Remembering Michael Vollbracht: ‘I was good-looking… I had a mouth’

The most handsome fashion designer I ever met was also one of the most interesting: Michael Vollbracht, an artist whose creations dripped with color, glamour and wit, whether they were on fabric or canvas.

Vollbracht died June 7 at his home in Safety Harbor, on Florida’s west coast. He was 71 and had esophageal cancer.

The rakish Vollbracht loved Safety Harbor. It’s where he escaped when New York City became too much.

He also came to Palm Beach often, to show his work at the Findlay Gallery or sign books or do runway shows of his creations as lead designer for Bill Blass.

In 1973, he sketched portraits of some of Palm Beach’s grande dames for his first gallery show on the island.

One of those portraits — of Peggy Jernigan, the wife of my friend, the late artist Brad Jernigan — hangs in my dining room.

Eighteen years ago, when Vollbracht was signing his book, “Nothing Sacred,” in Palm Beach, I mentioned that drawing, and he remembered it.

He also remembered those portraits fell flat — because “I made caricatures of people who were already caricatures…I greatly misunderstood the seriousness of the (society) game.”

This story, by Post arts writer Gary Schwan, was published originally in December 2000, at the time of the release of Vollbracht’s updated edition of his book, “Nothing Sacred.”

Michael Vollbracht has a smart mouth.

Just ask him. Ask him anything at all, for that matter. Nothing Sacred.

That’s the title of his book of art-filled recollections of when he was a high-flying fashion designer and illustrator — a multitalented Icarus who scraped the sun and crashed in an era when gargoyles like Andy Warhol and Diana Vreeland ruled the earth, or at least the New York worlds of art and fashion, and the author knew them all.

After his flame-out, the hot designer went missing and questions were asked. Whatever happened to Michael Vollbracht? You know, the genius who won the fashion industry’s prestigious Coty award in 1980 for his boldly patterned women’s evening wear? Did he die of AIDS like too many of his friends? Or did he just slice his wrists when he could no longer get a good table at Lutece? Too bad. He was so good-looking. And witty.

Nothing happened, Vollbracht says, except that he lost a fortune and regained his perspective.

“I also lost my love of fame and celebrity,” said the artist, who disappeared from the fashion scene in the mid-’80s, seeking sanity in aptly named Safety Harbor, near Tampa. That was after Johnny Carson’s then-wife Joanna, who bankrolled Vollbracht’s couture line, pulled the plug on him in a fit of pique, according to the designer.

“At the time, I thought I had failed,” he said. “Do you know what Joanna said to me? ‘If you’d only put shoulder pads on these clothes, none of this would have happened.’ The clothes were nothing to her. I was nothing to her. Just another hairdresser. Money is power — and I’ve never learned the trick of keeping money.

“Celebrity is a tragedy,” he added. “Fame brought no happiness. It got me into Studio 54 and a good table at restaurants. I had fun with my 15 minutes while it lasted. But most of the famous people I’ve known have been miserable.”

The gilded misery of the rich and renowned, from Greta Garbo to Madonna, is one of the themes of “Nothing Sacred,” a revised edition of Vollbracht’s popular book, which was originally published in 1985 by the author himself to the tune of $200,000. That version now sells for more than $1,200 over the internet. The handsome new edition, published by Rizzoli, goes for a mere $85.

The book intersperses candid little essays on the famous people Vollbracht has known or historical figures he has known of. The prose is accompanied by the artist’s portraits and collages. Some of the art was originally created for The New Yorker magazine, where he freelanced for nearly a decade after leaving the fashion industry.

Vollbracht is a skillful writer and artist, and the vignettes rise above mere gossip to achieve subtle, although sometimes terrifying, insights into famous people, as well as the author himself. Malice and score-settling aren’t priorities, although the anecdotes are ripe and not completely dig-free.

“I’ve forgiven everybody, however,” he said. “I just haven’t forgiven myself.”

Whether stalking Garbo, and finally bumping into his prey on a raw day in New York, or engaging in a sexy dance with Tina Turner, Vollbracht has something interesting to say about them all.

Even the ladies of Palm Beach, where his first gallery show in 1973 was met with a huge yawn.

“I was told about this fabulously talented young man who wanted to do a show here,” said Angel Gage, who was director of the former Agra Gallery on Via Parigi. “He thought it would be nice to do some charming caricatures of the town’s Old Guard.”

Gage sent Vollbracht photographs of such formidable matrons as Marjorie Merriweather Post, Lilly Pulitzer, Rose Kennedy, Mrs. Lannie Sanford and Mrs. Brad Jernigan. Before the show, a story appeared in the Palm Beach Daily News. The ladies were not amused.

“There was no outrage,” Gage recalled. “The works weren’t malicious, but they were just ignored.”

“I made caricatures of people who were already caricatures. No one came,” Vollbracht recalled. “It was just a dismissal. Outrage is good. Dismissal is not.”

The book contains his quasi-caricature of a bemedaled Mrs. Post, holding up a Grape Nuts box with a self-satisfied smirk on her face. “Mrs. Post caused no waves” over this “cut-out” portrait, he writes in the book. “I believe she was either confined or dead at the time.”

