This is the coolest It-girl that nobody knows and she's Dutch too

I am on vacation and therefore have time to read again. Debutant Divorcees by Plum Sykes has been unloved next to my bed for months, but now I am completely into it. Reading about New York heiresses who give their friends interior decoration as a gift and who you might have spoken to on the phone at 3:00 AM and who suddenly flew to Madrid the next morning: these are the more normal things in life there. I find it delightful. And then I especially want to look at who the style icons are of the ’harbor‘, of the women who push Beyoncé and Jay-Z away when they call to ask if they can come to their party. Who did they find cool and the epitome of style and chic?

A name comes up. Talitha Getty. Notably a Dutch woman, daughter of painter Willem Jits Pol and Arnoldine Mees. She spent the war in Dutch-Indies, returned to the Netherlands but when her mother died in 1948, her father took her to London where he remarried. Talitha married John Getty Jr., son of the immensely wealthy oil magnate Getty. Now mainly known from the Getty Museum in LA and the large photo agency. Talitha Getty was it completely. Friends with Yves Saint Laurent, Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, and Edie Sedgewick.

A hippie avant la lettre, cool, original style. She married in a white miniskirt trimmed with white mink and a hood.

They were part of the London hip party scene in the late 60s. In fact, they were the heart of it. John Getty was considered the supplier of drugs to the party people and Mick Jagger said that Talitha and he had the best opium. With their house in Marrakech, their life was complete. Talitha and John Paul were the archetype of the so-called ‘gypset’, living it up in Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent and preferably walking barefoot. The free life caught up with Talitha. At the age of 31, she died in Rome from an opium overdose.

The two had a son whom they, probably in a not entirely sober state, named Tara Gabriel Gramophone Galaxy. The best boy later got rid of his last two names, simply married a chambermaid he met during a vacation in Verbier, and had three children, one of whom he named Talitha.

With John Paul Getty, it was also not a little ‘and he lived happily ever after’ story. Something with drugs, an overly rich and extremely strict father, a kidnapping, and a severed ear.
Shall I tell more about that tomorrow?