Nicholson

Ivy (1934). American model. In the 1950s and 1960s, she was a star on the runways of Paris, Florence, and Rome, and on the covers of Elle, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. For Andy Warhol, she appeared in the film Couch, and took part in the projects of the Factory, the group of creators surrounding the master of pop art. She married a Roman aristocrat, whom she later divorced. She remarried in New York and had two children, Gunther and Penelope, with an eighteen-year-old member of the Factory. From the mid-1970s, Ivy, who had already experienced some emotional difficulties, disappeared entirely. Many years later, in 1987, the photographer Eric Luse from the San Francisco Chronicle photographed a “bag lady” on the streets of San Francisco with very singular movements and bearing, and a face that revealed a ruined beauty. He took a few photos and showed them to an old fashion correspondent, who immediately recognized the individual as Ivy Nicholson. Two journalists ran to find her in Market Street and in the areas frequented by homeless people. Furio Colombo related the incident in an article for Panorama in May 1987: “They found her seated on the ground next to a bonfire of rubbish, together with two older women, Brigitte, an alcoholic who read the fortunes of passers-by, and Dondy, who always pushed a shopping trolley full of old newspapers. On the wet pavement the younger woman opened a black plastic folder of the kind used by aspiring models as they go from one photographic agency to another: ‘Look, do look, feast your eyes,’ ordered Brigitte, when she saw the journalist spying on the group from behind. They were all fashion photographs. A splendid woman, aged eighteen, twenty, thirty (…) languid, feline, aggressive, innocent, distracted, she looked out with large dark eyes, sometimes intent, almost sulky, sometimes with a beautiful smile. Inside a milk carton there was a roll of film. ‘This is the film,’ explained the woman. She coughed and scratched her hands opening the rusty lid. She tried to show the stills to her friends, holding them up against the light of the fire. (…) She continued to cough but refused the blanket one of the journalists offered her: ‘Too new, my boy, I see you have no experience of life on the streets. Here they’d steal it straight away.’ They told her that Andy Warhol was dead. ‘I know, I know he’s dead. People throw away newspapers, they get blown by the wind, you just need to sit here and the pages arrive.’ The three women laughed. One of the famous ex-model’s teeth is missing, a premolar, and with a childlike gesture she covered her mouth.”