Monocled Alchemist

What does it take to be successful in business and right hand man to top model
Twiggy? To find out, INTRO talked to Justin de Villeneuve

Article from Intro magazine: 14th October 1967

Justin de Villeneuve & Twiggy: We had lunch under the tree which grows right in the middle of their favourite London restaurant. We’d gone expecting to meet just Justin, but national heroine No. 1—Twiggy—was there too.

They’re both very relaxed. Justin looks far more open-air and tanned-healthy than the sombre pictures of him in the papers. He apologizes for his rather rumpled blue and white striped shirt and floppy silk scarf.

He knows, and we know, the glories which his wardrobe could have produced in the way of flaming coloured ties, flared trousers. But it’s nice. The mood is simple. To match them both.

They are very happy having a free week before another trip. Justin explains why they have this free time.

“Twiggy doesn’t do so much work in England any more, except for glossies. Yes, I suppose it’s because she’s expensive—it’s £100 a day now for magazines, unless we make a special offer for the ones that can’t afford it.’’

Justin de Villeneuve & Twiggy:

“We do that kind of thing because sometimes it’s more interesting. Like, I just refused to do an interview for Nova. But I said O.K. to you because you’re a new magazine, for young people, which is nice.”

We ask whether work in England is seriously affected by the ban on Twiggy by photographers Bailey, Duffy, Montgomery and Donovan. Justin explains:

“All we could think was: it was sour grapes on their parts. We work with lots of the greatest photographers—greatest in the world, not just photographers here in England.

He glances at Twiggy. “That was a bad time for us, though. People were rushing to knock us down, you know, because they’d built us up. There was the thing of not giving Twiggy a passport for America.”

He glances again at Twiggy, then says: “We used to pick up the papers in the morning, didn’t we? And say: ‘Oh look, we’ve been banned again!”

Twiggy’s friend

Keeping Twiggy happy is Justin’s main contribution to the set-up.

“Look,” Justin says, ‘she’d have been great anyway. What I am, I’m Twiggy’s friend. I look after her. What I do is choose things for her to do, so she doesn’t get unhappy.

‘Everyone thinks I’m this Svengali type who’s created Twiggy. Well, I wouldn’t know how to do that. Twiggy happened all by herself. All I’ve ever done is manipulate things round her so they don’t go wrong.”’

Like what? ‘Well, say we went on television, on the Eamonn Andrews show; can you imagine? What we’d do, we’d say hello, then there’d be some comedian making jokes about Twiggy the rest of the programme.

Twiggy’s a professional model, she wouldn’t be able to answer back to a professional comedian. It would be a pantomime.”

He pauses. ‘Td end up knocking him out,” he adds, reflectively.

It’s no idle threat, either; he was a professional boxer at one time.

‘Three times a night, in a booth at a fairground,” he explains.

George, our photographer, who’s sitting next to him, nervously shifts his precious camera way out of striking distance.

Justin de Villeneuve & Twiggy:

Justin asks what about coffee, shall we have it at his new flat? Would we like to see it? We pile into his sleek white Mustang and speed off.

We cross the Cromwell Road, making for Justin’s North Kensington flat. He’s an opportunist driver, but very efficient. Now he’s talking about another contribution he makes to the set-up: the use of his shrewd business brain.

Why is he so successful?

“Well, don’t get me wrong, I have a finance man who’s wonderful. But otherwise I think it’s because I have this background, you know, the whole bit: East End, gangs and that. I’ve been on the fringe of jiggery-pokery.

“I can tell right away if someone’s trying to do me. In America, of course, they like the whole cheeky Londoner bit, it knocks them out. I make absolutely outrageous demands and they do it! They’re masochists!”’

He shakes his head, smiling. ‘‘Yeah, but I like America for business. ‘They do it big and they do it right.”

His own design

We arrive at the flat and Justin parks the car. The flat is at the top of the house and is vast. They race each other to amaze us with the fact that it costs only £9 a week.

Justin has designed all the doing-up himself. His success is proved: Elle and the New York Times are doing picture stories on it.

He left school at sixteen, worked at a bookmaker’s, then for a wine merchant; went as an assistant to Vidal Sassoon (who let him off the £250 training fee) and graduated to stylist. For the last five years before meeting Twiggy he was an interior decorator, and loved it.

