Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women

by Gross, Michael

  DICKINSON: “Isn’t that typical, Mike trying to make me look like an old whore? Mike fantasizes that he was the man who gave me the ticket. He never gave me anything. I gave him all his French Vogue covers. They were all my ideas.”

  REINHARDT: “When Janice came back to New York, she came to see me again. I was shooting, but I kept her here. She showed me her book. I pointed my camera at her and fell in love. Our relationship started through the camera. She was incredible.”

  DICKINSON: “I was very selective. I knew that if [I got involved with a photographer], my name would get out. I went on trips with Patrick Demarchelier and Alex Chatelain. I worked with Stember and Pierre Houlès and Jean-Paul Goude, and you can ask them, I touched no one’s feet. It just didn’t go down. They’re all a bunch of pussies anyway.

  “I avoided Mike for a couple of bookings. He was after me when I was married, and I don’t cheat when I’m married. He used to call me from all parts of the world, and I just said, ‘Forget it,’ and put the phone down. Finally he had a French Vogue booking for me. I said, ‘Airplane tickets? What’s the money? OK, I’ll take it.’ So we did a couple French Vogue shoots, and then we went back to New York, and I guess the relationship began. He finally had somebody who understood photography.

  “I was working all over the place, France, Italy, England, Germany, Japan, Paris. I was still with Wilhelmina. I was rockin’ and movin’. I was a star. I was booking anywhere that the larger digits came in, and I controlled it, honey, they didn’t control me. I brought a lot to everything, and Mike took all my money. I was naïve enough to give it to him. He started smoking a lot of pot, and he started to get nuts because he wasn’t the star, I was the star. He wasn’t like that in the beginning. He changed.”

  REINHARDT: “I’d been a big grass smoker. I started in Paris, and it became the love of my life. I was smoking morning to night. Eventually it affected my work. I got repetitive. I’d smoke just to stay even. I went out with Lisa Taylor around that time, but I don’t remember when. See how much pot I smoked? But when I was with Minty, I stopped. I was vegetarian, doing transcendental meditation for three or four years. Janice was also clean at the beginning, but slowly it dilapidated [sic].”

  DICKINSON: “Let’s get it straight. I did my share of drugs. What’s the big deal? There were times when it was appropriate, like after work, sometimes during work. I mean, it was the disco era. It was the fast lane. Every playboy, every shah of Iran, every movie star, every rock’n’roll star, they all wanted me. But it was just really a lonely time for me.”

  REINHARDT: “Janice brought an unfortunate vibration to my life. Things started getting crazy. Nobody would mistake Janice for sane. We’re both crazy. In hindsight we were a bad combination, but we had good work energy. You fall in love with a model, and then you work with her. She would do anything, and I thought it was really great. When I see her now, I think, How could I? but I adored everything she did. Now I think it’s very bad to work with your girlfriend. You know each other too well. But we helped each other. We worked. And we fought like cats and dogs when we were working.

  “Nothing could be done without much ado. We were noisy. Other people thought we were obnoxious, but I thought we were great. One night in Paris we were having dinner with Alex Chatelain, and Janice got on the table and mooned somebody.

  “Janice had a boyfriend before me, a French model humper. She was mad at him because when she left Paris, he had an affair with Debbie [her sister]. We were in Paris for French Vogue, and we decided to get this guy. She called him and said, ‘I’m in Paris, and I’m dying for you.’ We were in town, but she said she was working at the airport, staying at the Sofitel, and leaving for Germany the next morning. Would he drive out there with four dozen oysters, some sea urchins, and champagne because that gets her really horny? She said, ‘Get a room and I’ll be there at six.’ She called him every half hour and said the shoot was still going on. Then at midnight she called one last time and said, ‘You’re an asshole. Fuck you!’”

  DICKINSON: “That’s not true. That’s not true. I’m gonna sue him for that. Did he name names? I’ll sue him for that. That’s libel against my sister. I don’t appreciate that. And it was Mike who was doing the mooning, OK? Mike was the mooner.”

