The Beautiful and Damned
The Bohemian Chic Junky in Morocco....
PROFILE
Name: Talitha Getty (née Pol ) Born: October 18, 1940 Astrology: Libra
Nationality: Born in Java, Indonesia to Dutch artist parents. Spent 4 years in Japanese prison camp during the war, then relocated to London.
Education: Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts
Occupation: Actor, Model, Socialite
Residence: London, Rome, Marrakesh Husband: John Paul Getty Jr, married in Rome in 1966.
Children: Son born in 1968, Tara Gabriel Galaxy Gramophone Getty
Death: July 14, 1971 in Rome (at 30 years old, from heroine overdose)
Style Signature: She is the original initiator for the exotic glamour look Posh Hippie / Bohemian Chic / Jet Set Gipsy / Hippie de Luxe Travel inspired her style.
Ethnic influences - rich silk caftans, embroidery, fringes and tassel embellishments, turbans, colourful floral prints, harem pants, Moroccan gjellabas, babouches, accessorized with layers of jewels, Persian beads, wooden bangles.
Famous for/ How she is Remembered :
Muse to her friend Yves Saint Laurent
Diana Vreeland proclaimed her IT Girl
Her life changed when she married Paul Getty Jr, one of the richest man in the world, which propelled her to new heights of excessive pleasures and glamour.
Iconic photograph from Vogue shot in 1969 by Patrick L which is part of the collection of Britain's National Portrait Gallery
The Getty couple purchased their home Le Palais Da Zahir (Palais de la Zahia) , a nineteenth-century Moorish palace during their honeymoon in Marrakesh, Morocco.
It became known as The Pleasure Palace, a destination stop for the young and rich elite who indulge in debauchery while visiting Morocco.
Hosting lavishly decadent opium parties for famous friends. Guest included rockstars, the Beatles, Mick, Keith and Brian of the Rolling Stones, Jim Morrison and fashion icons Yves Saint Laurent + Betty Catroux, Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithful, Diane Von Furstenberg....
Keith Richard claimed the Getty's had access to the best opium
Tragic death by heroin overdose, within the same year the other 60's icons Brian Jones, 3 July 1969 (aged 27) Jimi Hendrix, September 18, 1970; (age 27) Janis Joplin, October 4, 1970 (aged 27) Jim Morrison, July 3, 1971 (aged 27) Talitha Getty July 14 ,1971 (aged 28) Edie Sedgwick November 16, 1971 (aged 28)
The drug dealer who supplied this heroine to the stars was Compte Jean de Breiteuil, a rebellious aristocrat, who has been linked to some of these deaths. He was a Euro Trash Playboy who had affairs with Marianne Faithful and Talitha Getty. He also died of a heroin overdose at 22 years old, in 1972. His only withstanding/ surviving client seems to be Keith Richards.
Her style legacy of the ultimate hippie de luxe which continues to inspire generations.
Rudolf Nureyev, the famous ballet dancer , whom she met at a party in 1965 was so charmed, said he "had never felt so erotically stirred by a woman" and wished to marry her.
At a dinner party hosted by Claus von Bulow, the seating plan was arranged for Rudolf to be next to Talitha. However, he failed to attend, and subsequently his seat was replaced for the man who would become her husband.
Her photograph in Vogue immortalized her, she is remembered forever young as the carefree and glamorous bohemian socialite whose excessive pleasures in exotic places lead to her doomed tragic ending.
OTHER FACTS
She is the step granddaughter of painter Augustus John
She was nominated ‘Girl of 1965’ by Tatler magazine.
She had a occasional roles as an actress, which includes a cameo in Barbarella (girl smoking a hookah pipe.)
THE QUEEN OF LUXURY GIPSY JET SET
VOGUE FEATURE
VOGUE 1970 ISSUE
Vogue featured Mr & Mrs Getty Jr at their magnificent home,Palais de la Zahia.
Shot in Morocco, January 1969
This photoshoot by Patrick Lichfield is ICONIC
Wonderful preview of the stunning interior of the mystical "Pleasure Palace"
An image from this photo series is now part of the collection of Britain's National Portrait Gallery in London
Caption on image reads the following
"This house is really a stage " Talitha Getty said of the nineteenth century ramble of rooms, courtyards, and terraces that she and her husband came upon on their honeymoon about 4 years gog and bought " things happen spontaneously" the spontaneity of this holiday house for the Gettys, who live most of the year in Rome and London, depends on their care as they gradually...."
THE ICONIC IMAGE
The couple on their home terrace in 1969 by photographer Patrick Lichfield for Vogue.
One of the most famous photos of the ‘60s.
This is the image from Britain's National Portrait Gallery in London
Beauty Shot with hat - close up of her usual set of rings I can identify what looks like looks like 3 gold snake ring
Very popular symbol often found in jewelry.
Several possible meanings which vary per culture.
One common interpretation is that it signifies eternal love, this association started in Victorian era.
Extract from the Vogue article originally published in 1970
Diana Vreeland who stated Talitha Getty was the "style icon of the century", wrote
"...Stage setting for the way the Gettys live - a welcoming, fatastical, joyous life, at once sensible and sybaritic. With a small runner-boy to bargain and carry, Mrs. Getty prowls the marketplace bringing back delights for the house and the table. Best, she brings back entertainers - dancers, acrobats, storytellers, geomancers and magicians. A day that began with a picnic, complete with a huge onion tart, on a great flat rock near a waterfall in the Atlas Mountains may end with a dinner for a houseful of young Moroccan and European friends by the light of candles, among roses wound with mint. While Salome is playing in the background, snake charmers charm and tea boys dance, balancing on their feet trays freighted with mint tea and burning candles."