Twiggy efficiently takes orders for coffee:. “Two blacks with sugar, two whites without, right?’ Then she flies off to the kitchen.

We go to the upstairs sitting-room, and sit on a wide, low, coffee-coloured leather sofa, and inspect a_bitter-chocolate wall.

Justin say’s he’s going to give it another coat of paint and finish it off with coachwork polish to make it glossy. He says he got the idea out of a David Hicks’ book, which happens to be lying on a low table made out of buttercup-yellow moulded plastic.

There are four or five kinetic (moving) painting/sculptures. Justin gets a great kick out of the fact that people buy works by the artist, Brian Robbins, because they’ve seen his in the flat.

Justin de Villeneuve & Twiggy:

Twiggy appears with four cups of instant coffee.

Justin tells us about Mr. L., a big collector, who’s going to come and see the paintings. ‘‘Oooooh!” says Twiggy, “are we seeing him today? He promised me a ride in his Mercedes.”

“Ring him up then,” says Justin.

Twiggy pouts, and reaches for the phone book. She hunches over it. She’s seventeen. Justin is lolling backwards watching her. He’s twenty-eight.

She says: “Justin, I’ve got the number, will you ring, please? Please Justin, will you?”

Justin, with the air of one painstakingly trying to train a child into good habits, says: “Now, come on, Twiggy.”

Then after more ‘pleases’: “Well, dial it, see if you want to talk and, if you don’t, say I’m coming.”

He explains how she gets in a panic about the telephone and how he’s trying to cure her of it. Does he influence her in any other personal ways? ‘‘Not her ideas, I don’t think. Nothing deliberate anyway. No. No, I don’t.”

He casts around then fixes on the subject of God. “‘Now I don’t believe in God, never have since I was a kid. Twiggy does.

Then she likes people I don’t—so, O.K., she talks to them, I don’t. With God, I think it’s lovely, I really do, if she gets peace of mind out of believing in Him. Why should I assert any authority? I don’t see the point.”

We hear Twiggy failing her telephone test, and she comes back to Justin a bit shakily. Masterfully, he strides to the phone, arranges her car ride and further publicity for Brian Robbins.

A sue a day . . .

They come back, arms linked, and Twiggy snuggles up behind Justin, hitching her chin over his shoulder.

Does he ever get depressed? ‘‘Only when people are trying to do me in. Which they do. I sue somebody every day. No, it’s true! It’s a trick I found out in America, didn’t I Twiggy? I had this writ served on me and I was terrified.

“I said: “What’s this? quaking, you know. Then somebody said: ‘Oh, that happens all the time over here, it’s just to warn you off.’

Well, now I do it, and it works! A Sue A Day Keeps The Villains Away!” he extemporizes, falling about laughing, and hugging Twiggy. Then he sobers up.

“But I do get depressed, like what’s life all about, do you mean?

Well, a few years ago when I had time, I used to sit down and get depressed. Now I don’t have time. I can think, I’m a bit fed up now, but tomorrow I’ll be in Paris.

We’re so lucky because we’ve this fantastic thing going for us, we just enjoy it the whole time.

“Twiggy works hard, but we can choose to do it. Which makes all the difference. When I was a hairdresser, I had to get in by nine every morning. Well, now I’m free.

Justin de Villeneuve & Twiggy:

Like, say I went to see Scotland, I could get a plane tonight, look at the country, then catch the plane back.”

He pauses thinking of this Scotland viewing programme. Then adds: “It’s really nice to feel the chains are off me at last.”

I ask if, now he’s able to buy and do almost anything he likes, he doesn’t want things so much.

He says: “I’ve always been on the outside looking in at the glitter. Now that I’m inside it doesn’t seem quite so glittery. :

“Like, say, when we were in Hollywood. You know Tony Curtis, well, he was always an idol of mine. And he took us to dinner. I mean, he maybe could have taken Marlon Brando that evening, but he took us.

“In a way it was an awful disappointment; there we were chatting away to this very nice ordinary bloke. He was just a nice human being. But in a way that’s nice. To find famous people are nice, I mean.

“Some people, they get fame and they believe in it. You can do that and become impossible and arrogant. Or, you can just, accept it. I think we do that.”’

He pauses. Twiggy has her arm round his waist. Justin leans back slightly and looks at her. “Fame’s just something that makes life nice,” he says.