Twiggy: A Life In Photographs by Madeline Bonn

A LIFE IN PHOTOGRAPHS

With contributions by Terence Pepper, Robin Muir, and Melvin Sokolsky

Published in Britian by Nationall Portrait Galler Publications

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Super New Thing

Photographer Profiles

Timeline

INTRODUCTION

ABOUT THIS BOOK

WHO IS TWIGGY?

As fashion model and photographic muse to many of the world’s

For Richard Avedon’s 1995 retrospective, a huge enlargement of

most significant photographers, Twiggy personified the particu-

Twiggy’s four seasons shoot was chosen to hang by the entrance, and

lar ‘London Look’ that forever defined the late 1960s. Aged only

the exhibition provided the opportunity for photographer and muse

sixteen, freckle-faced, five foot six and weighing just six and a half

to meet again. In the twenty-first century Twiggy’s appearance at the

stone, Twiggy – born sixty years ago this September – was an unlikely

Gallery have become even more frequent. In 2003 she featured in

candidate to become the world’s first supermodel. This she achieved

‘Lichfield: The Early Years’, as part of an ‘In Crowd’ captured for

in a modeling career that ran initially from early 1966 to the end of

Queen magazine. Also that year she was in ‘British Blondes’ (a study

the decade – just four years – at a feverish pitch and as the subject

by Allan Ballard) and Terry O’Neill’s retrospective ‘Celebrity’ (Twiggy

of continuous press fascination.

at the start of her career, with her mother). Twiggy standing on a

From the outset Twiggy collaborated with the leading photographers of all time. She was launched with a full-page profile by fashion writer Deirdre McSharry in the Daily Express, which published pictures by Barry Lategan. He also took the first fashion shots of

pedestal, in an orange dress designed by John Bates, was a highlight of the Gallery’s 2004 exhibition ‘Beaton: Portraits’, still touring in part in 2009. And most recently of all a pregnant Twiggy was the covergirl for our display of Bernard Schwartz’s 1970’s portraits.

Twiggy for the Daily Express. Twiggy was shown in 1981 as part of Norman Parkinson’s first retrospective, ‘Fifty years or Portraits and Fashion’, and eight years later images from her first shoot for a glossy magazine were included in Lewis Morley’s retrospective, ‘Photographers of the Sixties’ (1989). 9

SUPER NEW THING ROBIN MUIR

TWIGGY, VOGUE, AND THE YOUNG IDEA Within minutes of touching down at John F. Kennedy airport, New York, on a Monday Afternoon in late March 1967, the model Twiggy found herself caught up in a churning mass of photographers, journalists, fans and bystanders. At seventeen, London’s hottest property had arrived and was something of a curiosity. Fashion and ‘Pop’ culture had collided to produce a new kind of woman who looked nothing like a woman usually looked. Her blonde hair had been cut short into a signature boyish crop, her five-foot-six frame was angular to the point of wonderment, her breasts were barely perceptible, and her wide-eyed expression was reinforced by three rows of false lashes. Her demeanor was startling for its lack of conceit and unexpected for its naturalness and, to round it off, she spoke in an accent that many Americans found impenetrable when she was exuberant, which was most of the time. In less than a year Twiggy- born Lesley Hornby in Neasden, north London – had become a global phenomenon. She was by far the most internationally recognizable model, and the 12

embodiment of the fashion world’s ‘Young Idea’ in Britain and ‘Youthquake’ in America. Vogue explained the persona: ‘Twiggy is called Twiggy because she looks as if a strong gale would snap her in two and dash her to the ground. In a profession where thinness is essential, Twiggy is of such a meagre constitution that other models stare at her’, but the magazine was at a loss to explain her transcendency. She was newsworthy not solely for her remarkable looks, but because her new-found fame and the speed with which she had achieved it had become as much the story to report. Vogue deduced that the public’s appetite

“ Her power is incompleteness. Any person with a very spontaneous and Twiggy’s manager, ‘Justin de Villeneuve’ (properly Nigel Davies from Edmonton, northeast London), had joined her on that undefined image requires the viewer for novelty was becoming a phenomenon in itself: voracious, insatiable and likely to be fleeting and exciting.

first flight to New York. The former boxer, bookie’s clerk and

hairstylist explained her away to America as a’sort of mini-

to complete it.”

–Marshall McLuhan

Queen of the new social aristocracy.’ With daily access to Twiggy during her first weeks in America, Thomas Whiteside 13

“ Twiggy is called Twiggy because she looks as if a strong gale would snap her in two and dash her to the ground.”

