Thing of Beauty (60 page)

David Cohen is now a nationally known hat designer based in New York.

Denis Piel has his own film production company, Jupiter Films. He directs shorts and commercials around the world, and occasionally does still photography.

Harry King stopped doing hair for several years to take pictures, and later to write screenplays. He recently returned to doing some hairstyling.

Sara Foley Anderson was the head of the Wilhelmina agency’s W2 division, until recently accepting a position as senior bookings editor at
Harper’s Bazaar.

Helen Murray is an independent
fashionista
agent based in LA. She represents photographer Sante D’Orazio and several others.

Lizzette Kattan married an Italian economist with whom she has two children. They split their time between Milan and a home in Switzerland; Lizzette started a children’s clothing company and was also recently named ambassador from Honduras.

Charla Carter is a freelance writer, fashion editor, and stylist based in Paris.

Kay Mitchell left the modeling business after an unhappy experience running her own agency, Legends. She repaired to Ohio, where she spent most of the eighties building a series of regional modeling competitions, and returned to New York in 1990 to put together a national scouting company to service the top agencies.

Robert Hilton, who had been separated from his wife, Karen, for years before her stroke, lives in North Jersey with their two children and does drug rehab work in New York City.

Grace Mirabella was fired as editor-in-chief of
Vogue
and replaced by former British
Vogue
editor-in-chief Anna Win-tour. Soon after, Mirabella was hired by Rupert Murdoch to create her own namesake fashion publication.
Vogue
fashion editor Jade Hobson went to
Mirabella
as well. Grace Coddington came to American
Vogue
from the British edition as a fashion editor.

Polly Mellen changed jobs at
Vogue
not long after Anna Wintour took over, accepting a freelance fashion editing contract with the magazine that allowed her, for the first time in more than three decades, to work outside of
Vogue.
A year later, after a flap about her appearing as a model in an ad, she shifted to a similar position with the new Condé Nast beauty magazine
Allure.

Patrick Demarchelier recently made a high-profile contract shift from
Vogue
to
Harper’s Bazaar.

William Weinberg and Fran Rothschild both left the Wilhelmina agency after it was bought out by German businessman Dieter Esch and his daughter Natasha.

Juli Foster lives in central Florida and still does some modeling.

Christie Brinkley married singer Billy Joel. They have one child, and Brinkley does some modeling work for
Cover Girl
and
Sports Illustrated.

Esme Marshall lives in North Jersey with her daughter and is trying to get back into modeling.

Jerry Hall married Mick Jagger. They have three children. Hall has appeared in several recent films and on the London stage.

Janice Dickinson went through rehab and married Britishborn film producer Simon Fields. They have one child and live in Los Angeles. After several years away from the business, she has recently done some European runway modeling and is trying to make a second career in photography.

Patti Hansen did some acting and married Keith Richards. They have two children and live in Connecticut and England.
After years away from the business, she appeared on the cover of
Mirabella
to announce a return to modeling.

Lisa Taylor lives in Los Angeles and recently began modeling again when Calvin Klein featured her in a campaign celebrating mature women.

After Taylor’s comeback, and a Barney’s ad by Steven Meisel featuring Lauren Hutton (and other stars of the generation just before Gia’s), many of the top girls from the 70s signed with agent Bryan Bantry, who mostly represents photographers and hair and makeup artists. They are going to try to create a new market for top models in their 40s—instead of just the occassional nostalgia shots—and convince America that beauty is truth, not youth. Among the models are Janice Dickinson, Patti Hansen, Bitten, Shaun Casey, Lise Ryall, Lois Chiles, and Marisa Berenson.

The following people in the fashion industry are basically in the same lines of work—still freelance or associated with the same companies—as they were during the late seventies and early eighties. They are, however, all much bigger deals now, have more “side projects,” command higher fees and, in some cases, have even moved on to
emeritus
status.

Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Arthur Elgort, Albert Watson, John Stember, Mike Reinhardt, Francesco Scavullo, Alex Chatelain, Victor Skrebneski, Jacques Malignon, Aldo Fallai, Jean Pagliuso, Francois Lamy and Andrea Blanche are all still top names in fashion and commercial photography.

Sandy Linter, John Sahag, Maury Hopson, Ariella and Rick Pipino are still top names in hair and makeup, doing salon and studio work. Sahag now also owns his own successful salon.

