no time for sergeants

 

------------- [excerpt from Jerry Hall's book] ------------

A Chilean Adventure

Neiman Marcus was the fashionable Texan store my mother and sisters and I had loved when I was very young.  In those days we couldn't afford to buy anything from there, we just loved to look, so it was exciting to be asked to do a photo shoot for them.  They flew me and five other models to a ski resort in Portillo, Chile, to do a shoot in the snowy mountains for their fur and diamond collections.  We had six bodyguards with us, just to watch the jewels!

        Just after we arrived, our resort was completely covered in deep snow; no cars could get in or out.  We ended up being stuck there for three weeks, and they had to ration the food.  It was a natural disaster -- I know that because that was the wording the clients used as their excuse for not paying us models for the three weeks we were out of work.

        While we were waiting, I decided, or was coaxed by the cute ski instructor, into taking advantage of this extra time to learn to ski.  One day I went out on my own and fell into a hole and I couldn't get out.  I had fallen in bottom first with my skis up in the air, and lay there like a tortoise on its back.  It was freezing and I was stuck squirming for most of the day, yelling at the top of my lungs.  

It was getting dark and I had almost lost my voice when a soldier came up and pulled me out.  I really had begun to believe that I would die that day, I was so happy to be rescued.

        We models were finally airlifted out by army helicopter and we spent a day in military camp.  The soldiers couldn't stop looking at us, they kept getting into trouble with their sergeants.

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{Jerry Hall:  My life in pictures.  Curated by Jonathan Phang.  2010.  Quadrille Publishing.}

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