VINTAGE ICON: Tina Chow
Model, muse, designer, AIDs activist & vintage obsessive. The brightly burning flame of Tina Chow
I first encountered Tina Chow, radiant, in the Instamatics of Antonio Lopez. Swaddled in a red puffa jacket (with apparently not much underneath) or majestic in a gauzy tangerine evening dress and red lipstick. Who was this elfin Eurasian beauty who could strike such a pose? A little light Googling turned up striking Warhol Polaroids, soft black and white portraits by Herb Ritts, and the identity of the sitter: Tina Chow, model, fashion icon, wife of the iconic celeb restauranteur Michael âMr Chowâ Chow. Throughout the hedonistic glory days of the 70s and 80s, Ms Chow was the hostess with the mostesâ style â first in London, then around the world as the Mr Chow empire became global. Her marriage landed her into the elite artistic circles of her time, but that grace â that poise â was all her own.
Tina Chow (nĂ©e Bettina Louise Lutz) was born in Ohio in 1950, the child of a Japanese war bride mother and a German-American father. The family moved back to Japan in 1966, where a young Tina found early modelling success as the face of Shiseido. It was in a Tokyo department store that the 21-year-old was first spotted by the fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez, who introduced her to her future husband, Michael Chow. They got married in London in 1973 and celebrated at Mr Chowâs, âwhere Bianca Jagger upstaged the blushing bride by arriving late with nine-year-old Tatum OâNeal, both decked out in white dresses and wide-brimmed hats and carrying walking sticks.â [1]
The newlywed Mrs Chow had a natural pizzazz for restaurant work â her exquisite taste and natural charm added a new sense of magnetism to the London celebrity hotspot. According to one contemporary report: âYou went to Mr. Chow to show off, or to check out who was in town from everywhere that mattered. But what kept you coming back, night after night, year after year for almost a decade, was the aura of Tina Chow ⊠Tina Chow, Tina Chow, Tina Chow, whispered the slaves of style in her heady wake. Whatâs she wearing, whereâs she going, whoâs she talking to? When it came to taste, she was like DiMaggio at the plate or Marilyn on a subway grate-she knew she had it, and there was nothing she could do about it.â [2]
Striking beauty and insider access to the upper echelons of the art and fashion world made Chow an obvious muse. On top of modelling in fashion campaigns, Chow sat for portraits by Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Lord Snowdon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Steven Meisel, Herb Ritts, Helmut Newton and, of course, her friend Andy Warhol. Newton's remains one of the most memorable, showing her trussed up in Japanese rope bondage while her husband serves a flute of champagne. In more conventional society portraits, her refined sense of style shines through.
Chow was an ardent vintage fan. She collected haute couture pieces by CristĂłbal Balenciaga, Christian Dior, Madeleine Vionnet, and in particular, Mariano Fortuny. That delicately pleated tangerine silk dress from the Instamatics? Thatâs the Fortuny Delphos dress, first made in 1907 and named after a classical Greek sculpture. (They are now some of the most collectable vintage items in the world.) Itâs said that when Michael Chow first bought her a jewel-pink pleated Fortuny gown, she took it apart to see how it was made, then restored it. âDoing this with other items of vintage clothing, especially her Fortuny collection, became a passion.â
In 1992, the year of Chow's tragic early death from AIDs-related complications, the Fashion Institute of Technology held an exhibition of Chow's magnificient collection. The accompanying catalogue, Flair: Fashion Collected by Tina Chow, remains a key resouce for Chow fans and fashion historians alike â after her death, the collection was auctioned off and dispersed around the globe.
Despite this penchant for pre-war couture (and eye-catching cocktail jewellery), Chowâs day-to-day style was more pared-back. She would combine luxurious star pieces won at auction with inexpensive flea market finds or prosaic white cotton t-shirts. She is said to have had the same pair of simple black cigarette pants remade for her by Kenzo each season. Chow made the opulent unfussy and the unfussy opulent, dashing Japanese minimalist aesthetics with a soupçon of American decadence; Karl Lagerfeld credits her with inventing âminimal chicâ.
Though straight, Chow is something of a queer icon with her boyish dress sense and Eton crop hairstyle, said to have been clipped at a New York City barbershop. She set trends for straight women and gay men alike: writing in 1992, Maureen Orth commented that âyoung men in London and New York wake up, pomade their short-cropped hair, throw on her signature uniform of pressed white T, cashmere cardigan, and narrow slacks, and declare, Today Iâm Tina Chow!â[3]
This queer icon status is, of course, cemented by her activism for HIV/AIDs. Chow was the first high-profile heterosexual woman known to have contracted HIV, having had an affair with the bisexual French aristocrat Kim d'Estainville in the mid-1980s (d'Estainville would die from AIDs in 1990). In her final years, she turned her back on the glamour and decadence of the London and New York social scenes (âI lost several friends to AIDS and I felt my life slipping away while I continued to party,â she told the Chicago Tribune), focusing instead on charity work, meditation and holistic healing. She moved to the rugged California coastline and began to hand-make jewllery.
Chow's first jewellery collection sold at Bergdorffâs and her pieces are now highly collectable. Reflective of her style, they are both masculine and feminine, eastern and western. She combined traditional bamboo weaving techniques (for which she employed a Japanese master craftsman) and rough, uncut healing crystals, often concealed in the design. In one of her most well-known pieces, the Kyoto Bracelet, six pieces of pieces of coarse rose quartz rattle around inside a fetishistic black bamboo bangle. Though holistic in approach, the result was far from hippy-dippy.
In an essay for Critical Flame, Cynthia Cruz argues that it wasnât just the crystals, but the act of making that felt healing for Chow: âThe act of making, and in particular, the act of making from nothing and/or from remnants or from scrap ⊠is a phenomenal act of transformation. By using remnants as the centerpiece of a work is to invert the meaning of those objects. Chowâs inclusion of bamboo both transforms the bamboo from an invasive overgrowth into a prized possession while questioning the very idea of what it means to be Japanese.â[4]
Having spent so many years as a model, hostess, wife and muse, itâs heartening that Chow was able to find an avenue for her creative expression before she died. The tragedy is that it wouldnât have much time to flourish.
Rosa Vertov (@VertovVertov)
[1]Â https://maureenorth.com/1992/04/ciao-tina/
[2] ibid.
[3]Â http://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/people-events/article/2130316/remembering-tina-chow-style-icon-70s-and-80s
[3]Â https://maureenorth.com/1992/04/ciao-tina/
[4]Â http://criticalflame.org/tina-chows-articulate-silence/
