delanceyplace.com 07/28/05 - katharine hepburn

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In today's excerpt - casual elegance—in this case Katharine Hepburn's—sometimes takes more effort than is apparent:

"The yacht [Irene Selznick] rented was 125 feet long, carrying a crew of eight and four passengers, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Irene Mayer Selznick and me. We sailed from Balboa, on the California coast, for Catalina, hardly a seafaring journey, but I was so in awe of Hepburn and Tracy, I was seasick the entire voyage. The few times we dropped anchor, I went swimming with Hepburn and retook my stomach. My eyesight returned to normal and I noticed that Hepburn's green eye shadow didn't come off even in the water. Self-invented, she was flamboyantly unadorned. The eye shadow was her only makeup. She did bring two huge, bulging fortnighters for what was only a weekend; all day long, she changed into identical spotless, patched white ducks [pants] and spotless patched white shirts."