Multi rings with the magnificent bold cuff is perfect balance to her flowy caftan
What draws me to this image is the rings blending with the swirls of the fence.
BEST STYLE MOMENTS
LUXE BOHEMIAN When travels influences style
Print blouse and matching head scarf ...complimented by her usual mix of jewels
Another great print with cool leather boot - typical 70s
Summer Look inspo - little white dress ( linen ideal) with silk floral pattern kimono
Details to notice - chunky cuff and pendant charm necklace and his cool belt
More prints!!! More layered necklaces and multi bangles!!!
Love a man who can pull of suede pants
Shirling lined Kimono at a black tie event? Only she could rock this, that big shinny ring definitely elevates the look! ( notice man in the bow tie behind?!)
Long Brocade Coats and Floppy hat
Glowing in Glamour
Absolutely Fabulous - this is my fav, Talitha in a not so basic LBD halter style with major delcotage in a shinny leather, belted and marabou feather skirt and hanging hoop earrings to add to the drama of this evening look! My wild guess is that its a YSL - to verify!!
THE RELATIONSHIP
The Pleasure Seekers
The couple who gets high together, stays together?
They had met at a dinner party hosted by Claus Von Bulow in the summer of 1965.
John Paul Getty Jr., heir to one of America’s great oil fortunes
They married in December 1966 in Rome.
Talitha was the second wife of John Paul Getty II
They were part of the beautiful people, young and wealthy and in constant pursuit of pleasures
I love how she adapted the prime and proper/ conservative preppy with her carefree flair...Opera length pearls and pretty lace trimmed collar, the details of the look
The bride wore a hooded minidress in white velvet, trimmed with white mink
Married in Rome in 1966
TRAGIC DEATH
HEROINE ADDICTION
Indulgence of heroin creates an addict.
Behind the glamour was the dark reality of substance abuse which would result in tragedy.
By the late 60s the couple's bad habit became worst.
Paul was given an ultimatum, get sober or to lose his position with family business. He resigned.
They had their first son born in 1968. Their relationship starts to deteriorate in the 70s, they both had affairs ( her fling with Jean De Breteuil) .
For a while they are separated, she went to London, he stayed in Rome.
Sadly, she's another of the 60's icons gone too soon, by heroine overdose.
Talitha ended up returning to Rome with hopes to make her marriage work.
Unfortunately, she was found dead on July 14 1971.
The exact circumstances of death are unknown.
Initially her death verdict announced death from barbiturates overdose.
It was discovered 6 months after that the actual cause of death was from heroin.
Most likely from the source of Compte Jean de Breteuil, who is responsible for selling the lethal amount of heroin that killed Jim Morrison a few days before.
New York Times obituary July 14, 1971
In the late 1960s, the term ‘beautiful people’ came to be applied to a wealthy, indolent crowd of perpetual party-goers, most often found in exotic locations, who enjoyed a robust pursuit of alcohol, drugs and sexual liaisons. They differed from the ‘jet set’ in that they gravitated more toward counter-culture trends and fashions.
ROLLING STONES & GETTYS
Photo by Michael Cooper
Brian Jones, Anita Pallenberg, Nicki Brown, John Paul Getty II, and Talitha Getty in Ireland in 1967.
Images sourced from Morrison Hotel Gallery
Keith Richards mentions in his book Life published in 2010, on page 247,
"There were Paul and Talitha Getty, who had the best and finest opium."
MUSE TO YVES SAINT LAURENT
A Moroccan Passion Chapter 4
During the swinging sixties, Marrakech went from being a sleepy town to one of the most festive places in the world. It did not have many bars, so people met up in the most beautiful homes—specifically at the residence of Paul and Talitha Getty, one of the first couples to move there. They invited many friends and eventually met Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, who had established their own circle composed of the Gettys, Fernando Sanchez, Loulou de La Falaise, Andy Warhol, and Mick Jagger.
Extract from Musee YSL Paris - stories Le Maroc
Meeting Paul and Talitha Getty in 1967 The wealthy American heir John Paul Getty Jr. and his wife Talitha were part of Marrakech’s expat community. The embodiment of bohemianism and luxury, she seemed to Yves Saint Laurent like a modern-day heroine straight out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.
"[Talitha] arrived like a gust of wind, bringing a tornado with her when she married John Paul Getty Jr. She brought something new to that family and that whole world. She was a very beautiful woman who had never even thought about being dressed by a haute couture house, despite having the means to do so; she dressed a bit like a hippie. She was very touching, and she was very pretty. Yes, she was all of that. But, above all, she was a completely free character, and that, that was very important."
Pierre Bergé, L’Officiel, 2016.
Extract from Extract from Musee YSL Paris - Meeting Paul and Talitha Getty
"I knew the youthfulness of the sixties : Talitha and Paul Getty lying on a starlit terrace in Marrakesh, beautiful and damned, and a whole generation assembled as if for eternity where the curtain of the past seemed to be lift before an extraordinary future"
Yves Saint Laurent
Reference to book by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Beautiful and the Damned. *link to book section
“Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly… and when I got it, it turned to dust in my hand.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
"Once I grew sensitive to light and colors, I especially noticed the light on colors … , on every street corner in Marrakech, you encounter astonishingly vivid groups of men and women, which stand out in a blend of pink, blue, green, and purple caftans."
Yves Saint Laurent
“In Morocco, I realized that the range of colors I use was that of the zelliges, zouacs, djellabas and caftans. The boldness seen since then in my work, I owe to this country, to its forceful harmonies, to its audacious combinations, to the fervor of its creativity. This culture became mine, but I wasn’t satisfied with absorbing it; I took, transformed and adapted it.” Yves Saint Laurent, 1983
Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent in their first Moroccan home, Dar el-Hanch, Arabic fo the “Snake’s House.”