  CASABLANCAS: “Mike was just on a power trip, smoking joints all the time, crazed with all kinds of things. He was a nightmare to deal with.”

  MONIQUE PILLARD: “Janice was brilliant. She made Mike, let’s face it.”

  REINHARDT: “I didn’t know that we defined our moment. I wish I had, but I was too involved with drugs. I looked down on the business. I didn’t realize what I had.”

  BRINKLEY: “Then came the model wars. I was with Elite and Ford simultaneously. Then John wanted me back with him in New York. I agreed with his philosophy, and I felt I had to be faithful, and it made sense to me, so I went into the Fords and I said, ‘Please don’t take this personally, but I have to help him out.’ I can’t say that they were pleased, but they were very gracious. Eileen and Jerry said something like ‘We think you’re making a big mistake. We can do a lot more for you in your career, and when you come to realize that, we’ll welcome you with open arms.’ To me, it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

  CASABLANCAS: “I will always remember that Christie asked me, ‘Am I the first model who will join Elite?’ There was Maarit, but I said, ‘Yes, you are,’ and she said, ‘Then I’m coming.’ She hated Eileen’s guts. Eileen represented everything that she didn’t like: big business, American hypocrisy. She was really the young wife of a French idealist. She was becoming a big star, but she was very, very, very sweet. Our relationship continued in that way as long as she was married.”

  DICKINSON: “I left Wilhelmina to go to Ford. I don’t remember when. I was working every day, every night, in a different studio, with a different photographer, in a different country. Willie wasn’t a good negotiator. Eileen was a better negotiator. I always threw [what had happened between us] in her face. I said, ‘Listen, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You didn’t want me anyway.’ Jerry always backed me up. But Eileen’s a money-maker. She’d yes me to death. I was hot.

  “Then John came to me on bended knee and asked me if I wanted to go with Elite. I said, ‘Yeah, how much? What’s in it for me? I’ll go with you if you bring Monique Pillard, my booker, and you give me the commission that you get from the client, plus you pay me my percent.’

  “What do you think model agents are? Pimps. Meat market. But John Casablancas made no money off me. And I was the only model in his agency that he hadn’t slept with. He was sleeping with all of them, twosomes, threesomes. But he had to take my orders, and he had to kiss my ass. I was making a pretty good living. And Mike had nothing to do with this, OK? I made all my own decisions.”

  CASABLANCAS: “Mike Reinhardt, who was my friend, could not tell Janice to change agencies, because he would have been held responsible for it. He explained to me. He couldn’t do anything because ninety-nine percent of the models he booked were with Ford. But Janice probably started to become a little bit obnoxious. Instead of being smart and saying, ‘She’s trying to be obnoxious,’ Ford got rid of her. This was like a present from God, you know. So I took Janice, but I said, ‘I don’t want to lose my health on you. Not only don’t I want to take a commission for you, I’m going to return to you the twenty percent the client gives me [on these conditions]. I don’t want to hear your name; I never want to see you in the agency; I never want to talk to you. You’re going to get the best financial deal in the world, but I don’t want to see your face or hear from you or from Mike.’ They were obnoxious. For a while this was the deal.”

  BRINKLEY: “I like business to be business, and I like things to be above-board, and I got wind that certain models were having to pay less commission than me, that there were deals being made. I’m sure he had a deal with Janice, and I didn’t like that. I’d heard all the stuff about young models, too, but I wasn’t going to be sw
ayed by gossip. But when I was told by a model that Janice had this deal, I didn’t like it.”

  DICKINSON: “Mike was antagonistic, a Nazi. He wouldn’t let me take trips, because he was a jealous photographer. He hated Patrick; he hated Alex; he hated Albert Watson; he hated Avedon. He was so jealous that I was working for Avedon and Penn it used to make him green. He used to call up the studios, and torture me and make me cry. I’d say, ‘Just shut the fuck up, man. I’m working for these masters, and you’re just this little thirty-five-millimeter jealous B list photographer.’ I’d hang up, and he’d make a scene. I’d switched agencies, and he’d get Casablancas in on it and make havoc for me. He always pitted me against my agents. Any opportunity I had to get out of his studio, I took it.”

