Before starting at Queen’s College, I had a quick spin in Rome, where Andy and Fred Hughes had lived briefly in 1973. With director Paul Morrissey and actor Joe Dallesandro, they had shared a house with Andrew Braunsberg. Best known as Roman Polanski’s producer, as well as being behind masterpieces like Being There, Andrew was working on Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula with Andy and Paul. “They were there to make money,” Braunsberg says. “It wasn’t particularly about creativity.”
The American art market had dried up for Andy in the early ’70s. It was a result of minimalism being in the forefront, with cutting-edge artists like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Carl Andre who made Warhol look like old hat, or so some argued. Vincent Fremont, in charge of Warhol Enterprises, also reasons that after the assassination attempt on Andy in 1968, the American art establishment took a position that he had “lost his creative energy. It was not true,” argues Fremont. “Andy was physically healing but he had endless ideas.”
Recognizing the situation, Fred decided to Europeanize Warhol’s operation. Having been the protégé of Dominique and John de Menil, prominent collectors who were respected internationally, and having worked for Alexander Iolas, the Paris-based gallerist, he had all the right connections and was tailor-made for the job. In 1969, Fred got together with the powerful Zurich-based art dealer Bruno Bischofberger and Thomas Ammann, who was then working for him. “I invented the forty-by-forty-type portraits,” recalls Bischofberger. “We called them ‘Les Must de Warhol.’” (“Les Must” was a play on Cartier’s famous campaign.) Starting in earnest in 1970, they were an instant hit and according to Fremont were “a good way to keep cash flow coming in in between exhibitions and other projects.”
A constant source of income came via West Germany, Warhol’s biggest European market, where Peter Ludwig, the country’s most famous collector, and industrialists, their wives and families, and even politicians like Willy Brandt, the former chancellor, lined up to have their portraits done. “It was because the Germans understood and hungered for Pop art,” states Fremont. “The idea being that you could buy part of American culture via Pop art. After the Second World War, England was in a bad shape financially. But the Americans were giving money away via the Marshall Plan and everything.” Guided by Fred, Bischofberger took the business to another level.
During the 1970s, Fred also set up portrait sittings with members of European society such as Gianni and Marella Agnelli, Stavros Niarchos, Hélène Rochas, Éric de Rothschild, São Schlumberger, Silvia de Waldner, and Gunter Sachs and his then wife Brigitte Bardot, the famous French bombshell. The lucrative portrait-commissioning business helped ease the way for “the five-star social climbing and shopping trips to Europe that Warhol, the awkward boy from Pittsburgh’s Slavic ghetto, grew to love,” as described by Bob Colacello in his Vanity Fair profile on Fred.
Nevertheless, Europeans were thrilled to meet Andy. “In Rome, he was treated like a film star,” recalls Peter Brant. Jacques Grange, who was at the 1971 Venice Film Festival with Marisa Berenson and Paloma Picasso, was “electrified by Warhol’s presence.” Andy and Fred had turned up at the Palazzo Volpi, ruled by the social powerhouse Lili Volpi, and had dinner with the heiress and legendary collector Peggy Guggenheim and Yves Saint Laurent. “Peggy really wanted to meet him,” recalls Grange.
When taking the sleeper train back to Paris, Andy bumped into Nico, one of his former Superstars, who had sung with the Velvet Underground. “Beautiful but quite out of it, she wanted to see Andy alone and then immediately stung him for money,” recalls Clara Saint, who worked for Saint Laurent. “Of course, he gave it to her, but I think he was starting to tire of that type of behavior.”
A year later, Andy attended the Volpi Ball, given for the eighteenth birthday of Olimpia Aldobrandini, Lili Volpi’s granddaughter. It was viewed as the last of its kind by Cecil Beaton, the photographer and social diarist, who wrote, “It was interesting to see the influx of the new stars. Andy Warhol in a silk dinner jacket, Bianca Jagger with a swagger stick, Helmut Berger, very German and Marlene Dietrich–esque, his hair dyed yellow . . .”
Meanwhile, Fred didn’t just make Warhol into “an old master,” to requote Nicky Haslam, or “the Sargent of the Jet Set,” to further quote Colacello: “He also established a network of important European gallery owners such as London’s Anthony d’Offay, Paris’s Daniel Templon, Düsseldorf’s Hans Mayer, and Naples’ Lucio Amelio, who were later prepared to advance hundreds of thousands for shows of much more difficult work: the Mao series, the Drag Queens, the Hammer and Sickles, the Skulls.”
