BeforeBabe Paleywas Babe Paley, Truman Capotes favorite swan, she was Barbara Cushing Mortimer, editor atVogue.
She left the magazine in 1947 upon her second marriage to CBS founder William Paley.
Yet, she appeared regularly in our pages up until her death in 1978.
Babe Paley photographed by John Rawlings,Vogue, April 1944. This photograph ran alongside an essay she wrote on her personal style.
(Later on, Babe would become known for tying Hermes scarves to her purses.)
Below, read Babe Paleys 1944 essay, I Like Tradition, in its entirety.
I like to see beautiful fabricssilk satins, sheer linens, paper- shantungscarefully designed, worked, and proportioned.
I like the arbitrary slimness of L-85 fashionstheir narrowed, basic simplicity admits of an infinite richness of workmanship.
The look of being too deliberately dressed, with everything cautiously matching, always bores me.
I like the sudden shock of non-sequitur color.
Color, in fact, is my weakness.
I like the pansy blue of the paper-silk shantung suit photographed on this page.
I like the quick red of the Flower Show rose that blooms on my black-and-white checked cotton beret.
I like whitetraditional flattery for the dark-haired.
For dinner at home, or at the house of friends, I like to wear diaphanous white.
Antique jewelslittle, ingenious piecesappeal to me far more than anything massive and modern.
Tradition is my taste.
I like the simplest shoes, closed-toed, and uncluttered as a straight line.
I like mammoth handbags, made with the beautiful precision of English saddlery.
I like conservative gloves, though I occasionally have them made of special materials.
I like blouses made with all the nice attention of an 1890 Worth trousseau.