Eileen Ford, John Casablancas, Monique Pillard and Jo Zagami are still the top people at Ford and Elite, respectively.

Since the publication of
Thing of Beauty,
I have had many requests about where to find published photos of Gia. This is a completely arbitary list of pictures—most of which are mentioned in the book and should be accessible in libraries and used-magazine shops.

American
Vogue

Glamour

British
Vogue

French Vogue

Italian
Vogue

German
Vogue

American
Harpers Bazaar

American
Cosmopolitan

Italian
Bazaar

Several photos of Gia are also available in books. There are three in the out-of-print book
Fashion: Theory
edited by Carol Di Grappa and published by Lustrum Press. The Helmut Newton shot used in poster form in the opening of
Thing of Beauty
is reprinted in both the Pantheon Photo Library paperback on Newton and the book
Private Property.
The book
Scavullo Women
has two photos of Gia and an interview with her; the
Yves St. Laurent 1958–1988
book has Denis Piel’s 1979 collection photo of Gia with the harlequins. In terms of more disposable fashion-related books, photos of Gia are on the covers of
Cheap Chic
and
Hot
Tips: 1000 Fashion & Beauty Tricks
and inside
Disco Beauty.
I am told that Arthur Elgort will soon be releasing a book of his fashion work that will include several unpublished shots of Gia.

For information on actual prints of photographs of Gia, which are likely to be quite expensive, contact the individual photographer’s agent. The easiest way to identify an agent is to look up the photographer in one of the photo annuals that you can find in many libraries—like
Black Book, American Showcase,
or
Graphis.

K
athleen Sperr was my first source for the
Philadelphia
magazine story that grew into this book. A difficult, but nonetheless, brave woman, Kathleen, for reasons I never completely understood, opened up her life and her relationship with her late daughter to an astonishing level of scrutiny. She believed that the story of Gia’s life was worth telling no matter how it reflected upon her. And it was often she, in the early years of this project, who led me to the people with the most damning things to say about her. Kathleen trusted the process of uncompromised journalism. She would have liked to make some money, she wanted to review my work before publication and she made me jump through an awful lot of hoops. In fact, at this writing, I have no idea if we’re still speaking. But she neither demanded nor received any compensation or other conditions for her on-and-off cooperation over the last four years—including my last interview with her, for the book, which lasted nearly five hours.

When the techniques of reporting and psychological profiling are used in family situations—a thorny, hybrid process I can only describe as “investigative psychotherapy”—sources like Kathleen Sperr are absolutely crucial and difficult to come by. They also, by their cooperation, open themselves up to charges of media-hounding by those family members and friends who don’t believe in the process.

For a journalist to suggest that someone’s motivation in granting an interview is somehow more ethically compromised than the interview request itself is the height of cynicism and self-delusion. I was extremely fortunate that hundreds of people allowed me access to their public and personal lives in researching
Thing of Beauty.
And many people also assisted me in the research and writing of the investigative stories on teenage suicide and child sexual abuse in
Philadelphia
magazine that laid the groundwork for this project. They taught me how to interview them and how to be worthy of the extreme levels of trust required of the process. But every such undertaking begins with one person and one open wound. And it was Kathleen’s pain and frankness while we sat drinking coffee in her kitchen that started this one.

I met Kathleen because of a phone call from
AM Philadelphia
host Wally Kennedy after her original appearance on his program. Wally knows lots of journalists, and he could have called any one of them. I’m grateful that he chose me.

I had inspirational research assistance on this project from Sean Sperry, David Borgenicht, Laura Loro, Erin Friar and Sally (Luongo) Hyman. Merv Keizer checked the facts. Helen Flaherty transcribed a lot of the interviews; XyWrite software allowed me easy access to the raw material.

Thanks to Cindy Cathcart at the Condé Nast library; Sherry Handlin at the Butterick archives; Anne Walker at the Philadelphia AIDS library; Don Monroe, keeper of the Warhol archives; the library folk at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Philadelphia College of Textiles and the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
Xanthipi Joannides at
Glamour
arranged several crucial interviews for me; Sallie Dinkel and Greg Christianson, both formerly of
GQ,
did some of my homework; Reenie McDonnell, Michelle Nader, A. D. Amorosi and my old Jewish Y Men’s Health Club-mate Bob Bosco helped find unfindable sources and set scenes. New York sleeping accommodations courtesy of casas Rich/Fried and Green/Kaplan.