Pierre Bergé published in 2014 the book Yves Saint Laurent: A Moroccan Passion. It was originally published in French in conjunction with "YSL et le Maroc" 2010 exhibition at the YSL Museum in Marrakesh
“We quickly became very familiar with this garden, and went there every day. It was open to the public yet almost empty. We were seduced by this oasis where colours used by Matisse were mixed with those of nature … And when we heard that the garden was to be sold and replaced by a hotel, we did everything we could to stop that project from happening. This is how we eventually became owners of the garden and of the villa. And we have brought life back to the garden through the years.”
Extract from Yves Saint Laurent: A Moroccan Passion by Pierre Bergé
August 1980 issue of Vogue, by the legendary photographer Horst P Horst.
MOROCCO TRAVEL
the 'Ochre City'
YSL Museum in Morocco
Dedicated to work of the designer + temporary exhibitions + library + terrace cafe
Jardin Majorelle
The garden was created by French artist Jacques Majorelle, son of the famous Art Nouveau furniture designer Louis Majorelle.
Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge acquired the Jardin Marjorelle in 1980.
Museum of Berber Art at Jardin Majorelle
a stunning collection of everyday and ceremonial items, jewellery and tribal costumes.
“The second room houses an exceptional exhibition of Berber jewelry, featuring beautiful silver smithing combining precious material like amber and coral among others.”
Hotel La Mamounia
The legendary hotel in Marrakech that, since its opening in 1923, has hosted everyone from YSL , Charlie Chaplin to Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Alfred Hitchcock (who filmed The Man Who Knew Too Much there).
The Ben Youssef Madrasa
Dar Si Said Museum
https://www.thenationalnews.com/lifestyle/luxury/yves-saint-laurent-s-marrakech-connections-1.628534
BOOKS
TANGIER DIARIES By John Hopkins Published in 1997
Tangier in the 1960s and '70s was a fabled place. This edge city, the 'Interzone', became muse and escapist's dream for artists, writers, millionaires and socialites, who wrote, painted, partied and experienced life with an intensity and freedom that they never could back home. Into this louche and cosmopolitan world came John Hopkins, a young writer who became a part of the bohemian Tangier crowd with its core of Beats that included William Burroughs, Paul and Jane Bowles and Brion Gysin, as well as Tennessee Williams, Jean Genet, Yves Saint Laurent, Barbara Hutton and Malcolm Forbes. Those intoxicating decades - Tangier's 'Golden Years' - are long gone. Grand old houses that once sparkled with life are shuttered and dark and most of the eccentrics who once lived and loved in the city have died. But here, in the pages of John Hopkins' cult classic, all the decadence and flamboyance of those days is brought to life once more.
"One memorable New Year's Eve I went with friends to Marrakesh to meet the Beatles: 'Don't know what they lace the majoun with down here. Last night Paul and Talitha Getty threw a New Year's Eve party at their palace in the medina. Ira, Joe and I went to meet the Beatles. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were there, flat on their backs. They couldn't get off the floor let alone talk. I've never seen so many people out of control.'"
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THE BEAUTIFUL FALL: FASHION, GENIUS, GLORIOUS EXCESS IN 1970S PARIS By Alicia Drake Published 2006
In the 1970s, Paris fashion exploded like a champagne bottle left out in the sun. Amid sequins and longing, celebrities and aspirants flocked to the heart of chic, and Paris became a hothouse of revelry, intrigue, and searing ambition. At the center of it all were fashion's most beloved luminaries - Yves Saint Laurent, the reclusive enfant terrible, and Karl Lagerfeld, the flamboyant freelancer with a talent for reinvention - and they divided Paris into two fabulous halves. Their enduring rivalry is chronicled in this dazzling exposé of an era: of social ambitions, shared obsessions, and the mesmerizing quest for beauty.
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THE HOUSE OF GETTY
By: Russell Miller
Published in 1985
At the centre stands the figure of John Paul Getty, an eccentric oil billionaire believed to have been the richest man in the world. Married and divorced five times, he had five sons, and yet was cheated of his dearest ambition-to found an oil dynasty. His youngest son died at age twelve after years of illness. Of the remaining four sons, three proved to be hopeless businessmen and, one by one, dropped out of Getty Oil. Only one had the talent to take the helm of the family business, and was groomed for the part. He soon committed suicide.
With his cherished hopes of a family dynasty crushed, John Paul built a magnificent museum as a monument to his success. But money tainted even his philanthropy; the Getty Museum has become feared for its wealth and ability to pillage the art market. In the manoeuvring that followed John Paul's death, Getty Oil was sold; acquired by Texaco for $9.9 billion, the biggest corporate takeover in history.
Extracts from the book mentioning Talitha Getty
By 1965 their [John Paul Getty II and his first wife, Gail] marriage was over: Gail was living with a B-movie actor called Lang Jeffries and Paul was pursuing an exotic Dutch actress by the name of Talitha Pol. As part of a divorce settlement, Paul agreed to pay fifteen percent of his net income into a trust fund set up for the four children. Gail married Jeffries in a brief ceremony at Rome's city hall in August 1966 and shortly afterwards moved back to Los Angeles with her children and her new husband.
