Identified! The ‘strange boy in drag’ at Pierre Laroche’s breakfast with Ossie Clark, Marianne Faithfull + Michael Roberts in 1974
//According to artist Kevin Whitney, the "strange boy in drag" was the German fashion model Jurgen (surname not known).//
A couple of months back I wrote about a photo-session conducted at David Hockney’s Notting Hill house* in May 1974 by photographer Willie Christie.
This was for a potential editorial piece about Christie’s friend the make-up artist Pierre Laroche, who was posed with Hockney’s tenant Ossie Clark, the fashion writer Michael Roberts, singer Marianne Faithfull and two individuals whose identities were lost to memory.
Until now. I can reveal that the “strange boy in drag” (as Clark described him in his diaries) was Jurgen, a German fashion model working in London at the time.
//From left: Jurgen, unknown, Ossie Clark, Pierre Laroche, Marianne Faithfull, Michael Roberts. Photo: Willie Christie.//
The confirmation came via a circuitous route; writer/broadcaster Jonathan Meades thought the boy in the dress may have been Kevin Whitney.
Not so, said Whitney when we spoke a couple of weeks ago: “That’s not me, that’s Jurgen. He was very much part of our scene; we were all Thems, weren’t we? I remember a bunch of us went to Italy and then the last I heard of him, Jurgen had gone on back home to Germany.”
The identity of the woman next to Jurgen remains a mystery so further information is still welcome. It’s hoped that somewhere out there Jurgen is reading this.
My first post about Willie Christie’s photograph is here.
Keep up with Jonathan Meades here, check out Kevin Whitney – an official Olympics artist – here, and read my piece Antony Price And The Art Of Them Maintenance here.
* Thanks to Frances Lynn for pointing out that the photograph was taken at David Hockney’s house in Powis Terrace, not Clark’s own house in nearby Cambridge Gardens (which he had vacated following the split with wife Celia Birtwell). Read about Frances here.