Elsie de Wolfe - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• In Irving Berlin's Harlem On My Mind the singer professes to prefer the "low-down" Harlem ambience to her "high-falutin' flat that Lady Mendl designed."
• One of the color schemes she popularized was the inspiration for the Cole Porter song "That Black and White Baby of Mine" (whose lyrics include the lines "All she thinks black and white/She even drinks black and white").
• In Cole Porter's lyric about modern scandals, "Anything Goes," he observes, "When you hear that Lady Mendl, standing up/Now turns a handspring landing up-/On her toes/Anything goes!"
• Cole Porter also refers to her in the song Farming from the musical Let's Face It . The lyric describes the celebrities who have gone back to nature: Kit Cornell is shelling peas, Lady Mendl's climbing trees, Farming is so charming they all say!"