MONDAY
, 12:30
P.M.
, at WTVF, Channel 5: “Mr. Blass, I’m Debbie Alan, one of the hosts of the show. We’ll be talking about romance and clothes. We have a good time on this show, so just cut loose, okay? The other segments are Thanksgiving centerpieces and a guy with some great hair-care products. Hey, would one of you tell the hair guy I’m going to ask if conditioners really cure split ends, and if we have time I’ll touch on one of the other products, like maybe the curl enhancers.”
A production assistant in front of us is wearing fawn-colored twill jeans, a white poor-boy sweater, and brown moccasins. Blass looks at her and says, “My God, those look like my jeans. Call her over. Those are my jeans.” The woman turns and comes over to him, looking embarrassed, and says she hadn’t known he was going to be on the show, and didn’t wear the jeans on purpose. Blass is examining the jeans and doesn’t answer. “That’s a nice fabric, that twill, isn’t it? It’s a nice finish. It looks like suede.”
“I love them,” she says.
“She’s got herself up nicely, hasn’t she?” he says to me. “That’s a good look.”
The show begins, and Debbie Alan announces that the internationally famous designer Bill Blass will be coming up after the commercial. Then she giggles and says, “I have Bill Blass underwear and perfume, because that’s all I can afford, and I’m not going to tell you if I’m wearing either of them.” Blass, now perched on a tall director’s chair, hands in pockets, lets out a beefy chuckle. Once the commercial is over, Yvonne Lopez comes out wearing a slim-cut white jumpsuit piped in blue, followed by a model in a white-gazar-and-black-lace strapless gown. Debbie says, “Will someone scoop this up for, say, the Swan Ball?”
Blass says, “I hope so, Debbie.”
Now a model is wearing a Prince of Wales plaid pantsuit overlaid with black lace. Debbie asks whether women in Nashville dress differently from women in other parts of the country. Blass says, “There are wonderful-looking women all over this country, Debbie. I truly have a variety of customers—active, busy women who work or, like Alyne Massey, who are involved in charities, and so forth, and live all over the country.”
A few more outfits are shown: a boyish blazer in a granite-print fabric, a floral tiered minidress, and a long gown in the same floral fabric with black illusion sleeves and neck. Then the segment is over. Debbie thanks him for coming. Blass says, “Thank you, Debbie, and enjoy your underwear.”
A FEW OF
the Nashville models had gotten their breasts done. No one had anticipated this. The models had been discussed before our trip to Nashville: Craig had wanted twenty, but he and Jamie settled on eleven. Blass had said that because they would be local girls he expected them to be “a little plumpy.” As it happened, the Nashville models were not particularly plumpy, but they did have big breasts, one pair quite recently enhanced. When we got to Jamie’s store on Monday, Craig was fitting them into the samples and doing cleavage checks while three workmen were building a little runway in the store. The luncheon would be in the front room, which has a crystal chandelier, thick taupe carpeting, gilded molding, and plate-glass windows looking out on a small parking lot and then on Harding Road and across to a Kroger’s and a strip mall. The rest of the store is broken into separate nooks for different designers; there is also a shoe nook, a fine-jewelry nook, and a lingerie nook. The center of the store is a living room elegantly furnished with an ottoman, a coffee table, and two side chairs. Jamie was saying, “There just aren’t any shops like this anymore. Martha in New York—gone. Lou Lattimore, in Dallas—gone. Isabell Gerhart, in Houston—gone. In Nashville, I’m it. Let’s face it: In the past, we all used to fly our own planes around and spend a fortune on clothes, and we’ve all had to cut back. I still wanted to make this a special place. And that takes a little something. Those chairs for the living room—they’re oversized French fauteuils with needlepointed leopard upholstery—cost thousands of dollars, but I think it’s worth it, don’t you? It gives it a homey feel, don’t you think?”
Craig was helping one of the models into a gray and white chalk-striped sweater and morning-striped pleated skirt, saying, “Your cleavage, dear.” Blass rummaged around in a box of accessories on a counter, pulled out a little shoulder bag, and said to the model, “Put this on. Across your shoulder. Across. Yes. That’s good. That’ll jazz it up. Craig, use more of this goddam stuff to jazz it up.” He murmured to me, “I would never use a bag in the New York shows. I also left out a few of the pieces I showed in New York and added some from the resort collection—flowered things that I think will be big here. A lot of these customers go to Palm Beach for the season, so they need that sort of dress. Everything in New York has to be goddam severe. Of course, in New York they dislike everything anyway, so you give them as little to dislike as possible.”
