Beginning with her baptismal photograph, which was published in Vogue, Marisa Berenson’s life has unfolded in the camera’s eye. It caught her at age 5 with her younger sister Berinthia (known as “Berry”), when their grandmother, the great surrealist-inspired designer Elsa Schiaparelli, made them matching ruby red dresses with shocking pink sashes for the girls’ appearance on the cover of Elle.
Later, under the tutelage of Diana Vreeland (a family friend), Berenson found herself transformed from an introverted 16-year-old into a sleekly self-possessed, green-eyed beauty, stepping lightly from her cultivated European background into the youthquake of a new generation. She was the great-grandniece, on her aristocratic mother’s side, of a famous Neapolitan astronomer, and on her diplomat father’s side, of the noted art historian Bernard Berenson. Suddenly she found herself cavorting in chiffon minidresses or curly aluminum wigs or — gasp! — naked, in far-flung locations, for the likes of David Bailey and Henry Clarke, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn.
Luchino Visconti cast her in “Death in Venice,” and her film career was off and running, though she still found time to go out every night, with Andy and Truman and Liza and Halston, at Studio 54 and le Sept and Xenon, and to intoxicate some of the era’s most desirable bachelors, from her first love, the sugar heir/surfer/photographer Arnaud de Rosnay, to the actors Helmut Berger and Sam Shepherd, to the French banking scion David de Rothschild.
De Rosnay’s dreamy photograph of a young Marisa, wearing a furry white Chanel suit and reclining on leopard skins in a Rolls- Royce, graces the cover of “Marisa Berenson: A Life in Pictures” (Rizzoli, $60), a collection of images, out in October, ranging over more than half a century of life and work, edited by her friend the photographer Steven Meisel. Thirty-five photographs of Berenson (many not included in the book) are currently on view at the Donna Karan boutique (819 Madison Avenue), in a show curated by Shawn Waldron, through Oct. 11. From the street, blown up, you can see Patrick Litchfield’s very first test shot of the tender 16-year-old for British Vogue, side by side with a photograph of the mature beauty taken some 43 years later.
Over late summer tea at the Carlyle Hotel, and before setting off for her second home in Paris the next day, Berenson spoke to me about her illustrious grandmother, about finding spiritual enlightenment with the Beatles, about life after “Barry Lyndon” and about her hopes for her daughter’s generation (Starlight Melody Randall, born 1977).
L.C.: You mention in the book that your grandmother didn’t want you to pursue a career in fashion.
M.B.: I guess she wanted me to marry and have a normal lifestyle. She had been through so much, she was a single mother, and a career woman, which in her day wasn’t easy. So when she saw me taking that route, I think she sort of went, Oh gosh.
L.C.: Also in the book, in a conversation with Diane von Furstenberg, you describe yourself as shy.
M.B.: Actually, it’s a bit contradictory, because I was very shy and yet I was able to do nude pictures, and to go out looking outrageous. I guess it was my way of expressing myself. And modeling was very freeing for me. It just took off so fast, this whirlwind of a life, working with all these great photographers, and surrounded by these wonderful, creative people, Andy and all that. All those people touched me, because they were unique and exceptional. It wasn’t just superficial high society.
L.C.: Is there a downside to being an “It” girl?
M.B.: I didn’t think about it that way. I thought it was nice to be appreciated.
L.C.: So you were living in New York when you started your career.
M.B.: Yes, but I was traveling a lot, back and forth to Paris, and to different countries for Vogue. I went to India, Australia, the Mauritius Islands, Italy, of course, and Iran. Nowadays you could never be photographed on the roof of a blue mosque, wearing these chiffon clothes, and makeup, and half naked. You’d be shot dead.
L.C.: I guess India was important for you.
M.B.: India changed my life, because I was searching for my spiritual path, and I ended up in an ashram in Rishikesh with Maharishi and the Beatles. We’d sit on the floor at night, and George and Ringo would play the guitar, and we’d meditate all day, and have meals together, and become vegetarians, and live in huts. But it was just normal. It wasn’t like, “Oh, here are the Beatles.” The most important thing was my transcendental meditation. I was searching for the light.
L.C.: Halston comes up a lot in your book.
M.B.: Halston was like a big brother. He gave me away at my second wedding, and he did my dress. He was a great person and a wise man. And he had wonderful taste, obviously. He was a pioneer in his domain. He was one of the designers who really personified the American woman at her best: active and modern, clean and crisp. He was definitely the designer who made it all new.
L.C.: You also say that [Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film] “Barry Lyndon” was a mixed blessing for you.
M.B.: Yes, it sort of crystallized me in an image, a beautiful image. But as an actress you want to show other facets of yourself. And it’s hard to be told that you’ll never be as beautiful in another movie, and that you’ll probably never do a movie as great as that. But I can’t complain because it’s also accompanied me in the most positive ways. There was just this huge Kubrick show in Paris. I was the godmother of that show. And it never stops. Dear Stanley, I love him dearly, I thank him every day of my life.
L.C.: You’re still modeling and acting.
M.B.: I still have fun, and I love doing it. I’d like to be doing more in film. I work a lot in Europe, but in America it’s a whole other world now. The projects in the film industry are either huge
or nothing.
L.C.: I think in Europe there’s also a slightly different attitude toward women aging.
M.B.: Yes, in America they’re obsessed with plastic and youth, and a certain kind of perfection. But maybe we’ve reached a turning point. The world is in such a terrible state, there’s so much insecurity and danger and unrest, that I think people are coming back to more real and solid values. People are finally thinking, It’s time to wake up now. And there’s a wonderful generation of young people who are so aware, and strong, and clear, and who want the world to be a better place.