Millicent Rogers in Taos: Why We Love Her

In my previous post, I focused on "facts" about Millicent Rogers, in particular her legacy as one of the leading icons of style in the 20th Century.  There is little doubt that she carved out a special place in the history of Taos and in the development of style, the arts, and culture in this region as a whole.

But none of that is why I love her.  Certainly, her achievements are unique, but until I visited her museum a few years ago, her iconic image meant little.  As I wound up my visit I approached a side entrance into the gift shop of the Millicent Rogers Museum.  There at the end was "The Letter." 

Do you ever think back on your life and wonder how it is that you got where you are?  I'm not talking about being harsh or critical of your life -- just allowing yourself to observe the paths that have led you to this point.  Some might call this an admission that you have accepted your own mid-life crisis or a step in the process of resolving yourself to give up the past.   Or something more, perhaps.

For me, the process began before I got to Taos and ended not long after I got here.  It's a part of accepting life on life's terms in this very special place.   In a way, I've always thought of myself as a person attempting to find some kind of spiritual peace with the world.  Be this a spiritual journey or be it simply surviving the vicissitudes of life, I had to experience all that came before "here" before I could truly appreciate "here." Landing in Taos brought an amazing peace to my restless soul.

Finding the words to describe these things was difficult.  I knew I had powerful feelings and emotions about being in Taos and I knew that my soul was finally beginning to let go of the angst that had burdened it for so many years.  But all I could grasp were concepts and broad brush strokes.

Millicent Rogers

Then I read Millicent Rogers' letter to her son written over 60 years ago in Taos.  Although the letter is hanging on a wall in her museum, I heard her voice speaking the words.  As I listened, my heart melted.  I fell in love with Millicent Rogers the way that I had fallen in love with Taos.

Darling Paulie,

Did I ever tell you about the feeling I had a little while ago? Suddenly passing Taos Mountain I felt that I was part of the Earth, so that I felt the Sun on my Surface and the rain. I felt the Stars and the growth of the Moon, under me, rivers ran. And against me were the tides. The waters of rain sank into me. And I thought if I stretched out my hands they would be Earth and green would grow from me. And I knew that there was no reason to be lonely that one was everything, and Death was as easy as the rising sun and as calm and natural - that to be enfolded in Earth was not an end but part of oneself, part of every day and night that we lived, so that Being part of the Earth one was never alone. And all fear went out of me - with a great, good stillness and strength.

If anything should happen to me now, ever, just remember all this. I want to be buried in Taos with the wide sky - Life has been marvelous, all the experiences good and bad I have enjoyed, even pain and illness because out of it so many things were discovered. One has so little time to be still, to lie still and look at the Earth and the changing colors and the Forest - and the voices of people and clouds and light on water, smells and sound and music and the taste of wood smoke in the air.

Life is absolutely beautiful if one will disassociate oneself from noise and talk and live it according to one's inner light. Don't fool yourself more than you can help. Do what you want - do what you want knowingly. Anger is a curtain that people pull down over life so that they only see through it dimly - missing all the savor, the instincts - the delight - they feel safe only when they can down someone. And if one does that they end by being to many, more than one person, and life is dimmed - blotted and blurred! - I've had a most lovely life to myself - I've enjoyed it as thoroughly as it could be enjoyed. And when my time comes, no one is to feel that I have lost anything of it - or be too sorry - I've been in all of you - and will go on Being. So remember it peacefully - take all the good things that your life put there in your eyes - and they, your family, children, will see through your eyes. My love to all of you.

 

Millicent Rogers in Taos: 20th Century Style Icon

In their 1994 book The Power of Style, Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins focused on 14 women of the 20th Century who "defined the art of living well."  Among the select group were Coco Chanel, Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Millicent Rogers.  Because my blog focuses on all things Taos, I wanted to relay a few pieces of information about Millicent Rogers in the next couple of entries.

Millicent Rogers

She moved to Taos in 1947 and died five short years later at the relatively young age of 53.  In that span of time, Millicent Rogers amassed important collections of art, textiles, jewelry, and pottery that remain intact today at the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos.  The authors of The Power of Style noted that "No other American woman of style assembled a collection of anything that still remains intact."  One thing that makes them so extraordinary is that these are the collections of lifetimes -- not just one lifetime and certainly not just five brief years of one lifetime.

Coming as she did to Taos near the end of her life, she entered a world that was completely alien to her upbringing in the high society circles of Manhattan and Europe.  Before coming here major fashion houses of the 20th Century had determined that the "perfect" measurements for draping their creations were those of Millicent Rogers' body.  There are many, many stories of her influence on styles of her time that happened long before she came to New Mexico.  But it is here that her influence has endured and its reach has lasted.

When she arrived in 1947, Taos was already well-known as a major art capital.  In part due to her influence, Taos has remained so for decades.  As Dave Hicky said in his 2009 introduction to Dennis Hopper's show at Taos' Harwood Museum,  

"In the twentieth century, [Taos] has probably produced more serious art and literature than any other non-metropolitan area in the United States..."

But for all its amazing artistic influence, Taos was not known as a fashion center or a place of "style" other than perhaps Pueblo architecture.  No matter.  That, too, would change.

She immediately began meeting the local artists and artisans of her time.  Maria Martinez, for example, who's "black-on-black" style pottery was the first of its kind, became very close with Millicent Rogers.  The largest collection of "Maria Pots" in the world now resides at the Millicent Rogers Museum.

Maria Martinez Pottery

In addition to pottery and art, Millicent Rogers loved jewelry.  I have heard it said that what we all think of today as "Southwestern Jewelry" was permanently influenced by what Millicent Rogers bought or designed for herself during her time in Taos.  The collection of over 400 pieces at her museum is impressive to say the least.

One final word about her collections:  as time passes, experts and collectors from around the world have come to believe that many pieces in the Millicent Rogers' collections are some of the most important masterworks of their genre.  They are, just as she was, nothing short of extraordinary.