Recently, I got a chance to grill Bill Blass about the things that are nearest and dearest to his heart. These are some of his answers.
– I love food-obviously because I’m so widely overweight. I love the Midwestern country food I had as a kid. Meat and potatoes. I hate nouvelle cuisine. I’m a Hoosier from Ft. Wayne. I left when I was 18, but it never totally rubs off.
– If I were alone on a desert island, the two movies I would take would be “Dodsworth,” the original with Walter Houston and Mary Pickford. It had all the elements that made for a great motion picture. It had style, glamor. And I’d take aything by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Old movies presented life in a more appealing way. The two people I’d take? My two dogs. One’s a lab, another’s a golden retriever. And I’d take a jar of peanut butter and some bread. Peanut butter is the one thing you can’t live without. Two books? “Remembrance of Things Past” by Proust. And I’d take the Bible. And a book of Willa Cather’s short stories. Let me take three books.
– I shave before I get in the shower. Then I leave all the gook on my face and let it drip down. And then I shower. I don’t have any other beauty secrets, just soap.
– My favorite city for getting away, and I use it as an escape, is London. But I couldn’t live there. I wouldn’t be a good expatriate. New York is too tough, so I have a house in Connecticut. I spend four days a week there. I’m spoiled, but at this point in my life, I feel I should be.
– The Connaught in London is my favorite hotel. It’s cozy, it’s the most personal hotel and it’s luxurious. It spoils you for anything else. Ever.
– I’m not into sports. I’m truly a spectator. I really and truly don’t like going anyplace where there are mobs. I don’t mind a tennis match if I’m in London for Wimbledon. Tennis has a certain glamor in London that it lacks in other places. So do other sports, like horseracing. The British have a style about their sports that seems to be lacking in our country.
– My favorite thing to do in Chicago is to go to the museum. I love the Field Museum. It’s a must. I could go back and back and back. Each time you see something you never see before. So if I’m in Chicago, that’s where you’ll find me.
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You will find Bill Blass at the Field Museum when he’s in town on Friday. Look for him at the Marshall Field’s designer show, 11:30 a.m., in the Museum, where he’s scheduled to promote another thing he does in his spare time: design clothes.