Other details I have filed away about Silvano include that in the house he shares with his husband, Craig, there is a shrine to Anna Magnani and a poster from his 1977 campaign for supervisor of Board 5 in San Francisco. In the poster, he wears a one-shouldered top and tights and is beaming, his long arms flung skyward, a look inspired by a Patti Labelle<\/a> album cover. He was running as the \u201cdada alternative\u201d to Harvey Milk. Also, in Robert Gluck\u2019s novel Jack the Modernist<\/a><\/em>, the narrator goes out to a performance piece in which Silvano appears as \u201cMadame Chiang-Ch’ing.\u201d More recently he got his associate’s degree in accessories at FIT.<\/p>\n I knew all this about Silvano, but I didn\u2019t have any idea how much Elizabeth Taylor meant to him. Not even when I met him at his home Sunday morning and he came to the door wearing a purple felt fedora, an iridescent purple mandarin-collared jacket, and purple suede boots. We were on our way to a preview of the Elizabeth Taylor collection being auctioned off this week<\/a>. <\/p>\n There was already a line down the block when we got to Christie\u2019s on Forty-eighth Street. Silvano\u2019s friends Jen and Russell had joined us. We handed over our tickets, checked our coats, and were funneled into a low-lit hallway. Everyone stopped and peered into the room full of Taylor\u2019s jewelry boxes, not realizing yet just how much there would be to see, that this was the least of it.<\/p>\n The hall opened onto an open foyer, an altar of sorts, with three mannequins, the middle one suspended mid-air, arms outstretched in a kimono from the 1968 film Boom!<\/em> \u201cE.T. in ascension,\u201d murmured Russell. Inside, people kept their voices low, deferential. We had come to pay our respects, almost like a wake. Except we weren\u2019t there to gaze upon the deceased, but rather what she wore, like lot 319<\/a>, a short tunic of linked alloy discs, \u201cpossibly Paco Rabanne,\u201d estimated ($1000\u20131500).<\/p>\n \u201cThe grandma hot pants,\u201d Russell said fondly, like he had come upon an old friend. \u201cShe wore them to celebrate becoming a grandma at thirty-nine.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how they look at Christie\u2019s:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And here\u2019s how they looked on Liz:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Apparently she hated the nickname Liz. She also hated BUtterfield 8,<\/em> hated the part of Gloria Wandrous, and believed, as did many others, that she\u2019d gotten the Oscar in 1961 simply because she hadn\u2019t died when she got double pneumonia that time in London and the tabloids were camped at the hospital, waiting to see whether she was going to come out of the coma or not.<\/p>\n The next room was caftans as far as the eye could see. Red and orange chiffon. Cotton ikat. Bottle-green velvet.\u00a0\u201cThey cover a multitude of sins,\u201d Silvano said, gazing upon the phalanx of mannequins arranged like Rockettes, each with a hand jutting sideways. \u201cPlus they were comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n Actually, it wasn\u2019t just caftans: there were Oscar De La Renta embroidered cowboy boots, a burgundy velvet tunic with an armhole that opened like a trumpet. Next came the Vollbracht display, then Halston, Chanel, Dior, a suite of Louis Vuitton luggage with the famous purple MINE! tags. We lingered at Versace, marveling at lot 467<\/a>, a strapless evening gown of emerald-green silk, \u201cthe bust embellished with blood red and white rhinestone embroidery.\u201d Or circles of bling to go around what Richard Burton once called her \u201capocalyptic breasts.\u201d (\u201cWhy, I thought you\u2019d get all excited … heave and pant and come running at me, your melons bobbling,” George sneers in Who\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?<\/em>) Oddly, the mannequin was posed demurely, hands up, like she was hoping you wouldn\u2019t notice.<\/p>\n Of all the roles, I love Martha, in Woolf<\/em>, most. In a way, it\u2019s a hedge, because Martha contains Taylor\u2019s multitudes. She couldn\u2019t be who she is\u2014blowsy, boozy, vulgar\u2014if she hadn\u2019t been beautiful, hadn\u2019t once been Maggie the Cat, slinking about in that slip in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof<\/em>, hadn\u2019t been the girl Montgomery Clift kills Shelley Winter for in A Place in the Sun<\/em>.<\/p>\n Some say that she was a great movie star but a mediocre actress. Richard Burton, however, said she taught him how to act for the camera. \u201cWhat I try to do is to give the maximum emotional effect with the minimum of visual movement,\u201d she once explained, and that seems as astute a theory of screen acting as any other. For Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?<\/em>, she gained twenty-five pounds, wore a gray wig and extra padding. She called it her \u201cMartha suit\u201d and sadly it was not on display.<\/p>\n A Christie\u2019s employee told us that Liz\u2019s shoe size fluctuated between eight and ten, \u201cdepending on what time it was in her life.