- You know I was the shortest model
that had ever been in the business.
I was 5'6" and a half.
I lied, I said I was 5'7",
but they could tell I was 5'6".
(peaceful beats play)
I'm Lauren Hutton,
and I'm here to explain it all.
I remember the exact moment
when I decided to become a model,
because I was trying to get to Africa.
And then I found out that the $200 I had with me
wasn't going to cut the mustard.
So I had to stop in New York City
and then I didn't have a job,
and I had to get a job.
And Christian Dior, New York,
they told me they couldn't help me.
Actually, they, they had a little ad in New York Times,
and then I said as I left,
"I'll work for anything!", over my shoulder.
And they hired me, for $50 a week.
Christian Dior, New York was just for
like the big department stores.
Saks, and Lord & Taylor and everything.
And me and another model would sit in the back.
I'm sitting there looking at a magazine
in the first week that I'm there.
The other model who was
about 10 years older than me said,
those are photography models,
pointing to the, into the magazine.
And she said, you could never be one of those.
She said, look at your nose.
She said, and what about the giant gap in your teeth?
Then she said, and they make in an hour,
what you make in a week.
I mean my life was decided right then,
because I understood that for
probably every hour that I worked,
I'd get two or three in Africa, or Burma, or the Amazon,
or all the places I had to go to
since I was about five and a half years old.
We were like athletes, the great models.
We could work all day,
we could work four times harder than a anybody else.
And so I yelled over to my old man,
and I said, what can,
what do I do to get a contract?
And he said, tell all your photographers,
call up Eileen tell her you won't do any makeup.
They have the most money.
You won't do any makeup,
and tell all your photographers
that you want a contract.
About six months later,
Dick Avedon told me, well, I told Dick immediately.
And Dick said, make it exclusive!
And I started laughing,
I said, nobody has that much money, Dick.
Don't be silly.
But they did.
And Dick was as usual, right.
I had already started making movies
and I just finished one called Welcome to LA
with Bob Altman was producing.
And I had to go to Boston to go on television.
And there's this beautiful young girl,
about half my age maybe.
You know, I told her how you become a success.
I said, you worked four times harder than anybody else,
you've got to have the talent
for whatever it is you're trying to do.
You need a lot of luck because it's always luck
with whatever you're doing,
and you need horse strength.
And those are the four basic things you need.
She turns just like this on a stool,
so she's completely profile.
And she's sitting like right here next to me.
So I have to turn profile,
and no one else can see her eyes, just me.
And what I'm looking at is pure hatred.
And she said, why you?
Dumb luck?
Chutzpah?
Which is cheap aggression.
Or someone, and she leaned forward for this,
someone you knew?
So she was insinuating,
you know what she was insinuating.
I just sort of couldn't believe it.
So I leaned forward to her practically nose-to-nose,
and I said, right, I (beeped) my way to the top!
(claps) And then I fell,
I started laughing so hard, I fell off the stool.
By the time I got up and dusted myself off, she was gone.
And I spent the next three days in bed,
alternately crying or laughing because
it was ridiculous and absurd.
And then the old man, he said,
you certainly didn't do that with anybody, so,
why?
And then I would start crying,
and then we'd start laughing.
He said, I've got it!
You call a press conference.
Tell your agents that you want a press conference,
and you'll, you'll tell them that you don't work
for an old dinosaur of a corporation.
You work for modern, smart, with it people,
who understand that she was baiting you.
And obviously that wasn't the truth.
And that was right.
Fashion.
It's changed into this thing of fashionistas.
There's zillions of 'em!
I kind of love looking good!
It's fun to look in the mirror and swell up with pride.
And, and I used to make all my own clothes
when I was in high school, 'cause I was poor!
And I could get a yard of cloth for a quarter.
So I could get four yards, and make a big.
And I had made crinolines, which was, it was fifties.
My first crinoline was unfortunately made of
wire.
It was chicken wire, I think.
Chicken mesh.
And I made a big circle,
I knew what these things looked like.
These crinolines.
A big mesh, and then I tied elastic at my waist.
I did this all out in the shed so no one saw.
And then I tied string all the way around it,
and I pushed the full circle skirt over it.
And the wire kept poking through the,
'cause it was thin material, but that's okay.
And I hid it in the woods on the way up to school,
and then when I got to the place in the woods
where I could jump in and change out of whatever
I had on and put this thing on,
and I walked very proudly,
and it swayed like a bell,
and it was really somethin'.
And then I went to sit down at my desk,
and I had forgotten that the desk went like this,
so you couldn't get the hoop.
And it went over my head and my panties showed,
and they didn't allow that in those days at all.
So I was kicked out of school for a couple days.
And that's how I got into fashion.
Love, men, good books knock me out continually.
You meet people in the street that inspire you.
Nature.
I was just diving with 400 sharks out of whack.
I won't tell you where.
And they're just there.
Ah!
And they don't have to work.
And they're all very, very happy.
I saw about mostly their reef sharks,
which are not rough guys.
But I saw some lone hammer heads.
They're tough on you if they take an ocean.
It was heaven.
It was really somethin'.
These, I had a great time today!
She's a wonderful photographer,
and she had wonderful people she worked with,
and that was inspiring all day.
And, and the new Bazarre, their spectacular!
I mean imagine being brave enough to use someone 482.
That sayin' somethin' for 'em.
First of all, it's our job to have hope.
Especially women.
Yuval Noah Harari.
He's an Israeli,
he's really, really one of those geniuses.
And he wrote Sapiens,
and he says that if every country puts 2%
to what they're already taking
out of their gross national product,
that's what they do,
you throw money at it.
And you get everybody smart that comes together on it.
Yuval says that will do it.
And I believe it.
I don't have much of any skincare regime
until I met StriVectin.
And now I sound like a shill, which I am not.
I never would do, I was a pretty good model.
I, I had a moral bottom.
I wouldn't do wild fur of any kind.
I wouldn't do cigarettes.
I told them I was a user,
but I certainly wasn't a pusher.
And I didn't use much of any thing but soap and water.
And then this StriVectin stuff has a lot of retinol,
which I was always very suspicious of.
Turns out that it is great for your skin.
So now I sort of slather myself up
in all their various retinol stuff.
Mostly there's something called Star, which is oil.
And you have a bottle this big,
which will last for like six months,
'cause you only about three drops.
If I could change anything about my life,
I'd like to live to 400.
About the shape that I'm in now, is fine,
because big change is comin'.
And I'll bet we get through 'em because we're
an awfully ingenious animal.
And the other thing is,
I would give anything to meet my, my father.
My real father.
I was born in world war II,
they had some sort of fight,
my mother and my real father.
she from Charleston, South Carolina.
He was from Oxford, Mississippi.
And I didn't ever get to meet him.
One of my many goddaughters who now has given me
a great godson and a great goddaughter,
Indy. Indigo.
She told me to buckle up.
'Cause I never buckled my seat belts.
I just, just didn't.
There was something wrong with me
that I had never gotten it.
And when she had Indy, she said,
you've gotta start buckling up
because I want you to be around for
all her life and all mine.
And I still didn't do it.
But then it kept ringing in my ears, buckle up.
Buckle up.
And so finally, now I always buckle up.
No, the problem with modeling, is that now it's famous.
So there are tens of thousands of people.
And I don't even know how it works anymore.
They just, it's all about how many followers they get.
Sort of dumb stuff.
Because people need to see you,
and they need to see your personality a little,
and they need to see a little bit of yourself.
So you need to get out and see 'em.
My ultimate advice to young women
who wanna step into the modeling industry,
I don't think you step into any industry.
I think you study it like hell.