lady of the house: martha stewart

7/28/2019 Lady of the House: Martha Stewart

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Mu.,hu Stewart is roll-

ing in the dough-both liter-

ally and figuratively. The

new guru of do-it-from-

scratch, traditional home

entertaining has crafteda multimillion-dollar

book/vide olmagazinel

consulting empire with all

the elegance and apparent

ease with which she spins

sugar-and all the iron-

headed determination of

Attila the Hun.

Lady o:fthe FlouseWITH YAI{KEE II{GENUITY, MARTHA STEWART

HAS MADE HER FIIRTUI{E AS A VAI{KEE INGENUE

By Frank Lovece

More than anyone else,

Stewart has tapped into the

post-ei ghties stay-at-home

ethos, the so-called "co-

cooning" that is affecting

everything from restaurant

prices to the upward jump in

garden tool sales.

As Stewart, 48-going-on-

38, observes, "In the next I0

years, we're going to get

back to do-it-yourself. Look

at women who have gone out

to work. Now they're trying

to work shorter hours, lrying

to get home to see their kids,

saying,'Maybe I really

should spend more time at

home and be more entrepre-

neurial. "

Stewart should know.

62 TRUMP'S JUNEl99O

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With thecasual ele-

gance of a model,which she once was,

and the turbo-charged

mind of a stock-bro-

ker, which she also

once was, Martha Ste-

wart has made herself

Martha Stewart Inc.

Her eight books have

grossed $70 million in

the last eight years.She's also the star of

four how-to videos that

have sold almost50,000 copies (the

first came out infgBB). The HolidayEntertaining WithMarthq. Stewart spe-

cial she, made for pub-

lic television is regu-

larly repeated. And

now the giant of maga-

PAY DIRT

Martha Stewar(s Gardening, scheduled for a fall 1990 release, could

be the author's biggest book yet, considering the current ctaze lor

designer trowels and weeders.

According to Bruce Butterfield, research director of the National

Gardening Association in Burlington, Vermont, 75 percent of U.S.

households did some sort of gardening last year and spent $16.3

billion on lawn and garden products, compared with $12 billionin 1985.

other onhousekeep-

ing; entertaining forchildren's parties; re-

storing an old New En-

gland farmhouse (the

process of which un-

folded in a recent se-

ries of commercials for

K mart, which helped

subsidize the work);

and a novel-a semi_

autobiographicalGothic romance.

"Thebabyboomgenerationhasbecomethemostimportantlawn She is also whatandgardenconsumers,"saysButterfield,"andtheirimpactisproba- Newsweek calls a

bfygoingtobefeltforthenextl0years." "pseudoguru" to a

Stewart isn't a horticulturist, which is precisely why her editor, growing number oflsolde Motley, thinks the new book will inspire readers to dig in the women seeking fulfill-dirt. "Martha's a real person who has created an incredible suburban ment through the ret-garden all by herself -itt her real passion," says Motley. The book, reNorman Rockwellfilled with color photographs all shot in Stewart's own Westport vision that Stewartgarden (see abovel, is a month-by-month guide to raising earthly pushes. "Mothers and

delights-fromlettucetodamaskroses. -L.G. fathers have forgotten

to teach their children

zine publishing, Time-Warner, has who doesn't hold a special affection howtoirontheirshirtsoruseascrew-

expressedinterestinherconceptofa for soups." And her fans, shall we driver," she laments this day in her

monthly on home entertaining, with say, eat it up. cozy library. "'We've forgotten how to

Stewartaseditor-in-chief. Stewart's perfect, wifely counte- sit down and have dinner with our

She is, from all outward appear- nance beams from the covers of her children and how to have a conversa-

ances, a Barbie doll with brains. Yet eight lavish recipe and event-plan- tion." Stewart means to change all

Martha Stewart is not a WASP. Forget ning tomes, which have sold more that, sometimes even referring to her

the sprawling Federalist Colonial than 2.5 million copies since the audience as "my followers" and to

home in old Westport, Connecticut. first, Entertaining,was published in what she does as a "missisn"-41-Forget the blond hair and the Barnard 1982. And that's only the tip of the though, she quickly notes, ool

Collegebackground. Forgeteventhe iceberg lettuce. For a reported $5 wouldn't dieforthatmission."