Joyce Preston, Blass’s sales representative, walked in and stood next to Jamie, and Jamie said, “Joyce, I’ll be disappointed if we don’t do a hundred and fifty thousand dollars at the show. Most of the big people are coming, but we’ve got two Fortune 500s who are out of town and are going to miss the show. So that’s disappointing right there.”
IT HAD RAINED
all day and all night, and then sputtered to a stop just moments before women began arriving for the luncheon. The runway was ready, and tables set with linens, silver, bushy centerpieces, and Bill Blass, Ltd., pencils were now arranged in a semicircle around it. Jamie was dressed in a sharp-looking black wool crepe Blass suit from this fall. Mrs. Massey arrived wearing a suit from the same collection in red. Mrs. Johnson, who had had us over for dinner Sunday night, arrived. Mrs. Hunter Armistead, of the Tennessee Armisteads, and Mrs. Jimmy Bradford, of the J. C. Bradford brokerage Bradfords, and Mrs. James Cheek III, of the Maxwell House Coffee Cheeks, and Mrs. Neil Parrish, of the National Life and Accident Parrishes, and Mrs. Pamela Iannacio, a pencil heiress, arrived. In all, sixty-four guests were there, most of them wearing good Blass luncheon suits, with trim silhouettes, big buttons, smart details. The women were pearly, well coiffed, unglamorous, but timelessly good-looking; there were some mothers and daughters and probably a good span of generations, but for a million bucks I couldn’t have guessed anyone’s age. Mrs. Massey was seated at our table, next to Blass. Waiters circled the room and placed a papaya stuffed with lobster at each place, and after a few moments the show began. Yvonne came out in a black faille puff-sleeved jacket and morning-striped pants. Mrs. Massey leaned over to Blass and said, “That’s very correct, very fun.”
Blass said, “That’s a good suit. Those are good-looking pants. That’s something you ought to have.” Mrs. Massey made a note on a pad of paper. Then out came one of the buxom Nashville models, in a floral suit. Mrs. Massey glanced at Blass, and he whispered, “You should have that, babe. That’s very you.” She picked up the pencil again.
The next model wore a short black lace dress with black lace stockings. Blass pointed at her legs and said, “Love those stockings. Two hundred bucks a pair and goddam fragile.”
Mrs. Massey snorted, and said, “Darling,
never.
”
As soon as the show ended, the women popped up from their seats and headed for the next room, where the sample racks were lined up. Mrs. Massey was at Blass’s elbow, saying, “I need something for Palm Beach. Not too severe, because it’s for Palm Beach.”
People buzzed around the racks. A woman standing near Joyce said to her, “I’m giving something for the Super Bowl. What can you put me in?”
A young woman with a light brown ponytail emerged from one of the dressing rooms wearing an iridescent, mousseline strapless gown that cost $6,040. She said, “I can’t breathe, I can’t talk, I can’t move, but I love it.”
Blass looked her over and said, “It’s very good.”
She sucked in her breath and said, “I think I’ll buy it.”
I was bumped into one of the racks by someone grabbing my arm and saying, “There was the cutest little girl waiting on me who was Kappa Kappa Gamma at Vanderbilt. Do you know where she is?”
At this point, every dressing room was full, and Joyce, Craig, Jamie, and Jamie’s sales staff were bounding from rack to room with the samples. By two o’clock, they had written orders for eighty-five thousand dollars’ worth of clothes. Mrs. Massey had picked nine outfits, including a gown for the Swan Ball; they would all be tailored and delivered in a few months. Then she kissed Blass good-bye and left for Brook House.
A few minutes later, the phone in the store rang. Joyce took the call. After hanging up, she said to Blass, “That was Mrs. Massey. We have to protect her. She wants us to protect her especially on the gown and also on the suit.” Blass grimaced, and Joyce said, “Bill, we have to. I promised her no one else would have that at the Swan Ball.” To herself, she said, “I’m going to have to pull that plaid suit with the lace overlay, too. I could sell six, I’m sure, but I’ve already sold two, and this town is too small for another one.”
WHEN THE TOTAL
of orders approached a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Blass decided he could sneak out to see the Parthenon after all. We called for a limousine. It had a new driver. Mr. Blass looked at him and said, “Good-looking man.” The driver, Jim, opened the glove compartment and handed Blass a photograph of himself modeling suits for a local store.
“Very nice,” Blass said. “I think we should see the Parthenon.”