Paul remained in Rome, besotted with the dazzling Talitha. Born in Bali, the step-granddaughter of the painter Augustus John, Talitha was twenty-five years old, tall and slim with long russet hair and fulgent brown eyes. In the summer of 1965 she had gone to a party in London hoping to meet Rudolf Nureyev, but he did not turn up and so she got talking instead to a dar-haired, rather intense young American by the name of Paul Getty. In December 1966 they were married in the same red-damask room at Rome's city hall where Gail had been married four months earlier. Talitha wore a hooded minidress in white velvet, trimmed with white mink; Paul sported a flame-coloured 'psychedelic' tie.
A few months later, Paul left his secretary to get on with running Getty Oil Italiana and moved with Talitha to a nineteenth-century Moorish palace within the ancient walled city of Marrakech, where they experimented with drugs and held open house for luminaries of the 'swinging sixties' - painters, freaks, writers and rock groups like the Rolling Stones. That they had joined the beautiful people was validated by the ultimate authority of Vogue magazine, for whom they were photographed in fetching kaftans by Patrick Lichfield, a cousin of the Queen of England.
The house, Vogue breathlessly reported, was a stage setting for the way the Gettys live - a welcoming, fatastical, joyous life, at once sensible and sybaritic. With a small runner-boy to bargain and carry, Mrs. Getty prowls the marketplace bringing back delights for the house and the table. Best, she brings back entertainers - dancers, acrobats, storytellers, geomancers and magicians. A day that began with a picnic, complete with a huge onion tart, on a great flat rock near a waterfall in the Atlas Mountains may end with a dinner for a houseful of young Moroccan and European friends by the light of candles, among roses wound with mint. While Salome is playing in the background, snake charmers charm and tea boys dance, balancing on their feet trays freighted with mint tea and burning candles.
Paul and Talitha soon tired of the recherche delights of Marrakech and floated off on the hippie trail around the East, drifting aimlessly through Indonesia, Bali and Thailand, searching for the meaning of life and accumulating an extensive ethnic wardrobe. Early in 1968 Talitha discovered she was pregnant and they returned to Rome, to a huge rooftop apartment in the fashionable Piazza d'Araceoli, next door to Carlo Ponti. They once again attracted the attention of the paparazzi and were even photographed out shopping, perhaps because the son of the world's richest man now wore beads, a beard and sunglasses and 'carried a handbag', a phenomenon unusual, even outrageous, for males at that time.
In July Talitha gave birth to a boy, whom they named Tara Gabriel Galaxy Gramaphone Getty, guaranteeing derision in newspaper gossip columns everywhere. Under the headline 'RICH KID WITH A SILLY NAME' in the San Francisco Chronicle, Talitha explained that each of the names had a precise significance - Gramaphone being chosen, for example, because the boy would 'undoubtedly be fond of music'.
The arrival of Tara did not in any way inhibit their vibrant social life and they plunged back into a round of extravagant revelry with Rome's wild and dangerous sleek set. Talitha's penchant for see-through dresses, then the latest fashion, ensured that their entrance at every party was marked by exploding flashbulbs, even if Paul's handbag failed to excite attention.
For a while they were happy. They divided their time between their apartment in Rome and the 'Posta Vecchia', a fifty-five room villa on the coast at Palo, twenty miles north of Rome, which Paul's father had bought a few years earlier from Prince Ladislao Odescalchi.
But by the end of the sixties, that swinging decade had claimed them among its victims. Both Paul and Talitha were heroin addicts.
Getty [Paul's father] made it clear that he disapproved of Paul's lifestyle and he was deeply disturbed by rumours that his son was involved with drugs. On the last occasion they met, when Getty made a brief visit to Rome, Paul indicated he had no intention of returning to the business. 'It doesn't take anything to be a businessman,' he snarled at his father, 'anyone can do it.' No jibe could have been more calculated to wound Getty: he went ashen and refused to speak to anyone for an hour afterwards.
After this incident, Getty did his best to pretend that Paul did not exist. He never wanted to see him or talk to him and would not allow Paul's name to be mentioned in his presence. Paul did not care, he had enough troubles of his own. What had started as an idyll with Talitha had become a bleary struggle to exist from one fix to the next. Talitha was injecting heroin, Paul was sniffing it, but both had the dreaded monkey on their backs and needed to score ever-increasing supplies from underworld drug dealers. Both were also drinking heavily.
Outwardly they were still a golden couple 'making the scene', living life to the full and at the wildest lefel Rome could offer. But Talitha suffered terrifying bouts of depression, there were disagreements between them, ever more serious, and they began spending more and more time apart. In February 1971 Talitha left Rome with two-year-old Tara to spend some time in London, away from Paul. They telephoned each other often, fumbling to discover if they wanted to be together or apart. Paul was as much in love with her as ever but could see little future for them as a couple and in May he instructed lawyers to begin divorce proceedings.
On Saturday 10 July Talitha flew back to Rome alone to discuss a reconciliation. She met Paul at their apartment in the Piazza d'Aracoeli, where they had once been so happy together. Paul did not know whether he wanted a reconciliation and they began to argue, bolstering their turbulent responses with drink and drugs. At three o' clock on Sunday morning, Talitha, confused and tired, fell into bed. Paul blundered about the kitchen making himself something to eat and followed her to bed half an hour later.
He woke at midday and was surprised to find Talitha still sound asleep. It was only when he tried to rouse her that he realised something was wrong. Talitha was not sleeping: she was in a coma. Paul telephoned his doctor, Professor Franzo Silvestri, who arrived at the apartment within a few minutes. After a brief examination, the doctor said Talitha was in a critical condition and needed to be got into hospital immediately; he thought she might have had a heart attack.
An ambulance whining thorugh the narrow streets of Rome rushed Talitha to the Villa del Rosario Clinic, where heart massage was attempted to try and revive her. She died that evening without regaining consciousness.
