As David Jones turns 185, one of its original ambassadors, supermodel Lauren Hutton, reflects on beauty, million-dollar contracts and knowing your worth.
It’s not every day that you meet a name like Lauren Hutton. Because that’s what she is: a name. A big name. Massive. Someone whose moniker arrives days, weeks and, in the case of JONES, months before she’s stepped into the room. Months of fingers crossed (full disclosure: the JONES once even created a ‘Lauren Hutton vision board’, hoping a print-out of her golden curls and gap-toothed grin would align the stars to bring her to our shores).
Months of schedules checked, flights confirmed, fittings booked. And then, in she walks. She’s wearing a vintage red baseball cap – a signature, according to the dozens of articles I read before we meet – and box-fresh white canvas sneakers, a navy sweater tied over her shoulders.
She is just so cool. So cool, in fact, that she and Mort, her assistant of six years, think it’s amusing that some of her interviews for media and magazines get censored. (They confirm that she never says anything inappropriate.) So cool that she knows exactly what she wants to wear (button-down shirts, floor-length skirts, a pop of colour here and there) and what she doesn’t (earrings – after all, her ears aren’t pierced – and a blazer so oversized the shoulder pads nearly reach her elbows). And so cool that the minute she’s in front of the camera, she’s on flashing those teeth, working her collar, swaying in time to a soundtrack of bangers by Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra and the Spice Girls. Maybe it’s the three espressos she’s had, but by the time we sit down for a chat, Hutton is candidly doling out sage advice, tales of her travels and juicy anecdotes.
CAMILLA sunglasses
Timelines are a blur – but you quickly realise that doesn’t matter. What does matter? She’s nearly 80 years old and has been modelling since the 1960s. You do the math. Or forget the math: when she mentions people like Dick (Richard) Avedon, Veruschka, Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, just sit back and listen. Keeping up with dates just interferes with getting your head around much more interesting things, like the fact that she partied with Andy Warhol and was a regular at Studio 54.
Born in South Carolina and raised in Florida – “the swamp”, she calls it – Hutton moved to New York in the 1960s, becoming a model to make money to travel the world. Africa is a favourite destination; Sumatra, New Guinea, Finland and the Solomon Islands also come up in our conversation.
“It’s a big, good world out there,”
she says excitedly.
For Hutton, modelling has always been a way to fund her true passion – travel – but as she approached her 30s, she realised that her career had an expiry date.
“I saw a story on the front page of The New York Times, about a baseball guy called Catfish Hunter, who wouldn’t play without a contract for a million dollars,” she recalls. In fact, Hunter made history for being baseball’s first free agent, starting a bidding war before finally signing a five-year contract with the New York Yankees that made him the highest-paid player at the time.
Hutton continues: “I started reading because of the word ‘catfish’, which I used to fish back in the swamp, but I continued reading because Catfish Hunter said he was in a youth-oriented business, and I thought to myself, ‘I’m the only 30-year-old model out there now’ – Twiggy, Veruschka, all the big stars were doing other things. So I thought, I need a contract.”
The year was 1973, and Hutton made history, signing a US$250,000 cosmetics contract with Revlon, the first of its kind. It’s the deal that cemented her as a visionary. “I’m proud to be described as an inspiration or a visionary,” she says slowly, before continuing: “I was a visionary to go back to modelling at 47 – to stop making four or five really bad movies a year.”
Hutton had starred in a number of box-office releases, including American Gigolo opposite Richard Gere, before realising she couldn’t even stand watching her own films.
It’s just as well she went back to modelling: she now holds the record for the highest number of US Vogue covers (27), plus 13 more worldwide.
Along the way, she landed a role as an ambassador for David Jones. In a 1998 TV commercial for the retailer, she even sang the iconic jingle, ‘There’s no other store like David Jones – and she happily does it again on our cover shoot, giving a handful of renditions before the crew can’t help but break out in a cheer.
“I’m here because it’s the 185th year of David Jones, and that’s a phenomenon,” she continues to hum quietly. “An 80-year-old model: that’s another phenomenon.”
There’s no denying Hutton is a phenomenon. She’s magnetic. And it’s not just that glint in her eye, her off-the-cuff comments, the way she links her arms in yours as you walk off-set or even the fact that everything she tries on hangs perfectly on her frame.
It’s something else entirely – something that she herself describes best. “I think beauty is around us all the time, just like ugly,” she says. “You’ve got to figure out what you’re going to wear – what you’re going to wear in your mind, wear for the day or for the time – whether you’re going to be happy or unhappy. That’s beauty.”
For more conversations with the original beauty visionary, Lauren Hutton pick up the latest edition of JONES Magazine, available instore.