and i should have known

i had been searching for the paper i wrote for my film culture course last semester about edie sedgwick. i finally found it in my google documents yesterday. upon reading it, i was encapsulated with edie's person once more. i read a 46 chapter biography of her life in like half of a day. i was completely obsessed with getting to know this little lady.

so anyway, my point here is i thought i would share my paper. after looking over it again i see it could use some corrections, clarifications, and elaboration but i do not have time right now. maybe over x-mas break???

here it is nonetheless:


Edie Segdwick: As An Icon


The life of Ms. Edith Minturn Sedgwick Post was most appealingly glamorous but tinged with despair. Sedgwick was a socialite, heiress, actress, model, and the ultimate “It” girl of the 60's. Edie was famous for her role in Andy Warhol's underground films, because of her dazzling fashion sense, and her charming personality. She popularized the everlasting black tights and mini dresses or shirts. Her chandelier earrings and shortly chopped pixie cut blond hair were impeccable. Edie Sedgwick's legacy has continued so long after her untimely death because she was fascinating. She was a person everyone wanted to know, but could never exactly pinpoint. She was a spirited, girly, innocent, wildly disturbed, outrageous, rebellious creature. Almost faun-like, if touched she'd run scared from your outstretched hands. She was and is mesmerizing.

Edie embodies the culture of the 1960's. She had no inhibitions, she experimented heavily with drugs and sex, and lived in utter madness. Edie was and continues to be a character in a story that every ordinary person wants to be a part of, but can only watch from a distance. Edie had guts. She was outrageous. She was rebellious. She was a tragedy. She was this charismatic and enticing character, but she was vulnerable and she was sad. Edie is still an icon because she evokes a curious personality of self-destruction and outrageousness that went along with the 1960's and continues today because of her stunning capacity to captivate her audience. Whether in photograph or film, the viewer finds some way to relate to her. She has a presence on film, this stunning quality that has nothing to do with acting. She seems so real and human. There is a basis there for one to connect to her.

Today, through the film “Factory Girl” starring Sienna Miller, Edie's legacy is reacquainted with our culture. Ms. Sedgwick was never forgotten, but perhaps tucked away momentarily until we brought back her iconic style of dress. Essentially, Sienna Miller is an embodiment of the type of style Sedgwick made popular. Miller's use of leggings, black tights, and short dresses reincarnate Sedgwick. After chopping off her long blond hair, Miller took on Edie's look even more. Our culture, inspired by Miller's dress today, has taken hold of this fashion and run with it.

However, even before the film “Factory Girl (2007),” Edie was a fashion icon. In his fall 2005 collection, John Galliano used Sedgwick as inspiration (Marie Claire). Following the film, “Factory Girl,” the story of Edie became something of a spectacle in our culture. T-shirts, posters, and Edie's films and photographs became popular once more. Suddenly, numerous fashion blogs are sporting photos of Edie's leggings and dress combination. Bloggers gush about her stint as Warhol's muse and the sudden, and slightly fascinating death at 28.

Once described as being famous for being famous, her exploits were interesting to the common citizen. “The freedom and glamor of her life — smoking cigarettes, doing drugs, having casual affairs, being reckless with her money — has immense appeal, especially in our no-smoking, say-no-to-drugs, AIDS-ridden, economically worrisome era. Her horrible end (because of course the consequences of this carefree behavior caught up with her) soothes us with the thought that our more wholesome way of living is better (James 1). Today, we are engrossed by images of Brittney or Lindsey being sashayed off to prison for DUI's and drug possession. They are Edie's successors, but the reason Edie remains iconic is because of her magnetism. She has a special quality about her unfamiliar to Lohan or Spears. Edie was like a little girl. We sympathize, we do not judge. Edie's vulnerable character was evident and her need for attention proved she was seeking some sort of stability. She was loved for her struggle to remain on top and in the moment. Her untimely death allowed her to remain that tragically beautiful start that still is spoken about and resembled today.

I think the real appeal of Edie was the fact that her presence on screen made her quite unquestionably, the starlet. Sedgwick had this dainty, charismatic presence in the films she appeared in. She stole the show in the first film she ever was a part of, Vinyl. She was off to the right of the screen, however, her presence within the film is captivating. The audience is drawn to her. While said to have no real acting abilities, it was not necessary because she could dazzle the viewer by just being. “Edie's voice, gravelly, light, is a marvel (Koestenbaum 96).” Edie just had this naturally alluring quality that one is fascinated by so completely. One wants to continue listening, entranced by what she will say next, and how she will say it. She appears so vulnerable, her life so entirely tragic that the viewer wishes to deduce what she is thinking, feeling, and believing about her life. She was heavily into drugs, alcohol, and the sexual freedom representative of the 1960's, influencing the atmosphere of that culture. She graced parties, Andy Warhol's studio (The Factory) and Harvard University with her uniquely scattered personality.

Edie was described as, “[she was] the total essence of the fragmentation, the explosion, the uncertainty, the madness that we all lived through in the Sixties. The more outrageous you were, the more of a hero you became. With clothes, it was almost a contest to see who could come out with the most outrageous thing next (Stein 295).” Edie's sister, Saucie commented on her dress in the 1960's after Edie had moved to New York. She said, “suddenly [I] saw her in this little red fox fur waistcoat with matching hat and huge peacock-feather earrings, some kind of outlandish bag and black stockings, and high-heeled boots, none which was in fashion then at all (Stein 157-58).” Warhol said, “[actually] she invented all those new clothes and stuff. She looked so good (Stein 246).” Edie was ahead of the time in fashion and she became an inspiration to designers, appearing in Vogue and Life magazines (until they found she was associated with the drug scene).

