'Rock ‘n’ roll with wide-eyed Englishness’: Marianne Faithfull’s life in looks
'Rock ‘n’ roll with wide-eyed Englishness’: Marianne Faithfull’s life in looks
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The poster girl of Swinging Sixties style, Marianne Faithfull, died aged 78 on January 30. After a life of dizzying highs and crashing lows, the It girl best known for her relationship with Mick Jagger, pop stardom and troubled years tarnished with heroin and homelessness, Faithfull leaves behind a wealth of style inspiration as the very British muse with rock ‘n’ roll edge. “She was so unique, so beautiful and such a creature of the time,” says Bay Garnett, the stylist and Vogue contributor who knew the face of the 1960s in her later life.
“She was this amazing combination of two worlds: she was a drug addict with a gravelly, knowing voice but she also had this wide-eyed Englishness. There was a demure thing about her. It was a really original mix — there was no one else like her.” Before rising to fame as the partner of The Rolling Stones front man in 1966, Faithfull was raised in Hampstead, north London, where she was born to Glynn Faithfull, a former British spy in the Second World War, and Eva von Sacher-Masoch, a Viennese baroness.
Her quintessentially Sixties look revolved around micro skirts and afghan coats — “she was quite always quite put together. For me it’s not the girl on the motorcycle, it’s the little skirt with the court shoes and a Mongolian coat,” Garnett says. “Then it’s that fringe with the pout and droopy eyes.”. What set Faithfull apart from the other leading ladies of the decade — from Twiggy to Pattie Boyd — was her songwriting ability. “The other It girls didn’t write songs like Marianne. You listen to The Ballad of Lucy Jordan and it's incredible, so before it's years,” says Garnett.
And she well remembers meeting Faithfull in her later years. “I was quite surprised because she talked about herself in the third person, and she was quite loud and posh,” Garnett says. “The best moment was when I was in Paris with Anita Pallenberg and we went over to Marianne’s apartment for supper and drink. Hearing them talk was so funny because they were so different; Antia was very European and Marianne was the epitome of Englishness. Antita would laugh and tease her. They were these two creatures — and seeing their dynamic was wild and fun.”.
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