BERT STERN

1967

After beginning modeling in 1966 at the age of 16, Twiggy retired in 1970 after just four short years. She then began trying her talents at an acting and singing career and went onto performing on Broadway and in award winning films. She was a triple threat in the media.

–Vogue

of the New Yorker witnessed at first hand the ‘observable fact’

Vogue’s standards of excellence were unrivalled, and

of Twiggy as a ‘Super New Thing.’ Trailed by photographer and

within its pages Twiggy would stand or run or jump or do

film-maker Bert Stern for a series of documentaries, Twiggy’s

anything at all, with the exception of taking off her clothes,

every utterance and gesture was recorded, to the extent that

for fashion photographers greatest names: Guy Boudin (though

Whiteside could claim with a degree of horror: ‘[She] was

only her legs appeared in the final pictures); Helmut Newton

completely plugged in, aurally and visually, becoming almost

(for whom she wore a silver ‘Space Race’ mini-dress); and

literally an extension of the camera’s – ninety – one pounds of

Norman Parkinson (for whom she swung a rope). For her first

human feedback.’

Vogue shoot, taken in February 1966, she had stood in a muddy

Twiggy’s life had already changed by 1967. Life magazine had made two separate features out of her heart – stopping rise from Saturday girl at a Neasden hairdresser’s to the country’s

field for David Montgomery. Her latest Vogue pictures, ‘Spring Action!’ by Helmut Newton, already on the magazine racks as she left London, showed the newcomer at her most dynamic.

most famous fashion model. A cover story in Newsweek went

Photographed for Vogue but not yet released were another

into hyperbolic overdrive: ‘She is the magic child of the media

two sets by Newton; three by the up-and-coming Frenchman

… an adolsescent angel … Nothing like her has happened since

Just Jaeckin (one of which was considered too experimental

the Beatles. She was Britain’s ‘Face of ‘66’, and before she left

and subsequently scrapped); a cover and eight editorial pages

for six weeks in New York had appeared in thirteen separate

for French Vogue by the courtly American Henry Clarke; and

fashion shoots for Vogue – British, French, and American –

a ‘Paris Collection’s feature photographed by Bert Stern for

then, as now, the high point of a modeling career.

American Vogue and shared with French Vogue, ‘Twiggy: Haute 15

Couture’, becoming ‘Twiggy: Le Mannequin-Vedette 1967’ a

Douglas-Home in the Daily Express, the newspaper that had

month later. There was still-to-come plein air series by Ronald

launched Twiggy as ‘The Face of 1966’, remarked: ‘Isn’t it about

Traeger, a rising star, and the Frenchman Jeanloup Sieff. Then

time someone finally punctured this idiotic, currently fashion-

there was the never-to-appear: Bob Richardson, Vogue’s maver-

able balloon of hero-worshipping fashion photographers and

ick genius, photographed the phenomenon but his pictures,

models and of treating them as some sort of gods and goddesses

now lost, were never used.

flown in from outer space to become contemporary idols …’

Twiggy was ‘the Superstar Model’ as Vogue put it, ‘the master

Marshall McLuhan sought to make sense of it all: ‘Her power

pattern for a million teenagers all over the world. A heroine

is incompleteness. Any person with a very undefined, sponta-

for her time, which is now.’ However, on meeting her at the

neous image requires the viewer to complete it.’ She could be

airport, her modeling agent, Barbara Thorbahn, admitted with

anything that anyone wanted her to be. Seventeen beauty editor

alacrity that ‘really she’s not a model at this time. She’s a celeb-

said, ‘I found her fantastic! It’s like watching poetry. She’s all

rity.’ Already working outside the accepted system, magazines

kinds of people.’ She was a brand and a fashion entity. She

were nonplussed by Twiggy’s lack of pushiness and the fact that

had her own magazine, Twiggy, a fashion line, cosmetic

at seventeen she was the consummate professional, betraying

endorsements, ‘Twiggy Stix’ eyeliners and eyelashes, and,

neither ennui nor exhaustion. The writer Polly Devlin suggested

curiously, board games and lunch-boxes. All were controlled

that this was only possible because she could ‘remain the centre

through the London-based Twiggy Enterprises.

of her own world by not seeing those who don’t enter it’. Some observers went even further. As early as February 1966, Robin 16

Watching the phenomenon unfold, Twiggy’s American photographers worked elements of her burgeoning fame into

“ She is the magic child of the media, an adolsescent angel, Nothing like her has happened since the Beatles.”

