It was my first inkling of the number of girls who wanted to be models. I had to sit in a waiting room with about ten other girls, all apparently waiting for interviews like myself. I arrived at a depressing-looking building near Covent Garden, feeling sick with nerves, which were not at all helped by passing several self-possessed and, to my mind, over-made-up girls on the stairs. I dressed myself up and thought I looked fine, although I realize now I must have looked like a trussed chicken.
The first was Pat Larthe, who asked me to bring any snaps or photographs that I had and told me where her office was. I hated the idea of ringing up strange people and asking for interviews, but I telephoned and made appointments to see both the agents. Finally, one patient voice at the end of the line explained in answer to my request, ‘Did they need any models?’, that they got all the models they required through an agency, and my best policy was to join one. I was getting nowhere fast, when I had the further bright inspiration to look up ‘studios’, which were more to the point. The first dozen or so were of no use whatsoever, being the type of photographer who takes machinery or weddings or babies on fur rugs.
#TIMELESS 293 APPAREL H AND M SWEATER HOW TO#
I had absolutely no idea how to set about becoming a model, until I hit on the bright thought of looking up ‘photographers’ in the London telephone book (I can’t imagine now why I didn’t ring up a fashion magazine). Finally, my need for money got the better of me and I decided to have a shot. Secretly I began to toy with the idea of modelling-I say secretly because I felt rather self-conscious at the idea of my being attractive and vain enough to consider it possible. Being a private charter company, the work was very irregular, and sometimes there would be long, irritating spells of doing nothing. I finally ended up as an air hostess with Westminster Airways, a private charter company, and by September 1947 I was living in London on £8 a week (my only source of income), which after my food, rent and tax were paid left very little for anything else. I drifted along through WAAF’s and a parachute factory and various other things, with no idea of what I wanted out of life, except a restless ambition to be famous-at what, I didn’t know. I was at school when it started and when I left it seemed rather pointless to have ambitions about anything, as everyone was drafted into war work of one kind or another. The war had felt as if it would go on for ever. I had never really registered the fact that the faces of the girls showing clothes in magazines belonged to real people-they always seemed like stuffed dummies-and it certainly never entered my head to become one nor had I ever seen a model in real life and I couldn’t imagine them leading normal human lives-having to eat, sleep and clean their teeth at regular intervals. At that time there was nothing like the enormous amount of publicity given to models and modelling that there is to-day, so unless one knew someone in the fashion trade, one knew nothing whatsoever about it. It was then that somebody suggested I should try modelling. Nine years ago in November 1947, I had been a hard up air hostess, looking desperately around for some other means of supplementing my income.
Now I was lunching aboard the yacht of the most publicized honeymoon couple in the world.
As she spoke, I too began to think of the contrast of the past and the present. She said how different her life had been only a few years ago, when everything seemed to have gone wrong. Princess Grace and I were soon deep in discussion about horoscopes and fate she asked me when my birthday was, and told me hers was November 12. In spite of the weather, sunbathing was out of the question, so after lunch, we sat drinking coffee in the saloon. I was the guest of Prince Rainier of Monaco, and his bride, the former Grace Kelly: all around us reporters, photographers and sightseers were milling with field-glasses, cameras and even telescopes. April 1956 in Majorca was warm and sunny, but as we sat at lunch, the blinds of the yacht Deo Juvante, anchored off Formentor, were tightly drawn.