Lauren Hutton

Biography

Lauren Hutton (born Mary Laurence Hutton; November 17, 1943) is an American model and actress. Born and raised in the southern United States, Hutton relocated to New York City in her early adulthood to begin a modeling career. Though she was initially dismissed by agents for a signature gap in her teeth, Hutton signed a modeling contract with Revlon in 1973, which at the time was the biggest contract in the history of the modeling industry. Over her career, Hutton has worked both as a model and an actress, making her film debut in the sports drama Paper Lion in 1968, opposite Alan Alda. She also played central roles in The Gambler (1974) and American Gigolo (1980), and later appeared on television in the network series Paper Dolls, Falcon Crest, Central Park West and Nip/Tuck. Hutton has continued to model into her seventies, appearing in numerous advertising campaigns for H&M, Lord and Taylor, and Alexander Wang, and performed on the runway for Tom Ford's spring 2012 collection, as well as for Bottega Veneta at the 2016 New York Fashion Week.

== Early life == Hutton was born Mary Laurence Hutton on November 17, 1943, in Charleston, South Carolina, to Lawrence Bryan Hutton and Minnie (Behrens) Hutton. Her father was a native of Oxford, Mississippi, where he grew up next-door to William Faulkner, and was stationed with the U.S. Army Air Corps in England, during World War II when Lauren was born. After the war, Hutton's mother divorced her father in 1945, and she relocated to Miami, and later, Tampa, Florida. Hutton spent the remainder of her early life in Tampa, not knowing her father, who died June 24, 1956, from a heart attack at age 37. He was working as a farm editor for The Cotton Trade Journal, living in Shelby, Tennessee, with his second wife, Mary Elizabeth (Everette) Hutton. He is buried at Oxford Memorial Cemetery, in Oxford, Mississippi. "Never meeting my father was the most painful thing in my life," Hutton said in 1996. "I look just like him and I'm named for him, but all I have are these two books of his letters and drawings from the war. The day of my birth he wrote and told me about our ancestors, what he thought was important in the world, what books I should read and what he wanted for me." After her mother remarried in 1949, Hutton took the surname "Hall", although her stepfather never formally adopted her. She graduated from Chamberlain High School in Tampa in 1961 and was among the first students to attend the University of South Florida in 1961. Hutton later relocated with former Tampa disc jockey Pat Chamburs, a war veteran 19 years her senior who had lost a leg in a kamikaze attack, to New York City, where she worked as a "Bunny" waitress at the Playboy Club, at which time she made her first appearance on camera as a decoy contestant on To Tell The Truth in 1963. The pair lived in Europe, the Bahamas and later moved to New Orleans, where she attended Newcomb College, then a coordinate college within Tulane University, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1964.

== Career ==

=== 1964–2007: Early work and Revlon ===

Hutton returned to New York by herself in the mid-1960s, changed her name to "Lauren Hutton" and embarked on a career as a model. She was advised by agents to hide the gap in her teeth and tried using morticians' wax to cover the gap; she later used a cap to hide it, which she would often swallow, laugh out, or misplace. Hutton eventually retained this "imperfection" and the All Movie Guide stated that it "gave her on-camera persona a down-home sensibility that other, more ethereal models lacked." She continued to book modeling jobs, and appeared in a Chanel advertisement in 1968, photographed by Richard Avedon. In 1973, Hutton signed a contract with Revlon cosmetics, worth US$250,000 a year for 20 days' work (equivalent to $1,810,000 in 2025), a professional relationship that lasted for 10 years. At the time, it was the biggest contract in the history of the modeling industry. Hutton's initial contract with Revlon involved representation of the Ultima II brand. Twenty years later, she signed a new contract with Revlon to be the spokeswoman for Results, a collection of corrective moisturizing treatments. Her contract with Revlon garnered Hutton further modeling work, and she became a "cover girl," appearing on the front cover of Vogue a record 26 times. In 1982, Hutton appeared in two Pepsi Light commercials, one where she strips down to her one-piece swimsuit and dives into a swimming pool and one where she gets all wet when the shower turns on by itself. In 1988, she appeared in a campaign for Barneys New York, and in 1993, performed as a runway model for designer Calvin Klein, to which the New York Times responded by publishing an article stating that Hutton was "just as good as the current flock of fledglings." In 1997, Hutton became a brand ambassador and appeared in multiple advertising campaigns for the Australian department store David Jones. In 2001, she was replaced by Megan Gale. Hutton was presented on the November 1999 Millennium cover of American Vogue as one of the "Modern Muses". Following her recovery from a motorcycle accident in 2000, she became the spokeswoman for her own signature brand of cosmetics, "Lauren Hutton's Good Stuff", a line of cosmetic products for mature women. The brand was sold primarily in the USA, but was also available through secondary distribution channels throughout Europe and South America. In October 2005, Hutton was interviewed on ABC's Good Morning America program in relation to the future release of an edition of Big magazine that was entirely dedicated to Hutton's career and included eight pages of nude photos. Hutton agreed to pose nude for the feature, titled "Lauren Hutton: The Beautiful Persists", when she was 61 years old, and explained to GMA:

