How to be glamorous (like moi!) by Joan Collins
10th October 2009
Never will I forget walking into the cafeteria on the Fox studio lot in Los Angeles for lunch one day wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt and - believe it or not! - not a scrap of make-up.
It was 1955 and I had just been cast in my first Hollywood movie, The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing. The part had been intended for Marilyn Monroe, but she walked out of Fox and the role fell to me.
Aged 21, I - a young British actress - was to play the most beautiful girl in New York. As I walked through the cafe towards Richard Fleischer, the director of the movie, he saw me and he threw his hands in the air.
'Oh my God,' he said. 'I can't look at you. You look so hideous. You should always appear in public with full make-up, a nice dress and white gloves, otherwise you'll never get anywhere in this business.'
I must admit I was shocked. But when I was chatting to my girlfriends later, they told me that I
did look a bit scruffy. Then Hedda Hopper, the leading gossip columnist of the day, wrote that 'Joan Collins looks like she combs her hair with an egg-beater', and I knew I had to do something.
That's when I decided that perhaps I'd better start smartening up my act. The thing is, you see, that no one is born glamorous, but
anyone can acquire glamour.
But what is glamour? The clothes are important, of course. But, in the end, it isn't down to low-cut dresses and sequins and feather boas. It's to do with aura, with grooming, with self-possession - and with a touch of mystique.
I was lucky enough to have been a pretty baby, with lots of dark hair and big eyes, so I suppose I did look quite cute. When I was six months old, my mother put a sign on my pram which read: 'Please do not kiss me.'
I was 'discovered' while studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and was soon in demand as a photographic model. When I was 17, the Photographers' Association voted me the Most Beautiful Girl In Britain, something that amazed my father when he found out. Not terribly supportive!
In 1950, I was signed to the British film studio Rank and I played a succession of juvenile delinquents and hookers, none of them in the least glamorous.
The thing is, you see, that no one is born glamorous, but anyone can acquire glamour
But I would glam up for premieres, borrowing clothes from the studio and wearing their white mink stole. But, at home, I was more of a blue jeans and-tartan-shirt kind of a girl. My mother and my aunts, by contrast, were incredibly glamorous.
They wouldn't have dreamed of stepping outside the house without wearing make-up and their hair done. They would have considered it bad manners to do otherwise. But then the Forties and Fifties were intensely glamorous decades, probably as a reaction to the straitened times in which people lived.
Women looked up to movie stars such as Hedy Lamarr, Betty Grable and Joan Crawford, after whom I was named. The clothes they wore on screen were often more important than the films themselves.
I'd say from the Twenties to the Sixties, ordinary women would try the best they could to look like their favourite star. Then it all changed in the grungy Seventies, before glamour made a big comeback in the Eighties, helped in no small part by a certain television series called Dynasty.
By then I had a reputation as a woman who always made the best of herself, and who was determinedly glamorous. And that was something I learned in the school of hard knocks that was Hollywood in the Fifties.
After The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing, my next movie was The Opposite Sex with June Allyson and Leslie Nielsen. It was fantastically opulent, with fabulous clothes designed by Helen Rose. From that moment on - with the words of director Richard Fleischer still ringing in my ears - I began to get really interested in what I wore. And I've never looked back.
I invented a look with which I've stuck more or less ever since: big hair, smoky eyes and bright lipstick
I also had Marilyn Monroe's makeup man, Alan 'Whitey' Snyder, to show me how to apply my make-up properly. Just six years later, he was the person who was to make her up in her coffin.
I do my make-up now in ten minutes, faster and better, I admit, than anyone else. At the time I made The Stud and then The b*tch in the late Seventies, I invented a look with which I've stuck more or less ever since: big hair, smoky eyes and bright lipstick. My one infallible cosmetic tip? Always keep your eyebrow pencils as sharp as a pin.
So, when along came Dynasty and Alexis Carrington in the Eighties, her look was already in place - it was me! Initially, they tried to put me in little tweed jackets with pussycat bows, which just didn't work for the character.
Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin were coming out with the big shoulder look, and that felt right for Alexis. It also caught the eye of Princess Diana, whose shoulder pads were sometimes bigger than mine.
My dear friend Nolan Miller had dressed everyone from Lana Turner to Betty Grable and Joan Crawford. Alexis was a woman of the world, someone familiar with couture shows. So, as the designer on Dynasty, Nolan and I would go to the department stores Saks and Neiman Marcus every Saturday and pull things off the rails that we liked.
I usually needed ten outfits a week for the show. In fact, there's an 11-minute clip on YouTube of me walking in and out of rooms, always in a different outfit. I wore more clothes than I can count. Alexis defined a decade that has become renowned for its unapologetic glamour. I suppose it defined me, too.
Joan Crawford once said: 'I feel I owe it to my public always to look good. When you're young, you can get away with the careless, ungroomed look. But not to bother with grooming over the age of 40 is a mistake.'
When you look at programmes such as Jeremy Kyle today, you wonder what the world is coming to. Those women could get a little glamour in their lives, although it would be a bit of a challenge for the ones who are very overweight.
You might think it's easy for me to say all this as a Hollywood star, but believe me every woman has it in them to look fantastic. Not so long ago, I toured the UK with my one-woman show. Everywhere I went, women would come up to me and tell me they loved the way I dressed. But how could they look good on a budget, they asked me.
That gave me an idea. So I got together with a production company and we placed an advert in the national press asking for three generations of women from the same family to get in touch if they'd like to have a bit of glamour put into their lives.
We were swamped with applications, eventually choosing the Littlefair family from Plymouth: grandmother Eileen, mum Mary and teenage daughter Holli. I genuinely liked these women and wanted to help them.
I discovered long ago that, if you look good, you feel good. Don't believe any woman who says she doesn't like a compliment. I love it if I'm walking through a store or I'm in a restaurant and someone says I look great. It lifts your spirits.
Not long ago, I had a heavy cold and cough - most unlike me - and I looked like the wrath of God. I'd catch sight of myself in the mirror, slopping around bare-faced in a dressing gown, my hair a mess - and it made me feel even worse. After three days at home, I had to go out for several appointments. And, as I put on my face and stepped into a glamorous outfit, I could feel myself getting better.
So the message is clear, girls. Glamour really is good for you.
Source: Life Magazine - Sept. 12, 1955 - my scan
