Arts | Westchester: Defying the Conventions of Fashion

Photo Some of the designs worn by the daughters of Jay Gould, the Gilded-Age tycoon, on view at Lyndhurst, his former estate in Tarrytown. Credit Clifford Pickett

Kris Jenner, Mariah Carey and Madonna are among the women who have been accused of dressing too young for their age. But they are far from the first. Anna Gould, the younger daughter of the 19th-century financier and railroad tycoon Jay Gould, was challenging the fashion status quo many decades before.

Fiercely independent like her father, who was a misfit in Gilded Age society despite his vast wealth, Anna Gould loved fashion and dressed as she wished, with little care for convention.

"She always dressed younger than she was," said Howard Zar, the executive director at Lyndhurst, the Gould family estate perched on a hillside just south of the Tappan Zee Bridge in Tarrytown.

Owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the 67-acre Lyndhurst estate is open for tours, which through Sept. 25 include a chance to see the captivating exhibition "Defying Labels: New Roles, New Clothes." It showcases gorgeous designs from premier French couture houses and from American seamstresses they inspired, as it delves into how fashions preferred by Mr. Gould's daughters and daughter- in-law tell a powerful story of seismic changes in women's lives.

Described by Time magazine in 1932 as "plain, plump and not much concerned with 'Society,'" Mr. Gould's older daughter, Helen, lived through a period of significant change for women and became a powerhouse in the world of philanthropy.

"She studied law at New York University before the passage of suffrage. She championed women's economic equality, helped finance the Spanish-American War and married for love at age 45," the exhibition's catalog says.

As the exhibition makes clear, her wardrobe was in step with the evolving life of a businesswoman who loved sports, built a bowling alley at Lyndhurst and traveled to the Middle East at a time when women never ventured beyond cultured European capitals.

The earliest piece on display is a traditional, voluminous and elaborately decorated purple silk dress from 1885 by the American seamstress M. A. Connelly. Providing contrast is a sleekly tailored travel outfit from 1912, with c lean lines, a chic simplicity and even a contemporary feel.

Photo Helen Gould's shoe trunk, which she used on trips to the Middle East. Credit Clifford Pickett

Edith Kingdon Gould, the wife of Jay Gould's eldest son, George, and a former actress, pursued a more traditional path with fashion. She patronized the House of Worth, preferred French couturier to American socialites and favored designs that accented her voluptuous figure. She pushed back by employing fashion and public image as weapons, helping the family compete with the Astors and others who had shunned Jay Gould.

Anna Gould was married to two French aristocrats. She divorced the first one, and following the death of the second, the Duke of Talleyrand, returned to the United States at age 64 as a refugee fleeing the Nazis.

She steals the show in "Defying Labels."

"She displays a continuing independence in her lifelong fashion choices and refuses to give up a fashionable lifestyle despite divorce, dislocation, widowhood and old age," the catalog says. "She embodies the modern female sensibility of dressing to please oneself."

At Lyndhurst, Anna Gould sought to recreate her luxurious French lifestyle, buying American versions of gowns she had bought in Paris. Her outfits on display are spectacular — ranging from a super-chic sidesaddle riding outfit from Busvine of England to the Orientalist flapper dress by Agnès on loan from Palais Galliera, part of a suite that chronicles Gould's life in Paris.

The exclamation mark is an evening gown by Maison Burano of New York from the late 1940s or early '50s. With a tucked Basque waist, and a spray of flowers descending diagonally across its wide crinoline skirt, the long peach-colored dress is perfect for a girl feeling the first blush of womanhood. Anna Gould wore it in her 70s — without apology.

As terrific as the exhibition is, the star attraction is Lyndhurst, so ahead of its time that Mr. Zar refers to it as "the shock of the new."

Designed in 1838 by Alexander Jackson Davis, it was built for a former New York mayor, William Paulding. Around the time of the Civil War, Davis doubled the mansion's size for the second owner, the merchant George Merritt, who renamed it Lyndenhurst for the linden trees on the property.

Seven years after Merritt's death, Jay Gould bought the estate in 1880 as a summer home just as he was rising to the height of his power, controlling Western Union Telegraph, the New York Elevated Railway a nd the Union Pacific Railroad. (He changed the name to Lyndhurst.)

Photo A shoe worn by Anna Gould that was designed by Delman in the 1940s. Credit Bruce White

"Jay Gould could get to Wall Street in 45 minutes on his yacht. This is why he was here," Mr. Zar explained. "He came home every night."

Each of the mansion's rooms is impressive, and the most dramatic is the three-story art gallery. "At the beginning of the Gilded Age, this is what wealth looked like," Mr. Zar said. The collection includes such brand-name artists as Gustave Courbet, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Theodore Rousseau, Charles Daubigny and Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Helen Gould took over Lyndhurst after her father's death in 1892, and after she died in 1938, Anna Gould oversaw the estate until her death in 1961, when Lyndhurst went to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

"Lyndhurst had been languishing for a good decade," before his arrival approximately three and a half years ago, Mr. Zar said. Since then, roughly $2.1 million has been spent on restoration efforts.

One-hour guided tours of the Lyndhurst mansion are offered Fridays through Mondays, and a special Upstairs/Downstairs tour is available through Sept. 25.

In addition to visiting all of the rooms in the mansion, the tour takes visitors up the 79 steps to the observatory of the newly restored Merritt Tower — with a great view of Manhattan and the Hudson River — and down 99 steps to the butler's suite, kitchen and more. Next year, the restored bowling alley will also be to open to tours.

The grounds are as important as interiors at Lyndhurst, which in 2015 received a $500,000 state matching grant to help revitalize the lower landscape between the mansion and the Hudson River. The other $500,000 is in hand, and the project is poised to begin.

