‘Every Inch a Lady’ — Audrey Smaltz publishes marvelous new memoir

What makes fashionista Audrey Lavinia Smaltz’s new memoir, “Every Inch a Lady: My Amazing Journey from Dear Harlem to Haute Couture and Beyond” (with a foreword by Michael Kors), so vitally compelling?

In view of today’s ever-escalating demonization, dismissal, and erasure, it can seem impossible for some African Americans that America ever actually advanced enough to have had a Black president. Inspirational and a lickety-split read, here is a book that convinces one that the time for another Obama is at hand and coming soon.

Why? That’s to do with all she’s done, how much Smaltz and the world have evolved and changed over a short 89-year lifespan. Just as there are disparate levels of wealth, health, and educational outcomes for African Americans to surmount, even now, innumerable first-time achievements remain for Blacks to attain. To reach the distance, to gain equality, there’s still a way to go.

For instance, among the nation’s 500 top corporations (the so-called Fortune 500), three were led by Blacks in 2000. A generation later? Only eight more have joined them.

Ultimately, Schmaltz’s eventful life is a testament to her ability to “get shit done!” Yet most modern youth have no real idea about what being at the top and first even means. What ought never be forgotten is that when it comes to historical African American high achievers, including Smaltz, we do stand on the mighty shoulders of heroic giants.

In 1954, at only 17, Smaltz was named Miss Transit, launching her lifelong friendship with one of the judges: fellow Republican Evelyn Cunningham. Consider a time when, decades before there was ever a Black woman crowned Miss America, it was possible to be the first Black contestant vying to compete in a New York City beauty pageant. Imagine how, such a short time ago, it was possible for Smaltz to become only the second Black sales clerk employed at Bloomingdale’s.

Moving forward, from 1970 to 1977, collaborating uneasily with a sometimes intimidated Eunice Johnson, Smaltz was the Ebony Fashion Fair coordinator (Johnson had appropriated the idea from Smaltz’s friend, Black blonde supermodel Dorothea Towles Church). In this role, she acted as a sometimes provocative, always entertaining emcee, infusing her commentary on fashion parades featuring Black models showing the clothes of the world’s foremost designers; Smaltz could be counted on to keep audiences enraptured with wry wit. Attending to help benefit the United Negro College Fund, they were having their consciousness raised, becoming familiar with a level of luxury previously marketed exclusively to well-to-do whites. Smaltz was among the first to convince famed white designers to advertise their clothes directly to America’s lucrative bloc of eager Black consumers.

Then in 1977, Smaltz dreamed up an ingenious firm all her own: the Ground Crew. This masterstroke envisioned a force of professionals, combating clashes, chaos, and theft by doing all the behind-the-scenes work required to put on the seasonal presentations of Fashion Week. A tough sale at first, the Ground Crew became a phenomenal success overnight.

Even after learning that “Every Inch a Lady” was the motto of Smaltz’s all-girl public school, Harriet Beecher Stowe (P.S. 136), or that the concept was one her mother always urged her to adhere to, at least a couple of things might raise a question about the title’s appropriateness. One is the colorful way Smaltz sometimes expresses herself. Another is a series of torrid romances she describes; a few were conducted with other women’s husbands.

Of her initial liaison, Smaltz wrote, “One late night at the office, John and I found ourselves consumed in the heat of passion as we consummated our attraction in one steamy encounter. It was the first time I had ever been with a man sexually. John’s gentle touch liberated my soul. I was particularly happy because my neighborhood girlfriends would finally stop taunting me for being a virgin. From that night on, our relationship was taken to the next level in a full-fledged affair, and I fell madly in love with him.”

Soon enough it becomes clear that neither John nor a few additional recurring suitors were to be “the one.” Not for her. She was not to know a lifetime of connubial bliss with an already married lover she suggestively calls “Big Daddy,” nor even with a prominent Chicago physician who actually, if quite briefly, did become her husband.