"immaculately WASPy" tag applied million, Stewart is the five-year And there any similarity to Meryl

to her by certain members of the "life-style consultant" for K mart, Streep in She-DniI ends: Stewart is

press. Stewart revels in the fact that the middlebrow but highly success- not pink and frilly. Yet her cook-

shegrewupPolishinruralNewJer- ful department-store chain. She booksdoofferaromanticfantasyofa

sey, where she learned to hunt, fish, gives occasional sold-out seminars lifestyle that largely exists only in

and pluck chickens. Her books and and lectures on home entertaining. movies and among a small, highly

videos spin recipes for croquem- She's also the publisher of a quar- traditional Social Registergroup.

bouche and roasted kielbasa with terly newsletter on the same subject; Her influence is such that Sepp

equal ease, along with folksy ic- and she compiles classical music Leaf Products, a Manhattan mer-counts of her family life and also dinner albums for CBS Records. chant of edible gold leaf, saw a run on

choice social and culinary observa- She's currently working on five that bit of exotica after Stewart rec-

tions, such as, "[ don't know anyone books at once: One on gardening; an- ommended it in a recipe. Her influ-

64 T R u M p's JUNE 1990 ' (coNrlNUED ox pe<;e 98)



Martha Stewart(corurmuro rnom eece 64)

ence is such, too, that she has set offa dismissive backlash from food crit-ics like the NewYorkTimes's Marian

Burros.

Some of this Stewart brings on her-self with her forthrightness and her

tendency to speak in extremes-es-pecially when the topic is Martha

Stewart. "No one is more animal-

righteous than I am," she declares.

"No one!" But then she adds plain-

tively, "I wear only mink coats from

minks raised for fur-I'm not wear-ing fox that's been trapped in the

wild. So I feel," she insists, oovery,

very secure in my own actions."And there you have Martha Ste-

wart. She genuinely believes she's on

the side ofthe angels

The eight-acre estate in Connecticut

is surrounded by a low stone fence,

an apt metaphor for the mistress of

the house. On first encounter, in the

fabled kitchen she celebrates in her

books, Stewart is contained, formi-

dable, briskly no-nonsense. Yet once

that periphery is breached, she is as

hospitable and open as her home.

Bathed in cloudy sunlight in a libraryfilled literally to the rafters, Stewart

is ready to talk.Stewart's homey view of things

comes from her upbringing in Nutley,

New Jersey, where she was the oldest

daughterin Edward and Martha Kos-

tyra's brood of three boys and three

girls. Her father was a physical edu-cation teacher and later a pharma-

ceuticals salesman. The kids helped

to stretch the paycheck by hunting

for food and trapping beavers to sell

the pelts. Martha, already one of to-

morrow's overachievers, learned not

only how to sew and cook, but how to

couraged. I was not told I couldn't go

to Barnard because it was too expen-sive. My father said. 'Of course you

can go-get a scholarship.' So I got

three scholarships," she boasts,ooand

worked full time while studying."Of course, the "work" was model-

ing, a profession she had entered at

age 13. Doing print and TV ads forLifebuoy soap, Clairol hair-coloring,

and otherproducts in the early 1960s,

she earned as much as $35,000 a

year-a queenly sumat the time.During college, she met and mar-

ried Andrew Stewart, a law student at

Yale who wenl on to become presi-dent of the publishing house HarryN. Abrams, Inc., and co-founder ofanother, Stewart Tabor & Chang.

Upon graduation, Martha became a

highly successful stockbroker at

what is now Monness, Crespi, Hardt

& Co., but she left in 1973, after a

decade in the profession.

By then, the Stewarts had bought

and begun renovating the statelylB3B Westport house in which Mar-tha now lives. She stayed busy orga-

nizing a local food cooperative and,

later, catering. Applying to cateringthe same dizzyingsense of relentless

achievement she had applied to ev-

erything else in herlife, Stewart soon

became caterer to the stars.

One of them was Alan Mirken,then chairman of Crown Publishers,

and a friend of her husband's. oolwas

doing a party," Martha recalls, o'andhe came up to me and said, 'Do you

want to do a book for me?' I said,lsure'-I'd

been thinking of doing a

book. He said, 'Well, write me an

outline right away.'It took me a few

months," she says, chuckling. "Imean, I was busy!" The outline grew



knew she wanted an exPensive, full-

color creation the size of a Christmas

turkey.o'Oh, they had heart attacks

about it," she remembers with a

cackle-a rather endearing one,

since her patrician side doesn't looklike the type to guffaw and snort, but

her farmgirl side does it anyway'

Martha Stewart

'oThey first offered me 50 percent

color, 50 percent black-and-white

pictures. I said, oNo, food doesn't

look any good in black and white. It

has Lo be color-and every single

recipe has to be illustrated.'Iwantedit to be a big book," she says. And so

it was: 310 pages, $40, and a N en Yorlt

Times best-seller now in its 21st

printing.

