Leslie Bacall (1968)

The caption to the photo on the left read, "Leslie Bogart, daughter of Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, is sixteen now and old enough to wear a St. Laurent outfit just like her mother's. She got it last month in Paris. While her mother was covering haute couture for TV, Leslie went her own fashion way."

Leslie. BOGART! Paris? Sign me UP!



To finish out my week of non-midcentury postings, I thought I would share with you guys an article I came across while trying to find info on Mia + Vicky for the last post. In 1968, Life did a four page spread on Bogart's daughter, Leslie, who it seems had modeling aspirations. Named for actor Leslie Howard, I'd seen photos of LB as a tiny baby in those picture perfect Bogart family photos that litter the illustrated portions of Bogart biographies, and I'd seen LB, her mother, and her brother Steve (named after Bogie's character in To Have and To Have Not, the movie that launched his parents' romance) at openings of classic Hollywood related events and award ceremonies. But the in-between stage? Nada. Which is why I was glad to fill in a gap in my children-of-movie-stars-I'm-obsessed-with knowledge. Take a look with me, won't you?



For starters, which of her parents do you think Leslie favors? My vote's for young Bogart, but there's a little of the Bacall look there, too.



This first photo finds a long, cool Leslie at the famous Maxim's, doing the same under-the-brow "Look" her mother popularized in the forties'. "Leslie goes formal in a sporty way in an elongated sweater (MicMac, $62) worn unexpectedly with wide leather belt and boots plus beaucoup silver rings," adds the caption. "Micmac", to my understanding, is a French slang word meaning "chaos, disorder"; it was also a boutique in Paris in the sixties' backed by Gunther Sachs (Brigitte Bardot's second husband, after Roger Vadim). I love the maxi-length sweater dress look here, but I think you have to be genuinely whippet-thin to pull it off (she is, I'm not). Nevertheless, the pairing of the boots and the wide leather belt, plus "beaucoup silver rings" is definitely something anyone can do!



I told you she was thin! At left, Leslie models "a skintight jumpsuit of silver mesh", in the "ultramodern chrome filled Left Bank shop of Ted Lapidus". You can see a slideshow of Lapidus's life and work here (warning...around the 70s, lots of plaid. LOTS). At right, Leslie sits in the famous sunken conversation pit at Mia + Vicky (!!), wearing a "tunic dress and a sleeveless Mongolian jacket". Not so sure about the jacket, but I love that I think that's Vicky sitting right there next to her, and the idea of a sunken conversation pit sends the pinwheels in my brain spinning. I can't remember which famous seventies' gentleman, in the VT memoir, came back to the shop in the nineties' when it was just "Vicky Tiel" and looked around for the central seating fixture, only to have Vicky tell him she'd filled it with concrete in the 80s to modernize the boutique's look. Nothing gold can stay!

Best picture!! Ready? Steady? Take a look!



"In the jazzy Castel compound, which has a discotheque, boutique, and poster shop, Leslie wears international youth uniform of Indian headband, multiple rings, and chains." Doesn't she look just like a sultrier Ali MacGraw in this photograph? And she's only 16...!! Additionally, how about that poster shop? I want my den to look just like that.

The paragraph long copy in the middle of the article explains that Leslie liked the look of the Mia + Vicky and Ted Lapidus outfits, but, quote, they were "too expensive and I don't go out that much". Frugality! Practicality! Not something you would probably see in the majority of celebrities' children today. She liked the more conservative look of the other two outfits, it seems, more.

Other tidbits from the article? At the time, Leslie was a student at New York's Lycée Français, which appears to be still running. The article describes her as a "quiet girl, both shy and self-possessed, and she wears clothes well", going on to say, "Along with her tall figure and long, shiny hair, she has inheirited the insouciant way with fashion that made her famous actress-mother also a famous clotheshorse." How nice, though!

This one's very David Bailey, though I didn't see who took it:



Today, Leslie Bogart works as a yoga instructor in California, and is married to Erich Schiffman, a kind of yoga superstar from what the internet's telling me. The only other magazine articles I could find from her online were from yoga publications, like this one:



Which sixties' look, of the four Leslie models above, would you swipe? Do you have any interest in "children of celebrities", like me? Do tell!

Til next time.