She was a fashion icon because she was daring with what she wore. Edie replied to her sister's comment by saying, “I think it's fun (Stein 164). It was always about fun for Edie. Forever the daredevil (fashion or not), Edie was dangerously self-destructive during her lifetime. She would drive her Mercedes on acid (Stein 164). She set the Chelsea Hotel on fire because she fell asleep with a cigarette in her hand. She once said that she received injections called “speedballs,” which were shots in each arm, one of heroin and one of cocaine and speed (Stein 267). She could not take the shots standing up because she did not weigh enough. Her tragic displays of self-destruction were evident throughout her life, like tiny cries of help. The world could not help but stare as she continued the rampage through her life.

Sedgwick is, perhaps, still considered so iconic today because of her untimely death at age 28 by barbiturate overdose. Her sister, Suky, once said of her, “Suddenly her glamorous world would evaporate, would shatter...the absolute purity and defenselessness that belong to all the stories she told, and absolute tenderness. There would be openings in the clouds and she would throw her arms around me and cry (Stein 134).” Sedgwick was and has remained this sort of tragically beautiful star. She truly made her mark on the culture and abandoned that culture so quickly that we are left only to question what her life was truly like and whether or not the uninhibited path of heavy drug and alcohol abuse, casual affairs, and recklessness was genuinely as glamorous as Ms. Sedgwick made it seem.

The film she made shortly before her death, “Ciao! Manhattan” was a fictional recounting of the tragedies and escapades of her life through a narrator by the name of Susan Superstar, who lived in an emptied pool in the backyard of a rundown California mansion. The film, which features Edie on drugs in most parts, seems to be a “real” portrayal of Sedgwick's life. The film recounts tales from her days in New York and her meeting of Andy Warhol. The film ends with clips of Edie's marriage to Michael Post and it ties the supposedly fictional story of Susan with Edie's reality. It takes the audience through Edie's life, with her aid in the interpretation of it. The film itself seems extremely iconic because of the irony involved. Within the film, Sedgwick's character undergoes shock therapy and after filming, Edie herself must receive such treatments. The film is the last hurrah for Edie and the image of her used for the cover seems to be her legacy. She is looking up to the ceiling as if to say, “This is it.”

Edie's lifestyle was ridiculous, blazing through her inheritance, $80,000 in six months (Stein 167). She spent it on drugs, limousines, frivolous outfits, and leopard skin coats. There's a fascination about Sedgwick. She is the socialite that viewers want to get to know, to understand truly. She has the free and uninhibited life that some were afraid to take on. She was a living embodiment of the 60's revolution of freedom and free-living. Sedgwick was absolutely a symbol for all of this. In our culture today, we continue to see her as this completely liberal soul and we embrace it. Although it can be argued that she had her own chains to contend with, I think that adds to her persona, and thus her appeal. We are able to sympathize and relate to her while appreciating the sense of liberty she possessed.

Edie was, however, a manipulative and immature woman. She had a dark side to her that was selfish and irresponsible. Her freedom and abandon were at the cost of others. Edie burned her room at the Chelsea Hotel down because of falling asleep with a lit cigarette (she also started several small fires this way). She told her husband that she only married him because he visited her at the hospital. She told him she would have married anyone that dispensed her pills to her (Stein 407). Edie was hurtful at times, but it was often overlooked because she was so childlike and seemingly innocent. She knew exactly how to work it. Through this, however, she displays truly human characteristics that allow us to relate to her. She is real.

When pouring over her life, it is easy to see through her dark eyes and elf-like face why she could so easily captivate people. Her friend Tom Goodwin said, “I saw her desperate like a caged animal. Yet she had such energy...I mean she'd run people ragged (Stein 168).” Edie was absolutely ridiculous. She was all over the place, all the time. Warhol once said, “She always wanted to leave. Even if a party was good she wanted to leave...she couldn't wait to get to the next place (Stein 247).” A friend of hers also was quoted as saying, “Edie was very frail and vulnerable. She never finished a sentence, she never looked you in the face, she was never there (Stein 174).” Edie's life was especially tragic near the end. She was heavily into drug use, in and out of mental hospitals, and trying to find any way to remain in the spotlight whether in film or in her own life. The attention began to fade. At her wedding to Michael Post in July 1971, her brother's friend was reading palms and when he grabbed Edie's hand, he looked at it and then her. She just said simply, “Yes, I know (Stein 404).” It was as though Edie knew that she would end tragically, as if it was her destiny. She allowed herself to be positively uninhibited and reckless, until the ultimate end: her death.

In a culture grown out of heavy drug use, free love, absolute recklessness, and the quest for the outrageous, Edie is the ultimate icon. She is captivating and wild. Charismatic, but fragile. She pushes the limits of life without really noticing she is doing such. Her beautifully tragic life ended all too quickly, leaving the population in want of the real thoughts, feelings, and manners of Edith Sedgwick. She has remained an object of fascination; a mystery that can never be solved, but only puzzled over and appreciated for what it began. A revolution of sorts. A representation of the liberated human being getting lost in the marvels of drugs, sex, and fashion.








Works Cited

“Edie Sedgwick.” Marie Claire. 31 Jan 2008: Style Blog.

James, Caryn. “For Edie Sedgwick, A Belated 16th Minute.” 4 Feb 2007: New York Times Online.

Koestenbaum, Wayne. “Andy Warhol.” Penguin Group, New York: 2001.

Stein, Jean. Edited by George Plimpton. “Edie.” Alfred A. Knopf. New York: 1982.