“You should go see Opryland,” Jim said. “The entertainment business is to Nashville what a pinkie with a diamond ring is to a hand.”
Mr. Blass settled into the seat and lit a cigarette. When we got to the Parthenon, Jim told us to be sure to look inside at the statue of Athena, because it was the largest indoor sculpture in the Western world. When we saw it, Mr. Blass stopped and stared in amazement. The statue was chalk white, and was wearing a peplos, sandals, and a military headpiece. After a minute, Blass said, “Well, that’s the biggest goddam fake job I’ve ever seen. My God, it’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything so awful in my life. Have you ever seen anything so awful?” We went down to the gift shop, where he admired a T-shirt and then told the cashier her printed-silk bomber jacket was amusing and asked if it was for sale. She said it was. He took a second look and said, “It’s a good jacket. It’s amusing. But it’s really not for me.”
TIFFANY
O
NE THING THAT TIFFANY, TIFFANY’S MANAGER
, and the entire Tiffany organization would like you to know is that even though it may seem too good to be true, Tiffany’s real name is really Tiffany.
“Of course her real name is Tiffany,” says George Tobin, her record producer, manager, and vigilant shepherd. “Her name is Tiffany, just like Madonna’s name is Madonna. You know, I’d actually prefer that you didn’t use her last name at all. No one ever uses Madonna’s last name—it’s always just Madonna. I like it to be just Tiffany. If her name were Mary or something, then we’d use her last name, but we have a name like Tiffany, and that’s perfect, and it’s real.”
Tiffany, who is sixteen years old and whose debut album,
Tiffany,
has sold 4 million copies worldwide, says, “I know Tiffany is a pretty unusual name. It actually was really unusual when I was born. But then, when I was about two, it started to become really popular.” She rubs her forehead and then says, “When I was about two, they even started making Tiffany lamps and even Tiffany rugs. They even started making Tiffany jewelry. I guess it’s just a name that got really popular.”
Another thing that Tiffany, Tiffany’s manager, and the entire Tiffany organization would like you to know is that even though her success may seem too instantaneous and easy to be true, Tiffany’s talent is real.
“She’s going to be around for a long, long time,” Tobin says. “She’s going to have a long career. The whole trip with her is that she’s real. It’s going to last. We’ve built a fan base of support, and now we’re solidifying it. I’m sure that you’ll be writing about her many, many times in the future.”
“I’m myself onstage,” Tiffany says. “I want to come across as a real person. This is my career. I’d like it to continue for a long time. Or, I guess, I could end up being a manicurist or something, right?”
It is the night before the day that Tiffany will perform at Disney World. For the first time in her life she will be singing with a band before a large audience. Granted, her statistics are impressive: She is the youngest female to have her debut album go to the top of the pop charts, and the youngest person to have the first two singles of her first album (“I Think We’re Alone Now” and “Could’ve Been”) hit Number One, and the first person in three years to have two different songs hit Number One simultaneously, one in England and one in the United States. Her record is already multi-platinum. But her only experience in front of crowds has been singing along with tapes in shopping malls.
“I’m not nervous,” Tiffany says, her voice mild and somewhat affectless. “Not anymore. I only get nervous in airplanes, and that’s just because I’m not in control.”
She is sitting with Tobin, his wife, and three of their children in a faux-Italian restaurant a few miles east of Disney World, in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, and she has a plate of black olives in one hand and a portable phone in the other. Black olives are her favorite food. The portable phone is George Tobin’s favorite tool. While the Tobins eat pizza and talk about their plans for visiting Disney World tomorrow, Tiffany is working the phone, occasionally popping black olives into her mouth, and mostly solidifying her fan base of support.
“Tiff,” Tobin says, pushing a piece of paper toward her, “call this guy first at the radio station. I told him you’d do a phoner.”
She tucks the phone under her chin and, after listening for a minute, says into the phone, “Okay, I’ve got it.” Then in a louder voice she says, “Hi, this is Tiffany and you’re listening to WKO . . . uh, oh, I’m a nerd. I forgot the call letters.” She takes a big breath and starts again.
“Hi, this is
Tiffany,
and you’re listening to—oh, God, I’m a nerd. I’m a
nerd.
”
The table is getting quieter now.
“I’ll get it,” she says. Her voice is still composed, but her face—usually peachy pale and bloodless—is reddening. “I am
such
a nerd.”