  REINHARDT: “There was no cocaine in the relationship until the very end. We went on a binge for a few months. But that whole last year, 1979, was pretty drug-ridden. We had a breakup in May. She heard from a male model that I’d screwed his girlfriend. I don’t really remember. I think it was true. I was in Paris, Janice was here, and she flipped out and told me to fuck off and went off with some model, and I think she stopped taking coke. We reconciled. That Christmas Pierre Houlès, Christie, Janice, and I went to St. Moritz. I had to go to Paris afterwards, and when I got back to New York, she was gone. It broke my heart. I was devastated, but I deserved it.”

  BRINKLEY: “Most of the time that I was friends with Mike, he was going out with Janice. And then they had their meltdown. My marriage broke up around 1980. I got a divorce, and I moved to California. No sooner did I get there than I got a job in New York, and I came back and met Pierre Houlès. I went back to California, and we kept talking. Pierre was very knowledgeable about the business. He had wonderful ideas. Gilles Bensimon and Mike Reinhardt used to call him for advice. Pierre was the least well known, but amongst that group he was probably the most respected. And so I learned from him. Pierre would give me advice about agents, but I really went more on just a gut instinct.”

  DICKINSON: “I was young, you know, and I left Mike because he was sleeping with half the models in the head sheet. He was a pig. Girls that I was shooting with told me, and it really hurt my feelings. I’m a street kid, and I should have been tough; but I really thought I kinda dug this guy for a minute. And it’s just not very nice, it’s not very discreet when other models come up to you and sort of flaunt in your face: ‘Nyaa, I slept with your boyfriend.’ But this is high school shit. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  BRINKLEY: “Unbeknownst to me, Pierre had another girlfriend, Valerie. But I, being the type that passionately throws myself into things, gave up my apartment in California and went back to New York and Paris. Pierre and I had a very rough relationship. He was trying to appear like somebody who didn’t have another girlfriend. I moved in with him in Paris, and I think Valerie must have been in Carnegie Hall, because I still had my apartment in New York. Anyway, Pierre had come up with this idea for Elle, a special issue, just me, but it wasn’t going to be obvious that it was just me. I was to have wigs made, contact lenses, and we were going to start out at a heavier weight and then show a complete metamorphosis. We started it, and that’s when I found out about Valerie. I was heartbroken. So I went back to New York, devastated beyond belief. And Mike picked me up at the airport. He was really my best friend at the time. We had a lot of fun. He’s a good guy.”

  REINHARDT: “Pierre and I became estranged because of Christie. She and I were really good friends. She’d just broken up with Pierre, and she came to my house, distraught. Pierre called and said, ‘Kick her out immediately.’ I said, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ I was with Ely at the time, but she’d gone on a trip, and Christie and I were alone in the country, and I was pissed at Pierre for demanding I throw her out. It just happened, and it lasted three weeks. But it felt incestuous. It wasn’t right.”

  BRINKLEY: “It wasn’t like we ever admitted to being anything more than friends because that’s what we were. But we had a little affair. That was that. And we both realized we’d made a mistake. Valerie and I spent a weekend together talking about Pierre. Once you know the truth, things get resolved.”

  REINHARDT: “Christie and I are still friends, but Pierre didn’t speak to me for two years. I was in Paris for Bazaar, and I ran into Pierre and Patrick Demarchelier. Patrick said, ‘Don’t you think it’s enough?’ It was Saturday. We decided to have lunch on Monday. But Pierre was found dead on the street on Sunday. He was jogging, and he had an aneurysm.”

  CASABLANCAS: “This sweet little girl suddenly starts having marital problems. Then she gets caught in a love triangle with the two most obnoxious power players in the business. They’re best friends, and they’re competing with each other, and they’re trying to show her how strong they are by bullying the agent, us. She’s going through—I don’t know exactly what—success, which destroys so many models. My ex-wife hated Mike with such a passion because she saw what he did to me. I would come home, I would be in tears. Pierre and Mike were playing mind games with me, telling me that I was going to lose Christie if I didn’t do this. So I would do this, and they’d say that was not good enough. They were in agreement. It was the most bizarre relationship. They were competing for Christie, speaking bad about each other to her, but at the same time they were best friends and agreeing on what they had to do with me. It was a totally destructive thing. It was such a shitty period.”

