people and then a regular mannequin body. So she was dominatrix Margaret Thatcher. He did Madonna in a window where everything was self referential. Everything was about Madonna. And Madonna, of course, because she comes up in everything that we talk about. Life is about Madonna. He talked about his windows as being like Coney island, and that Coney island is for everybody. And that's what he wanted his windows to be. Not to be so precious and expensive looking. So all of the clothing was put in a context where it wasn't forbidding, it wasn't keeping you at bay, it was making you laugh so that you wanted to come inside and you wanted to be part of the fun and the party. In his efforts to find ways to do things on the cheap, he famously did a window that was just the clothing, but the floor was completely covered in Mr. Potato Heads, and the faces of the mannequins were just like a shoe or a pipe or whatever. He also had, again, no budget for Barneys, so it was just coinciding. And we've talked about this. When women really stopped wearing pantyhose, like the, you know, tan colored. Yes. So at Barney's, they had a surplus of them. There were so many. So he did a window that was all. It looked like starbursts, like giant, like sort of like the. The chandelier at in Lincoln Center. But it was all pantyhose just radiating from a central point. And. And he would comb New York City looking for, again, found objects to just stuff in the window. So dead Christmas trees made the scene interesting. Yes. So he. He was the innovator of all time. So the New York Times covered the Nancy Reagan window, but there were 11 other windows that went with it because it was the 12 days of Christmas. Oh, wow. He said, my basic idea was to take the traditional idea of the song to its lunatic conclusion. It sort of reminds you of when people have a vendetta against someone and send them things like 12 aluminum ladders on a print approval or have ready mixed concrete delivered to people they don't like. That happens.

[42:03] Meg: Good idea. Seriously.

[42:05] Jessica: I have a list I know about, like, you know, someone's having a party or whatever and you send them like or at home like 19 pizzas. But concrete, that's special. So his motive for including Mrs. Reagan was simple. He said, I wanted to do something topical. People are speculating about how Mrs. Reagan feels feels about leaving the White House. As the plans for the windows evolved, Mr. Doonan decided to pair the first lady with the six GISA laying. And one of those eggs is a quail egg. Get it? Dan Quail. He had a cross eyed mannequin done up in red silk taffeta and surrounded by 12 bongo drummers drumming. Who is in the mannequin had simply been pushed to the edge. She simply can't take it anymore. He did a window based on Beverly Hills Cop. He did a Diana Vreeland and with a staff of 15 people made everything happen. Oh, and for nine lords a leaping. And this is our callback to Dali. He had two mannequins. They're about to jump through a window into a snowy night depicted by a backdrop on a slow moving roller. A tabloid on the floor reads I leaping lords in Insider Christmas Shocker.

[43:22] Meg: So of a time it was.

[43:24] Jessica: And everything that he did and set the tone in the 80s but was able to pull it through to the bitter end was don't take yourself so seriously. This is just clothing. Which of course is probably what made Gene Pressman and his pastrami sandwich livid.

[43:41] Meg: I can imagine.

[43:42] Jessica: Right. Like all I want you to do is look at the vibe that I've created. No, we're going to put Margaret Thatcher in a corset and a harness. No, that's what people care about. But they did. And crazy. He's a brilliant genius and I feel like on our, on our Instagram we need to post some of these photos for people.

[44:01] Meg: Definitely.

[44:02] Jessica: What he did and what that store makes me think of, that there's a sense of specialness that seems to be vanishing in the city. And it's definitely a post pandemic kind of feeling. The sense of humor and the going out to be seen. Seems like it's waned a bit. I was so excited to look at these photographs and remember how thrilling it was to be there and to just go through the racks and hope for a sale to occur. Which they did and bless them. I bought so many things that did not fit me just because they were on sale at Barney's. But that sense of specialness is something that I can't find in the 70s. Do you feel that? No, I think it's everywhere.

[44:51] Meg: Absolutely. I think New York is offering so many fun, interesting adventures, and there are too many to even keep track of, really.

[44:59] Jessica: I feel like the things that are happening. And maybe I'm just in a mood today, but the things that are happening seem very orchestrated. Like, they're not sort of random, fun things that, like Pressman said, create a vibe where you just stumble across them and it's part of the. The scenery becomes the point.

[45:19] Meg: I think I understand the distinction you're making, and I. I'm gonna make a list.

[45:23] Jessica: Oh, I'm very excited.

[45:24] Meg: Of things that are authentic and not orchestrated and adventurous for us to go on where it's not something corporate, that it's something organic, and we can do that.

[45:35] Jessica: Okay, look, do we have to leave the island of man to do this?

[45:39] Meg: Possibly.

[45:39] Jessica: See, this is my point. I think that nothing is happening in Manhattan right now. I think that, oh, the kids. The kids with the Brooklyn and the Queens have weird organic stuff happening, and I think that it's realistic.

[45:57] Meg: We'll take the ferry. We'll take the ferry to the weird organic stuff.

