Bianca Jagger, the Reigning Queen of Studio 54

Vogue UK December 1974, ph. David Bailey
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Bianca Jagger (born Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias, 2 May 1945) is a Nicaraguan-born socialite turned human rights activist.

She was born in Managua, Nicaragua. Her father was a successful import-export merchant and her mother a housewife. They divorced when Bianca was ten and she stayed with her mother, who had to take care of three children on a small income. She received a scholarship to study political science in France at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. 

Bianca & Mick Jagger

Bianca Jagger is known for being both the first wife of Mick Jagger and one of the most impeccably stylish women in the world. Bianca’s exotic beauty caught the Rolling Stones’ frontman’s eye at a party in France after one of their concerts in 1970 and they married ( Bianca wore a YSL Le Smoking jacket on her wedding day) a year later in St Tropez. Bianca has since said that her marriage was over as soon as it began, but black and white photographs of the cooler-than-cool pair dripping with ’70s glamour suggest it was beautiful while it lasted. Their split did little to snuff out Bianca’s jet-setting, party-going reputation, and she was a solid fixture on Manhattan’s Studio 54 scene always decked out in luxurious furs, glittering sequins and exquisitely tailored white YSL trouser suits.

A close friend and photographic favourite of Andy Warhol (her daughter Jade once urinated on a piece of his artwork), Bianca also personified the elegant Halston woman along with Liza Minnelli and Lauren Bacall. It was Halston she wore to her 30^th birthday party at Studio 54 where she famously rode on a white horse lead by a semi-clad man.

Studio 54

Steve Rubel(owner Studio 54), Halston and Bianca Jagger at Studio 54, 1978
Halston, Bianca & Andy WarholWith Angie & David BowieElisabeth Taylor, Halston & Bianca
Halston, Bianca,Liza Minnelli & Micheal Jackson
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The It Girl of the decade, Bianca’s glam look ranged from unbuttoned blouses, wide-lapel suits, bold choker necklaces, one-shoulder dresses, and fierce facial expressions. As she puts it well, “Style is knowing what suits you, who you are, and what your assets are. It is also accepting it all.”

Wearing Zandra Rhodes Wearing Ossie ClarkWith Yves Saint Laurent.

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Studio 54 Fable

Bianca Jagger wants to set the record straight about a certain night at Studio 54, which has haunted the annals of night life lore since 1977. “Mick Jagger and I walked into Studio 54,” she wrote in a letter to the editor in the Financial Times, finally setting to rest the rumors that she rode into the famed nightclub on a white horse.

As with most rumors, the story has some basis in fact. Fashion designer Halston threw a 30th birthday party at Studio 54 for Jagger, who at the time was married to Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger. At the party, a naked giant covered in gold glitter led Bianca, clad in Halston and Manolo Blahniks, around the night club on horseback. The moment was captured by noted fashion photographerRose Hartman and the image went whatever was the 1977 equivalent of viral, slowly becoming emblematic of the excesses (read: fun) of the era and eventually becoming a legend.

However somewhere along the way, the story was twisted to include the detail that Jaggerrode into the nightclub on the horse, which would certainly be a memorable feat. However, Jagger took to the Financial Times today to declare that detail preposterous and, as an animal rights defender, downright offensive. In the letter to the editor, she wrote: “It is one thing to, on the spur of the moment, get on a horse in a night club, but it quite another to ride in on one.”

She explained that the club’s owner, Steve Rubell, had brought the horse into a club as a lark, after seeing a photo of her riding one in her home of Nicaragua. When she saw the horse inside the club, Jagger thought it would be fun to hop on and take it for a quick spin. Contrary to rumor, she did not ride the white horse down 54th street and into the velvet-roped doors of Studio 54. In her letter to the editor, Jagger wrote: “I often ask myself how people visualise this fable . . . Where was Mick during this time? Was he holding the reins and pulling me and the horse through the streets of New York, or following submissively behind me!?”

She closed the note with the hope that her letter would finally “put this Studio 54 fable — out to pasture.”

By Melissa Locker for Vanity Fair

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Wearing her backstage pass on het shoe

info:

WikiPedia

http://www.oystermag.com

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/04/bianca-jagger-studio-54