Interior decorator Suzie Frankfurt had known Andy since the 1950s. However, during her trips to Europe with Warhol and Hughes, it was Fred who won her attention. “After her divorce, my mother became a bit of a groupie,” explains Peter Frankfurt. “She was just dazzled by him. Fred had become an impresario.”
Nevertheless, Warhol still fretted about funds and the need to finance his empire, which included the Velvet Underground and Interview magazine. “Every year, Andy would be paranoid that we had no money,” says Fremont. “And I bought into it.”
During the making of Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, Elizabeth Taylor happened to be in Rome. Miserable at the Grand Hotel, she was boozing, having just been dumped by Richard Burton. “Anyway, Andy was convinced that I was going to be her next husband,” recalls Braunsberg. “He did everything to push the situation, ignoring my pleas to the contrary.” Including the fact that Braunsberg was romantically attached to Faye Dunaway. Andy relished playing the role of Cupid. He often did that. And years later when he saw Braunsberg on Fifth Avenue, he reminded him of the fact. “Andy said, ‘Andrew, I am so disappointed in you. You should have married Elizabeth. You would have had it made.’”
Andy did like to match-make. In fact, when we first met in February 1980, at a lunch given by Marguerite Littman, a southern-born society hostess, he asked if I knew Johnnie Samuels (who has since morphed into John Stockwell, an actor and horror-film director). Nicknamed “Beauty” at the time, he was the son of John Samuels III, a Warhol collector and prominent New York City Ballet benefactor who was referred to as “Beast.” “You should meet him, he’s an Armani model,” Andy said. At first I was taken aback. He was, after all, Mr. Important Pop Artist who was mentioned in a David Bowie song—the latter being major for that period. And here he was being silly. Then I remembered that Interview, Andy’s magazine, had recently published a portrait of my eldest sister. Besides, I didn’t mind. Andy knew how to tease. There was mutual interest—I was the daughter of Lady A, quite a celebrity, and he was the famous American artist. As he and I bantered, it was like being with one of the girls. According to Bob Colacello, “Andy was curious about women. He felt that he could gossip [with women] more than he could with straight men.” Still, I sensed to withhold personal details. When he was grilling me about the guy I was seeing—a dashing but dastardly playboy—I refused to reveal his name. And when Andy asked if he was married—the playboy wasn’t the type to get hitched—I was a little relieved by the arrival of other guests, who included Bianca Jagger, John Richardson, and Nicky Haslam, who was giving a party that night in honor of Andy.
Marguerite, whose husband was one of the Queen’s barristers, was renowned for her lunch parties. Held at her Chester Square house, they were not only delicious, with food ranging from fillets of sole with ginger, southern fried chicken, and prune soufflé, but they also had an incredible mix of folk. Inclusive, she would mingle her New York pals like Diana Vreeland, writer Brooke Hayward, socialites Nan Kempner and Pat Buckley, and designer Bill Blass with her London friends such as Lady Diana Cooper and the Queen’s cousin John Bowes-Lyon.
Marguerite had known Andy since the beginning of his career. She cohosted a party for him in the 1960s that led to decorating the walls with silver foil. Meanwhile, her range of literary-lion friends included Christopher Isherwood, poet Stephen Spender, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, and Tennessee Williams. I liked her “Keep it light” style and the fact that my mother disapproved of her long, lingering lunches.
As for Marguerite’s strong accent, she admitted that it was pure theater: “It may sound southern to you, but when I go back to Louisiana, a lot of people don’t understand what I’m saying,” she told British Vogue’s Louise Baring. Self-parody was one of Marguerite’s many endearing features. That said, to Hollywood, she was considered the coach for a southern accent. She had prepared Elizabeth Taylor for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and also worked with Claire Bloom, Orson Welles, Paul Newman, and Joanne Woodward.
As usual, Marguerite looked immaculate in one of her Yves Saint Laurent outfits. I, on the other hand, had arrived on a bicycle, sporting tight drainpipe jeans, a pink-and-white vintage sweater, and tasseled loafers. My hair had been dyed black, and my eyes, later described by Tatler’s Tina Brown as “large, dark, and grabby,” were smudged with dark purple eyeliner. Everyone else was more formally dressed and a lot more important. However, I was sixteen years old, spilling out in the right places and charged with the best accessory in the world—youth! British Vogue had also just published my full-page portrait under the title “New Beauties for the Eighties—The World Is Their Oyster . . .” Stefano Massimo, a Roman-born prince and Andy acquaintance, had taken my photograph. John Frieda, the then happening hairdresser, had done my hair, while Tom Bell, the fashion designer du jour, stitched me into the silver lamé strapless gown that made my snowy cleavage look like a pair of shimmering shells.
