Aretha Franklins Shocking Insult Revealed by Designer

He has delighted Daily Mail readers with his no-holds-barred gossip about the greatest icons of stage and screen.

And now Oscar-nominated costume designer Jean-Pierre Dorléac has turned his attention to some of the most famous singers he has worked with.

Fans of and Janis Joplin may be stunned at Dorléac's tales of their bad behavior. 

But the French-born expert has also insisted on highlighting some of the nicest musicians he has encountered.

Gloria Estefan, Eartha Kitt, Edith Piaf and Rosemary Clooney were all showered with praise. 

Dorléac's most shocking new anecdote details his encounter with Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, who he says lived in a filthy Detroit mansion and delighted in calling him 'cracker' - an offensive term for a white person.  

Dorléac, 82, was summoned by the Respect singer in 1994 to design a gown for her to wear to a Christmas concert at the White House. 

The Los Angeles-based designer said he had to travel to the Midwest because Franklin - who died in 2018 aged 78 - adored his work in Somewhere In Time and did not like to fly. 

'I was very hesitant because I had heard rather scandalous stories about how vain and arrogant she was,' said Dorléac, who has written a new book of explosive Hollywood gossip called Evocative Observations that he is hoping to find a publisher for.

'Well, anyway, I went. I got out of the taxi, I went to the door and rang the bell, and she surprisingly opened it.

'I thought she was the housekeeper and I didn't recognize her because she was wearing one of those durags, a floral shirt over some black tight pants and flip flops and smoking a cigarette. 

'I looked at her and I said, "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't recognize you. And I can't tell you what an honor it is to meet you. I've loved Respect ever since I heard it, and I always play it on the jukeboxes that I go to when I'm in some strange place and not familiar with things."

'She says, "Well, it's too bad those motherf****rs didn't give me money from that, did they?"

'I just stared at her, and she looked at me and she sneered, "Well, just don't stand there, cracker, get your monkey motherf*****g ass in here and call me Miss Franklin." That was my introduction to her.'

Dorléac said further shocks were to come when he entered the contemporary-style mansion whose interior had been painted white. 

'The place was an entire mess,' he said 

'There were newspapers on the floors and video cassettes stacked in boxes, and dead flowers everywhere, and ashtrays overflowing with cigarettes butts on every single surface you could even find.

'She went over, and she plopped down in this black bunny fur coat she had, and stabbed out her cigarette. And then she uses the lid of an empty candy box, because all the ashtrays were filled. 

'She had all this turquoise shag carpeting. And I went up to a landing of three steps, and on the middle of this landing was this white, Victorian bird cage with white doves in it.

'Underneath it, between the bottom of the cage and the carpeting, was an eight inch hill of bird droppings, because nobody had cleaned the cage.'

Dorléac asked Franklin for a drink because of the sweltering temperature inside the mansion and was instructed by her to go to the kitchen - where more horror awaited. 

'Every single surface of the kitchen, was filled with old Chinese boxes, containers with old food in it, and plates with moldy food all over the place and more ashtrays filled with cigarette butts and filled garbage sacks on the floor.

'The kitchen sink was just stuffed with dishes. I had to find a glass and wash it about four times.'

Finally ready to begin his fitting, Dorléac said Franklin told him she wanted a white dress similar to a famously beautiful gown he had designed for Jane Seymour's in Somewhere in Time. 

But Franklin was 'built like a refrigerator' according to Dorléac, who estimated that the singer weighed around 250 pounds during their meeting. 

He tried to talk her out of the color because it would look bad on television and told Franklin she was going to 'look like the iceberg that sank the Titanic,' which did not amuse the star.

Franklin insisted on a white dress and paid a $7,000 deposit to cover 50 percent of the cost of the dress, Dorléac said.

As the fitting concluded, she told him: 'Well, listen, cracker, your cab's outside... we'll be in touch.' 

To add insult to injury, Franklin never paid the remaining $7,000 she owed Dorleac for the gown, which he later turned into cushions. 

Another music icon with serious hygiene and reliability issues was Janis Joplin, Dorléac said. 

The costume designer became part of Joplin's circle after moving into an apartment across the hallway from hers in Los Angeles during the 1960s.

Recalling his initial impressions, Dorléac said: '(She) was a filthy hippy who was partially drunk and stunk to high heaven. 

'We went to see foreign movies together. We were very, very close for a time, but she was a very, very unhappy girl... so she ended up sleeping with whoever she could, and got a very bad reputation. 

'She had straight relationships. She had gay relationships. 

'She would get drunk with her girlfriends upstairs in the bedroom and scream and fight each other and throw whiskey bottles at each other, and they chased each other naked, down the stairs, out into the streets.'

Dorléac said that he once discovered Joplin overdosed on heroin and that he had to call 911 for help.

On another occasion, she knocked herself out while running a bath and flooded his apartment. 

Dorléac said the breaking point for their friendship came after he flew from Los Angeles to New York City to deliver a dress - only to be told she was too busy having sex with Hallelujah singer Leonard Cohen to see him.  

'She couldn't see me because she met (Cohen) on the street that morning...' Dorleac said, before recalling what Joplin's aide told him. 'She's upstairs f**king this Canadian who's supposed to be a recording artist and she doesn't have time to see you before the show now.

'And I thought, you bitch. I got a flight all the way out here to New York.

'That was kind of the breaking point of our relationship. Janice was just not dependable. 

'She was way off into another world, and she was one of those girls or that you really like very much, but then you begin feeling sorry for them, and then you get tired of feeling sorry for them.'

Dorléac says he still adores Joplin's music, but was not surprised when she in 1970 aged just 27 from a drug overdose. 

The Hollywood costume designer has encountered almost every big name imaginable - and says that for every horror story, there were many other stars who were delightful. 

Dorléac adored Gloria Estefan, after working with her on the video for her classic 1985 song Bad Boy in a sketchy part of Los Angeles. 

'Gloria was the nicest, most professional, organized lady I've ever met,' he said. 'Paid her bills on time. Never any problems, always very grateful and appreciative.

'I mean, there she was at two o'clock in the morning out in this rat-infested alley in this beaded gown I'd made for her, and dancing shoes and everything.

'She never complained once. She was professional at all the fittings. She was kind, she was gracious. She was nice to everyone. Yeah, and I was around during the times when she didn't have to be nice to everyone, and yet, she was always a sweet person.'

Eartha Kitt was 'absolutely phenomenal' too, said Dorléac. 

'She was the lovely lady to work for,' he said of the singer and actress, who died in 2008 aged 81. 

'She was always timely. She always knew what she wanted. She never gave you any problems... she was not egocentric. 

'And she most graciously, which is very rare amongst the entertainers, paid her bills on time in full and that meant a lot to me.' 

French singing icon Edith Piaf were also consistently 'wonderful' to work for, Dorléac said.

He believes many of the celebrities who treat people badly have been warped by a combination of underlying insecurity and a sense of entitlement bred into them by the showbiz machine.