Jerry Hall

Jerry Hall speaks to US Harper's Bazaar... (harpersbazaar.com:(

Jerry Hall: The Interview

With collections from Louis Vuitton to Gucci channeling Jerry Hall's signature '70s glamour, the legendary model will always be in style.

Jerry Hall--first-generation supermodel, the former Mrs. Mick Jagger, dictionary definition of "cool blonde"--is shaping the fashion moment. Her signature style was all over the Spring 2011 collections: Gucci, with Marrakesh-inspired luxe in jewel tones; Fendi, with whites and turquoise, all very Jerry in Saint-Tropez in the mid-'70s; Marc Jacobs, in a more Studio 54 sort of a way. We are all about to be impacted by Jerry Hall's aesthetic.

"Oh, that's so nice," says Hall when we meet at her London home to talk about the fact that she's holding the world's runways in thrall. "I've been hearing it. All the photographers and hair and makeup artists have been telling me, 'We keep saying, 'That's so Jerry Hall!'" And she laughs, which is her way of softening anything that might otherwise seem self-congratulatory.

It's predictable, but in the flesh, Hall is preposterously good-looking. She is 54 years old, all legs, blonde hair, and mannered charm. She is part man-whispering coquette, part solicitous girl's girl, part alpha mama. (I overheard her badgering 13-year-old son Gabriel Jagger to put on a coat before he went outside.) And she is good company.

She's leafing through her new book, Jerry Hall: My Life in Pictures, out now in the U.K. It's both an autobiography and a testament to a spectacular career. "Yves Saint Laurent was my first fashion show," she says. "I wore his tuxedo. And Helmut Newton was my first photographer, in 1973. I was really very lucky. I had an amazing career."

Hall didn't always dream of modeling. Growing up in Mesquite, Texas, she just wanted to be glamorous. "My mother and my sisters--five girls--were crazy about glamour and Hollywood movies. I styled myself on Veronica Lake and Marlene Dietrich." Yet, she says, she was a tomboy.

It wasn't until she took LSD at a high school party that she began to understand her potential. "A boy gave me a quarter of a tab. I didn't know what it was!" she says. "I actually had never taken drugs and was very nervous. And I never did take drugs [afterward] ever, ever. But I locked myself in the bathroom and spent the whole night staring in the mirror, going, 'Oh, my God.'" She runs her fingers over the contours of her face. "All of a sudden, I thought, Wow!"

And so, a few weeks before her 17th birthday, she flew to Paris. "I sort of had a turning thing. One of those moments where you decide you're going to do something really wild. And I did it."

Her twin sister, Terry, soon joined her, and the two of them shacked up in the Hotel Crystal with Grace Jones. "We shared a room; it had twin beds on one side and a single bed on the other and was divided by a curtain," writes Hall in her new book. "Grace was trying to be a model," she tells me. "She and I put on cabaret shows for our friends. We told her she had to be a singer. We'd go to the Club Sept, which was the happening club. That's where I met Antonio Lopez, the fashion illustrator I started working with. And Helmut Newton and Salvador Dalí. I was attracted to artistic and creative types."

Her charm impressed the Parisian intellectual and artistic set. She met Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at La Coupole. Dalí asked her to come to Spain to make a film of her wearing only a white veil. She turned him down. "I had promised my mama I wouldn't pose nude," she writes.

It sounds like an intense and decadent crowd. "Actually, they were all very sensible," she says. "Andy Warhol [one of Hall's good friends] was the most sensible person I've ever met. He never took drugs, didn't drink. He liked sort of watching. Dalí too. Watchers. And I don't like to be in the middle of a crowd, so I like to watch too."

Hall's modeling career took off instantly. But it was the cover for Roxy Music's 1975 album, Siren, that propelled her to international celebrity. Lead singer Bryan Ferry picked her up at Heathrow Airport, and by the time the shoot was over, they had fallen for each other. Within months, Ferry proposed. Hall was 19; he was 30.

London embraced the glamour and cool of the couple. They were invited everywhere, including to dinner by Mick Jagger. "Bryan was flattered by Mick's attention, but he could also see that Mick was smitten with me. It couldn't have been nice for him. At the end of the evening, Mick brushed his leg next to mine," Hall writes. "I felt an electric jolt!"

Can she remember what she was wearing when she and Jagger met? "Yeah, I can. I was wearing linen trousers, kind of full, '30s, and they buttoned at the side. I had this crocheted sweater; it was '30s too, with short sleeves and a knitted collar. And a matching straw beret. All '30s. I always liked to do a look from a period, you know. Ha, ha! And I loved the '50s. The Hollywood sort of slightly sl*tty glamour. I still love that."