Paul was devestated and choked with guilt. He had no doubt he was to blame and blieved, fervently believed, he could have saved her had he not himself been comatose in a drug-induced stupor.
Doctor at the clinic ascribed the cause of death on the death certificate as 'intoxication by mixture of barbiturates and alcohol'. But Paul soon learned, from Doctor Bruno Farina, Rome's deputy public prosecutor, that a postmortem was to be carried out and he knew what would be revealed - that Talitha had died from a heroin overdose. He also knew that he could expect little sympathy from the police oncy they discovered, as they surely would, that he, too, was a junkie.
In a panic, Paul fled. Two days after being questioned by the deputy public prosecutor, he drove out to Rome's Fiumicino airport and caught the first flight to London. For many months he lived in terror that the Italian authorities would issue a warrant for his extradition: he heard that the Italian police were 'gunning' for him and wanted to charge him with manslaughter.
Paul went into a rapid decline after Talitha's death. Obsessed by remorse and guilt, he wanted only Talitha; she became the love, the lost love, of his life. He bought a gloomy double-fronted house overlooking the Thames at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and shut himself away with Talitha's ghost, seeing no one but a few 'friends' who kept him supplied with drugs. He had the garden planted with Talitha's favourite flowers and added a clause to his will asking to be buried alongside her grave in Holland.
In March 1972 an inquest in Rome revealed that Talitha had died from a massive overdose of heroin and the judge conducting the inquiry into her death issued a statement appealing for Paul to return. 'In the interests of everyone concerned,' the judge said, 'it would be a valuable contribution if he would come here voluntarily and give what help he can.'
Paul stayed resolutely in his house at Cheyne Walk, with the shutters closed - abandoning Tara Gabriel Galaxy Gramaphone to the care of his maternal grandparents in the south of France.
Sourced from Archieve.org
MARRAKESH FLAIR by Marisa Berenson Published by Assouline 2020
It has been said that Marrakech awakens all of the senses. Whether it is seeing the intricate zellige tilework; smelling the various spices sold at the souks; hearing the call to prayer emanate from the nearby mosques; touching the supple leather used to make a pair of babouches (leather sandals); tasting a flavorful tagine, Marrakech never fails to excite. Located just west of the Atlas Mountains, the city has been inhabited by Berber farmers for centuries. It has been dubbed the “Ochre City” because of the proliferation of red sandstone buildings and the red city walls, which now enclose the Medina, home to Jemaa el-Fnaa, one of the busiest squares in Africa.
Marrakech overflows with culture and has been inspiring visitors for decades. From Yves Saint Laurent to Talitha Getty, Winston Churchill to Mick Jagger, Marrakech has attracted great icons inspired by its eternal spirit as well as its sweet, beautiful life. Yves Saint Laurent’s intimate relationship to this city lead to the opening of a museum dedicated to his legendary work. The annual Marrakech International Film Festival draws a prominent crowd. Museums abound, exhibiting Moroccan arts, photography, carpets, and the Andalusian design aesthetic that permeates the city’s architecture. La Mamounia hotel, opened in 1923, offers a storied history, which includes hosting guests such as Winston Churchill. Vanessa Branson’s El Fenn is a collection of traditional riads that form a stunning boutique hotel. There are countless ways to be immersed in the culture of Marrakech, but perhaps the best place to start is with a simple glass of mint tea.
Book available at Assouline
Book Review
Tatler
From Yves Saint Laurent to Talitha Getty, Winston Churchill to Mick Jagger, the 'Ochre City' has been capturing the imagination of the international jet-set for decades, and now, this dazzling new tome from Assouline is set to capture its magic on the page once and for all
Images from the book
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Gypset Style
Book by Julia Chaplin
Published by Assouline 2009
Gypsetters are artists, designers, and bon vivants who live and work around the globe. Wanderlust meets the height of sophistication as New York Times journalist Julia Chaplin explores the unconventional lives of these high-low cultural nomads and the bohemian enclaves they inhabit. In addition to Jade Jagger, Damien Hirst, and Alice Temperly, the Gypsetters' counterculture forebears, including the Victorian explorers, the Lost Generation, the Beatniks, and the hippies, are all profiled.
Another Mag Review
https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/2792/the-5-rules-of-gypset-style
JEWLERY SELECTION
TEST
-need credits / theme photos
ARTICLES
The Telegraph - July 2008
by Justine Picardie
She was muse to Yves Saint Laurent, queen of 1960s Marrakech and the woman Rudolf Nureyev wanted to marry. But adoration and immense wealth weren't enough for Talitha Getty, fashion icon and addict. By Justine Picardie
As such, it's represented an oddly persistent afterlife for Talitha Getty, who died of a heroin overdose in Rome on 14 July 1971 (or possibly 11 July, for the precise details of her death, like much of her life, remain shrouded in mystery). She was just 30, and left behind her a three-year-old son, the whimsically named Tara Gabriel Gramophone Galaxy Getty, and a reclusive husband who grieved in seclusion for a decade afterwards.
The couple travelled to Marrakech for their honeymoon, where they bought the beautiful 19th-century Le Palais du Zahir, thereafter known as the Pleasure Palace. It was here that Lichfield's photograph (now held by the National Portrait Gallery) was taken - John Paul hooded and brooding in a djellaba, Talitha the epitome of rich bohemianism in her ornate silk kaftan over white harem pants - and it was here, too, that Yves Saint Laurent was swept into their orbit.
