Twiggy and Justin

by Thomas Whiteside

Within an unbelievably short time, and from somewhere out of North London, a slight, boyish-looking, Cockney-accented young girl aptly nicknamed Twiggy has become the world's top fashion model, the idol of millions of teenage girls, and the hub of a big business involving products ranging from eyelashes to miniskirts. This has happened partly because of Twiggy's natural beauty and charm. It has also come to pass because Twiggy is represented by an extraordinary young man named Justin de Villeneuve, who, with little more business experience than selling bric-a-brac from a barrow in London's Chelsea district, brought Twiggy to America on a shoestring and showed such intuitive understanding of the ways of Madison Avenue that in six weeks both of them were able to leave this country with the assurance of becoming millionaires.
  This delightful and sharply revealing book tells the story of Twiggy and Justin, a modern-day version of Pygmalion and Galatea. Thomas Whiteside, one of The New Yorker's most accomplished writers, first met Twiggy and Justin when, with great fanfare, they arrived in New York last March for a visit to model and promote "the Twiggy line" of clothes. Day after frantic day, Mr. Whiteside followed Twiggy and Justin through their exhausting rounds of fashion photographers' studios, press conferences, and swinging parties. He observed them coping with throngs of adoring teen-agers and kept up with Justin's often tempestuous meetings with TV network and advertising executives, and his shrewd dealings with all sorts of promoters and all kinds of what Justin called "jiggery-pokery." From his close-up view of Twiggy and Justin and their entourage, Mr. Whiteside has drawn an incisive portrait of two oddly fascinating people, and of the surrounding commercial corruption that both attracted and repelled them. Twiggy and Justin is a discerning look into the inner workings of the worlds of fashion and mass communications—the expert photographers, the editors and filmmakers, the publicists and Madison Avenue men, all of whom played a part in the almost instant creation of a celebrity and her transformation into a multi-million-dollar business.

Genres: Fashion

122 pages, Hardcover

First published April 17, 1968

Reviews

[Rosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the last week or so, I've been on a real Twiggy kick. I love the look of the mid-sixties, specifically late 1965-early 1967, when colors were bright and patterns were bold, before things got really weird and wiggy (although I love the weird and wiggy, too). And Twiggy defined that look. I've read criticism of her: she was too thin and flat and boyish-looking, bad for “real” women’s body image, and, according to Esquire, a sign of the sun continuing to sink after already setting on the British Empire (Reporter: “Twiggy, do you know what happened at Hiroshima?” Twiggy: “Where’s that?”). This latter seemed mean-spirited, picking on an uneducated working-class girl who was whisked away from normality at sixteen by a svengali to become a Big Thing.

Her svengali (she would later deny it, but that’s what he was) was about ten years older, a man by the name of Nigel Davies, who changed that to “Justin de Villeneuve” with no justification. Nigel Davies is a perfectly fine name, unlike “Lesley Hornby,” ugh. (And when referring to him by his new surname, it’s always “de Villeneuve,” never just “Villeneuve.” This irritated me slightly.) He turned Twiggy into a big brand. I thoroughly enjoyed browsing through the masses of Twiggy merchandise on eBay: Twiggy false eyelashes, doll, stockings, board game (which I desperately want to play), lunchbox and thermos, totes, paper dolls (lots of fun), dress patterns, clothes hangers, and on and on.

Possibly having her face put on a hanger was why Twiggy quit modeling in 1970. She wanted to be more than just something to hang clothes on.

When they came to the U.S. to model (Twiggy) and make a fortune (Justin), Thomas Whiteside latched on and took notes. From his book, Twiggy was a real charmer, innocent, totally unaffected, sweet-natured, sensitive, and naturally gifted at modeling. Justin…Justin was just a bit more complicated. He seemed to genuinely care for his young charge, but I didn’t see any romance, although they were supposed to be a couple. He was very controlling of Twiggy’s image; not a hint of sexuality was allowed. He nixed the idea of a pictorial with Twiggy as various fairy tale heroines, because there was “something sexually erotic” about Little Red Riding Hood being menaced by a wolf. He’s right, I suppose, but it would have been great.

Justin made no secret of being a breadhead. His gift was conspicuous consumption. He cared about money and image and not much else. When he and the author pass a parade of war protestors, “de Villeneuve made no comment; evidently this just wasn’t his scene.” Even before this scene, as Twiggy modeled for Richard Avedon to the sound of the Kinks’ Greatest Hits, bystanders donned creepy-looking Twiggy masks for publicity photos, Justin argued with Mattel over exactly how the doll should look, and Thomas Whiteside covered it all, something was bothering me. Don’t you people know there’s a war on? Don’t you know about all the suffering in the world? You’re not helping.

Thomas Whiteside stays an unobtrusive observer throughout most of the book, until the end when he expresses some of his opinions: “Her angularity made me think of the lines of some census graph sprung to life and set to jiggling around in front of me. After all, it is the play of the census figures that determines whether a Justin can successfully present a Twiggy, and that determines how many young girls lie ready, in certain age brackets, ‘to be merchandised at,’ as the lady executive at Yardley had remarked to me. What had marked Justin's efforts on behalf of Twiggy, it seemed to me, was an unusual sense of timing, a prescient feeling for that magical moment when demand is about to exceed supply, and an intuitive knowledge of how to magnify that threshold effect by delaying and selectively exploiting the supply of what is being promoted until, through the peculiar dynamics of modern publicity, interest could be turned into importunity, and Twiggy could be brought gloriously In.”

I was interested by this, but also kind of disappointed, because I thought he saw Twiggy as a person. Maybe he did, but as a person of far less import in herself than what she was turned into: the most recent thing to make tween girls squeal and spend all of that lovely disposable income. Little did he know that Twiggy would dump it all to become an actress. Actually, Twiggy herself knew least of all. She said herself that plans to put her in a movie were ridiculous, because she couldn’t act. I guess she gained self-confidence. I still have to see The Boy Friend. I look forward to it.

Honestly, this review doesn’t cover the cynicism and money-mindedness of the people Justin deals with, and of Justin himself. The last line is devastating (although not as devastating as the duckling incident), when Justin reveals that, when the time comes, he will go his way and Twiggy will go hers. I guess he didn’t plan to propose.

If you think this review is too much about the people involved and not enough about the book itself, I’ll just say that it’s a good book, probably very useful for teaching reportorial skills, as well as an insider’s view of how this charming young thing was turned into the face of ‘67, and how we the consumers are cynically manipulated by the people whose goal it is to keep us consuming more and more.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting book -- reads like a long magazine article. Fascinating what a phenomenon she was -- in the pre-internet age. She struck a nerve -- anyone who loves this history of fashion and its personalities will love this book.