Thing of Beauty (61 page)
All my sources worked very hard through sometimes grueling interviews, but I’d like to especially thank Sharon Beverly,*
Rob Fay, Karen Karuza, Rochelle Rosen,* Nancy Adams, Monique Pillard, Kay Mitchell, Lizzette Kattan (who also took care of us in Milan), Felicitas Oeltze von Lobenthal (who did the same in Munich), Francesco Scavullo and Sean Byrnes (the first fashion people to speak with me, triggering a chain reaction of cooperation among the
fashionistas),
Polly Mellen (whose cooperation also opened many doors, as did that of Marc Balet and Sara Foley), Michael Tighe, Robert Hilton, Giampiero Paoletti, Claude Brouet, Maurice Tannenbaum, David Uosikkinen, Fran Chalin, Margie Dameshek and Sue Lubin. Special thanks to all the sources I’m not allowed to thank by name.
Most of the quotes in this book are from interviews I conducted or are clearly attributed to the places where they originally appeared. There are a handful of quotes from public figures that I took the liberty of including without direct attribution. It’s only fair to acknowledge the appropriations: Maury Hopson would not speak with me, but Dick Polman of
The Philadelphia Inquirer
provided raw interviews with Hopson from his coverage of Way Bandy’s death; the out-of-print book
Fashion: Theory
was a wellspring of insight, especially since co-publisher John Flattau allowed me to use the interview he taped with Chris von Wangenheim for the book; Anthony Haden-Guest spent an afternoon walking me through his various
New York
modeling stories, from which I retrieved some of the more verifiable anecdotes, and he graciously loaned me some of his files; Lynn Snowden gave me an unpublished piece about her own modeling career, and I used several quotes from her
Mademoiselle
story on Esme Marshall; John Lombardi helped me out with several sources, and wrote both the Arthur Elgort profile for
American Photographer
and the piece for
High Times
from which I got ideas and factoids about “heroin as mass hip”; Brad Gooch’s
Vanity Fair
story on club culture was very helpful, and contained the Anita Sarko quote I used; Judy Klemesrud wrote the
Esquire
cover story on “The Year of the Lusty Woman”; Marie Winn wrote the
Times Magazine
profile of Alexander Liberman; Jennifer Allen wrote the five-part New York
Daily News
series on modeling I mentioned (which Joel Seigel kindly fetched from the about-to-strike
News
library); Peter Wilkinson spoke with me about his interview
with Patti Hansen for
New York Woman,
from which I got a quote; some Avedon background and a quote came from a 1978
Newsweek
cover story on him; a few Ann Simonton quotes came from Susan Faludi’s
Mother Jones
piece; Tony Shugaar’s
Spy
article on Terry Broome was of help; the
Sports Illustrated
twenty-fifth anniversary swimsuit issue was, of course, a compendium of facts I needed; Mark Stevens’s book
Model
noted the D’Arcy phenomenon; and Timothy White’s interview in
Musician
was the source of the Bowie quote; the Cindy Crawford interviews were with Bruce Buschel
(GQ)
and Michael Gross
(New York).
Nora Magid was my writing teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, my mentor and my first professional colleague. She died while I was finishing the final draft of
Thing of Beauty,
and I hope she forgave me for paying more attention to the work she inspired me to do than I did to
her
during the last years of her life.
Nora passed me on to Ed McFall, who was the reporting teacher I never had and has remained a good friend. Ron Javers gave me the job at
Philadelphia
magazine in 1982 and the editing that led to most everything else. Both he and the magazine have given me a lot. Ron and publisher Herb Lipson—and later, Herb’s son David—also indulged me several professional courtesies that allowed this book to happen.
The music column I used to do for Art Cooper at
GQ
was my only contact with the printed world while writing
Thing of Beauty.
My editors there, especially Paul Scanlon, helped me piggyback book research onto their assignments. In a wonderful twist of fate, the person to whom I owed the most thanks at
GQ,
Eliot Kaplan—who also helped out with a draft of this book and has been a pal since childhood—is now editor-in-chief of
Philadelphia,
where I owe him other thanks.
I had written only one piece for Wayne Lawson, my editor at
Vanity Fair,
when he took it upon himself to filet this book down into a magazine excerpt and then sold the idea to Graydon Carter. When I tell other writer-friends about Wayne’s efforts, they are pleasantly stunned to hear that
there are any editors like him left in the magazine business. So am I.
On the art side of things, where I learned a lot of noneditorial stuff needed for this project, thanks to Amy Herling, Alfred Zelcer, Tracy Diehl, Russell O. Jones, Greg Klee, Ken Newbaker, Patricia McElroy, Michael Jones and Heidi Volpe—as well as photographers Mary D’Anella, Jim Graham, Dan Kron and Pepe Botella, and hair-makeup guy Marc Carrasquillo.
This book happened because Loretta Weingel-Fidel, my agent, did a great job selling it and listening to me whine during it, and Jane Rosenman, my editor, worked hard on it through three rigorous editing passes. (Jane, you proved
TNR
wrong.) Bill Grose, the editor-in-chief of Pocket Books, let us do what we wanted and never asked us to shy away from the tough stuff. Photo editor Vincent Virga gave us a burst of perspective and made visual sense of it all. And Lisa Levinson and Donna Ng were two of the many Pocketeers who deserve thanks.