[46:00] Jessica: Okay. I can. I can definitely be convinced to do that.

[46:05] Meg: There's axe throwing in Long Island City, for example. Come on.

[46:10] Jessica: No, no, I'm into it. I've thought about that in the past. I don't know if I have the upper body strength.

[46:15] Meg: Let's find out.

[46:16] Jessica: Throw it and hit my foot. I was just looking for spas.

[46:20] Meg: Oh, there's a great spa.

[46:23] Jessica: Yeah. The Korean spa in Queens.

[46:25] Meg: There's a Korean spa in Manhattan that I have to go to. But also, there is a spa that just opened in the Flatiron district that looks amazing.

[46:37] Jessica: What is it called?

[46:38] Meg: I think it's called the Flatiron Baths. I think.

[46:41] Jessica: So you're not talking about air baths. Like, it's like a Roman bath that. That has been.

[46:47] Meg: It's like you go there for the day and you go into different baths. You go into the sauna, and you go into a cold bath or a hot bath, and then you go in, you know, you spend the day going into different baths.

[46:59] Jessica: Interesting. In my endeavors regarding spa research, I did see that, you know the company Lush?

[47:06] Meg: Yes. Bath Bombs.

[47:07] Jessica: Yes. So they have a bath quote spa that you could go to. And all that I was really able to glean from this is they put you in a bathtub and throw in a bath bomb.

[47:19] Meg: I'll do it.

[47:20] Jessica: Type in some music. And I'm like, I could do that at home. I do not need to pay. Whatever this is for you to be like, I'm now going to drop a bath bomb in the water.

[47:31] Meg: Well, let's do some research. Let's do some research. Let's ask our listeners, what is your favorite spa in New York City or even Tri State? Is that too.

[47:42] Jessica: Are you crazy? We don't drive. Neither one of us has a driver's license. Tri state.

[47:48] Meg: Okay, okay, okay. New York City, any borough.

[47:51] Jessica: Any borough spa, including Staten, including statin.

[47:55] Meg: If it's a fantastic spa, I want to hear about it.

[47:57] Jessica: All right, all right. You know what? Yes. Because you're very good at getting me like, to do things right normally. Be like crotchety and, and winter is

[48:05] Meg: the best time to do a spa thing because you've got all this dry skin that needs to be sloughed off.

[48:11] Jessica: This is my thinking. So I was like, I desperately, desperately, desperately need, like a warm weather vacation. But I was like, of course, instantly. I don't want to paint for a warm weather vacation. And then I was like, what could I do for, I don't know, let's say $500? That would be a true escape. And I was like, I will find a spa that will give me a day of relaxation, will be the right price, and it will make me feel like I have gotten outside of myself.

[48:44] Meg: I don't even think you have to spend that much money, to be honest. I think you will find that it is much more affordable than that, especially if you can go during the week and, and then you have add ons. You can get massage and that'll be like 100 bucks more.

[48:58] Jessica: But I was thinking like a full body scrub, some kind of a hydrating wrap, a massage.

[49:05] Meg: No, I hear you. It's gonna add up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[49:08] Jessica: Oh, God.

[49:08] Meg: You're at 500.

[49:09] Jessica: God knows this is not looking like anything that anyone wants to sit next to, even on.

[49:15] Meg: I disagree.

[49:16] Jessica: Well, you're very kind. You like me already. That's, you know, or sometimes. Thank you for the head. Like Bobble. Yeah, you're all right. Yeah. Like, so it's sort of weird, this little story that I'm bringing about windows because I was so happy and excited when I was reading it and looking at Simon Doonan's work. I think it's so interesting and so typical of winter in New York that I went really dark really fast. I love those. And they're gone. And Manhattan's dead.

[49:49] Meg: No, we just have to, we just have to find them. It's. Manhattan is never dead. It's a beautiful, wonderful place and we're the luckiest people in the world.

[49:57] Jessica: We are the luckiest people in the world. But you hang out with all those young people, so I think that you've been infused with their.

[50:03] Meg: With promise.

[50:04] Jessica: Yes. With the future. Yes. It's there. Okay,

[50:18] Meg: Let's tie it up.

[50:20] Jessica: Okay. So I do have to admit for our listeners that at first I was like, oh, this one's easy Cocaine at show. And it's the 80s in New York. It just filled with. And then I'm like, that's our entire podcast. I'm an idiot. Clearly. I need. I need to go to the spa. I need a brain break. Okay. So the tenuous connection that I can come up with is cocaine.

[50:42] Meg: Okay. Yes.

[50:43] Jessica: Choate's cocaine issue and Simon Doonan's famous Nancy Reagan Just say no.

[50:49] Meg: Ooh.

[50:50] Jessica: I mean, he didn't say just say no, but Nancy Reagan and her just say no and her just say no campaign.

[50:56] Meg: Yeah. Thanks, Nancy, for those words of wisdom.

[50:59] Jessica: It's almost like our conversation earlier be best. That's the tie in Melania, Nancy.