On the third try she runs through the sentence without a hitch, and the Tobin family resumes conversation. After finishing his food, George reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a tan plastic gadget, flicks its switch, and shows it to me. “Got it in England,” he says, tapping the gadget’s little display screen. “Great new toy. It’s a real computer! One hundred and twenty-eight K of memory.” He pokes a button and the display lights up. “Isn’t that something?” he says. “Remembers
everything.
”
AFTER DINNER
, Tobin and I ride over to the Magic Kingdom. Tobin mentions that he has been in the music business for decades—he was a staff producer for Motown in the early seventies, has produced Smokey Robinson and Natalie Cole, and now owns recording studios in North Hollywood, where he first encountered Tiffany. A beefy man with shaggy hair and clear green eyes, he has a way of fixing his gaze and stating his case that gives him an unflaggingly imperious manner.
Tonight, though, it’s clear that he is anxious. This will be Tiffany’s first real concert, and she will have to perform three times—nine-thirty, eleven-thirty, and one-thirty in the morning. This will also be the first time she has worked with a stylist and a choreographer. Moreover, the show is going to be filmed for her next video—two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cameras and crew will be standing around waiting for one good rendition of “I Saw Her Standing There.” Plus, there’s a matter of prestige. Ray Parker, Jr., Exposé, Regina Belle, and Roger will also be playing in the Magic Kingdom tomorrow night, but they have been relegated to small stages in Tomorrowland, Frontierland, and Fantasyland. Tiffany, though, has been assigned to the most prominent stage—the platform in front of Cinderella Castle, the hub of the Magic Kingdom, which straddles the border between Main Street, USA, and Fantasyland.
As soon as we arrive at the castle, Tobin is set upon by the video director, the road crew, Disney representatives, and the stagehands, all of whom are as anxious as Tobin. Can Tiffany move well on this big stage? Can she follow the band? Can she talk long enough between songs to give the band enough time to reprogram the synthesizers? Can she give the camera crew good stuff even with the distraction of the audience? Look—it’s one thing for her to sing to shoppers in malls and to make those slick, sprightly cover versions of old hit records, but this is different. Now there’s a lot of money and expectations and a certain critical consideration in play.
Tomorrow night is shaping up as a calculated gamble that this little girl with the big voice isn’t just an attractive youngster expertly pushed and packaged, but something for real. And at the moment, on the stage in front of Cinderella Castle, a lot of large adult males are banking on those odds.
TIFFANY IS DANCING
in the dressing room. It’s Friday afternoon now, only four hours before the show, and she is practicing stage moves with a fake microphone while a choreographer flown in from Los Angeles watches and corrects her.
“Cross your hands like
this,
” he says, snapping his wrists across his chest.
She duplicates the move, carefully and somewhat gawkily organizing her long arms and legs as directed. All the while she is staring at herself in the mirror. She is at an age when even a month or two makes a noticeable difference in your looks. Even though the photograph on her album cover is just a year old, she has already lost the placid, babyish look it conveys—her face now tapers more sharply at the chin; her straight red hair is longer and heavier; her dark brown eyes have less of the wounded fawn in them and more of the maturing and somewhat exhausted teenager who has been working nonstop for several months.
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” Tiffany says and then slumps into a chair. “I’m
tired.
” She fluffs her hair and sinks down.
For the last forty-five days she has been making appearances to support the record; after Disney World, she will begin an extensive concert tour—playing arenas if the ticket sales materialize—and she will start recording her next album. Even Tobin admits that she is exhausted, but he is the one setting the pace. “We have to build up the fan base now,” he explained earlier in the day. “We want as many people to see her as possible. The demand for her is out there now.”
Tiffany spent the morning in the Magic Kingdom—the only free time she will have to be a teenage tourist on this trip. “I went on Space Mountain four times,” she says, a little morosely. “I should have saved it. After Space Mountain, nothing was quite as thrilling. I guess I’m the kind of person who is always going to go on the best ride and then immediately say, ‘What’s next?’ And unfortunately nothing is ever as good.”
Tiffany Darwish met Tobin when she was twelve. The only child of a small-aircraft pilot and a secretary who were divorced when she was two, she grew up in Norwalk, California, a quiet town north of Los Angeles. Her stepfather negotiated her first, albeit impromptu, gig—a few songs with a band that was playing at a barbecue. She was nine years old. By the time she was twelve, she was singing with country bands in town.
That year a local songwriter asked her to sing on demo tapes for a few of his songs and reserved recording time for the session at one of George Tobin’s North Hollywood studios. Tobin was producing a Smokey Robinson album at the time and probably would have never noticed the little girl if one of the studio hands hadn’t called him over to hear Tiffany sing. It seemed that she was able to mimic anything with her full, elastic voice: all-out weepy country laments, zippy pop songs, even the growls and yelps of rock and roll.
