They call me 'Twiggy'
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Independent Minds
Barry Lategan
A picture from the exhibition - 'Twiggy in 1966' at the National Portrait Gallery
More pictures
In 1966, a sixteen-year-old gamine girl with an urchin haircut and a nickname of "Twiggy" become one of the most iconic models of all time. She turns sixty in September and The National Portrait Gallery are celebrating her birthday with a photographic biography of her life.
Twiggy's - aka Lesley Hornby - androgynous waif-like look, combined with the classic sixties design style of Mary Quant, took the modelling world by storm and helped changed the face of fashion. A year after she was spotted, Twiggy fever had crossed the Atlantic. There were Twiggy dolls, false eyelashes, and an eponymous magazine.
Appearing in all the leading magazines across her career, she has been photographed by Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Melvin Sokolsky, Ronald Traeger, Bert Stern and Norman Parkinson amongst others.
"Over my career I’ve had the privilege of working with many great photographers," Twiggy says. "I’m very excited to see so many of these portraits coming together at the National Portrait Gallery. It’s really interesting to see how fashion photography and portraiture have evolved throughout my career. I hope that this display and book will give people the opportunity to see these pictures that have captured definitive moments in my career."
Growing discontented with just modelling, in 1970 Twiggy turned to acting and subverted the stereotype of models-turned-actors succeeding solely for their looks. For her performance in The Boyfriend (1971), she was awarded two Golden Globes - Most Promising Newcomer and Best Actress in a Musical. She has since appeared in many plays and musicals and was also nominated for a Tony award.
Twiggy’s modelling career was re-launched with the successful Marks and Spencer advertising campaign in 2005, where she appears alongside leading supermodels of the noughties Erin O'Connor and Lily Cole. She’s also appeared as a judge on the US reality show America's Next Top Model opposite Tyra Banks, and has designed a clothing line for Littlewoods.
The exhibition begins on her sixtieth birthday on the 19th September and runs until March 2010. The display encompasses Twiggy’s life in portraits, from early shots by Lategan to the present day. There will also be a book released which features pictures from the exhibition as well as her private collection of photographs and a current retrospective in her own words.
The North London girl came from working on the counter at Woolworths, and her iconic status has not only outlived the store, but also the tired notion that beauty equals youth.
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Comments
We are now very much in the grip of a society that, in many respects, is no longer worth a bowl of spit as evidenced this week by events in both east & south London in respect of the Townsend & Smith murders, both of which have Black Culture written all over them, Knives, Gangs, Lawlessness, etc.
This in addition to the subsequent arrival in the UK on mass of a separate group of people, many of whom have loyalties that lie elsewhere on the planet. So who is responsible for this abysmal state of affairs?
There are only two candidates in my opinion, Adolf Hitler and Clem Attlee, Hitler being responsible for the outbreak of World War II or Attlee & his government who got the great inward flood from abroad underway in the late 1940's. My nod goes to Attlee, hence the subject title.
Of course, subsequent governments to Attlee's in the 1950's and beyond continued his administrations policy of encouraging prospective 'cheap labour' from abroad to move to the UK, therefore it may seem a little unfair to put the whole thing on Attlee's head. However, as it was Attlee who got the ball rolling, therefore I am of the view that he should be considered the 'father' of modern multi racial Britain. So, thanks a bunch Clem, I hope you are now in a very hot & uncomfortable place along with your main contemporaries in this regard.
One of the quacks most responsible for the multiculturalization of Britain (aka, the deliberate destruction of our national character) is Israel Ehrenberg who was born in the East End of London, 28 June 1905. As a young man, he changed his name to "Montague Francis Ashley Montagu" (with that sweet-sounding mouthful, he must have thought himself special). After moving to USA, he changed his name again to Ashley Montagu.
His personal prejudices basically shaped all the United Nations policies vis-a-vis race & gender held since. Officially, he was the rapporteur, in 1950, of the UNESCO statement The Race Question, but everyone who has studied the period knows he was also its lead author.
In 1942, Ehrenberg's book, "Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race" was published. Perhaps in retrospect, we should re-name his work: "Man's Most Dangerous Book: The Fallacy of Ehrenberg."
This jerk is responsible for such nut-job quotes as: "The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness" - said to Johnny Carson during a book-promoting appearance of the latest edition of his book 'The Natural Superiority of Women.' [Wikipedia]
But, that is what Communists like Ehrenberg have always wanted more than anything else ... the destruction of the family via the diminution of the role of men and fathers.
The so-called "Race Question" is a UNESCO statement issued on 18 July 1950. Look it up, carefully study the wording, and identify the Communist ideology running through it.
For example, the UNESCO statement advocated that: "National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connection with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term "race" is used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term "race" altogether and speak of 'ethnic groups'."
You can easily pick this apart; it is so full of childish thinking one becomes embarrassed to realize this is the kind of emotional pap our current world has been constructed upon.
The whole point of the UNESCO statement (Ehrenberg's thesis) was to invent something that would be the mirror image of anything followed by the Nazi's. That was its only purpose, to discredit absolutely everything the Nazi's embraced, even when it was scientifically true. We have been living in an artificially constructed environment ever since.
You should know that for many decades after World War II, the composer Wagner was reviled by many so-called British intellectuals simply because Hitler had admired Wagner. I believe the record sales of Beethoven suffered for many years for the same reason.