'When I knew Talitha Getty,' he later recalled, 'my vision completely changed.' He was entranced by her mixture of apparent innocence - the barefoot flower child in ethnic dress - and wild decadence (the drugs, the jewels, the Rolling Stones and Beatles as house guests). 'I knew the youthfulness of the Sixties,' said Saint Laurent, in 1984, almost two decades afterwards, 'Talitha and Paul Getty lying on a starlit terrace in Marrakech, beautiful and damned, and a whole generation assembled as if for eternity where the curtain of the past seemed to lift before an extraordinary future…'
Alicia Drake, describing their initial encounters when Saint Laurent first went on holiday to Marrakech in 1967. 'He took in every visual detail. He was struck by the wildness and high sexuality of it all, at that time so alien to Paris couture. It wasn't just the clothes that affected Yves; the Gettys lived with a degree of indulgence and hedonism that he had never witnessed before.'
It was under Talitha's influence that he and his partner, Pierre Bergé, bought a house within the walled medina of Marrakech; and her legacy is still apparent in the current summer exhibition at the YSL Fondation in Paris, 'Une Passion Marocaine', a collection of gorgeously decorative kaftans and north African jewellery of the kind that Talitha wore at her parties in the Pleasure Palace.
But instead, she remains forever young, almond-eyed and enticing, on that Marrakech rooftop, with the world at her feet and the Atlas mountains behind her, as if the 1960s hadn't ended, and the sky had never gone cold.
** link to article free trial? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/justine-picardie/
**
TV show Trust about the Gettys
THE TELEGRAPH UK - 2008 Hippie hippie fakes
BY JUSTINE PICARDIE | 08 JUNE 2008
These days it really helps to be rich to dress like a hippie, says closet thinker Justine Picardie
Four decades after the Summer of Love and Woodstock, the hippie look has moved from counter-culture rebellion to mainstream establishment fashion, proving surprisingly durable for something that once seemed as ethereal as a butterfly wing. Purists might scoff at this season's incarnation - commonly referred to as 'hippie deluxe' - with its expensive designer sheen, as exemplified by Roberto Cavalli's long lace and Liberty-print dresses, worn with trailing scarves, lashings of kohl and a six-figure diamond friendship bracelet.
As the daughter of a free-spirited 1960s hippie mother, who floated around London with barely a penny to her name in authentic Indian-cotton kaftans and flip-flops that cost next to nothing, I suppose I should start harrumphing now about lost ideals (and where have all the flowers gone?).
But actually I can recognise the appeal of hippie deluxe, even if the label is mildly annoying; and anyway, all those iconic photographs of Talitha Getty, Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull are proof that there was always a luxurious alternative to my mother's homespun hippie wardrobe. Not for them the eschewal of riches or consumerism: they were swathed in costly chiffons, satins and feathers by Ossie Clark or Yves Saint Laurent; and in an era that celebrated the Flower Child they introduced a darker streak, described by Marianne Faithfull as an 'evil glamour', with their mutual passions for heroin and the Rolling Stones.
The look was distilled in Patrick Lichfield's famous photograph of Talitha Getty on a Marrakech rooftop in 1969; her husband, John Paul Getty, is brooding and hooded in the background, while she is poised in white harem trousers and a silken couture kaftan.
Yves Saint Laurent - Talitha's favourite designer, along with Valentino - described the young couple as 'lying on a starlit terrace in Marrakech, beautiful and damned, and a whole generation assembled as if for eternity where the curtain of the past seemed to lift before an extraordinary future…' Talitha died of a heroin overdose in July 1971, but acolytes might argue that the curtain never really fell on her.
Certainly, a curiously material version of her ghost seems everywhere this summer, haunting the imaginations of designers; and it is as if her wardrobe has been ransacked, ready for expeditions to Glastonbury or Ibiza. You could spend a fortune on all of this, of course, only for it to be trampled in the festival mud or lost in a suitcase at Terminal 5. And if that happens? Well, as a true hippie might have said, 40 years ago, 'It's karma, man.'
REFINERY 29
How Talitha Pol, The Dutch It-Girl Who Married Paul Getty Jr., Became An Enduring Icon Of The 1960s By : ELENA NICOLAOU
Extracts
By the time of their divorce, Getty Jr. was already enmeshed with Talitha Pol, a 25-year-old actress and dancer he had met at a dinner party in the summer of 1965. Until that point, Pol's life was marked by turmoil, tragedy, and a dash of glamor. Pol was born in 1940 in what is now Java, Indonesia, to a Dutch father and English mother. During WWII, she and her mother were interned in a Japanese camp. They returned to England when the war was over, each bearing scars of their imprisonment. Her parents separated, and her mother died not soon after. Pol was raised by her father and his wife, the daughter of the famous painter Augustus John, in London.
When she got older, Pol became an actress and fluttered around the London party circuit. Her life would reach its most notorious phase in 1965, when she met the man who would become her husband. Pol had originally accepted the invitation to dinner at Claus von Bülow’s London house believing she would be sitting next to Rudolph Nureyev, a famous ballet dancer who was smitten with Pol — he told a friend that he “had never felt so erotically stirred by a woman” and was intent on marrying her. But Nureyev was a no show. Instead, von Bülow sat Pol next to Paul Getty Jr. The connection was immediate. According to All the Money in the World by John Pearson, the following day, Getty Jr. showed up to Pol's London flat and brought her to meet his father.
The couple moved to Rome and quickly started living the wild, glamorous life that would eventually render them iconic. They married in December 1966. But their pace of living — and drug use — had repercussions. Getty gave his son an ultimatum: Either get sober or lose your position as General Manager of Getty Oil Italiana. Getty Jr. chose to resign.
