When I speak to Twiggy, we\u2019re sitting near the back of a quiet Italian restaurant in Chelsea. It\u2019s a beautiful late-summer day, and people are enjoying lunch on the sunlit terrace.<\/p>\n
Twiggy\u2014who achieved global fame at just 16 years old, becoming arguably the world\u2019s first true supermodel\u2014is in the midst of a busy week: last night, she hosted a screening party at Sloane\u2019s in SoHo for a new documentary about her life, where guests like Fran Drescher, Ellen von Unwerth, Iris Law, and Donna Karan paid her tribute. In a few days, she\u2019ll be in Los Angeles, hosting another screening.<\/p>\n
Before this trip, Twiggy, now 77, hadn\u2019t visited New York since before the pandemic. The very first time she touched down here, however, she was 17 and immediately mobbed by fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI landed and they were teenage girls with banners up with my name,\u201d she remembers. \u201cI came in after the Beatles, so I became part of the British Invasion… I was one of the invaders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before becoming the biggest model in the world, Twiggy, born Lesley Hornby, was brought up in suburban London, where she began going to mod clubs at 13. \u201cI was a school girl, so I was only allowed out on a Saturday night. I had a strict curfew. I had to be home by 10:00,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019d go to a club in another suburb of London. The thing about mods is you wore the same things. It was a uniform.\u201d Twiggy and her friends would emulate the older girls, wearing the established \u201cgray pleated skirt that came just below your knee, Hush Puppies shoes, and a navy blue nylon raincoat,\u201d as she recalls.<\/p>\n
Then a Saturday girl at a hairdresser, she would save up her tips to shop at the storied London boutique Biba. \u201cIt was like our church, going to Biba,\u201d Twiggy says. \u201cEvery fourth week, we\u2019d run down to Biba during our lunch hour. You could get a dress for two pounds and it was brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s ironic that Twiggy spent her spare time working in a salon, because it was at the hands of a hairstylist that her life changed. In 1966, Leonard Lewis, also known as Leonard of Mayfair, gave Twiggy her iconic chop. \u201cI didn\u2019t want my hair cut,\u201d she confesses. \u201cI was sitting in this posh salon in Mayfair and I was too shy to say no. Thank God, because if I hadn\u2019t had my hair cut, none of this would have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I speak to Twiggy, we\u2019re sitting near the back of a quiet Italian restaurant in Chelsea. It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270,268301],"class_list":["post-632009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-twiggy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}