When Lauren Hutton started displaying herself for pay seven years ago, the ultimate fashion model was Veruschka, who was as tall as a basketball player, thin as an eyebrow pencil and mysterious as an Ingmar Bergman heroine. By those standards Hutton seemed to be in the wrong game. She is only 5 ft. 7½ in.—slightly below average for a mannequin. Worse, by her own rather exaggerated reckoning, she has a "lopsided face, crossed eyes, a bumpy nose, and a Huckleberry Finn gap between my front teeth." When Photographer Richard Avedon first saw her, he wrote her off as not having enough "intensity." He thought she was too much like "a Florida type on water skis — just another pretty girl."
Hutton, now 28, still looks orange-juice wholesome, and her funny flaws remain. Tastes change, however, and Hutton has become modeling's new superstar. Her 19th Vogue cover will appear in October. She is now getting film offers and requests to appear on the Carson, Cavett, Griffin and Sally Quinn shows. Recently she got one of her profession's great plums by signing to appear in all magazine and TV ads for Charles Revson's Ultima II cosmetics line. That two-year contract alone will bring her about $400,000.
What makes any face so magically salable? Hutton herself is not sure: "There is no work anybody does to justify such enormous sums. But that is the situation I am in, right or wrong."
The negotiations with Revson took months. Hutton recalls that "he sobbed, he gasped, he clutched his chest." In the end he also met her price. Revson, chairman of the Revlon Co., knew what he was after. Back in the '50s he built a successful campaign around Suzy Parker. For Ultima II, his high-priced line, he also wanted someone special.
A persona to sell cosmetics must have a much more subtle appeal than one hawking dresses, furs or bras. Garments speak for themselves, and the wearer must simply show them to good advantage. Makeup is something else. It blends with the face, and the potential customer cannot distinguish the product apart from the package. So Revson bought the exclusive advertising rights to Hutton's image because she has a "reachable, nonremote" quality. "She is a symbol," he says, "of the ability of the American woman to achieve beauty despite isolated features not in themselves beautiful."
Avedon believes that "all the great models are exceptions to the rule. Twiggy was too small, Parker too tall, Veruschka too eccentric, Jean Shrimpton too vacuous. Lauren is too ordinary." Vogue Editor in Chief Grace Mirabella says: "Year after year she gets better looking. It's the mood of the girl that comes through. She is a direct, strong, intelligent, straight woman. There's nothing chichi."