'oThey knew I knew what I was

talking about. And Andy helPed,"

she adds. "He helped a lot."

He does not, however, helP anYlonger, and there's the irony in her

career: Since 1987, the maven of

home and hearth has been seParated

from her husband-because, she

surmises, of her rampant perfection-

ism. And in an odd way, the circum-

stance humanizes her, momentarilY

takes the Inc. from her veins. Curl-

ing up with one of her five cats, she

sighsand says,

ool don't wanna be a

single person. But that's the way it's

turned out."

fo Stewart, wasting time is a

I mortal sin. She doesn't even go

gardening without a bottom line. "Ican go to my garden in the morning

and plant, and feel that I am accom-

plishing something for my monetary

survival," she says, flashing back to

her just-get-by youth, 'obecause I'm

writing now about gardening. I'mvery fortunate," she muses, "to have

a job that rs my lifestyle."

Stewart admits that not all her

readers are at home on the range.o'So

many people admit to me that theY

read my books in bed, that theY keeP

them on the coffee table, that theY

just look at the pictures. But I don t

care ifpeople are doing things step-

by-step from my books," she saYs.ool

care that they're getting ideas and

inspiration and good feelings from

my books."

But it's an appealing fantasY that

Stewart sells. Even if the two- and

sometimes three-job families in this

country don't have the time or energy

each evening to PfePare one of Ste-

wart's "quick-cook meals" that take

an hour, Stewart touches a universalwistfulness for a comfortable, ele-

gant life. And it's hard to argue with

herpremise. w

Frank Lwece is a sYndicated colum-

nistandauthor'

"We're booked at the QualitY Hotel

Capitol Hill inWashington, Mr.s. Wharton.'It's

excellent . . . a strategic location'"

I A block from the Capitol, a I Free indoor parking,

brief walk to America's-greatest in-room HBO, rooftop pool

museumsandtheMetrorailsubway I Enioyable Coach & Parlor| 341 spacious tuest rooms Restaurant and Whistlestop

I HandsomeandflexiblemeetingLounge just off-lobby

and banquet facilities for 10 to 550

It's simple, really. We put you up in ve.ry pleasant

comfort thit keeps ihe beln-iounters quite comfort-

able with your exPense rePorts.

QUALITY HOTELCAPITOL HILLWe simbLa Lilp our gtests

415 New lersey Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 2OOO I

(2O2) 638-1616 o FAX (ZO2) 63A-0707 o Toll-Free (8OO) 228-5t5t

IllO TRUMP'S JUNEI99O



lV|HE POWUE OFNRAGAZTTHE

DY(|

f i-JER CORRIDORMartha Stewart

weare a eilk ouil by

Calvin Klein;BergdorfGoodmanNYC. Stylisrs Paula

Fox/Viaages.

Hair: David

Ieonard forThom Thmblyn.

Makeup: Catherin

Mahlin forFrederic Fekkai.

Photogpaphed forTRUMP'S by

Ken Nahoum.

THE ORIGINALS/ 20They Do it With Styleo Substanceo and Character

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Capital Architect Arthur Cotton Moore

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POWER TEAttil 26Partners in Influence

You may not know James and Mary Classman, but the most important

people in Washington take them very seriously. Together, they edit and

publish Roll Call, the newspaper that senators, congressmen, and cabinet

members turn to for news on the Hill. We take an inside look at a very

inside couple by Francis Wilkinson

ON THE COVEF.I 62Lady of the House

A Yankee ingenue with Yankee ingenuity, Martha Stewart has spun sugar

into gold. We visit her in the Connecticut home that has made her a

household name by Frank Loaece

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COUNTER CULTURE/ 34Collbctibleso Edibles, Wearableso and Stare-at-ables:

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34 New York by Joni Miller 36 Boston by Andrea Brox

Washington by Marion S . Jacobson

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lady of the house: martha stewart

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