To show off the already gorgeous estate, a tour of the grounds will be offered from Sept. 4 to Sept. 25. In addition to 16 structures, including a Lord & Burnham steel-framed greenhouse, the property features an award-winning rose garden, a fern garden, a rock garden and specimen trees.

"Defying Labels" may be viewed as part of Lyndhurst tours or separately.

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The Fall Jewelry Trend Georgia May Jagger Predicts Will Be Big

Last week in a picturesque suite at The Bowery Hotel, I sat down with British model Georgia May Jagger over a cup of tea (well, I had water in a teacup, but we can pretend) to discuss her partnership with jewelry brand Thomas Sabo. I was admittedly a bit overenthusiastic to meet the daughter of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall (who wouldn't be?), and even though as editors we interview celebrities all of the time, this particular run-in was especially exciting. Jagger casually stepped out on the terrace to meet with me in a pink Reformation dress and her signature blond waves. She was down-to-earth, sweet, and had a thing or two to say about jewelry. Scroll down to read our interview and find out what her most prized jewelry possession is, he r prediction for fall's biggest jewelry trend, and more.

Modern Love: Words With (I Wish We Were More Than) Friends

The next night was no different, and I realized I had to start getting this down on paper. When a game ended, our chats from that game ended with it. Every 45 minutes or so, everything would disappear, and I wanted to preserve all of it, proof that such things are possible, and at any age.

After a week, I told my best friend back east what was happening. She told me a story about a co-worker who had an online relationship with a woman for two years. Now they were married. I laughed it off and thanked her, but I told her I had no illusions.

We were always brutally honest about our future, namely in agreeing there wasn't one. It wasn't even clear that she was coming back to Reno; she would go wherever she managed to land a job. We were a most pleasant distraction for each other, but school would eventually resume for her, and I'd eventually meet someone in Reno. On the Words With Friends board, we were both masters of the endgame, but there didn't seem to be any endgame for us in real life.

I also knew that it was the baked-in distance and the impossibility of a date that had allowed me to fall so deeply in the first place. In person, I'm typically so shy in romantic situations that I can barely make eye contact with someone I've just met. With her, I felt free to open myself up entirely.

Two weeks in, after playing and chatting four to six hours every night, she warned me that she was meeting her father in South Korea the coming weekend and wouldn't be around to keep up our nightly ritual.

It's strange to miss someone you have never actually met. In the morning, I awoke to a message she had sent from the airport, waiting out a delay. This single message meant more to me than the thousands of others we had exchanged.

When I took my first business trip as a single man a few years earlier, I remember wishing I had someone to text from the airport. I had internalized the idea that love is having someone who cares about every utterly benign detail of your travel.

"I made it!" I wanted to tap out. "Man, I think I parked in the furthest possible spot." "The line at security is insane — is it spring break or something?" "Ok, at my gate!" "Boarding!" "Shutting down now, about to take off :)."

All those imagined texts with no recipient. It stung even more when my plane touched down several hours later with nobody to tell I'd arrived safely.

Our three days "apart" didn't stall anything. After she returned, we slid right back into our routine of increasingly intimate disclosures. The times we each tried to rescue a hurt animal we came across. The worst thing I did as a kid that I still feel guilty about. Growing up in broken homes. Worst dating experience. Favorite sex position. Ever fake an orgasm?

She agreed with me that the biggest commitment either of us could ever make would be combining our libraries, and that we probably shouldn't take that step until we had at least two kids.

One night, I told her my memory is extremely selective: I'll remember she played the clarinet until sixth grade, yet consistently forget her birth day. It turned out that very day was her birthday. By that point, we had long stopped being surprised at the freakish number of coincidences. Fittingly and as promised, I don't remember what day that was.

Another night, I preemptively apologized and told her not to hate me, then played "eutaxies" — a triple word bingo with the "x" on a triple letter for 227 points. She messaged me a considerable growl, and five minutes later I went to bed with a smug grin plastered across my face. I took a screen shot of my play, printed it out and proudly showed my three interns the next day at work. It still hangs in my office today.

And then, as I had long feared, something shifted. Two games at once turned into one. Our six-hour chat sessions dwindled to five, then four, then three. Eventually we played a f ull game without either of us sending a message.

At one point, I gathered my courage and asked if I'd said anything wrong. She was quick to assure me I hadn't.

Yes, there were other factors at play. Her teaching break had ended, and she was back at work. That same day, my mother called to tell me her breast cancer had come back and she was having a mastectomy. Three days later, my father ended up in the hospital with a blood clot — a complication from leukemia. Still, if there was ever a week when I could have used six hours of nightly companionship, that was it.

We stretched it out for another few weeks, playing a single move per day accompanied by a single chat, neither of us willing to concede the end. One ni ght, I sent her a message thanking her for the last two months, letting her know that however unorthodox it had been, I had loved every minute. She told me she felt exactly the same.

One day, we started what would be our final game. We each played a move. The next day, she didn't play. Nor the day after. Ten days passed before Words With Friends automatically killed the game. The last time I saw her screen name was with the message, "They Timed Out."

Midsummer is when she was due to return to the States, but I don't know if she ever did. July was also my one-year anniversary in Reno. Yet my happiest memories here have nothing to do with Nevada or the mountains or the university. They are of me sitting on my couch furiously tapping away on a three-inch screen to a woman on the other side of the world, a woman I know both intimately and not at all.

I know how she felt when staring into the eyes of a buffalo up close. I know she would love to see "Owl Jeopardy," where every response starts with "Whoooo." I know she gets mildly aroused talking about compound miter saws and has a weird thing for hands and likes to sing songs about her cat.

But I don't know what she looks like when she sleeps. I don't know the sound of her voice or the feel of her hair. I don't even know her last name.

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