Village, vintage, and Vogue

 

Jerry Hall by Irving Penn  1975

-------- [excerpt / Jerry Hall:  My Life in Pictures] ---------------

        It was great fun living in the Village.  [Greenwich Village, in New York City] 

Every morning we had coffee at the Italian cafés.  We shopped for vintage clothes and I started to collect a Fiestaware dinner service.  I loved its beautiful colours and shapes; it had been around since the thirties but wasn't made anymore, so finding pieces was always exciting.

        At this time I was appearing on hundreds of magazine covers for publications all over the world and I travelled a lot doing catwalk shows for the designers' collections.  I would travel to Milan and be in 30 fashion shows a week, then go to Paris for 35 shows a week, before heading on to Japan for their shows and then straight back to New York to do another 30.  It was a gruelling non-stop schedule, but I loved it.

        ...I cannot tell you the thrill of working for a great artist or photographer and having a kind of telepathy, a symbiotic partnership, striving and working together to achieve a desired effect.  The mutual excitement was breathtaking.  The better the artist or photographer, the greater the possibility of achieving a lasting iconic image; a true work of art.

        At that time the greatest living photographer was Irving Penn.  I first worked with him for American Vogue....I was shocked when Polly [Mellen - Vogue editor] told me one day that Vogue wanted me to have a Dutch boy haircut; a short bob with a fringe, or they wouldn't work with me anymore.  

They said if I cut my hair they would put me on two covers and do twelve pages with Irving Penn.  

It was tempting.  But my hair was so much a part of who I was.  I was the first model to have really long hair and it had worked for me -- I felt it was modern and strong, vital and yet still feminine, so I refused.  ------------- [end / excerpt]

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        I find that last paragraph - its content - odd.  Like -- to offer her "two covers" and "twelve pages with Irvin Penn" -- seems like they were really trying to "dangle" (like a carrot) something she would want, plus 'threatening' her, in a sense -- Vogue would not work with her anymore if she didn't cut her hair - ?

Sounds creepy, and extreme, to me.

And if they want a different hairstyle on her for some photographs:  wigs!  Hello?!  It's the fashion magazine business.  Surely they wouldn't need us readers to educate them that wigs exist - LOL.  That Polly Mellen sounds like she was a manipulative mischief-maker...

-30-