The Woman I Wanted to Be (13 page)

It might seem trivial to give that much importance to hair, but I know all women with curls will identify with this struggle. So will some curly-haired men, I recently discovered. During a vacation last year on the boat of a friend, entertainment mogul David Geffen, I was having a conversation about hair with the women on board when Bruce Springsteen the macho, superhero rock star chimed in. He, too, used to hate his Italian curls when he was fifteen and starting out, he confessed, and so did his teenage band mates, The Castiles. They all wished they could switch their Mediterranean curls for straight bangs like the Beatles. So, at night, they would go secretly to a beauty parlor for black women in Freehold, New Jersey, to have their hair straightened! Bruce said he would also sneak into his mother’s bathroom, steal some of her long hair pins, comb his hair all on one side, anchor it with the pins, and sleep on that same side to keep it flattened and straight. However, he never managed to achieve the cherubic, pageboy style of John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

My mother had no patience with my dissatisfaction with my appearance and my obsession with my hair. She dressed me in nice
clothes and made sure I was always presentable, but beauty was not a worthwhile subject of conversation. She was much more interested in teaching me literature, history, and most of all, to be independent. Indeed, not considering myself beautiful as a young girl turned out to be a plus. Yes, I envied the blond, straight-haired girls, especially Mireille, who was striking to more than just me and would go on, at age seventeen, to marry Prince Christian von Hanover, twenty-seven years her senior. But being too beautiful as a child, I realized as I grew older, can be a curse. Counting too much on your appearance limits one’s growth. Looks are fleeting and cannot be your only asset.

E
arly on I decided that if I could not be a pretty blonde like the other girls, I would accept being different, develop my own personality, and become popular by being funny and daring. I made lots of friends in boarding school as I did later in Geneva, where I lived with my mother and Hans Muller. I was considered “the fun girl,” always ready to go and do anything, and people sought me out for that, including Egon, who arrived in Geneva a year after I did. Looking at pictures of those years, I realize that I did have a slim and agile body, long legs, good skin and was, in fact, quite pretty, but I didn’t feel it, so my priority was developing a personality.

Though I believed personality, authenticity, and charm were what made a person attractive, along the way I did have many moments of awkwardness and insecurity. I remember my first visit to the Agnellis’ house in Cortina d’Ampezzo over the Christmas holidays when I was turning twenty. The Agnellis were the leading family in Cortina and Egon and his younger brother, Sebastian, were the hottest, most eligible boys in the Alpine town. On my last night there, we went to a party where, to my great surprise, I was voted Lady Cortina. Although
elegant enough in a lamé dress in rainbow colors, I remember feeling embarrassed and inadequate as I accepted my beauty award. Clearly it was not for my looks, but because I was Egon’s girlfriend. They placed a silly rhinestone tiara on top of the hairpiece that was giving my straightened hair more volume and draped me with a Lady Cortina band. I felt foolish and that was visible in my photo on the front page of the local paper the next morning.

I was better prepared the next year when once again I arrived in Cortina on Egon’s arm. By then I had lost some of the baby fat on my face, was a bit more polished, and much more at ease with Egon’s Italian aristocratic friends. My transformation did not go unnoticed. Years later, Mimmo, a close friend of Sebastian and the son of Angelo Ferretti, my future mentor, reminded me how I’d gone from looking pudgy and awkward one year to looking beautiful and sexy the next. The pictures of those two holidays prove that confidence and ease can make the same person look quite different.

Egon was my guide and my Pygmalion in his world of beautiful, sophisticated people, all of whom seemed to live magical lives drifting from the Alps in the winter to the South of France in the summer and going to party after party in between.

I will never forget the costume ball he took me to in Venice given by Countess Marina Cicogna during the film festival. That weekend was a crash course in glamour. Marina Cicogna was a very successful producer of Italian cinema at the time, working with directors like Fellini, Pasolini, and Antonioni. There were many movie stars at the party: Liz Taylor and Richard Burton; Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim; Audrey Hepburn and her Italian husband, Andrea Dotti; Catherine Deneuve and David Bailey; the gorgeous model Capucine, who had been in
The Return of the Pink Panther
; and the young actor Helmut Berger with director Lucchino Visconti. I remember meeting
Gualtiero Jacopetti, the director of the very provocative new genre documentary,
Mondo Cane
. Gualtiero was a lot older, but very handsome and seductive. We talked all night and I felt beautiful because he paid me so much attention. I was to find out later that he specialized in courting very young girls.

