No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (19 page)

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TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SET A LEICA TIMER

AT CARNEGIE HALL STUDIO.

ignored this unwritten law, we would argue. Loud,
fuckyou
arguments. Mike had to be in charge. Mike had to be in control. Mike worked on convincing me that I was nothing without him, and, since I’d been trained to believe that I
was
nothing, I was an easy sell.

Still, I found it hard to bite my tongue. So we argued constantly. Bitterly. We argued about how I should look in a shot.

About what I was wearing. About the way I held my fork.

And we argued, incessantly, about other men. Mike was so fucking jealous it drove me nuts. Couldn’t he see I was devoted to him? He was even
retroactively
jealous. He was curious about men I’d slept with long before I met him. He wondered if I’d slept with any photographers—and whether they were any good. As
photographers,
not as lovers.

Men! Go figure.

Still, confused as I was about life with Mike, my career was going strong. I was so hot I was burning. All the big N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 137

jobs were beginning to roll in. Revlon. Max Factor. Clairol.

And all the name designers were after me. Halston. Bill Blass. Perry Ellis. Oscar de la Renta.

Mike shot me half a dozen times. He
insisted.
He was still the Genius of Light, as far as I was concerned, and I was curious about how he managed it. I started getting seriously interested in photography. I’d watch him set up and pepper him with questions about lenses, distortion, shadows. Eventually, he stopped answering my questions. I guess he was worried I might learn a little too much.

No matter: There were other masters. I was out there all day, day after day. Posing, vamping, learning. And these others appreciated my interest in the work. I hate to be immodest, but what the hell—this is my book. So I’ll spell it out: I wasn’t just about looking good. I had personality. I was a fucking hoot to work with. (I even got laughs out of old, stiff-upper-lip Normy.) I was interesting and
interested.
I asked questions, made suggestions, tried to make it fun for everyone. And that came through in the pictures.

And it changed things for everyone. Hell, before I came along, models were just supposed to stand around looking like, well,
models.
I made it okay to have personality. And of course I went overboard. I was Personality Plus. And the others followed. (Well, they
tried.
)

At around this time I was booking so many jobs that Monique was starting to worry. I’d be doing a Saks catalog in the morning, a shoot for French
Vogue
in the afternoon, and a test for a commercial in the evening. One frenetic day I actually walked out of a shoot and into the wrong limo, and only discovered my mistake as we were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge.

Monique begged me to slow down. “Who do you think

you are?” she asked in her thick French accent. “Super

mon
?”

138 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

“No,” I said. “Super
model.
”

And lo and behold! I’d coined a phrase!

Mike was so jealous. “Supermodel!? What is that shit?

What about Superphotographer?”

I told him he was lucky to have me. “Look at all the breaks I’ve given you. Me, Supermodel.”

“
You
gave
me
breaks! Ha! I fucking made you,” he said.

“Fuck you,” I said. “You’re nothing without me.”

“Right!”

We had huge fights about who was doing what for

whom, who was doing the using.

Mike had this line: “We’re all prostitutes. Every last one of us is a whore.” He’d started out as a law student and joked that he’d opted out because he couldn’t deal with all the snakes. By the time he discovered that there were even more snakes in the fashion biz, it was too late to back out.

“It’s mutual abuse. Everyone uses everyone, in work and in life. That’s what all relationships are about.”

“Is that what
our
relationship is about?” I asked.

“Of course. Why should we be any different?”

“So what happens when we’ve used each other up?” I

asked.

“We’ll find someone else to use,” he said.

It made me sad.

So I lost myself in work. And there wasn’t anyone I
didn’t
work for. I was in all the magazines. I did layouts for Hush Puppies, Cutex nails, Max Factor, Keiko bathing suits. I did billboards for Virginia Slims. Yes, I sold cigarettes to the young. This was the mid-1970s. What the fuck did we know? We didn’t even care. I was in love and in money, and people recognized me on the street. Ah, fame.

Who knew how many adolescent boys across the country were locked in their parents’ bathrooms at that very moment, their little cocks in their hands, trying to will the N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 139

picture of me to leap off the page and into their laps.

Like I said, I’m here to make it fun.

One day, a Venezuelan photographer told me: “You are the first dark superstar. You opened the doors for all these other girls.” He was right. I represented hope for all the girls who’d been told they were too ethnic. They looked at me and knew they could be as beautiful as—hell,
more
beautiful than—any white-bread blond. And about time, too! America was a melting pot. Why shouldn’t the fashion world be stoked over the same fires?

And he was right about opening doors. Suddenly there were other “mutts” sniffing around the fashion business, especially at the runway shows. Dalma, a Brazilian model at Zoli, who had the most amazing, long-legged, rhumbalike walk I’d ever seen. Apollonia, the Polish princess, who kicked her legs like a prima ballerina. And Pat Cleveland, so light-skinned she could have passed for white. Pat was one of the greatest runway models ever. When she moved, she painted the air around her with the clothes—a veritable riot of living color. She was Halston’s favorite.

“Baby, when I saw you in
Vogue,
I knew there was hope,” Dalma once told me. And Apollonia echoed the sentiment: “I love you, you big Polack. But watch your butt; I’m right behind you.”

