When She Was "It" – The 60s

You could find the "It" girls... at the Peppermint Lounge as teenagers before they moved on to the Scene a couple of years later, shopping for minidresses at Paraphernalia and Betsey Bunky Nini, getting up with Obetral and down with Valium, rooming at the Barbizon Hotel, popping in to see Andy Warhol at the Factory on 47th Street, pearing at the vintage racks of Limbo, buying their makeup at Cambridge Chemists, attending Be-Ins in Central Park, slopping for a 2 a.m. omelet or shrimp-and-lobster salad at the Brasserie on Park Avenue.

Jane Holzer in Andy Warhol's short film Jane Holzer (Toothbrush) [ST147].

Jane Holzer

The original Warhol girl doesn't think that much about her time in the limelight.

By Bridget Read

Jane Holzer’s calling card was her hair: a towering blonde bouffant, teased and flipped over like a cresting wave, that Tom Wolfe would dub her “huge hairy corona” when he anointed her the “Girl of the Year” in 1964. At first, she was mostly another society girl: a 23-year-old Palm Beach heiress and Park Avenue housewife who had gotten a taste of fame when David Bailey took her photo for British Vogue in 1963. Around that time, Holzer was walking down Lexington Avenue when she ran into Andy Warhol, who asked her to be in his movies. With that, Baby Jane, as she was known, became Warhol’s first superstar, her corona bobbing to every concert, soirée, and shindig that mattered. She was a blonde flag planted on the dance floor signifying that whatever was happening was happening: the first “It” girl of the modern age.