  BRINKLEY: “John wanted to do posters with his top girls. So he had it set up. Mike Reinhardt was shooting it, and the picture came back, and I didn’t like it; but John put the poster out without my approval, and we took him to court. Mike and I sued John Casablancas, and quite honestly I was amazed that we ended up winning our lawsuit. I called up the Fords and said, ‘You were right, and I want to come back.’ But I had a little problem with the guy that worked at Ford’s, Joey Hunter. I had only met him four times in my entire career. But he said some things about me that were not nice, and I didn’t really want to go to that agency when he was there. So I went to Zoli for a few minutes.”

  CASABLANCAS: “I was in Hamburg on a business trip, and I stayed two and a half hours on the telephone over this, and I came to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. I broke down, and I said to Pierre, ‘You can take Christie and you can stick her up your ass.’ It was bizarre. She went from being a loyal, faithful wife to becoming the mistress of two guys that had other girlfriends. This is how crazy she got.

  “I get this letter from both of them, Christie and Valerie: that they’re both going to Zoli. It was extraordinary, the mind games that these guys played. I mean, I have to take my hat off to Mike and Pierre. Pierre was a madman. May he rest in peace. But when he died and Patrick and Mike were lamenting him, I said, ‘I’m not going to miss this guy one day.’ He hated everything; he was Mr. Critique. He used people, but at the same time he pretended he didn’t. End of story.

  “So this is the story of Christie. She went to Ford [in May 1980] and started going out with Olivier Chandon, and she went from being a model to being a celebrity. And everything following the scenario I had laid out for her. Christie will always be a mystery to me because in thirty years I have never seen such a change in personality. It was not an evolution; it was a complete flip-flop. She went from the sweetest, not-money-interested, not-VIP-hungry to this…. I don’t think it was only Mike and Pierre. She must have had something in her. Also, you know, drugs. I believe that Christie probably never did drugs except during that period, which could explain why she changed. I don’t know that for a fact. But the only way that I can explain certain things is that she probably did.”

  BRINKLEY: “I have never been strung out on drugs. I was aware that I was hanging around a lot of crazy people and a lot of crazy things were going on, but I really have to say that is not my style. I was always aware of not wanting to go to the bathroom. If you went to the bathroom, it looked suspicious.

  “I don’t believe I was ever manipulated. I’ve always made my
decisions from the gut. When Mike and Pierre started talking about things, it was far too political and beyond what I needed to know. It really goes back to never really feeling that this was the business I was going to stay in. Still, to this day I’ve always kept different things going on the side.

  “I think it all started happening after the third time I was in Sports Illustrated. Things just kept on happening, and I kept going along with it. I was getting a lot of fan mail asking for beauty advice, and so I came up with the idea of a newsletter answering the most commonly asked questions, and then I decided to do a book and went to Simon and Schuster and sold the idea. Sports Illustrated asked me to be their first calendar girl, and it was so wildly successful, that I took it the next step and thought, If they’re making all this money off my image, why not produce it myself? So I was the first model to produce my own calendar. And I did that for the next few years.”

  DICKINSON: “I didn’t think a lot in those days. If I had to do it all over again, I would change some things. I was working all those hours, and the agents don’t give a crap. They get these poor young girls wrapped around their fingers. I couldn’t handle the pace.”

  REINHARDT: “Cocaine destroyed Janice. Coke was never my drug although I was around it and I did it, and once I got arrested in Milan with a sizable amount for personal consumption in my pocket. I was shooting the collections for Harper’s Bazaar. It was the best thing that happened to me. I’d never understood why anyone wanted to put that shit in their nose; but I did it, and before you know it, it creeps up on you. I could have very easily fallen into it. It was just at that point when I got busted.”