Anna’s world was Manhattan’s high life and nightlife: the trendy Upper East Side, where she again established a shaky live-in relationship with Bradshaw, whom she had followed to New York; the chic Saturday Night Fever scene at Studio 54, with its Andy Warhol–beautiful people set; the downtown scene where other recent British expatriates—journalists and fashion people—lived in funky artists’ lofts, ran trendy new boutiques, and opened exclusive boîtes. Though the city was almost bankrupt, there was nowhere in the world more hip and open than New York in the mid- to late seventies. It was a freewheeling era of artistic creativity. Anna’s arrival in the far-out seventies, however, was greeted by a fashion scene that wasn’t very far-out, and fashion magazines of the day had little of her kind of pizzazz, which may have been part of her master plan for coming to America—even though she denied having one—or merely a stroke of luck. Women’s wear was nowhere, with more focus on the personality of who was wearing the clothes than the clothes themselves.
