They were adorable, if I do say so myself.” Johnson wore one of her own creations to work, and, after her colleagues asked her where they could buy one, she started taking orders, at twenty dollars a piece. I finished them off with a little bow on the front. (It’s co-written by her former receptionist and longtime confidant Mark Vitulano.) “They had short, tight sleeves and a scoop neck that was trimmed with a half-inch of velvet. (She’d wanted to finish school somewhere where she could be a cheerleader.) Now she found a hand-crocheted fabric and stitched it “into sweaters that hugged the body,” she writes in her new memoir, “ Betsey,” which was published last month by Viking Books. Johnson had studied art at the Pratt Institute, before transferring to Syracuse University to study fabric design. So she found a fifth-floor walkup underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and, to make rent, began supplementing her magazine income by designing women’s tops. She moved to another all-women’s hotel, but was soon kicked out for smoking in her room. With a full-time job, she decided that it was time to leave the strict environment of the Barbizon, where pants were forbidden and some residents had a designated chaperone.

(Past alumna of the program included Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion.) Though most guest editors spent just one season at the magazine, Johnson had stayed on to fill a spot vacated by a woman on maternity leave. She had landed at the magazine by winning its summer scholarship contest, a program that placed promising young ladies in “guest editor” roles while housing them at the Barbizon, an all-female boarding house on East 63rd Street.

In 1964, Betsey Johnson was a twenty-two-year-old magazine editor, working in the fabrics department of Mademoiselle.

Seven Dress Sizes by Jude Johnson