The word "race" is certainly over-used, but that should be no cause for alarm. Fortunately, I am widely travelled, and encountering racial differences has made it all worthwhile. If we were all the same, then what would be the point of seeking out other cultures and distant places? ... there wouldn't be any!
If racial differences do not exist, then why are Olympic 100 metre races always dominated by blacks? Why were most of the world's most important scientific developments discovered by Germans? Why do most Indian women have delicate ankles? I could go on to state the obvious, but why bother? People should be making the effort themselves. We all know racial differences exist, just as racial similarities exist. Make love to a girl from South India then to a girl from Holland ... you'll laugh at how we ever took clowns like Ehrenberg seriously.
I agree that if everyone was the same or similar then it would be a dull world indeed. Sadly, the immigration policies of post war governments in the UK have not so much created an underclass ( as one has probably always existed anyway ) it has in fact created what would more accurately be described as an under-underclass, which I would suggest is in no ones interest, yet amazingly this process seems to have speeded up again over recent years under the Blair/Brown regimes.
And she still looks gorgeous.
AND she's never had any side on her at all. A funny, articulate easy going London girl who is just so very nice to listen to. For all her fame she remains one of us.
I shall deffo be visiting the NPG.
The move towards androgyny also had a political angle, as the 1960s also witnessed the birth of radical (2nd wave) Feminism. This came to a boil in the USA first, and did not arrive in Britain until 1972, but it was still largely a 1960s movement. During the 1960s, unisex underwear was introduced (do you remember that?) where young men were expected to fit their 'tackle' into a space barely big enough for women's pubic hair. Never underestimate the political angle mind_ful, as the 1960s was when Britain started to go to rot. During that decade of social revolution, everything was being questioned, challenged, or overturned (for the noblest intentions of course!).
By 1969, in Britain at least, the whole point of young women's fashion was to give full focus to her upper thighs and clitoris. Micro-miniskirts were so short, absolutely nothing was left to the imagination; so much so that vaginal deodorant was introduced and became a best seller. This extremism, begun by Mary Quant, destroyed what being female truly means, and removed from men any need to address normally vital issues such as a woman's personality, character, and morality. Then suddenly, after about 2 years of micro-mini obsession, the plug was pulled, and in came the Maxi dress. That radical switchover happened simply because the Maxi-dress coincided with the arrival of Radical Feminism (social politics again).
Of course, we cannot blame Lesley Hornby for the androgynous look. She was born in 1949. Note that between 1945 and 1948, millions of Europeans had died from malnutrition or from diseases born of malnutrition. Food rationing in Britain did not end until 4th July 1954, when the young "Twiggy" was about to enter Primary School. She may have been genetically inclined to slimness but that was surely exacerbated by the age she grew up in. Most other top English models of that decade were very slender, and for similar reasons.
Well over half of all Britons who reached their teen years during the 1960s displayed signs of mild malnutrition, in particular from a low average intake of protein. The tight fitting, skinny fashions of the 1960s celebrated that reality by making it virtuous and chic. British males of this period were notoriously thin: their shoulders and arms typically puny. Look back via the photographs (e.g., pop album record sleeves, etc) to check for yourself, if you don't believe me.
It is ironic that all the English Rose fashion models of the 1960s --- there were several --- have all aged well. Today, they all remain physically desirable even as they each enter their sixth decade. Quite remarkable. As for "Twiggy", in my humble opinion, she blossomed into a truly beautiful woman after passing her 30th birthday (it might have happened a few years earlier, but I wasn't watching). By the time she had reached her mid 30s, Twiggy had developed a magnificently curvaceous figure that was almost perfect. I would go so far as to say Lesley Hornby had a far better (sexier) body when aged 35 than most girls of today have at 20 years.
And finally, I am not so sure your assumption of a "healthy size 14" is correct. When I was young enough to date young single girls in Britain, both the normal and sexiest size by far was size 12. Any girl over size 12 was considered getting on for being fat. The young women of today (generally speaking) are a disgrace because not only do they swallow the wrong things into their stomachs, but they also swallow the wrong things into their heads. The English Rose is now a Bramble Bush, if not a Poison Ivy.
The situation is not beyond repair, but more of us need to at least get the historical facts correct. It might help to drop all attachments to those myriad junk & self-destructive influences typically authored in New York City & its environs.
Well Ive heard some flimsy pretexts for a rascist rant in my time but you two take the biscuit. Just as well the article wasnt about Naomi Campbell eh.
Fucking hell.
I must say I had to laugh at the bit about 'make love to a girl from south India and a girl from holland'. Obviously what you meant to say was. 'try wanking over a picture of a girl from south india and a girl from holland.'
So do you have them all spread out on the toilet floor or do you like to flick back and forth........
Or hang on...wait a min.....Its all becoming clear now.....Fat sweaty bigot takes sex tour to Amsterdam last year and liked 'Jenny Foreigner' so much he go to Bangkok year after..... 'sucky fucky five dollah.' where next ? Cuba for 2010..ARRIIBAAAHHHH! You lucky lucky senoritas!
Dear oh dear oh dear. If you saddos are the last protectors of our 'proud' british heritage then were all doomed (thank fuck).