Soon, the house — which they nicknamed the pleasure palace — became an essential stop for elite travelers on their tour of the East. The couple’s parties were legendary, hosting the likes of Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and Yves St. Laurent. Vogue devoted an entire profile to Pol and her lavish parties, which often featured magicians, acrobats, and servers who would dance as they wove around the crowds with tea trays. “It was always en grande fete, always a perpetual party with fascinating and amusing people and something wonderful occurring,” a visitor recalled.
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DONT DIE WONDERING TALITHA GETTY | HEIRESS OF STYLE OCTOBER 7, 2020 Extracts
But in between the glitz of celebrity and ensconced away from the flash of the mainstream press cameras was a glittering new class of bohemians that influenced those influencing the mainstream. A secretive gypset of wealthy young bohemian travellers that set the tone for the trends of the time – the so called “jet set”. Scions of industry magnates, muses, artists and professional bon vivants – they took the world by the horns, determined to make it their own by globetrotting and socialising their way around it.
Their names read like a menu of cultural influences we still feel today Sedgwick, Herrera, Rubirosa, Whitney, Bibba, Guggenheim, Kennedy, Monroe, Getty, Onassis, Casiraghi, Thynne, Rothschild and their fearless exploits were captured by wanderlust documentarists Slim Aarons, Bill Bernstein, Norman Parkinson, Patrick Lichtfield and David Bailey, among others.
shake her affair with French aristocrat and “drug dealer to the stars” Count Jean De Breteuil
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THE NEW YORKER November 4, 1996 Issue Prophets of Seduction
By Francine du Plessix Gray October 28, 1996
For just think of the liberating styles that preceded Dior’s counter-revolution: the abolition of corsets which was championed by the suffragette movement and was pioneered, as far back as 1906, by Poiret; the athletic androgyny expressed in the flapper look of the nineteen-twenties; the novel image of the working woman incarnated in the fluid, casual clothes of the visionary Chanel. All these tokens of emancipation had been cancelled overnight by a so-called New Look, which in fact turned out to be the dumbest misnomer in the history of finery. It turned the clock back to the restrictive folderol of La Belle Époque, and evoked alarmingly regressive models of femaleness: women as passive sex objects, displayers of their men’s wealth and status—women who needed to be helped into cabs, who required huge trunks in order to travel with their finery, and maids to help them dress. Dior’s first collections included daytime outfits that weighed eight pounds and evening dresses that weighed sixty and were said by their wearers to be too heavy even to dance in. How could we have ever submitted to such nonsense? the feminist in me was now raging.
That triumphant aspect of Dior’s 1947 spectacle was obvious to anyone who knew the difference between de Gaulle and John Wayne.
for some decades, one of the earmarks of the Saint Laurent legend was the phalanx of high-living, spacey groupies who constantly surrounded him (hippies de luxe, the French called them). Of this desolate group, who particularly enjoyed doing drugs together in Marrakesh, where Saint Laurent and Bergé have a posh vacation retreat, Talitha Getty, the wife of John Paul Getty, Jr., died of a heroin overdose; the fabulously stylish Loulou de La Falaise was ordered by her doctor to stop drinking to prevent further damage to her health; and the gaunt, androgynous Betty Catroux, who, along with Loulou de La Falaise, is an acknowledged muse for Saint Laurent’s creations, has been quoted as admitting to drug problems.
Yet in France his ill health only added to his allure, which thrived on a national image of the couturier as a “creative artist” and on the Romantic legend of the delicate, doomed aesthete (Rimbaud, Verlaine) who must suffer for the sake of his art.
Legion of Honor, and his retrospective at the Metropolitan—“Yves Saint Laurent: 25 Years of Design”—was the first ever given at that museum to a living designer.
Three weeks ago, in reports on this autumn’s Paris fashions, the New York Times—after censuring Rei Kawakubo’s unwearable eccentricities, and Gianfranco Ferré’s tepid farewell collection for Maison Dior—had this to say: “While . . . audiences look to the runway for what is new, at Saint Laurent they can look quietly at what will last.
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Blog - Dandy in Aspic
Their relationship started deteriorating , too. In 1971 Paul had an affair, and Talitha left their Rome apartament and went to London. In London she started her own affair - with a shady French aristocrat Count Jean De Breteuil. De Breteuil stayed at Keith Richards' house in Chayne Walk and was a self-proclaimed 'drug dealer to rock stars'. After some time, Talitha decided to go back to Rome to fix her marriage (around the same time, Count De Breteuil went to Paris with Marianne Faithful, where he sold a lethal dose of heroin to Jim Morrison). On 14 July 1971, Talitha died in Rome of heroin overdose. The exact circumstances of her death are unknown. She was taken to a private clinic, where initial verdict was 'death from a barbiturate overdose'. It wasn't until six months later, when it was reaveled that the drug in question was heroin (Count De Breteuil's stuff, most likely).
Guilt stricken Paul Getty, thinking in paranoid state, that he might be arrested in connection with Talitha's death, fled Rome and came to London. Several dark years followed.
Several dark years followed. He never completely recovered from Talitha's death and he succumbed deeper into his heroin addiction. In 1973, another tragedy happened. Paul's son from his first marriage - 17 year-old John Paul Getty III was kidnapped in Calabria. Kidnappers demanded $17 million ransom. Because Paul's trust fund was not enough to cover such sum, he turned to help to his father, J.P. Getty Sr., who refused saying: I have fourteen other grandchildren. If I pay a penny now, I will have fourteen kidnapped grandchildren. But when kidnappers cut off young Paul's ear, and posted it to an Italian newspaper, He agreed to lend Paul II money with a 4% interest. Paul III was eventually freed (just like his father, he was a drug addict. In 1981 he took an overdose, which resulted in stroke, which left him paralysed from a neck down and nearly blind at the age of 25. He died in 2008).