I was barely twenty, and only beginning to feel comfortable in Egon’s world. I did not smile as easily as he did and he reprimanded me for appearing cold and detached. Slowly, as I felt more comfortable, I warmed up and began to stand on my own. For that party, the most glamorous, fun party I’ve ever been to, I dressed like a page boy in black midknee velvet pants and a matching jacket with white satin lapels, inspired by Yves Saint Laurent who had just created the tuxedo for women. Mine was definitely not a Saint Laurent; I don’t remember where I found the jacket, but I’d had the pants made to my specifications. I wore black tights and thick-heeled shoes with rhinestones. I felt very stylish.

Egon’s cousins, the counts Brandolini, and all their aristocratic friends dressed as hippies, all of that being new and daring in a Venetian palace. We danced all night, ate spaghetti at dawn, and watched the sun come up from the cafés of Piazza San Marco holding our shoes in our hands. The next day, the crowd met at the Lido, under the elegant striped cabanas where the parade of gorgeous women in beach attire spent the day under the critical scrutiny of the powerful doyenne of Venice, the Countess Lily Volpi. Exotic Brazilian star Florinda Bolkan and Yul Brynner’s beautiful wife, Doris, were there along with all the other beauties, an endless inventory of what appeared to be effortless elegance and class. I was new to the scene and in awe of so much glamour, style, and allure. I wanted to be one of these stylish women in their thirties and could not wait to get older. I wanted to become one of those women across the room who look so poised and seductive.

I
am always asked who the women are whose beauty and style inspired me. My favorite compliment as a young girl was being told that I looked like the French actress Anouk Aimée. Sophisticated, incredibly seductive with a deep sexy voice, always playing with her hair and crossing and uncrossing her legs, she was who I wanted to be. Her most famous movie,
Un homme et une femme
(
A Man and a Woman
) had a big impact on me. Anouk and I later became friends. She and I felt enormous simpatico and I often call her when I go to Paris. She lives in Montmartre with her many dogs and cats, the voice on her answering machine is as sexy as ever, and she has many admirers. Once a femme fatale, always a femme fatale!

The epitome of femme fatale will always be Marlene Dietrich, the most glamorous woman of all time. She had the best legs, an extraordinary voice, and a personal style and elegance as no one else. Her strength, courage, and independence were imposing. I never met her but so wished I had especially after I read her memoir,
Nehmt nur mein Leben
(
Just Take My Life
). She had been very brave during World War II, turning her back on the entreaties of the Nazi government in her native Germany and instead promoting US War Bonds and entertaining the Allied troops on the front lines in Algeria, Italy, France, and England. She laughed, sang, drank, cooked, cared little for convention, and had sexual liaisons with men and women into her seventies. She was a free spirit and an inspiration to me. I did try to channel her a few times, especially the two occasions I posed for Horst, the photographer who had captured and immortalized her beauty so many times.

As much as I was drawn to Dietrich’s toughness, I’ve always found Marilyn Monroe’s vulnerability touching and her beauty irresistible. She never manifested strength and independence so I did not want to be like her, but her appearance was so desirable and genuine. I was
just a young teenager in 1962 when she died of a drug overdose. I have collected portraits of Marilyn ever since.

Jackie Kennedy Onassis inspired me with her elegance, her beauty, and her incredible style. Style has so much to do with the way one handles oneself and I always admired Jackie’s dignity at all moments of her tragic life. She never acted as a victim and always looked impeccable, even with bloodstains on the pink wool suit she refused to change out of the day her husband was killed. I was at boarding school in England then, and my mother had come to visit for the weekend. We watched the tragedy unfold on TV, sitting on our bed at the Hilton Hotel in London.

I remember meeting Jackie when Egon and I had dinner with her and her then husband, Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis, at El Morocco in New York. She was as charming as he was rough. I hated the way he belittled her but I liked her enormously. I loved it when later, after he died, Jackie decided to have a private, ordinary life for herself and her kids in New York. She became an editor at the publishing house Doubleday. I remember the paparazzi photos of her walking the New York streets in her camel-colored pants and a sweater, with her trademark large, incognito sunglasses.

