*dust wrapper affixed to cover boards*

TWIGGY

Hart-Davis, MacGibbon

1975

8.75″ x 5.5″

[156] pp.

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Twiggy’s own account of her rise to ‘gawky,’ ‘knock-kneed, pigeon-toed’ youth-culture glory. Lesley (Hornby) Lawson’s early rise to fame and fortune as teen sensation, cultural icon, and era-defining model detailed in her best-selling autobiography. Told in her own words, alternating with occasional italicized contrasting viewpoints from Justin de Villeneuve, Twiggy’s sometime manager-boyfriend; though Twiggy makes a determined effort to be fair and kind, writing not long after their breakup, in later years she spoke more bluntly (“He was not my Svengali. He was my boyfriend who spent a lot of my money.”) Parodied as “Icky” in contemporary comic strips, derided and complimented in the same breath for her slight stature, knock-knees, and “boyish” looks, the mild-mannered and mostly un-scandalous Twiggy endured the projections and fantasies of a frantic multinational press corps and the adoration of a teen army thrilled to learn that extreme youth was no longer a burden but an aspirational quality: that teenagers were, for the first time, at the center of the fashion world and the center of the universe. As for the author herself, by the turn of the decade and the end of her teens, “Modeling had begun to bore me, and when you’re bored it shows”: Twiggy was off to star in a Ken Russell film; thence to Los Angeles and the warm company of Sonny and Cher; to brief stints in design and theatrical work, to new adventures.