Paul Getty II started overcoming his addiction in early 1980's, thanks to a lenghty and expensive (£500 per day for approximately 500 days) period in London Clinic. After inheriting his father's money in 1976, he started making a slow transformation from a drug addicted jet-setter to a prolific philantropist. He shared his $3 billion fortune with poor and needy. His donations included £50 million to National Gallery, £20 million to British Film Institute and £5 million to St. Paul's Cathedral. He purchase Canova's Three Graces for National Galleries of Scotland for £1 million. During miners' strike in 1984 (even though he was a lifelong Conservative supporter) he was helping financially miners' families. He set up Paul Getty Jr. Charitable Trust which he claimed supported 'unpopular' causes - rehabilitation for young offenders, assistance to victims of domestic abuse, preserving dilapidated buildings, etc. Countless little businesses around the country benefited from Getty's generosity. For his charitable work, he had been rewarded KBE (Knight Commander of the British Empire) in 1987, although he could not use a title 'Sir' because of his American citizenship - which he eventually renounced when he was granted British citizenship in 1997.
Paul Getty Jr. died in 2003, aged 70 - a respactable, slightly eccentric English gentleman,a philantropist, friend of many Conservative politicians - a very far journey from young American Playboy of 1960's, who, along with his' beautiful and damned' wife, led a life of pleasures. And tragedies.
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SOURCES
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Bill Willis
Bill Willis, 1967, when he first arrived in Marrakech with Talitha and J. Paul Getty. He restored the Palais du Zahir for the Gettys then began working with Yves St. Laurent and Pierre Berge on their house Dar El Hanche.
the dealer
BLOGS * not worth presenting FORMIDABLE MAG
TV show - Portrayed by Hilary Swank, Gail Getty in Trust
** PICK JEWELS I THINK SHE WOULD LIKE TO WEAR
the intoxicating scent of orange blossoms mixes with smoke and cumin; electric colors like lapis lazuli and sunflower-yellow pop against the city's dusk-pink-painted walls;
THE CAFTAN
Dior is credited with showing the first modern caftan, as a coat over a dress, on a haute couture runway in the 1950s.
In the early ’60s, “Vogue” editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland discovered caftans on a trip to Morocco, and began to wear them around the office and champion them in her writing, calling them “the most becoming fashion ever invented.”
By 1967, Vreeland’s Vogue was overflowing with caftans. She insisted that caftans were “fashionable for the beautiful people.
Yves Saint Laurent and his life partner, Pierre Bergé, who launched the Saint Laurent fashion house with him in 1961, visited Marrakesh, Morocco, in 1968, and became enamored with the colors, textiles, and sensuality of Moroccan culture. Saint Laurent fashioned caftans for his fabulous pals like actress and socialite Talitha Getty, her playboy husband, John Paul Getty, Jr., and supermodel Marisa Berenson. In January 1969, the Gettys were photographed by Patrick Lichfield wearing caftans on a Marrakech rooftop, which became an iconic image that defined what’s known as hippie or boho chic.
Over the years, Elizabeth Taylor amassed a huge collection of designer caftans by Emanuel and Thea Porter, and she even wore a tie-dyed Gina Frantini caftan for her second wedding to Richard Burton in 1975. In the 1970s, Halston designed tie-dyed and silk chiffon caftans explicitly for nights on New York’s club scene. Halston was the person who clothed the jet set of that time, and especially the Dancing Queens who loved their disco. It was the height of fashion to have something that you could dance in that really showed off your motion by moving with you.
THEA PORTER
Thea was making clothes for rock stars: Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull and the Beatles loved her creations, and Pink Floyd wore her jackets on the cover of their debut album.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-exclusive-tour-of-a-french-iconoclasts-moroccan-getaway-1505210280
Designers have mentioned her as muse - link to some collections (JPG, Oscar, Celine, Isabelle Marant, Chloe, Gucci Frida Days, Ossie Clark )
r spring/summer 2019, it was the search for neo-bohemian utopia: from Natacha Ramsay-Levi’s foray into what she termed Chloé’s “hippie modernism” to Paco Rabanne‘s eclectic exploration of exotic souvenirs; JW Anderson’s patch-worked venture into the field to Oscar de la Renta’s Moroccan silhouettes. Accordingly, and on the anniversary of her birth, there is no better icon to celebrate than Talitha Getty: the woman who, throughout her tragically short life, exemplified wildly glamorous bohemia.
“couture of the souks” as coined by Phoebe Philo
Despite her untimely death, her style legacy wont be forgotten
Picasso's more ornate designs for Tiffany, too, often reflect her own fascination with the city. "I love the landscape, the colors, and the art of Marrakech," she says. "My Zellige jewelry collection was definitely inspired by the geometric shapes and intricate patterns that can be found throughout the medina."
On an everyday basis, it has hosted the Aga Khan and Rita Hayworth, who honeymooned at Villa Taylor; Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Elizabeth Taylor, Irene Pappas, Rudolph Nureyev, Mick Jagger, Anthony Quinn, Henry Kissinger, Truman Capote, William Burroughs, Paul Bowles, Paul Reynaud, the queen of Denmark, Prince Michael of Kent and his wife, Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Beverly Sills, and Alexis, Baron de Rédé, just to name some names.
TALITHA GETTY – THERE WAS SUCH A CHARM TO HER BOHEMIAN WOMANLINESS, CORRUPTED WITH THE SPIRIT OF A ROCK QUEEN.
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