Initially, I loathed the picture. Frieda made my hair resemble a dark haystack, and my dignified expression defined old-fashioned and uncool. Lord Snowdon’s portrait of model and actress Catherine Oxenberg, another beauty in the series, was much more to my taste. She looked very pretty and dream date–like. Yet if I think back, my Vogue portrait stoked mild interest and established me as a new person on London’s scene.
Later, a school acquaintance described me as a London “it girl.” To be honest, I usually felt more like a “hit girl,” with the amount of insults I received because I was viewed as confident or even cocky, when I was actually confused by the attention yet determined to seize life by the horns. Besides, the “it girl” expression was hardly ever used during the 1980s. And to explain about the London social scene then, it was staggeringly provincial because most people were English. To quote Nicholas Coleridge (then a star writer at Tatler), “London had more of a village atmosphere and there was a feeling—certainly in the world of Tatler—that there were twenty surnames.” I remember gate-crashing two exceedingly smart weddings—of Edwina Brudenell, the daughter of David Hicks and the goddaughter of the Queen, who was naturally there; and of Eddie Somerset, whose father was David Somerset, the future Duke of Beaufort—and both went without a glitch because someone knew a member of my family. Gate-crashing such events would be unheard-of now.
Having strong features, I was recognizable and quickly viewed as posh with cleavage. When I appeared at Nicky Haslam’s party for Andy, held at Régine’s nightclub, the crème de la crème of the paparazzi—I refer to Alan Davidson and Richard Young—made a point of taking my picture.
True to form, Mr. Warhol also snapped away. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. I felt fairly chuffed until he said exactly the same to an American heiress sporting dental braces. Nevertheless, I stuck close and he didn’t mind my sharing his space. “You’re so beautiful,” he continued to gush as he aimlessly clicked away at London’s jeunesse dorée crowd. Being my frank, practical self, I felt the need to blurt out, “Andy, why aren’t you looking through the lens?” He didn’t reply but smiled as if to say, “I don’t need to.” And I remained hot on his heels until Bianca Jagger arrived.
In those days, it was considered impolite not to dress up for a smart party, particularly when the invitation was sent by Nicky, media king. So I wore my black tutu dress, bought from a boutique in Rome called Ginger. It had cost twenty pounds. Andy immediately asked who the designer was. I didn’t quite get it. At sixteen, I didn’t wear high fashion, nor did any of my contemporaries. That was firmly for the older generation. So I explained that the black tulle dress had been on a mannequin in a Roman side street. Andy was amazed by the price. Actually, it was normal.
Bianca, on the other hand, was wearing Halston. I shared a limousine with her, Andy, Fred, and Mark Shand—the hunky brother of Camilla Parker Bowles—who kept trying to take Bianca’s hand. It was quite femme fatale and quite off-putting until we talked about her emerald-green taffeta trouser suit. The color looked sensational with her black hair.
Still, Halston equaled a fortune. It was serious money that I never spent on clothes. For instance, my Saturdays were taken up by either going early to Portobello Road and rummaging through the humid cardboard boxes that offered the occasional sensational bargain—sometimes the designer Ossie Clark kept me company, with his little dog stuffed in his coat—or trying the stalls at Camden Lock that were farther away but cheaper. In London then, there was a sort of inverted snob pact: the cheaper the clothes, the better. However, if parents splurged on a cocktail-length dress or ball gown, they relied upon Bellville Sassoon or Caroline Charles.
Mine did not splurge. Instead, I borrowed dresses from Tom Bell, who was the London equivalent of Halston for a moment. He always had dresses to lend and I always had a party to go to. The atmosphere was heady and caught aptly by the Tatler, a sort of pictorial “upper-class comic” that, to quote Coleridge, was “full of jokes and insults. I remember Michael Roberts [Tatler’s fashion editor] saying that the spine line should have read ‘the magazine that bites the hand that feeds it.’” His boss was tough and demanding—“With Tina, you could go from hero to zero in seconds”—but her staff had the finger on the pulse.