Jagger began turning up regularly at the London house Hall shared with Ferry. "He'd be jumping around and joking, and Bryan would get very edgy. ... One time Mick started chasing me around the Ping-Pong table, trying to kiss me, and Bryan came in and chased him out."

One night while Ferry was on tour, Hall was seated between Jagger and Warren Beatty at a dinner party in New York City. They ended up party-hopping all over town. "[It was] May 21, 1977. ... We would celebrate that day for the next 23 years," she writes. Jagger started wooing Hall with bouquets of flowers and constant attention. She finally gave in, and they began an affair. There was only one problem: Jagger admitted that he smoked heroin. "I told him I couldn't see him if he took drugs," she writes. Jagger managed to break his habit.

When Ferry's tour ended later that summer, he took Hall with him to Los Angeles, but Jagger was relentless. "He begged to see me again, telling me how much he missed me," she writes. They met in Paris. "As soon as I saw him again, I knew I wanted to be with him." They flew to Morocco, and Hall told Ferry she was working. "Finally, he said, 'Stop lying. I read about you and Mick in Morocco in the papers.'"

They ended things, leaving Hall and Jagger free to move in together. Hall tried not to worry about the small detail that Jagger was technically married to Bianca. "I thought ... I could get him to give up womanizing," she writes. For a while, she was right. After all, as she famously told David Letterman on his show, her mother had taught her "the way to keep a man was to be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen, and a wh*re in the bedroom."

The couple became regulars at their favorite nightspot, Studio 54. "That was wonderful. Because you'd see all these amazing people, famous people from all over the world, in one place on one night. It was quite something!"

And she was one of those famous people. "But I was still a fan. Ha, ha! It was wonderful. You'd see Martha Graham, Rudolf Nureyev, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams. Elizabeth Taylor."

Her Studio 54 outfits were conceived to maximize the club's lighting. "Lots of bling! And lots of Halston. Jersey and draped and quite chic, you know."

Over the years, Hall inevitably became friends with many of the designers she worked with. "Yves Saint Laurent, Thierry Mugler, Madame Grès." Did they give her clothes? "Oh, yes. An awful lot," she drawls. "I know. So lucky!" A year and a half ago, Hall sold a significant portion of her collection at Sotheby's auction house and donated the proceeds to a homeless charity. Was it a wrench to let so much go? "No. Because I was having a feng shui attack," she explains. "And I'm not finished yet. So much junk everywhere."

It's the first big cleanout she's done since splitting with Jagger in 1999. She had been plagued with doubts about their relationship for years. "Mick was a dangerous sexual predator," she writes, "and although I loved him and he swore undying love for me, I felt very unsure of him. I had weaned him off drugs, but they had been replaced by sex. ... By the time we had children, I would read about Mick's dalliances in the newspapers." One report finally did them in: the news about Jagger's son with Brazilian model Luciana Morad.
 
The interview continued... (same source:(

Years later, she is on good terms with most of the extended Jagger clan, including his partner of eight years, designer L'Wren Scott. "To be honest, I think she is better at dealing with him than I am. He needs a lot of adoration, which I wasn't really willing to give him," she writes. Hall even owns a Scott dress. "They are like couture kinds of things. Very well cut. Beautiful!"

She adores her children, including model daughters Georgia May, 18, and Lizzy, 26. She's very proud the two have followed in her footsteps. "I love watching my daughters be in pictures," she says. "I gave them all these films to watch. Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, and Mae West. Actually, they both shot with Karl Lagerfeld, and he was saying to them, 'Okay, be Bette Davis in The Letter.' And they knew what to do! He said, 'Oh, my God. I never work with girls who know what I'm talking about! Your mother trained you so well.' So funny!"

Even supermodels age, however, and Hall seems especially conscious of it. She makes it clear that she rarely models these days because she's just "too old." "I've had to give up leather pants and miniskirts," and she misses the miniskirts most. "I said to Georgia May, 'Can't I wear them with thick tights?' And she goes, 'No,' and then she took 'em all!"

But still, Hall loves clothes. She names Vivienne Westwood as a favorite, and she just bought a skirt suit by British designer Antony Price because it was "very Mad Men."

Does she like the show? "I love it. It's my new favorite. And I love the big girl [Joan, played by Christina Hendricks]. I am so glad curvy women have come back. All this size 0! A bit ridiculous. There's something creepy about fashion shows. The models look like they're going to be tortured. They do this strange pony walk; their heels are so high, they can hardly walk. Creepy!"

For now, Hall is focusing on her acting, which includes a recent stint as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate in Australia, where she met current squeeze Warwick Hemsley, an Australian real-estate tycoon. But she's mostly to be found at Downe House, her home by Richmond Park in London.

