A girl from a Yorkshire mining town is barely thirteen when her father kills himself – her brother finds him dying. At sixteen she’s spotted by a rock star and becomes an international Vogue model. Seven years later her brother kills himself in her New York apartment and her mother dies too. With no family left, her life is now one of extreme choices. Fifty years later, Victoria confronts her past and takes her readers on an unflinching voyage through her experiences as a model and beyond. Speaking frankly about loss, love, friendship and ambition, Head Shot is a book of inspiration and purpose. Packed with astonishing images by the photographers Victoria worked with, and the defiant fashions she wore throughout her career, it also bears witness to a time of unparalleled cultural energy and invention; it’s a story in which bags and shoes can, and do, sit right next to life and death.
Head Shot by Victoria Nixon was published by Unbound on 8 August 2019. As part of the #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour, I'm delighted to be able to give away one copy to one reader.
Entry is simple; just fill out the competition widget at the end of this post.
UK Entries only.
GOOD LUCK!
CLOSE-UP
How vain it is to sit down and write if you have not stood up to live
– Henry David Thoreau
London 2012. Opening night at a friend's art exhibition draws a good-looking, fast-moving crowd, the flashbulbs so frantic I don't see who's furiously tapping my shoulder. It's another pal and former model with a towering young admirer in tow. She skips off into the crowd parking her suitor with me, and I soon discover why.
The lofty one's dark city suit neatly belies his state of mind. Grabbing two large vodkas from a passing waiter, he snorts them both in seconds and they clearly aren't his first. Thirtyish, clean shaven with hooded slate-grey eyes and a drained face, he fixes me with a deep unnerving gaze:
"Tell me, is it true that you Sixties models all shagged like stoats and married for money?"
He may have been joking, and he wasn't the first to ask.
But he will be the last. Foto-fit features do not guarantee a mind devoid of thought.
I gave him my best 'bright lights' smile and left him to it.
I'd never given the Sixties much thought since living them, life too full-on to dredge lost memories. Yet that unabashed question from a wasted city slicker delivered the nudge I needed to clear the junk from the trunk which languished in my loft. To put an end to being forever labelled by a vacant stare in a vintage glossy.
That's not how it was. That's not how I was. This is how it was.
Victoria Nixon is the Co-founder and Managing Director of AirCell Structures Ltd, a British company which designs and manufactures humanitarian aid products used worldwide.Born and educated in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, she was 18 when discovered by the late Helmut Newton, who photographed her for Vogue. This launched her international modelling career as Vikki Nixon in the late Sixties. She became an award-winning advertising copywriter, television producer, magazine editor and author. In the Nineties, she opened a London deli specialising in healthy fresh food – the first in the UK to ban all plastic packaging.
Her first book, Supermodels' Beauty Secrets, was published in 2002 and nominated 'Best Beauty Book' by the Daily Mail in 2010. Her second book, Supermodels' Diet Secrets, was published in 2004.
Twitter @VictoriaNixon_
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