We lived one block from each other on Fifth Avenue where we were each raising two children on our own, a boy and a girl, although mine were much younger. My perfume Tatiana was her favorite. Later, one of her granddaughters would be named Tatiana. We shared the same hairdresser, Edgar. I identified with her in many ways, including our respective battles with cancer. Of all the women I admire, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis will truly remain the model of style, beauty, and courage.

Angelina Jolie is another woman I find both ravishing and interesting. I was attracted first by her free spirit and her unconventional
life. I thought her desire to create a large family, adopting children from all sides of the world, was commendable. But it was when I saw the movie she wrote and directed about Bosnia,
In the Land of Blood and Honey,
that I began to truly admire her. I went to see the film on a rainy afternoon in Paris. Sitting by me were two Bosnian women, weeping. Angelina is continuing to address the huge issue of sexual violence in conflict and brought great attention to the cause. What makes Angelina uniquely beautiful is her substance and her wanting to give voice to those who have none.

Madonna was not what you would call a striking beauty when she appeared at a party in my apartment in the early eighties. She was nineteen years old and hiding under a huge dark felt hat. The only person who noticed her that night was my mother, with whom she talked for hours. What Madonna did have was personality, courage, ambition, and talent. She knew who she wanted to be. Her passion, her hard work, her constant desire to learn and improve, turned her into a great beauty, a superwoman, superstar, and role model, breaking boundaries and appealing to many generations. Madonna’s personality created Madonna.

I had hoped to meet Mother Teresa in the 1970s when she came to New York and visited with Mayor Ed Koch. I found her strikingly beautiful and elegant in her white-and-blue-striped robe, full of humility, strength, love, and compassion. I was told she also had a lively sense of humor.

Another woman who personifies beauty, strength, and dignity is Oprah Winfrey. Oprah is simply the most formidable woman I’ve ever met. As a little girl, she knew she wanted a special life, so she defeated the huge obstacles she faced, worked incredibly hard, and became one of the world’s most influential women. Oprah is bigger than life; she is life, all the good and purity of it. The strength of her desire to improve
the world is a true example of beauty. I love her, respect her, and admire her, and feel so privileged to call her my friend.

I have been in awe of Gloria Steinem, who led the women’s movement and improved our lives forever, since the moment I met her. Feminist and feminine, doer and dreamer, graceful, strong, and beautiful, her impact on the lives of all women is immeasurable. It is because of Gloria that I gave up using the title of princess and opted for Ms. It felt more glamorous at the time. Ms. meant freedom.

Character. Intelligence. Strength. Style. That makes beauty. All these attributes form beauty, and personality, that elusive state of being that is not necessarily perfect. “Beauty is perfect in its imperfections.” It is our imperfections that make us different. Personality, not traditional beauty, is always what I’ve looked for in my models.

I
was at a party in New York in 1970 when I saw this amazing-looking girl who was part of the court of Andy Warhol. She was very, very pale with an unusual face that looked like a mixture of Greta Garbo and a moonchild. She’d plucked off the ends of each of her eyebrows, which gave her a startled, almost comic expression—some said she looked like an exotic bug. She was about five foot six or so and weighed less than a hundred pounds—and looked different from everyone else.

I had just taken a showroom, my first, at the Gotham Hotel in New York for fashion week in April 1971 when I approached this seventeen-year-old. “Would you be interested in modeling my clothes to show buyers for a week?” I asked. “Sure,” she said. And so Jane Forth became my first of many, many models.

I didn’t know that I’d started a pattern that continues to this day: finding interesting-looking girls with personality at the very beginning
of their lives and careers, girls I noticed because they were different. I’d found Jane just before she became famous—two months after fashion week,
Life
magazine did a four-page color spread of her titled “Just Plain Jane” that described her as “a new now face in the awesome tradition of Twiggy and Penelope Tree” and she starred in Andy’s film
L’Amour,
which he wrote for her. I cannot claim that I discovered Jane or any of the other models who have worked for me over the years, but I do notice them very early on.