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British icons Twiggy and Sadie Frost certainly know how to light up a room and they were both bursting with love for life and Mallorca on Thursday ahead of the Spanish premiere of the documentary Twiggy, directed by Sadie Frost, at Cineciutat, one of the highlights of this year’s 14th Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival in Palma. And neither of them are strangers to Mallorca. Sadie has participated in the festival before. In fact she used her visit to find and buy a house near Soller and she said she was really pleased to be back at the festival and to have seen how much it has grown. Trip down memory lane And for Twiggy, coming back to Mallorca has been a romantic trip down memory lane for her and her husband. “I first came here in 1986,” Twiggy said. “I met my husband in 85 and he had a house in Andratx. On Wednesday we took a romantic journey to Andratx, saw our lovely old village house, and we both agreed we should have kept it. But we eventually moved to Los Angeles and it was just too far. But we loved it and had so many happy holidays on the island with our kids, who were little then. So it was quite a nostalgic trip, we went down to the port, which has grown so much. When we used to go there it was just a little tiny fishing port. And this summer I took my daughter and grandchildren to Pollensa, which I’d never been to and always wanted to see. It’s gorgeous - so I’m very tempted to come back, it’s a beautiful island,” she said. And Sadie has lived on the island as well. “I first properly came and lived here when I was filming Presence of Mind with Harvey Keitel and Lauren Bacall at Raixa. I spent two months living in an old-fashioned house in Soller, which was great because I got to see the island from the point of view of a resident if you like, not a tourist, and that really opened my eyes to Mallorca. Then I would come back, stay at the Residencia and then I decided that I wanted to live here and I bought a little house in Soller, which I kept for three years. I had always wanted to live abroad, have a house in a different country, grow my own fruit and veg, live in the countryside; the reality of it was great. Moved to Mallorca too soon “But what I realised once I had moved here was that my kids hardly came over and I missed them, so I realised that to move abroad is a big step when you are on your own. It was really good that I did it, but in the end I felt that I still had to be in the UK and now I’ve got grandchildren, so it was one of those things that I ticked off the bucket list. Maybe I made the move too soon, too young and perhaps one day I shall return. I love it here, so let’s see what happens when I retire,” Sadie said before Twiggy jumped in and suggested that they buy a property together on the island and share it through the year. “It would work, we work really well together,” added Sadie. And that shows in the documentary. Sadie and Twiggy really got to know each other in the wake of Sadie making the documentary Quant about fashion designer Mary Quant. We did a podcast together as part of the promotion but I had been so immersed in the project that I hadn’t thought about what I was going to do next and in the middle of the podcast I realised I didn’t have a job. Was I going to be a one-film wonder?” Sadie explained. “I remember you told me that you wanted to continue investigating the 60s and somebody involved with the 60s - you suddenly said ‘oh, I should do you’ ”, added Twiggy. “So we talked about it over the next few weeks and before I knew it I wasn’t out of work,” said Sadie. Very emotional “I had been approached over the past 20 years about doing my life story but it’s a major commitment to agree to someone putting your life on the big screen. It’s a very emotional thing to do. Everyone has a photo album at home with pictures, but to see your life on the big screen. If I did it, I wanted to do it with someone I could trust and felt comfortable with. So I had turned down many offers until Sadie came along. We got on really well and I thought I’m going to have to do it at some point before someone else does and perhaps without my input and control. She’s a woman and there are things only women understand and we’ve kind of had parallel lives and careers. She’s been in the public eye since probably younger than I was as a child model actress aged just 4, so we were both coming from the same background if you like. But she did so much hard work on this project and the end result is amazing,” said Twiggy. “It is very emotional. We’re really celebrating Twiggy’s life and people who have watched the documentary and don’t know Twiggy have cried at the end. It’s just a very uplifting human story, the relationship between Twiggy and her daughter is wonderful and very heartfelt,” said Sadie. MeToo Movement And considering the impact Twiggy has had on the world, especially for women, she told the Bulletin that, in her opinion, over the past few years the biggest breakthrough for women has been the MeToo movement. “I don’t go out and preach, I’m very private. I talk about my life but I don’t talk about religion or politics -I have my views but tend to keep them to myelf. “But, although I didn’t get heavily involved, the MeToo Movement moved everything ahead for women for the better. It’s still not 100 percent there but we are in a better position than I think we ever were. Personally, I think what happened to me in 1966 happened so suddenly, it was totally out of my control. I was probably more shocked than the rest of the world with what happened to me because I didn’t plan to do that, I was a school girl. At my all-girl grammar school it was detention if caught in a short skirt and certainly no make-up. All that was on the weekends. “Plus, I didn’t look like all the previous models. I was too small and too thin. If I’d gone to a modelling agency in 1966, they’d have shown me the door because I didn’t fit the criteria. I was a funny little kid with long eyelashes but I guess the haircut, which was a mistake at the time, kind of pulled it all together. I often wonder how I coped with all the attention. You kind of forget things, but when I watched the documentary it all came back. All the eyes were on London “I remember when I first went to New York. I was 17 years old and a young 17... . And there’s all this footage Sadie found of me arriving in New York with girls screaming; my fan club. I arrived just after The Beatles so I was part of the British invasion, but when I landed I didn’t expect such a massive crazy welcome and it was the same wherever we went. I had to have a bodyguard, although that didn’t stop one of the top hotels from trying to not let me into the restaurant because I was wearing trousers. Women didn’t wear them then, it was not allowed in many places, just like they weren’t wearing mini skirts, all of my fans were all in knee-length skirts, but that quickly changed,” Twiggy laughed. “It was all very exciting because, until then, all I’d done was go to school,” she added. “I certainly changed the perception within the fashion industry, but I didn’t mean to. That’s what I looked like, but I changed what and who model agencies would take. Look, we then had Kate Moss in the 90s, she’s the same height as me. I think I opened the door for those different types of models,” said Twiggy. “I guess I was the right person at the right time. Five years earlier or later, and none of it would have happened. It was the mid to late 60s and the eyes of the world were on London - the music, the art, the fashion designers, the freedom, young people having a voice. So I guess those doors I opened have led to a much more diverse fashion industry, especially on the catwalks,” she said. But that was then.Twiggy’s biggest concern today for girls, young women and people in general is social media and all the tools we have on our phones etc. to enhance our beauty and distort real natural life. “I’ve got wrinkles and I’m proud of them, I’ve worked damn hard for them,” she said. “But it’s still a shame that the fashion industry makes people commodities, it’s a shame it still can’t come from a more authentic and genuine place,” said Sadie. “What has always inspired me about Twiggy is that her image was not artificial. It was truly her. That naturalness continues to be an example for all women who work in fashion, film, or any creative field. Beauty comes from being true to oneself,” Sadie stressed. On the contrast between the past and the present, Twiggy reflected: “In the 1960s, terrible things happened, such as the Vietnam War, but on the other hand, people were more innocent, more liberal, and there were more powerful icons. Today, everything is seen in a very negative light, and activism creates a lot of tension; before, it was more romantic, more pacifist.” She confessed that the documentary has brought her “a lot of happiness; it’s the portrait of a fantastic life.”
