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Unlike her husband, who received awestruck coverage of his run of early legislative successes, the First Lady was granted no press honeymoon. "From . the beginning," she says now, "I was certainly aware that everybody was not just cuckoo about me." She was caricatured as the high-handed queen of a new Gilded Age, making a fuss over fops and froufrous just as a painful national recession was setting in. Muffie Brandon, her social secretary, was joking when she spoke of a "tablecloth crisis" at the White House, but the new concern for elegance was real. The First Lady had some of the Reagans' rich friends, among others, pony up $800,000 to redecorate the private rooms at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, then got $209,000 worth of china donated, and let opulent Architectural Digest have exclusive photo rights to the spruced-up interiors. She maintained arrangements with her favorite couturiers to give her gowns to wear, which were then given to two Manhattan fashion-design schools. She had--and still has--three hairdressers buzzing in and out. (Nancy Reagan is a "warm honey-blond with highlights," says Monsieur Marc, her New York stylist, who provides some of the highlights.) In all, Washington was overtaken by an extravagant new Tory chic.
"She has innate taste, no question about that," says a former aide. "She has great instincts--and great blind spots. Sometimes she gets glamour, class and notoriety all mixed up." Frank Sinatra, whom she calls "Francis Albert," became an almost monthly White House visitor. When her aides suggested she invite Opera Star Frederica von Stade to perform at a state dinner in 1982, the unsure First Lady ordered them first to "check it out with Frank." Nancy also saw quite a lot of her rich bachelor friend Jerry Zipkin, a full-time Manhattan partygoer whom she has called "a modern-day Oscar Wilde." Says one of her former aides: "There is a little element here of Louis XIV's French court and les precieuses --the affected ladies. She had a certain liking for witty, amusing, well-dressed men who were willing to walk three paces behind and carry the purse."
Women's Wear Daily and gossip columnists were thrilled by the self- consciously lavish example she set. Democratic Socialite Oatsie Charles, an arbiter of Washington taste, was pleased too. "The White House sets the tone for everything that goes on here," says Charles. "It was nice to know that she cared." But many newspaper editorialists and a large portion of the citizenry thought the extravagance unseemly. "She was one of the best single targets for the opposition's attacks about 'fairness' and special interests," says a White House strategist. Thin-skinned Nancy Reagan was wounded by the criticism, especially since the White House really was badly in need of repairs. "That absolutely uncalled-for attack by some in the media with regard to the refurbishing and painting a few walls in the White House," says the President, "that was very upsetting to her." The First Lady was hurt when she had feelers sent out about getting an honorary degree from her alma mater, Smith College, and Smith refused. As a reaction to the general antipathy in 1981 and 1982, she says now, "I tended to retreat and hold back." She went from a petite 114 lbs. to a rather gaunt 104.