– Newsweek

DAVID STEEN Twiggy

was

1967 discovered

while getting her hair cut at The House of Leaonard. After photographer, Barry Lategan took photos to put up in the salon, fashion journalist, Deidre McSharry of The Daily Express, saw them and asked to meet with the young girl.

their own photographs. Bert Stern’s ‘Paris Collections’ series

frenzy of her arrival in New York, he raised Stern’s implica-

for American and French Vogues made a direct allusion to the

tions of voyeurism and scrutiny in the Twiggy phenomenon

media furore surrounding the teenage sensation. The most

to a level of concern. Her popularity was unsettling and

intriguing showed Twiggy in isolation, staring back at her

there was, by Sokolsky’s reckoning, nowhere to run. ‘I felt

face reflected in several television monitors dotted around the

I was from outer space,’ Twiggy would write later. She was

studio. That her face appeared lost and vulnerable beneath the

already identifiable as a celebrity/model, and now Sokolsky

striations of the screen made the photographs more troubling.

defined her as something approaching a commodity.

‘Who knows what drama lurks off-stage?’ ran one caption. Twiggy’s celebrity had placed her under intense scrutiny and shortly after her arrival Melvin Sokolsky amplified this in a surreal set of photographs that put her identity under even closer examination. In the most arresting frame his subject is all but overpowered by passers-by wielding black-and-white ‘Twiggy’ masks. It was now an unavoidable consequence of any location shoot with Twiggy that a crowd would gather, and Sokolsky made a virtue out of it. Massing the onlookers around her ‘ordinary’ people, despite the disquieting masks – Twiggy faced a barrier, almost invisible, a plate glass shop window, through which Sokolsky made his photograph. Reflecting the

The opportunity offered by American Vogue to work with Richard Avedon was one of the reasons New York held allure. Avedon was the type of fashion photographer people had in mind whenever they thought of a fashion photographer: gregarious, charming, unmoved by hemline debates, but focused entirely on the girl and the picture. He was articulate too, and cerebral, and his imprimatur could propel a model girl into the pantheon. Newsweek’s verdict had already been dispiriting: ‘four straight limbs in search of a woman’s body’, and among Twiggy’s first words to America was, ‘Well, it’s not what you’d call a figure, is 19

it?’ Avedon may have embraced the statuesque Veruschka von

shoot for Vogue). Her status as a fashion icon was assured.

Lehndorff as muse and found inspiration in the coltish Jean

Richard Avedon’s dynamic series is now regarded as a master-

Shrimpton, Twiggy’s heroine whilst a teenager, but he had

piece of fashion photography

asked for Twiggy, and the signs were good: ‘I’m interested in young girls not because of knock knees and tongues sticking out but because of what I can find about them that is beautiful. With Twiggy, I considered the shape of her head beautiful, and also the simplicity and gentleness of her gestures.’

Twiggy became a star of stage and screen, most notably and shimmeringly film musical ,The Boy Friend (1971), for which she won two Golden Globe awards. A Broadway career began with My One and Only (1983 – 1984). Her fame, far outlived a fashion for triple-layered false lashes and a range of stick-

Diana Vreeland, editor-in-chief of American Vogue and the

thin dolls, and the transition to acting and dancing seemed

orchestrator of Twiggy’s success with Avedon, stated that ‘She’s

effortless. ‘I didn’t plan to do anything. I didn’t plan to be a

delicious looking.’ ‘We love her silky throat, her naturalness,

model. I didn’t plan to be a singer. I didn’t plan to be an actress.’

her inner serenity,’ she declared, while admonishing Avedon privately on the mechanics necessary to achieve naturalness and serenity: ‘handle her as a precious package, ask her to pull in her behind and shoot up her spine and you’ll have the glorious girl, sullen eyes and pouting lips should not appear in [American] Vogue.’ In 1970, at the age of twenty, Twiggy retired from modeling (although she would concede the occasional 20

She returned to modeling in 1993 at the request of Italian Vogue and the American photographer Steven Miesel, whom she considered ‘the Avedon of the Nineties’. Meisel had observed Avedon’s modus operandi and reinterpreted it in the modern idiom, specifically, the slow shutter-speed ‘jump’ technique that Avedon had reworked from the pre-war photographs taken by the phenomenal photographer, Martin Munkacsi.

TIMELINE 1964

Leslie Hornby gets the nickname ‘Sticks’ which then became ‘Twiggy’ because of her skinny legs and arms.

1966

The first credited photograph of Twiggy by Lewis Morley appears in print in the London Life in January. Later, Deirdre McSharry of the Daily Express names Twiggy ‘The Face of ‘66’.

1967

Twiggy appears on the cover of Newsweek, Elle Magazine, French Vogue, Ladie’s Home Journal, Seventeen, US Vogue, and the Daily Telegraph Magazine. Her face became iconic.