I want them [women] not to be ashamed of who they are when they're in bed. Society has told us to be ashamed ... The really important [thing] is that women understand not to listen to a 2,000-year-old patriarchal society. Hutton, who is supposedly one of four women offered US$1 million by Larry Flynt to pose nude, also explained that she first sought permission from her fourteen godchildren, who told her the photographs would be "inspirational".

=== 2008–2021: Runway and campaigns === In 2008, Hutton accepted an offer from Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen to appear in the lookbook for their clothing line The Row, and explained in 2010: "I saw the clothes, and they were wonderful, real simple, minimalist designs... Ash had a place on the beach, so we did it at her place... And they would dance on the deck, and I would do what they were doing. And it was good." During the same year, retailer Mango launched a fashion collection inspired by Hutton's personal style, and she also appeared in Lord & Taylor's fall/winter and spring collections. The following year, she was featured in a campaign by Badgley Mischka. Alongside celebrity models such as Iman and Paulina Porizkova, Hutton was one of the panel members in a roundtable discussion for the "Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion" gala, an annual event organized by the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute. Held in May 2009, the discussion occurred at New York's Minetta Tavern. Photographs of Hutton were also displayed as part of the exhibition The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion that was taking place at The Met and acknowledged the significance of fashion models. A third-party licensing brand of the Jim Henson Company, Henson Independent Properties (HIP), entered into an agreement with Hutton in November 2010 to act as the global licensing agent for her merchandising program. Targeted at women over 40 years of age, the brand launched products such as eyewear, handbags, and luggage, and home décor, globally in 2012. HIP's senior vice president at the time referred to Hutton as a "trailblazer" in the press release. Hutton was also a guest judge on the fashion designer reality television show Project Runway in 2010, also appearing in advertisements for J.Crew the same year. In 2011, Hutton walked the runway for Tom Ford's spring 2012 collection, and was selected as the house model for the Alexis Bittar jewelry brand. Designer Alexis Bittar, a recipient of the CFDA Accessory Designer of the Year award, personally selected Hutton after choosing Joan Collins for the previous year. Hutton stated that Bittar's jewelry is "like art and still doesn't look like anything I have ever seen." Her photos for the campaign were shot by Jack Pierson. Hutton then appeared alongside people such as actress Shuya Chang and Annie Lennox's daughter Tali Lennox in the spring 2011 ad campaign for the Club Monaco retail brand. The lookbook was photographed by Ryan McGinley, the youngest photographer to be featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art at the time of the Club Monaco shoot. She appeared in a campaign title "Do Something" by designer Alexander Wang, alongside Rod Stewart and Kate Moss in 2015, and was featured in Tod's Timeless Icons retrospective in 2016. She was also featured in H&M's fall 2016 video campaign alongside Hari Nef. In 2016 for Milan Fashion Week, Hutton walked the runway for Bottega Veneta's Spring 2017 show.

== Film and television career ==