\u201d We also learned she was five foot one or five foot two. \u201cI think they\u2019re a bit much,\u201d Silvano said, pointing to a pair of shoes on the floor. \u201cThe metal caps. I would do metallic leather.\u201d After a closet of handbags it was paintings: Utrillo, Pissarro, Van Gogh, Renoir, Hals. \u201cI just realized it\u2019s in pounds not dollars,\u201d Russell said. \u00a3350,000\u2013450,000 for the Degas.<\/p>\n That’s when the line slowed. A crowd gathered around the Taj Mahal, the Indian diamond-and-jade pendant on a ruby and gold chain, a gift from Richard Burton on her fortieth birthday. Another bottleneck at the sapphire and diamond \u201cTrombino\u201d ring.<\/p>\n A form of collective organizing emerged. One person would stand by the wall text and read off the lots and descriptions, while the rest bent over the displays, murmuring and giddy.<\/p>\n \u201cI wonder who will buy that diamond.\u201d And that was before we\u2019d even gotten to the Krupp<\/a>, 33.19-carat, Asscher-cut. It\u2019s a Type IIa diamond, the most chemically pure, and has exceptional optical transparency. \u201cI\u2019m not dressed,\u201d she\u2019d say until it was on her finger. The Christie\u2019s estimate was $2,500,0000\u20133,500,000. It sold Tuesday night for $8,818,500. \u201cIt\u2019s all going to end up in safe-deposit boxes in Switzerland,\u201d Russell said. There were cognac diamonds from Michael Jackson, rubies from Mike Todd, and so much more from Richard Burton, including the rings<\/a> he gave her for winning a game of Ping-Pong in 1974. I\u2019d say the effect is restrained, an unexpected word for Liz, except that there are three of them, so we don’t have to call her names like modest or discreet. (Sold for $134,500.)<\/p>\n Taylor and Burton married the first time in 1964, divorced in 1974, then remarried sixteen months later, this time in Botswana. It lasted until 1976. The first dress<\/a> was a burst of Irene Sharaff sunshine. The second<\/a>, a \u201cpatchwork silk bodice and floating pastel chiffon ombr\u00e9 sleeves and skirts, with long, beaded, feather trimmed streamers.\u201d A garment of its time, let\u2019s say.<\/p>\n In the last room was the Tiziani black velvet cape<\/a> with silver encrusted scorpions that she wore to Princess Grace\u2019s fortieth birthday party. And finally, La Peregrina, hanging from a necklace of diamonds and rubies, another gift from Burton. The provenance of the cultured pear-shaped pearl starts in Spain and goes like this:<\/p>\n Philip II (1582\u201398) Its new owner paid $11,843,500 for it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so vulgar,\u201d Silvano said the next day when I came over to look through the set of catalogues he\u2019d bought. There are five plus the index. He was looking at lot 35<\/a>. But the way Silvano said \u201cvulgar\u201d was different from the way people usually say it. His voice held alarm, titillation, delight, and awe.<\/p>\n Silvano said he came to Elizabeth Taylor first through the movie magazines when he was seven or eight. \u201cShe did whatever she wanted and she didn\u2019t care.\u201d A woman with appetite and without apology.\u00a0The jewels, the hamburgers, the men.\u00a0She was somehow both self-abandoning and self-sufficient (her perfume, Passion, grossed $70 million in a year).<\/p>\n We were in Brooklyn at his kitchen table, and it was weirdly misty out that day. You could hear fog horns out on the water, almost like San Francisco, where Silvano told me he used to see a drag act called the Two-Headed Martha\u2014two drag queens in one dress. \u201cOne would be smoking and the other would be gnawing on a chicken leg,\u201d Silvano said, and I felt like a kid getting the dada alternative to a bedtime story.<\/p>\n \u201cHow did I miss that?\u201d Silvano was forlorn. He had come upon the page for the diamond, sapphire, and emerald brooch<\/a> that Richard Burton gave her on the premiere of The Night of the Iguana <\/em>in 1964. Silvano sighed. \u201cNow I\u2019m going to have to go back.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/mannequin1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ET_hotpants.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/taylorgreen.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/taylorbook.jpg\")
<\/a>Downstairs, the movie memorabilia. Director chairs and costumes, purple leather-bound scripts, gifts from Eddie Fisher. A first edition of Nibbles and Me<\/em><\/a>, the book Taylor wrote when she was fourteen about her pet chipmunk. The Oscars weren\u2019t for sale but for atmosphere. People didn’t linger long, though. They were there for the jewels.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhich<\/em> one?\u201d
\n\u201cThe big one.\u201d
\n\u201cWhich<\/em> big one?\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/talorwedding.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nPhilip III (1598\u20131621)
\nPhilip IV (1621\u201365)
\nCharles II (1665\u20131700)
\nPhilip V (1700\u201346)
\nFernando VI (1746\u201359)
\nCharles III (1759\u201378)
\nCarlos IV (1778\u20131808)
\nJoseph Bonaparte, of France (1808\u2013ca. 1844)
\nPrince Louis Napoleon, of France (ca. 1844\u2013ca. 1848)
\nDuke and Duchess of Abercorn (ca. 1848\u20131914)
\nElizabeth Taylor (1969\u20132011)<\/p>\n