They still had trouble getting into the magazines,

though. That felt too permanent, too risky. Who were these girls? What would readers think? And—most important—

would they sell product or magazines? And while it was true that
Vogue
had taken a chance with Beverly Johnson, it wasn’t as if the doors had opened; it wasn’t as if the offers were coming in fast and furious.

Of course the print girls were now clamoring for the runway shows. It hadn’t started out that way—runway shows were something you did in Milan or Paris, and they

140 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

were hard work and not much fun—but suddenly they

became chic. A runway show was like a stage play. You were on, and you were live. It was terrifying—but that’s what made it so exciting.

But enough about them, darling. Let’s get back to
moi
. . .

Monique kept getting calls from the French. They wanted me back. After all, they said they’d discovered me, and they felt entitled. (That fucking word again—
entitled.
Just like the rat bastard, may he rot in hell.) She put them off until the offers were too good to refuse. I flew to Paris and booked gigs with Yves Saint Laurent, Issey Miyake,

Yamamoto, and Kenzo. Then I hopped over to Milan for back-to-back meetings with Gianni Versace and Giorgio Armani—a trip in and of itself.

Ricardo Guay, my Italian booking agent, was waiting for me at the Milan airport. “Don’t be nervous,” he said, APOLLONIA AND JERRY ON THE WAY

TO LONG ISLAND FOR A SHOOT.

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N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 141

helping me into the limo. Then he turned to the driver and barked, “Versace!”

I
was
nervous, of course. I was crazy about Versace’s designs, and the initial meeting with a designer is always a little intense. You want to impress them; you want them to like you; you want them to want to drape your body in their genius clothes.

We crawled through downtown traffic as Ricardo made small talk about life and love and misadventures—mostly his—then, finally, there we were, pulling up in front of Versace’s atelier. I took a deep breath and stepped into the building. They were waiting for me. A good sign. A very hip young assistant ushered me into the spacious studio and the master himself turned toward me. He had the warmest smile; it matched the warmth of his eyes.

“Jan
eeeece,”
he said, taking my hand in both of his.

“Thank you so much for coming.”

For the next half-hour he had me in and out of leather jackets, fall sweaters, jodhpurs, more leather, and more sweaters. He handed me a leather riding crop and made me feel like the queen of the Horsey Set. He asked me to walk a little, so I did. But after a minute my giddiness ran away with me and I broke into a trot, whinnying like a thoroughbred. Versace laughed. He came over and hugged me. “I like you,” he said. “We will be seeing much of each other, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “I certainly hope so.”

He walked me out and gave me a little kiss good-bye and I hopped into the car and sped off to Armani’s. “How’d it go?” Ricardo asked.

“He loves me,” I said.

The atmosphere at Armani’s was a little different. Some woman who looked like she’d just stepped off the space shuttle directed me to a small, sterile waiting room. I sat 142 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

and waited. And waited. I waited so long I fell asleep.

When Little Miss Astronaut returned to fetch me, I noticed I’d been dozing for over an hour.

“This way,” she said. She led me down a stark corridor and through a large door into the inner sanctum. Giorgio was sitting on an elevated throne—an actual throne, I kid you not!—on the far side of the room. He watched me approach with a mystifying lack of interest. He was handsome; his hair was starting to go white, and he combed it straight back, proud like a lion. Something in his hand caught the light, and I found myself mesmerized by the largest pinky ring I’d ever seen.

“Hello, Gianni,” I said, parking myself directly in front of his throne. I had to tilt my head back to look at him—

he was way above us commoners—but I was feeling

pretty chipper. I’d done a number on Versace and was primed to impress Armani, too. I almost whinnied with excitement.

But something was wrong. Armani’s boredom had

turned to anger. His eyes flashed.
What had I done?
Little Miss Astronaut crept up behind me and whispered in my ear. “Giorgio.
Giorgio.”

Good Christ! I’d called him Gianni.

Giorgio raised his left hand—the one with the massive pinky ring—and directed my attention to door.
What!?
The motherfucker was dismissing me? Jesus!

“Are you putting me on?” I said. But he wouldn’t even meet my eyes. Instead, he just stared at his Little Astronaut, and when he snapped at her in Italian she jumped and literally took me by the arm, dragging me toward the exit. I couldn’t believe it. I took my arm back and turned back to Armani. That ring, that throne, that
attitude.
“Jesus, dude—

who the fuck do you think you are? The goddamn pope?”

Then I spun round and marched out the door.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 143

“How’d it go?” Ricardo asked when I got back into the limo next to him.

“Take me back to Versace’s,” I said, and I burst into tears.

Versace’s assistant was surprised to see me again. But he went off to get the boss. I was still crying, but I managed to tell Gianni what happened. He gave me a hug and dabbed away at my eyes with a cashmere scarf, laughing in spite of himself. “You called him the pope! That’s wonderful! She called Giorgio the pope!
Il Pappa!
” Everyone else laughed, too. Versace draped the cashmere scarf around my neck and kissed me on both cheeks, like the pope might have done. “I bless you, my child,” he said, laughing. And everyone laughed with him, me included. “Janeece, you and I are going to be great friends!”