A fellow Republican, jazz great Lionel Hampton, took her to Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. She was still with him when we first met in the mid-1990s. Hampton seems to have been the truest love of the first half of Smaltz’s exciting existence. Despite being 29 years older, his caring, warmth, and generosity come through on every page she speaks of him. Together for two decades, the couple remained devoted friends even after they parted, until the legend’s death in 2008.

What exactly is the nature of the attraction of opposites, and why should such a question so promptly bring to mind Gail Marquis and Audrey Smaltz? However one looks at it, they are a marvelously modern couple.

A University of Phoenix alumna, former Olympian silver medalist for basketball, and Mass Mutual Financial Group executive, Marquis is level-headed and protective, and brooks no nonsense.

Smaltz, the girl from the Harlem River Houses, who boasts of being “born, bred, toasted, buttered, jellied, jammed, and honeyed in Harlem,” is a diva, through and through, and always has been. Energetic and enterprising, she has always worked hard: She enjoys gaiety and music, too, good times in smart settings. However, at this stage of the game, the occasional company of innumerable friends is enough. “Incessant partying is not a requirement.”

This perfect pair is spotted out less often nowadays, living full-time in Delaware since Smaltz gave up her bandbox-sized penthouse flat, with a lengthy terrace above 55th Street near Fifth Avenue. Their 11/11/11 nuptials in Central Park caused a stir, but it was hardly a surprise to friends like Alma Rangel, whom I accompanied. Rather, as another intimate said, “it was merely confirmation of a love so vast it needed wide-open spaces to contain …”

Processing along a serpentine pathway, they were serenaded by a herald-like trombonist. The alfresco ceremony is best characterized by that quaint phrase, “every kind of beautiful”; that’s how varied the gathering of about 150 well-wishers was.

The old, the young, and in-between; gay, straight; Black, white, and indeterminate all were on hand, beautifully outfitted and garlanded by smiles. Artfully strewn with brown leaves, the lawn was a magic carpet; the azure sky a vast canopy; both lighted by a welcome and warming sun that made the water sparkle.

Simple, yet somehow also sublime, the vows these women exchanged touched us all, momentarily connected by love and regard, from generation to generation.

“She’s my life partner, my lover, my sweetheart, my own Gentle Giant,” cooed Smaltz the other night, at her book party at the Brownstone boutique on 125th Street. This is 15 years after their union was solemnized and 25 after they first met. So many from Harlem’s glamorous group were on hand: onetime Wilhelmina model-turned-restaurateur Norma Jean Darden; Bloomberg Foundation executive Erana Sennett; jeweler Lou Willard Hoffman; designer Baron Artist — Audrey admirers by the score were on hand to celebrate.

Not untypically, we frequently spoke of those from the recent past we still missed. Marvelous model Sara Lou Harris, who became Lady Carter. Twin photographers Morgan and Marvin Smith. The inimitable Eartha Kitt. Smaltz knew them all and they each knew Ophelia DeVore, who was far more than just Audrey’s mentor as leader of the Grace Del Marco Model Agency, she helped establish in 1946. As a successful businesswoman, publisher, and model, she was also a template, emulated by Smaltz as a means of finding her way.

As far as clothes, poise, what to wear and how, like her gay Haitian-American hairstylist and confidant “Frenchy,” DeVore helped teach Smaltz all about how to be every inch a lady. “Only, she never strove to be conventionally ladylike!” insists Valerie Jo Bradley, Smaltz’s friend of more than 50 years. “Who cares about avoiding expressive adjectives, verbs, or nouns deemed coarse, if they best get your point across? And as to love, it’s completely complicated and fraught with the kind of peril requiring strategic action and an abundance of tact. Audrey knows just what to do and how. Especially when it comes to doing what’s right and always maintaining integrity. Since Sojourner Truth and before, the femininity and gentility of sisters has been questioned. But Audrey’s book has the perfect title, and, I think you’ll notice, she tells the truth, too!”