True, many parties were promotional, but such events were new and thrilling to London—they began after the election of Margaret Thatcher—and there was a ton of champagne to be quaffed. Tom Bell could be counted upon to arrive with a gaggle of women like Mitey Roche and me. Mitey was the daughter of the poet Paul Roche, known for his relationship with Duncan Grant, the Bloomsbury group painter, while her American mother, Clarissa, had been Sylvia Plath’s close friend. Armed by our dyed black hair—the L’Oréal shade was “Brasilia”—and a ton of eye shadow, with prominent cleavage in tow, Mitey and I would make a complete exhibition of ourselves. Such soirées varied in tone, but we always caught attention with our youth and brashness.
Occasionally, we would go too far. Actor Oliver Tobias’s fiesta jumps to mind. Suavely handsome, he was famous for one film—The Stud—that costarred Joan Collins, his older and fabulous-looking lover. Mitey and I managed to break some potted exotic plants and then get locked in the powder room—the place of choice to take cocaine. As a result, we encountered the wrath of the Stud. He told us to fuck off and leave. Far from being terrified, we collapsed in a heap, laughing.
There were also all the evenings spent at 11 Park Walk, the restaurant off the Fulham Road that was run by a group of Italians who had earned their stripes at Mr Chow. The management never fraternized with the customers: an unusual formula. Instead, they were phenomenally efficient and skilled at seating everyone.
There was a mirrored staircase that led down to the eatery where people checked out either their makeup or their noses for white powder traces. On any given night, there were groups of friends who tended to be swigging back the white wine and generally showing off. Few people had money in London then, but those who were wealthy, like Jasper Guinness, the brother of Catherine Hesketh, were fantastically generous. They picked up the bill for twelve people without question.
There was always a sea of social activities, whether it was a crummy but entertaining eighteenth-birthday party in Battersea or a smart drinks party celebrating Wimbledon given by Patricia Rothermere, the wife of the press baron who owned the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard newspapers. She was also the mother of Geraldine Harmsworth, the fourth English Muffin.
Showing customary extravagance, Lady Rothermere—nicknamed “Bubbles” in the press for her love of champagne—gave a party for Andy. As did Lord and Lady Lambton—the parents of Anne Lambton, whom the artist had actually proposed to. “I had just had this massive car crash,” she recalls. “And my father came in and said, ‘You’re not going to marry this Warhol character, are you?’ I was in my hospital bed and said, ‘I don’t think so.’”
Discharging herself from the hospital and wearing a neck brace, Anne had attended her parents’ party for Andy. “It was fantastic,” she recalls. “My mother was dancing with what she thought was a black man.” It was a transvestite. Whereas her father talking to Andy “was like China talking to America. They didn’t understand one word [the other said].” A curious aside: Sabrina Guinness points out, “In London, parties were always being given for Andy and it was an era when people didn’t.” The artist incited that. According to Nicholas Coleridge, the world of Warhol, Fred Hughes, and Bob Colacello was “considered fashionable by Tatler because of the English people working there. That’s what cool girls did,” he says.
One Tatler highlight that lacked Andy and company was the Belvoir ball. Extremely grand and given by the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, it was for their daughter Lady Theresa Manners, who’d been at St. Mary’s Ascot with me. I had never seen so many diamond tiaras in my life. Suddenly women who lived in Barbour jackets and tweed skirts were transformed by the family jewels. The dark side of the party were the upper-class junkies. From a distance they looked Sargent-like and romantic in their white tails or black tie, but when viewed up close, it was obvious their eyes were pinned. I met a society beauty on the main staircase who burst into floods of tears because her boyfriend couldn’t “score,” putting him in a foul mood.
One junkie scene remains stamped in my memory. It happened at an apartment in Earl’s Court. Three guys had just chased the dragon: strips of burned tinfoil were all over the floor. They were watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre—it was at the noisiest, most violent scene in the movie—and they alternated between nodding off and opening their eyes, showing pale blue, lifeless orbs. Apparently there was a cool factor to heroin, the ultimate escapist drug. I never got it. The self-indulgence and deadbeat, dank aspect defined depressing.
A familiar scenario during the height of taking smack was going to dinner parties where the table was emptied of eighty percent of the guests, who were either taking heroin or organizing their next fix or having a meltdown because someone had stolen their fix. A lot of whining went on, as it can with addictive behavior. One plus point was befriending Robin Hurlstone, the art dealer. I didn’t know who the mysterious, good-looking blond was, but I certainly wondered. Yet again, he and I were left alone at a table, in the company of everyone else’s food, and then he leaned over and said, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”