Review
'It's funny, naughty, sexy, revelatory.' --
Chrissy Iley THE SUNDAY TIMES 'sit back and be
transported into a world where everyone is
irresistible.' -- Helena Frith Powell THE
SUNDAY TIMES 'a surprisingly candid and
thoughtful autobiography by one of the world's
first supermodels.' -- Henry Sutton THE MIRROR
'Helvin's rise to fame and affair with
photographer David Bailey, makes for
fascinating reading and reminds that models
have been misbehaving well before Naomi and
Kate.' AXM 'Helvin's candour about her
personal life is remarkable. Her description
of Warren Beatty's face when she knocked him
back in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel
is worth the cover price alone.' -- Hadley
Freeman VOGUE
Review
'It's funny, naughty, sexy, revelatory.' (Chrissy
Iley THE SUNDAY TIMES )
'sit back and be transported into a world where everyone is irresistible.' (Helena Frith Powell THE SUNDAY TIMES )
'a surprisingly candid and thoughtful autobiography by one of the world's first supermodels.' (Henry Sutton THE MIRROR )
'Helvin's rise to fame and affair with photographer David Bailey, makes for fascinating reading and reminds that models have been misbehaving well before Naomi and Kate.' (AXM )
'Helvin's candour about her personal life is remarkable. Her description of Warren Beatty's face when she knocked him back in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel is worth the cover price alone.' (Hadley Freeman VOGUE )
In these instant celebrity days it's refreshing and rare to have a realistic take on Fame at the top combined with an openness and discretion about conversations behind closed celebrity doors.
The book recounts the sum total of experiences and stories that made Marie Helvin who she was and who she has become.. And what a life it has been. This is not a reality TV style personal journey, nor second hand ` ghosted ` and massaged memoir. It's a surreal story, yet it is real. And reality for Marie, as Robin Williams once said `what a concept'. Her life is awesome.
Once married to David Bailey, Marie met many of the great names of the age including Salman Rushdie, Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol,. Added to that she inspired David Bowie's Aladdin Sane and introduced the Princess of Wales to Dodi al Fayed.
`What we think is less than what we know; what we know is less than what we love, what we love so much less than what there is. And to that precise extent we are so much less than what we are' reads the prologue.
It's a quote from RD Laing, the brilliant, 70's Scottish Pschoanalyst . The essence of his work was that anguish and confusion could herald an inner voyage resulting in the emergence of a more authentic way of being-in-the-world.
What and why was a model muse quoting Laing? I bought the book.
More about the book, or more accurately odyssey - how was it for me?
I n a word, like the person, extraordinary. There is an elegant structure. It starts with Bailey and the morning before her marriage ended. Brooding on Jerry Halls words `this time you've got to do something' about his affair with his with Catherine, she does and her life is never the same. How could she be the person so confident on the catwalk and in her head but so lacking in courage she could barely shout at her husband?
That's the question Marie poses. In responding to that question she recounts scenes from a life that defies belief. She does it in an evocative, generous way. That's the type of individual she is.
As Marie notes -it goes back to childhood - all things do. With tolerant parents, the real stars of the first chapter and a magical, idyllic Hawaiin upbringing along with her siblings Marie alway had her feet on the ground. How many of us were able to walk barefoot to school? It's not quite, Cider with Rosie, more Pakalola (natural grown weed) with Russell.
Back to her upbringing, Marie always did her own thing and never played by the rules. What is impressive is that she had read the complete works of Dickens by the time she was 16. Incredible.
Japanorama the second chapter shows the making of Marie as a model.. Talent spotted in a hotel coffee house Imai -San plants the seed with an offer for a three year modelling contract. At sixteen with a Sampsonite suitcase, no shampoo, the book How to be a Success, unsuitable clothes but proper shoes she turns up in Tokyo. Culturally at sea, lesser people would have drowned.
Marie implores the designer Yamamoto to take her to London. With the proviso that no one must know she is American, and she shaves her eyebrows .in 1971 she is off to London.
London is where the high life takes off. It's where the book gets into top gear. It's where Marie comes into her own. There we experience first hand the early 70's catwalk scene as Marie and the Japanese team became a sensation. For Marie life as a supermodel blossomed. She started to live in airports.
We are then treated to an insider account of Marie's life in the 70's. The stories are hilarious. It was as she says a period of many discoveries and initiations. We also learn about life with Bailey, and how it was engineered, by Grace Coddington, the then fashion editor of Vogue. My did he have outrageous nerve. But as well as nerve he had experience. And a wicked sense of humour.
But this is no idealised `perfuming the pig' autobiography and Helvin is ruthlessly honest in describing the death of her younger sister Suzon which marks a turning point in her life.
Here the book deals in the real life , the death of her sister was a jolt that woke her up and contributed to her `interminable ` divorce.
Thanks in part to Mark Shand, Marie's life takes on a new trajectory. He proposed, but she turned him down. She then go's out with Peter Gabriel (helps her stop smoking) and Eric Clapton. ( a surreal opera playing ride with John McInroe). We also hear how Marie turned down Warren (Attentive) Beatty, and succumbed to Jack Nicholson after many years, only to find it a let-down.
