I recommend Christie Brinkley’s memoir ... with one proviso
Christie Brinkley’s memoir begins with a horrific helicopter crash and it’s hardly a spoiler to tell that Christie survives, going on to write this book which in America has sold 1.2 million copies. Which is the greater miracle?
Christie Brinkley’s memoir, Uptown Girl begins with a horrific helicopter crash and it’s hardly a spoiler to tell that Christie survives, going on to write this book which in America has sold 1.2 million copies.
Which is the greater miracle?
We can decide that later, but first I want you to know that I am not simply reading this book so that you don’t have to. I say this because I am a shameless consumer of literary reviews and often find a critical precis of about 900 words a most convenient substitute for reading the whole work.
In time I might even come to believe that I did read the book.
This is not laziness. Just consider that every year hundreds of thousands of books are published in the English language alone. Here in Australia we produce 22,000 new titles annually.
AI would have trouble keeping up.
Christie’s book begins with her account of the accident: she’s choppering over the San Juan mountains in snowbound Colorado. She’s hoping to go skiing to recover from yet another celebrity split from her husband Billy Joel, whose best-selling hit song supplies the title to this memoir.
The crash completely destroys the helicopter. The author is thrown from the aircraft and somehow survives. But it’s a close thing. Her foot is still tangled in the seat belt and attached to the wrecked helicopter which is sliding towards a steep cliff.
“So that’s what’s going to kill me? A seat belt strap tangled around my boot?”
But then we learn that Christie is carrying a Chimayo charm she obtained during a stay with the Pueblo Indians in the mountains north of Santa Fe, and apparently it has magic qualities.
The helicopter doesn’t go over the cliff.
There is another passenger, a young boy named Cade, badly injured with no feeling in his legs and in need of comfort. Christie finds a disposable camera and cheers him up with a couple of selfies. “You can tell everyone that you were in a helicopter crash with that model Christie, and now you’ll have the photos to prove it,” she says.
Irony?
I’m not sure.
“I knew we’d be in trouble it we didn’t conserve our warmth,” Christie continues, “so I grabbed whatever clothing had been thrown from the helicopter, zipping a jacket over Cade and pulling on someone’s vest that clashed horribly with my Ralph Lauren suit.
“But by this point, it was no longer fashion ‘to die for’ but rather fashion to keep us from dying.” She adds: “Was it the miracle of Chimayo that saved me – and all of us – that day? I don’t know. But what I do know is that when you believe in magic, magic happens. And if you want to believe in the magic with me, let the adventure begin.”
So we set forth on a glossy, well-lit, 50-year flashbulb sashay down the international fashion catwalk complete with vintage glamour and every magazine cover you’ve ever heard of (and many I hadn’t) and enough celebrity name drops to fill 400 pages.
We bump into Andy Warhol, Calvin Klein, Paul McCartney, Jack Nicholson, Mick Jagger, Gianni Versace and indeed the whole cast of a later day Belle Epoch in which Christie Brinkley played her own commanding role. Three consecutive covers of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues 1979 to 1981 was a record, along with 25 years as the face of CoverGirl and throw in another 500 magazine covers. Don’t pretend not to recognise her.
Then there were television ads. She tells it better than I ever could:
“The more TV commercials I did, the more I loved to act and to this day the Chanel No.19 spot remains my favourite because I felt so distinctly French. For the shoot I wore a pleated white Chanel skirt, which fluttered prettily whenever a breeze traveled off the Mediterranean, and a navy-and-white-striped Chanel blouse – I adore anything with a nautical stripe – with my hair parted and pinned to one side, so that it bounced all around me in alluring waves.”
We shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Christie shot that commercial with Helmut Newton at the Cap d’Antibes Beach Hotel. It is considered exclusive even though some years ago I was there filming with 60 Minutes.
Ah! The good old days when mere journos flitted around the world like supermodels.
And I met a few of them, too. I spent three days in LA with Miranda Kerr and longer in New York with Elle MacPherson. Others I have forgotten but I retain more than an inkling of the fabulous and entirely meretricious lifestyle that must come with travelling for Chanel No.19. And maybe to a lesser extent, for Channel No.9.
I’m not sure why I stuck with this book and with Christie’s improbable rise from art student to supermodel and all her indulgent adventures along the way. Perhaps it’s because I came from the wrong side of Bass Strait and after decades of largely undeserved high life have ended back where I began (unlike Christie) and can only take solace in her wise counsel, “You only get one ride – make it count.”
I would never be so churlish to review a book I didn’t find in some way enjoyable and so I can recommend Uptown Girl with this one proviso: it should be read poolside with a hangover at the Cap D’Antibes Beach Hotel. With a few glasses of champagne beside you. But it would have to be a bottle of 2016 Louis Roederer Cristal.
Because of course, you only get one ride.
Charles Wooley is undoubtably fishing
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