On a more personal note, I’d like to thank my friends Joel and Lisa Perilstein, Loren and Jill Feldman, Geoffrey Little, Diane Douglas, Jeff Rosenschein and Doug Sherman for their unending support. In the area of work pals, thanks to Barbara Fallon, Polly Hurst, Carol Saline, Janet Bukovinsky, Lisa DePaulo, Judy Prouty; Sandy Bloom, Ruth Ann Ryan, and Edith Shapin; Steven Levy and Teresa Carpenter; and Rob Hyman for the tune.
My family has always been amazingly supportive of what I do for a living—even when they were baffled by it or, worse, forced to be the
subject
of it. To my parents, Estelle and Jerry, my brothers, Jeff and Dan, my Nana and Pop-pop, my in-laws, Joan and Ed, the Schultzes, the Caplans and the rest of the crew, I can only say thanks for loving me and trying to answer my questions.
My wife, Diane Ayres, smoothly answered every query I had about what it was like to be a girl and took a lot of time away from her fiction writing to make sure that
Thing
of Beauty
got done. Her first two novels were also teeming with insights I couldn’t possibly have written this without: I hope she sees what I got from them as homage rather than appropriation. Diane edited all the drafts of this book and the original Gia article, and sat through endless discussions with me about everything from Keats to Bowie, and back again. She is my miracle.
Abraham Lincoln High School, drug culture at,
23
–24
Abscam trials,
262
Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program,
262
Adams, Barbara (aunt),
20
–21,
329
,
396
Adams, Nancy (aunt),
15
,
20
–21,
30
,
57
,
65
–66,
67
–68,
74
,
173
,
239
,
262
,
312
,
329
–30,
335
–36,
358
,
376
,
382
,
384
,
396
Afghanistan, Soviet invasion of,
217
Ahearn, Michael,
66
AIDS
in the fashion world,
355
–56,
361
,
372
–75,
389
,
395
medical personnel fear of,
361
–63
public consciousness of,
355
–56
see also under
Carangi, Gia Marie (Gia)
AIDS-related complex (ARC),
361
see also
AIDS,
361
Aladdin Sane,
31
Alaskan Fur Company,
153
Alexis, Kim,
132
,
219
,
225
,
228
,
267
,
285
Alice’s Restaurant of Pennsylvania,
40
Allen, Woody,
187
All in the Family,
17
“All the Young Dudes,”
38
Allure,
399
Alt, Carol,
253
,
267
,
272
,
284
,
316
,
353
alta moda. See
Italian fashion world
American Bandstand,
37
American Nurses’ Assoc.,
363
American Psychiatric Assoc.,
46
American Psychological Assoc.,
46
Amphetamines,
170
and weight loss,
161
AM Philadelphia,
390
–91
Amyl nitrite capsules,
171
Andy Warhol’s
Interview. See Interview
“Angie,”
38
Anna Karenina,
156
Antonioni, Michelangelo,
94
Apart,
278
Apollonia.
See
Von Ravenstein, Apollonia
Arena,
135
Armani, Giorgio,
117
,
126
,
209
,
235
Artemis,
40
Aryan look,
192
Atlantic City,
138
,
142
,
262
,
291
–92,
306
–08
Avedon, Richard,
90
,
109
,
112
,
144
,
148
,
158
,
200
,
209
–12,
229
,
234
,
236
,
245
,
275
,
277
,
278
,
316
,
400
“Baby Gia,”
394
Bailey, David,
94
Bandy, Way,
122
–23,
144
,
151
–52,
164
,
170
,
223
,
228
,
274
,
371
–75,
389
,
395
“Bang Bang,”
217
Barbie Doll,
84
Barboza, Anthony,
111
Barker, Laughlin,
355
“Barracudas, The,”
333
Barry, Marion,
96
Basil’s,
185
Basquiat, Jean-Michel,
170
Battelle, Kenneth,
158
Bazaar. See Harper’s Bazaar
Beatles, the,
30
Beautiful Punk,
121
Beauty-industrial complex,
91
–93,
126
–27,
212
–13
Belushi, John,
279
Berry, Chuck,
232
Betty Ford Center,
327
Beverly, Sharon (pseudonym),
69
–70,
73
–74,
88
,
93
,
111
,
141
,
160
,
187
–88,
216
,
281
,
397
Beverly, Stevie (pseudonym),
59
Black Album,
392
Blanche, Andrea,
111
,
124
,
152
,
157
,
196
,
228
,
400
Blass, Bill,
355
Blixen, Karen,
101
Bobby Brooks,
119
Bogdanovich, Peter,
247
Bogosian, Eric,
170
Bohan, Marc,
134
Bolan, Marc,
38
“Book out,”
234
Borain, Jose,
316
Bowie, Angie,
80
Bowie, David,
26
,
29
–33,
38
,
51
–56,
80
,
170
,
192
,
266
,
341
Bowie hair cut,
30
“Bowie kids,”
29
–33,
38
,
52
–54,
55
Brass Rail (in Atlantic City),
309
Breakfast Club, The,
345
Brigitte,
278
Brinkley, Christine,
1
,
133
,
147
,
177
,
253
,
267
,
353
,
354
,
399
British Invasion,
94