“I was enthralled by her voice,” George Tobin recalls. “It was like taffy—you could pull it anywhere. In under ten minutes, I decided to sign her. I had a dream of where she could go. When I do a project, I get totally immersed in it. I got really obsessed with her. I just kept thinking that I
had
to do something with her.”
Over the next year and a half, Tobin stayed in contact with Tiffany and her mother and tried to find a manager for her. At first he had intended just to produce her records. “None of the managers I approached were interested in her,” he says. “Then I realized I needed a manager for her who could see eye to eye with me, and the only person who sees eye to eye with me is me. I’d watched so many other managers make horrendous mistakes, so I finally decided that I would manage her myself.”
In 1986 they signed a seven-album exclusive production and management contract that gave Tobin complete control of Tiffany’s records, videos, and performances. Any record company interested in her would have to sign a contract with George Tobin Productions, which would in turn provide the company with Tiffany product. It is far more common for an artist to sign directly with a record company and also to retain separate people to produce her records and manage her affairs, but Tiffany’s arrangement with Tobin isn’t completely novel—it’s a system, a consolidation of control, just like the one Motown has used for developing new and especially young acts. Except this time, the manager, not the record company, is calling all the shots.
“I learned a whole lot working [at Motown],” Tobin says. “Tiffany is signed to
me
—one hundred percent signed to
me.
The record company has no part of her. They deal with
me.
”
In the beginning of 1986, Tobin started recording. Tiffany’s mother, who according to Tobin declines to be interviewed, had wanted her to be a flat-out country singer, but Tobin started her on a regimen of light pop, loping ballads, and covers of rock and roll standards, because, he says, you have to be in Nashville to do country, and besides, there’s so much money to be made in rock and pop.
“Her mother did think covering a Beatles song was sacrilegious, so we just never sent those tapes home,” Tobin admits. “But her mother doesn’t get involved. The family has decided that I manage the act.”
He sent Tiffany’s tapes around and was rebuffed immediately—most record companies said they simply didn’t know how to promote such a young kid. So Tobin got more aggressive, having Tiffany sing in his studio for small groups of record executives, and he once even sent her to see Clive Davis, president of Arista Records, at his room in the Beverly Hills Hotel, so she could perform for him. “I wanted people to look her right in the face when they said no,” Tobin says.
Tobin tells the story of negotiating for her record contract without pulling a punch—such and such record company hated her, so-and-so didn’t hear anything in her voice at all—and there’s a lot of glee in his voice, the sound of someone who is now savoring the right to say “I told you so.” Tiffany is sitting beside him, and rather than seeming embarrassed or hurt by these tales of rejection, she is impassive.
“Remember this, Tiff?” Tobin says and starts to laugh. “I think it was Epic and MCA wanted her, and I think the guy from Epic said, ‘What should we do, play poker for her?’ ” Tiffany shrugs and looks down. “Anyway,” Tobin continues, “I wanted to go with a West Coast company, and the main reason I went with MCA is because their offices are one mile from my office, and if I want to get something done, I can drive down there and block their cars on their driveway with my car, which I have done, and not let them out until it’s settled.”
MCA paid George Tobin Productions $150,000 for Tiffany’s record. And it was certainly ready—Tobin had taped forty-eight songs in his sessions with her, from ages fourteen to fifteen.
BUT UNTIL THE BEAUTIFUL YOU
: Celebrating the Good Life Shopping Mall Tour ’87 came about, Tiffany’s album just sat in the MCA warehouses. “We didn’t know how to promote it, how to market it,” says Larry Solters, senior vice president of MCA Records. “Radio had been burned by teen stars like Bobby Sherman and Shaun Cassidy. Radio was very tentative about her. Plus, she was only sixteen and the themes on the record are very adult themes. Maybe we got overly analytical about it.”
As Solters remembers it, he was stumped for a few months until he thought of sending Tiffany on a tour of shopping malls. He approached Shopping Center Network, a marketing company that sets up promotions in malls; the company’s Beautiful You: Celebrating the Good Life Tour, which had such sponsors as Toyota, Clairol, and Adidas, was already under way, and Tiffany was invited to join it. As Tobin remembers it, MCA stalled on promoting the record for a year and a half, so he came to Tiffany’s rescue—he threatened to “
ninja
his way into Larry Solters’s office” and yank the record unless MCA came up with a promotion plan within the week.