Has Marie Helvin conquered her own myths through the writing of this book?
Fame brings privilege but obligations, Marie writes. And how well she fulfils her obligations.
Marie has satwa and it shows.
'sit back and be transported into a world where everyone is irresistible.' (Helena Frith Powell THE SUNDAY TIMES )
'a surprisingly candid and thoughtful autobiography by one of the world's first supermodels.' (Henry Sutton THE MIRROR )
'Helvin's rise to fame and affair with photographer David Bailey, makes for fascinating reading and reminds that models have been misbehaving well before Naomi and Kate.' (AXM )
'Helvin's candour about her personal life is remarkable. Her description of Warren Beatty's face when she knocked him back in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel is worth the cover price alone.' (Hadley Freeman VOGUE )
The
most authentic and amusing autobiography of
celebrity times,
| By | Rhcross "Cross" (UK) |
This review is
from: The Autobiography (Hardcover)
This has to be the most authentic
autobiographies of our modern celebrity times.
It is award winning material as a book or as a
film. Born in Japan, raised in Hawaii, Marie
Helvin has been there, seen it, and done it .
Her career as a fashion icon spans four
decades from the heady look of the seventies
(and she was the seventies), acquiescent
eighties, identity torn nineties, through to
the independent noughties.In these instant celebrity days it's refreshing and rare to have a realistic take on Fame at the top combined with an openness and discretion about conversations behind closed celebrity doors.
The book recounts the sum total of experiences and stories that made Marie Helvin who she was and who she has become.. And what a life it has been. This is not a reality TV style personal journey, nor second hand ` ghosted ` and massaged memoir. It's a surreal story, yet it is real. And reality for Marie, as Robin Williams once said `what a concept'. Her life is awesome.
Once married to David Bailey, Marie met many of the great names of the age including Salman Rushdie, Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol,. Added to that she inspired David Bowie's Aladdin Sane and introduced the Princess of Wales to Dodi al Fayed.
`What we think is less than what we know; what we know is less than what we love, what we love so much less than what there is. And to that precise extent we are so much less than what we are' reads the prologue.
It's a quote from RD Laing, the brilliant, 70's Scottish Pschoanalyst . The essence of his work was that anguish and confusion could herald an inner voyage resulting in the emergence of a more authentic way of being-in-the-world.
What and why was a model muse quoting Laing? I bought the book.
More about the book, or more accurately odyssey - how was it for me?
I n a word, like the person, extraordinary. There is an elegant structure. It starts with Bailey and the morning before her marriage ended. Brooding on Jerry Halls words `this time you've got to do something' about his affair with his with Catherine, she does and her life is never the same. How could she be the person so confident on the catwalk and in her head but so lacking in courage she could barely shout at her husband?
That's the question Marie poses. In responding to that question she recounts scenes from a life that defies belief. She does it in an evocative, generous way. That's the type of individual she is.
As Marie notes -it goes back to childhood - all things do. With tolerant parents, the real stars of the first chapter and a magical, idyllic Hawaiin upbringing along with her siblings Marie alway had her feet on the ground. How many of us were able to walk barefoot to school? It's not quite, Cider with Rosie, more Pakalola (natural grown weed) with Russell.
Back to her upbringing, Marie always did her own thing and never played by the rules. What is impressive is that she had read the complete works of Dickens by the time she was 16. Incredible.
Japanorama the second chapter shows the making of Marie as a model.. Talent spotted in a hotel coffee house Imai -San plants the seed with an offer for a three year modelling contract. At sixteen with a Sampsonite suitcase, no shampoo, the book How to be a Success, unsuitable clothes but proper shoes she turns up in Tokyo. Culturally at sea, lesser people would have drowned.
Marie implores the designer Yamamoto to take her to London. With the proviso that no one must know she is American, and she shaves her eyebrows .in 1971 she is off to London.
London is where the high life takes off. It's where the book gets into top gear. It's where Marie comes into her own. There we experience first hand the early 70's catwalk scene as Marie and the Japanese team became a sensation. For Marie life as a supermodel blossomed. She started to live in airports.
We are then treated to an insider account of Marie's life in the 70's. The stories are hilarious. It was as she says a period of many discoveries and initiations. We also learn about life with Bailey, and how it was engineered, by Grace Coddington, the then fashion editor of Vogue. My did he have outrageous nerve. But as well as nerve he had experience. And a wicked sense of humour.
But this is no idealised `perfuming the pig' autobiography and Helvin is ruthlessly honest in describing the death of her younger sister Suzon which marks a turning point in her life.
Here the book deals in the real life , the death of her sister was a jolt that woke her up and contributed to her `interminable ` divorce.
Thanks in part to Mark Shand, Marie's life takes on a new trajectory. He proposed, but she turned him down. She then go's out with Peter Gabriel (helps her stop smoking) and Eric Clapton. ( a surreal opera playing ride with John McInroe). We also hear how Marie turned down Warren (Attentive) Beatty, and succumbed to Jack Nicholson after many years, only to find it a let-down.
Has Marie Helvin conquered her own myths through the writing of this book?
Fame brings privilege but obligations, Marie writes. And how well she fulfils her obligations.
Marie has satwa and it shows.
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