“I greatly misunderstood the seriousness of the game,” he adds. “Acceptable were: diamond tiaras and gigolos worn all the days of the week, poison green, Izod pink and frog motifs. Taboo were: blacks, identifiable homosexuals, artists who poke fun at the local pecking order and Jews. Had I vanitized instead of vandalized, I would not have left this island with my tail between my legs.”

Vollbracht continued to visit Palm Beach over the years. “Palm Beach is fascinating. It really is America, either at its best or worst. It’s also the only place I’ve ever seen with red Rolls-Royces.”

Vollbracht, 53, is the son of an Army officer and a ferociously talented but self-absorbed mother who would drop her children off at movie theaters in order to go traipsing around town on her own. (Vollbracht is writing a book about his “disastrous” childhood.) At 17, he left a Kansas City suburb for New York, where he studied at the Parsons School of Design. He achieved early success as an illustrator — and as a handsome young man who made influential friends.

“Good looks help you when you’re young in an insincere place,” he said. “If you were attractive, and mobilized yourself, it was easy to meet famous people.”

Vollbracht moved from illustration to fashion in the late ’70s, eventually bankrolled by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor. He was an instant success. “His clothes simply didn’t look like anyone else’s,” said Angel Gage.

In a recent issue of Vogue, wealthy fashion-plate Ann Bass discusses her favorite designers: “I also wore these exquisite, hand-painted, silk dresses by Michael Vollbracht, who before disappearing … made extraordinary clothes — simple, streamlined, extremely modern, and decorated in a way that felt completely new.”

Cursed with the “bad omen” of early success, the brutally honest Vollbracht didn’t endure on fickle Seventh Avenue. “I was never liked in that world,” he said. “I was good-looking, brash, talented, and I had a mouth. I made enemies.”

One was John Fairchild, who owned the influential Women’s Wear Daily. In his book, Vollbracht tells of a luncheon meeting in which the disdainful Fairchild suggested, with feigned solicitude, that Vollbracht find work with a second-tier couture line. Vollbracht told him where to get off.

“At that time, he had the power,” Vollbracht said. “No longer. Today, MTV makes fashion.”

Vollbracht did get along with rich women, but he never took them too seriously. “They were tough cookies. That was my business — dressing tough cookies.” But these cookies often crumbled, he said. “They were absolutely miserable in those fitting rooms. They were no longer young, and it’s a terrible tragedy for once-beautiful people when no one looks at them anymore when they walk into a room. I had to slap them into dresses” that often no longer suited their figures. “I got along with the women. I avoided the husbands.”

On the other hand, he considers it his good fortune to have met movie stars beyond their prime. They were attracted to the handsome, though “very gay,” fashion designer. “I was good-looking but no Gary Cooper. But they were attracted to youthful beauty. So am I, unfortunately. When you’re not beautiful, you learn to cope with life. When you are born beautiful, but no longer are, life can be a tragedy.”

One of his favorite actresses is Elizabeth Taylor, who liked his clothes enough to bankroll him for a time. “She’s the last great showbiz commodity. She and Mickey Mouse.” He’s not awed by her, however. The book has a funny anecdote about Taylor refusing to enter a room through a certain door because it would show off her multiple chins to the photographers gathered below.

When his professional life fell apart, Vollbracht fled New York in order to “reinvent himself.” A friend invited him to do a mural for a rundown spa in Safety Harbor. The brief visit has lasted more than a decade, with frequent trips back to New York, where Vollbracht conducts seminars at his alma mater, Parsons, as well as staying in touch with old friends.

“I used to dine at Lutece. Now I live in a place where my neighbors are rednecks with shotguns in the back of their pickup trucks,” he laughed. “And I love it.”

Asked what he dislikes in a person’s character, Vollbracht answered “insincerity.” What does he admire? “Honesty. I don’t like shrinking violets.”

Mary McFadden, a frequent Palm Beach visitor, is no shrinker. In the book, the famed fashion designer is portrayed as a kind of Renaissance virgin because of her otherwordly opaqueness. “Mary McFadden is a bizarre and maddening Madonna,” he writes. “She can draw you inward very quickly, like an exotic spider in a pleated web.”

“She is a genius when it comes to her taste in art,” he said. “Whether it goes on her walls or on her models. The first time I saw her fashion show, she had her models parading around Henry Moore sculptures. Good Henry Moore sculptures.”

Fashion designer Bill Blass is described as “a tough cookie who knows the game, but is also very generous to everyone.” Blass contributed a short introduction to the new edition of “Nothing Sacred.”

Designer Carolina Herrera is “the sexiest woman I ever met,” Vollbracht said.

The imperious fashion arbiter Diana Vreeland is remembered as “Dianasaurus Vreeland,” the woman who hired the young Vollbracht to work on a mural, only to curtly paint it over after he was finished. Crushed, Vollbracht still managed to say to her, “If you need me for anything else, please feel free to call.” Her response: “Can you whitewash mannequins?”

Vollbracht was close to Joan Crawford later in her life. In the book, she is remembered for her thick makeup and her fetish for clean houses. “The first time I saw Joan Crawford she was seated at her makeup table applying spit-cake mascara with a toothbrush,” he writes. “The last time I saw (her) she was in a brass urn. Joan Crawford was now dust. We all knew Joan hated dust.”

At peace in dusty old Safety Harbor, Vollbracht hates no one.

Except perhaps the very idea of celebrity.

“I wouldn’t give two sh—- any more about meeting Tom Cruise.”