We Love Lauren
August 5th, 2009
CHARM AND SEX APPEAL ARE ONLY TWO OF THE REASONS WHY
Words Susan Locht Images ioulex Assistant Hector Adalid Styling Barbora Venckunaite
Make-up Roberto Morelli using Lauren Hutton Make-up Assistant Akira Flume Studio Splashlight NYC
Lauren Hutton struggled to move gracefully in front of the camera on her first big photo shoot in the 60s with photographer Richard Avedon. She claims she was nervous, so to put her at ease, Avedon suggested she pretend she was back in her girlhood home in the swamplands of Florida. “So I started to leap around, as if I was jumping through mud, and he loved it.” The shots Avedon took of her over the following decade are now iconic, particularly his nudes. Hutton herself has since literally leaped across the pages of countless fashion magazines, and her signature gap-toothed smile has been on dozens of Vogue covers. She’s acted in several feature films, including The Gambler, with James Caan, and American Gigolo, with Richard Gere, and is famous for having signed, in 1973, the very first exclusive modelling contract in the world, with Revlon. More recently, she has started her own skincare line, called Lauren Hutton Good Stuff, modelled for J.Crew, posed nude for Big magazine, and appeared in the look books for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s clothing label The Row (which Hutton happened to be wearing the day we met).
To say Hutton is an icon in the modelling world is undoubtedly an understatement. Today, on the New York set of The Block’s fashion shoot with Hutton, she is every bit the part: poised, energetic and absolutely stunning. Lucky for everyone on set, it’s not long before her sharp-tongued wit makes an appearance. Dressed by our stylist in what Hutton sees as a sexy, powerful, and somewhat provocative ensemble, she asks for a switch. She’s kind of kidding, of course, but is more than pleased to be passed a long, prickly branch from a nearby flower bouquet. Later, she recalls the moment: “It was this kind of leather outfit, almost dominatrix-like. And for some reason I suddenly pictured Dick Cheney on the floor in front of me, naked, tied up and in the fetal position.” She laughs. I laugh. “But he could have me killed,” she adds. “So I probably shouldn’t say that.”
The crack at Cheney sets the tone for the rest of our conversation. Gender roles and power struggles are obviously topics Hutton has thought and read a lot about, and she doesn’t hesitate to launch into them at any point. “Women are generally methodical, sober, careful. They’re the ones that, biologically, have had to be the long-term thinkers. After all,” Hutton explains, “women are the ones who have to keep a baby alive inside them for nine months, and for years after that. They’ve been the ones who had to ask, ‘Is there enough water? Is there enough food?’ Men, on the other hand, think more in the short term: ‘Do you have to fight it? Can you fuck it? Is it funny? Is it fun?’”
Hutton believes this short-term thinking makes men brave. “This is why humans crossed continents. Women on their own would not have done this, because women were responsible to keep everybody alive.” She goes on, “Men are fantastically brave, which is really why they’re the only game in town for me – for sex anyway.” She flashes me her signature grin and then adds, under her breath, “Assholes.” I laugh again. “Sorry,” she says, “but they are. They really are a different species. I mean, it’s like having a leopard in your bed.”
I had, of course, planned to discuss with Hutton her modelling and acting career over our late-morning tea, and to find out whom her creative icons have been over the years. We manage to get to those things, eventually, but not before covering the current state of the world (which she says is in “hot shit”), her motorcycle gang (she used to ride regularly with her friends Dennis Hopper, Jeremy Irons, and Laurence Fishburne), and dog-sledding (which she has, in fact, done, and loved). Also covered: Abraham Lincoln.
“Abe Lincoln was incredibly good-looking, you know,” Hutton insists. “If you really look at old pictures of him. He had a lot of character in his face. And did you know that he refused – refused – to go to his father’s funeral? I like that in a man. I really do.” Hutton explains: “I like someone being able to say, ‘I’m sorry, this is how I feel and that’s how it is,’ and not thinking ‘Oh gee, my career will be ruined,’ or ‘Oh gee, my wife will be this,’ or ‘Oh gee, my friends will be that.’ I kinda like people figuring out their own way.”
Hutton herself can claim a similar path, one that was her own. When she moved to New York City shortly after high school, she wanted to make money so she could travel. “I didn’t come to New York to be a model. I didn’t even really know what that was.” But when Hutton discovered the earning potential in modelling, she gave it a shot. Breaking into the business wasn’t easy, however. “First of all, I was short, and I had this big space in my teeth.” Hutton made her rounds at all five agencies that existed in New York at the time, and one by one, each agency turned her down. “But I would take what they said was the reason not to hire me, change it, and then go on to the next agency.” The last office she visited was that of Eileen Ford, who also refused her at first, but at the last second changed her mind.
“Back then, agencies told you you couldn’t leave on vacation for more than two weeks at a time or you’d be finished. They still tell girls that,” says Hutton. But in that first year, she ignored all instruction and went away for a month. The next year, it was two months. “I kept increasing my time away until I was half on, and half off. Basically, I went away every time I felt my smile dying.”
And it is her travel that has made her who she is. In fact, Hutton is perhaps more anthropologist or sociologist than model or actress. She has taken several trips to Africa, and spent months among tribes of people who live solely off the land. Hutton believes it is in studying and spending time with people connected to ancient ways of human existence that will ultimately save us from “the desperate trouble we’re in now. I basically haven’t slept in five years, and I don’t like it. It’s infuriating. Because, it’s basically simple: the world should be run by both men and women.” The role of governments, Hutton believes, is to keep people safe, and this requires long-term thinking. But, if governments are made up mostly of men, Hutton claims this can’t happen. “The boys have made such a mess of it. Such a ferocious mess.”
Hutton’s passionate opinions on men sometimes leave her in a vulnerable state. But for such a fierce iconoclast, a little softness is a beguiling accessory. Speaking about Georgia O’Keefe, who Hutton feels is “incredibly powerful,” she mentions that she once had to excuse herself early from a big opening at The Whitney because it was “just too sexy.” Hutton was attending the event on her own, and had started the Revlon campaign the year before. “So many people were looking at me, and I was feeling vulnerable. I was dressed up for the event, of course, and not wearing my usual sneakers, and I found myself standing in front of [O'Keefe's] Clam Shell. I started sort of waving back and forth in my heels. I thought to myself, ‘You’re outta here, Hutton. You’re gone.’ And I left. It might have been fine had it been all women there. But it was just so sexy with all of the men all over the place too. O’Keefe’s work is fantastically sensual, and she always went her own way. She did what she wanted, and I like that.”
Special thanks to Roberto Morelli, Ahmad Larnes, and Corie Beardsley at Splashlight studios, Katie Kinsella, Albright fashion library.
