Linda Morand.com
Model Story
Linda Morand's look and style helped define certain avant guard style of beauty that emerged in the Mod Sixties. A promising young Art major she graduated Lindenhurst High School with honors. Her paintings had been shown at the 1964 World's Fair and her poetry was published in "Young America Sings", an anthology of Selected American students. She was planning on studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology because of her love of fashion and design. Her teachers and fellow students encouraged her to try modeling. She went to Key West for the summer and was discovered by Jim Russell, the owner of Key West Hand Print Fabrics. He encouraged her to try acting in the local theater and to pose for an ad in the new Yorker for the beautiful hand sreened fabrics they made.
She was born after the end of WWII one of the tidal wave of 78 million Baby Boomers. She grew up in Lindenhurst, a small town on Long Island, where she was the eldest of four girls. Her family was an eclectic and artistic group of Scottish and English descent. Her mother Dorris had done some modeling and had once had a professional singer during the Big Band era.
Grandfather, James Buchanan Wilson, a prolific writer, published poetry and political and philosophical treatises, while Grandmother May kept an immaculate house and made every one of her five daughters and seventeen grandchildren think she loved him or her best. But the truth was, Nanny was a wonderful, loving and spiritual woman, who walked in love all the days of her life.
Linda's favorite aunt was Great Aunt Grace, who was better known as Eva Tanguay, the silent movie star, Vaudeville headliner and the original recorder of the hit song of the Twenties “I Don’t Care.” She took her mother's maiden name.
As a scrawny, awkward child, with enormous hazel eyes and a shiny brown pageboy bob, Linda resembled the wistful waifs in the popular Keane Paintings.In junior high school, being tall and skinny, with troubled skin and straight A's, Linda remained on the fringe of the cliques. She joined the Drama overcome her shyness and begin to shed her youthful awkwardness.
Linda's life completely changed in her Junior year School when it became apparent to and everyone that Linda was the spitting image Jacqueline Kennedy, who was then First Lady. It was an undeniable Ugly Duckling story. Linda had been awkward and considered a bit of a geek but suddenly her look was “in.” She cut her long hair to a chin length bob and learned how to do Jackie’s make-up. She was in the often the star of school plays and served as the Art Editor of the School Newspaper and Yearbook.
She majored in art and English in High School, studying oil painting, fashion design, technical drawing, watercolor and sculpture. At Linda's school the Arts were greatly emphasized. Linda's art teacher, Nick Baldo, head of the Art Department, and a gifted artist himself, was beloved by all his students. He encouraged the young artists' emerging talent and Linda was invited to join a group of gifted students who enjoyed special benefits. Similar to a sports team, the members of the group were an Art Team, whose works used to deorate the halls of the schools and were entered into State an National Art Competitions.
The students were provided with unlimited canvases, paint, brushes and workspace. Sometimes Linda would spend up to five hours a day working on large scale paintings. The school entered some of her large oil paintings into a nationwide contest for American students' artwork and they won a place in an exhibit held at World’s Fair in 1964.
She was awarded a full scholarship to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. A promising future as a commercial artist or a career as a fashion designer awaited her, but Linda had dreams of going into acting like Aunt Eva Tanguay.
Eva Tanguay - Star of the Palace Theater
Linda spent the summer
of 1965 with family friends in Key West, Florida. It was a sleepy island then, much less visited than it
is now. There were no large hotels, only a naval Base and a small but
lively colony of artists and actors who gathered in the quaint Duval Street
area. She started her modeling
career, by taking a summer job with then small
exclusive boutique Key West Hand Print Fabrics. As a
model/sales associate, she was given a wardrobe of handmade designer dresses made of gorgeous
silk-screened fabrics designed by Lily Pulitzer.
She was also featured in the shop's national ad in the New Yorker.
fShe
auditioned for and was accepted by the Key West Players, the
Community theater which had some well known actors. That summer she starred in
“Under the Yum-Yum
Tree” for which she received a favorable review in the Miami Herald.
After much encouragement from visiting tourists from New York and Palm Beach, who seemed to see a lot potential in the tall, slender and elegant doe-eyed waif, Linda returned to New York. Armed with one studio portrait and her New Yorker tearsheet, she tried to break into the hugely competitive world of professional modeling.
Although she had the required height of over 5’9” and wore a size four, it still took a whole year of very determined, heavy-duty pavement pounding and door knocking on her part before Linda Morand was able to put together a good portfolio and was finally discovered by Eileen Ford, the top model agency in the world.
For quite awhile, Jean Shrimpton had been the reigning “Supermodel” with her enormous blue eyes and long thick chestnut hair.
Linda
used to wear a long, luxurious fall to augment her tresses and loved the big
teased hair look. However, she was not getting much work. She did not have
a new hip modern “Look”. Linda Morand needed to reinvent herself.
In 1966 the new British sensation was Twiggy, with her short blond hair and androgynous look. The Ford agency sent Linda to Vidal Sassoon, who had an exclusive salon in London and one in Manhattan. He chopped off all Linda's thick brown hair hair and created a cute little head hugging Beatle type haircut on her.
"Well, I hated it!" Linda said in a recent interview. "I thought I looked like a pinhead and refused to be seen in public without my long full fall, which I attached to the top of my head with pins and combs. Nevertheless, Sassoon was very pleased and asked me to be a House Model. Soon my pictures, with my then very cutting-edge geometric haircut were displayed all over the salons and in the hair-do magazines. The haircut was the finishing touch to the mini-skirts and go-go boots I liked to wear and now I had had "The Look."
One day I was sent to show my portfolio, filled with pictures of me with big hair, to Gosta Petersen, a top fashion photographer whose work was cutting edge technologically. He had come to New York from Denmark and his wife was a very talented editor at the New York Times.
He looked at me carefully, ignoring the big puffy bouffant haired pictures in my book. 'I love your high cheek bones and big eyes, but you have way too much hair. ' he said to me. If you had short hair, I would book you for a ten page spread in Mademoiselle!'
"He was shocked and delighted when I ripped that hairpiece off my head in two seconds flat! He picked up the phone, laughing hysterically and booked my for a ten page spread and the the July cover! He had that kind of pull at the magazine. That changed my life forever."
Linda Morand was entering the Big Time....