1970

After retiring from modeling after just 4 years, Twiggy takes interest in acting and singing. She is cast in her first role as Polly Brown in the musical film The Boy Friend which she won 2 Golden Globe awards for. 21

BURT GLINN

1966

In the 1990’s, Twiggy tried her talent as a television interviewer

with

her

series, ‘Twiggy’s People.’ She interviewed celebrities such as Bill Curry, Dustin Hoffman, Joan Rivers, and Eric Idle.

Meisel’s portfolio, extending over seventeen pages, was a resounding success, and Italian Vogue, available on important in limited numbers, sold out its run in Britain. Twiggy then sat, after nearly twenty years away from the fashion pages, for several magazines, notably Tatler, who reunited her with Barry Lategan, whose photographs from 1966 had first propelled her into the public eye. As the twenty-first century approached, Vogue glanced back to its heritage for ‘Millennium’ special issues, and Twiggy featured in new photographs by Nick Knight

“ It was Twiggy’s unaffected presence that translated into an inimitable body language and it was this that captivated her fans.”

– Melvin Sokolsky

(for British Vogue) and Annie Leibovitz (for American Vogue). Her status was assured and allowed her to move forward in the world of fashion. Her own valediction to an extraordinary moment in fashion photographic history and the ‘Twiggy’ phenomenon is stark but characteristically self-effacing: ‘I used to be a thing,’ she said. ‘I’m a person now.’

PHOTOGRAPHERS

BEHIND THE CAMERA

Richard Avedon is remembered as the photographer who

RICHARD AVEDON

shaped and defined Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sense of fashion and style in the late 20th century, captivating energy, freedom and excitement through his clicks. Best known for his minimalistic and probing portraits, Avedon acted as the driving force who added a

BORN: May 15, 1923 DEATH: October 1, 2004 CITY:

New York City

sense of vibrancy into the realm of fashion photography. His breath-taking and awe-inspiring photographs have filled the pages of numerous prestigious magazines in the United States of America. One of the most renowned photographers in the world, Avedon was endowed with a brilliant sense of imagery and insight. He delved deep into the subjects he shot and created some of the most intensive and creative photographs for the world to behold. He gave photographers around the world a new vision in portrait photography, something that was quintessentially seen in his works. Avedonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work has been exhibited at various prestigious exhibitions all over the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the MOMA, National Museum of American History, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France. 27

“ For nearly forty years, I carried in my Filofax a small contact photo of Dick and me leaping through the air. For me it somehow crosses the barriers between the professional and personal. I treasure it and feel very fortunate to have worked with this extremely talented artist.” – Twiggy

An American photographer which went beyond his art’s

MELVIN SOKOLSKY

borders, with painting influences and a taste for surprises and surrealistic invention.Melvin Sokolsky was born and raised in New York, and he started his career at 21 years old as a still life

BORN: January 1, 1933 CITY: New York City

photographer for Harper’s Bazaar; during the following years, he worked for magazines such as Esquire, Newsweek and the New York Times Magazine. Sokolsky lacked of academic technical education, thus he was lead only by his creativity, which pushed him to experiment in a totally personal way. “My approach was completely instinctive, and all I had to give was my irreverence”, he confessed to the journalist Martin Harrison.

“ On the day of the shoot a problem arose because people kept getting in the frame, so Mel came up with the idea of making masks from blackand-white photographs of my face, which he gave to the crowd to wear. It worked amazingly well.” – Twiggy

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Bert Stern was a self-taught

BERT STERN

photographer. He is the legendary figures in contemporary photography and personified as the commercial photographer as cultural hero in the 1960s. Hugely successful in the worlds of

BORN: October 3,1929 DEATH: June 3,2003 CITY: Brooklyn, NYC

fashion and advertising photography, in the late 1960s he operated a studio, not unlike Andy Warholâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Factory, from which he created countless award-winning ads, editorial features, magazine covers, films, and portraits. His name is firmly associated with the golden age of advertising, and many of his images have become classics. Stern began his career as assistant to art director Hershel Bramson at Look magazine from 1946 to 1948. Between 1949 and 1951, he was art director at Mayfair magazine, after which he rejoined Bramson at L.C. Gumbiner advertising agency, and helped create the modern advertising photograph. In 1954, he opened the first of four studios in New York. Stern passeda way in June 2013 at the age of 90.

“ Halfway through a shoot with Bert, I managed to sprain my ankle. In a flash of inspiration, Bert worked out that he could shoot me with my damaged foot cleverly hidden behind various objects.”

– Twiggy

“ I used to be a thing. I’m a person now.” – Twiggy

“There’s no need to dress like everyone else. It is much more fun to create your own look.”

– Twiggy