What is she looking forward to next? "Well," Hall says, pragmatically, "I am wondering when--if--I have to cut my hair. I think it looks terrible if you have really long hair and it's gone gray. So I am experimenting with wearing it up. Up, with pearls. I think that's quite a good look." She demonstrates.

But she's still wearing it long and carefree right now. "I don't have any regrets," she says. "I'm very happy."
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Jerry with her partner Warwick Hensley arriving at Mick's Chelsea house (dailymail.co.uk:(

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Jerry and Lizzy open the Harrods Winter Sale (dailymail.co.uk:(

 
The cover of Norman Parkinson's 1983 book, Lifework (ebay.com/souvenir_century:(
 
A newspaper ran a comparison of what people might look like with a change of hair colour... (dailymail.co.uk:(

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Vogue UK January 1976 by Norman Parkinson


Vogue UK July 1976 by Barry Lategan


vogue.co.uk
 
Vogue UK May 1975
Jamacia
Model: Jerry Hall
Photographer: Norman Parkinson




ciaovogue
 
Wow, thanks a lot, Blueorchid! I love seeing her in editorials, she's fantastic.
 
Jerry Hall , 1978 Jalouse France February 2011 ebook30
 
Jerry on holiday with her partner, Warwick Hemsley, in St Tropez (dailymail.co.uk);

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Jerry in Mugler, with Helmut Newton, shot by Alice Springs in Paris, 1996 (ebay.co.uk/rolls-royce-ltd:(
 
A short interview between Jerry and David Bailey, from UK Vogue in the 90s (typed by me:(

Bailey: Has the fun gone out of modelling?

Jerry
: It used to be that 20 girls spent all afternoon hanging out backstage in curlers, gossiping, chatting – you know, it was really a lot of fun. Now lots of photographers are allowed backstage and it's about doing PR. I mean, you're hired, you can't say no. You're expected to get there much earlier and then they've got all these TV interviews set up. It's not the casual fun it used to be.

B: What about all the bitchiness between the girls?

J
: There's not as much camaraderie. People are so worried about who's getting more attention backstage or who's got what clothes. At one show, Naomi Campbell complained to Thierry Mugler that I was wearing a diamond ring and that it shouldn't be allowed. I had to go back to the hotel an put it away. It was mad.

B
: Have you ever seen any physical fights backstage?

J
: I've seen some very good cat fights between rivals. Certain girls have fiery tempers and they have fits and storm out. They usually get fed up and their careers don't last long, but sometimes they're so extraordinarily beautiful that peple will tolerate it for quite a while. I remember one girl – she used to be really wild. She used to turn up at shows she wasn't booked for and have fights with girls and find out which girl's clothes fitted her, and then wear them and charge the client, even when they hadn't hired her. But that didn't last too long. Now there's a couple of girls who are kind of fiery, but not too many. I mean, they're a pretty professional bunch now.
 
Bryan Ferry speaking to UK Bazaar about that period (typed by me:(

On graduating, Ferry moved to London and taught pottery, before forming Roxy Music in 1970. It was not until 1975 that he met the cover star of Roxy Music’s fifth album, Seventies supermodel Jerry Hall.

Ferry sits up on the cough and his voice becomes tight when I ask about the image in which Hall, dressed as a blue-painted mermaid, claws her way out of the water. Had he met Hall before the day of the photoshoot?

“I had not met Jerry at this point,” he says. Then, sighing: “But I’d seen pictures of her by Norman Parkinson. There were these pictures of her with long hair - perfect for a mermaid. We went to Anglesey in Wales because we were looking for somewhere with incredible rocks and spray. But the day we went, it was the hottest day in history, so it looked like Greece, which was also good. There was this Greek-myth thing to it. And Antony painted her blue.”

As the story goes, Hall couldn’t get the paint off after the shoot and went back to Ferry’s house where they romantically removed the paint, starting up an affair. Is the story true? “Oh, no. Antony was taking the paint off,” he says. “He was scrubbing her down. But yeah, we did start… going out together then, for about a year.”

Is he still in contact with Hall? “Not really, although she is a friend of my friend Ivor’s [Ivor Braka, the London-based Francis Bacon art dealer]. “I… get on fine with her now. It’s funny how you can live in London and not see people for many years.”

I was always struck by the story I read about the night Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall got it together. Jagger and Ferry were friends at the time, and they were apparently playing a game of pool as Hall looked on. Ferry is said to be famously competitive - obsessive, even. He won the game but lost the girl.

When I mention the episode, Ferry shoots me a look. “I don’t play pool,” he retorts. “Billiards?” I suggest. He breaks into one of his deep chuckles: “The Jerry thing was pretty blown out of proportion, When you think about it - one year in the life.”
 

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