Marisa Berenson has never needed to wrangle party invitations. The granddaughter of legendary designer Elsa Schiaparelli, she was all of 16 years old when Vogue editor Diana Vreeland laid eyes on her at a debutante party in New York and decided Berenson needed to start modeling. Shortly after, she was on a plane headed to Paris for a David Bailey shoot that ran in Vogue's September issue. Ever since, Berenson's life has been filled with beautiful people and places. Her "many lifetimes on this planet" include everything from acting—in movies like Cabaret and Barry Lyndon—to a 1973 Newsweek cover that anointed her “The Queen of the Scene.” There’s an Alice in Wonderland-like quality to the way she tumbled into close friendships with Andy Warhol and Karl Lagerfeld and navigated the Studio 54 set. “Things just happened naturally,” she says. “It was all organic.” Occasionally, the 79-year-old will still pop up on runways, walking for Dior, Thom Browne, and Tom Ford. Now, she spends most of her time in Marrakesh, where she practices yoga and meditates daily. Her poolside, bohemian glamour is coming to Zara thanks to her new apparel and homeware collaboration with the brand, which hits stores June 5. "Endless Summer” takes inspiration from memories of vacationing in Capri and Saint-Tropez, breezing into nightclubs in strappy sandals, diaphanous dresses, and colorful caftans. "It's more of a mood than anything,” says Berenson. “It’s about happy glamour, and feeling free. Every woman deserves that.”
“I was very existential as a child, and I wasn't a particularly happy child,” says Berenson. Born in New York but raised around Europe, her upbringing was strict and her family followed the conventions common to high society, such as sending daughters to finishing schools. Her grandmother, Elsa Schiaparelli (middle, left), retired from fashion before Berenson was born. “She never talked about her fashion house.” Meanwhile, her mother, Gogo (front, left), was a prominent socialite. In the photo above, “I was sixteen and this was my first Christmas in New York. My father was ill and he came out of the hospital to spend Christmas with us.” Berenson was close with her sister, Berry (back), who tragically died on 9/11 as a passenger on one of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers.
“Modeling was always like acting, except you don’t have the dialogue,” says Berenson, who modeled for most of the 1960s. “When I made my first movie, Death in Venice [in 1971], with [Luchino] Visconti, he said to me, ‘You have this freedom, and you have this relationship with the camera that is like a seduction.’” In front of a camera, “something comes alive and I transform into whoever I want to be.” Above, Berenson poses for Bert Stern in a bias cut dress for the January 1966 issue of Vogue, edited by Diana Vreeland.
“We had an intimacy, Andy [Warhol] and I,” says Berenson, who was a fixture at his Factory in 1970s Manhattan. “I really loved him. He was a man of few words, but we so understood each other. We would stand on the outside, looking in, and he would just say, ‘Oh, isn’t this beautiful? Isn’t she glamorous? And isn’t he something?’” Above, they are pictured attending the Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—better-known now as the Met Gala—in 1975.
Of all the haunts that Berenson misses, Jimmy’s, the legendary Paris nightclub, might top the list. “What fun we had,” says Berenson. “God, so much fun. We had so much freedom in those days.” Above, she’s pictured at the club in 1971 with Florence Ginda (center), a close friend from boarding school, and the English man Ginda was dating at the time. The outfit? “I always mix everything together,” she says. “I never think of what I'm going to wear. It always comes together naturally.”
In the 1970s, Paloma Picasso, Loulou de la Falaise, and Berenson all served as muses for Yves Saint Laurent. His 1971 collection was inspired by Picasso, who often dressed in her mother’s vintage clothing and quirky flea market finds. The French press was very critical of the show (which was nicknamed the “Scandal” collection), but Berenson says she always “had a blast” in the designer’s orbit. “Yves was the one who kind of baptized me as the It Girl of the ’70s,” she says. “Yves was incredibly sensitive and fragile, yet incredibly strong and powerful. I loved him, and the fact that I loved him was part of the reason that I always wanted to wear all his clothes.”
In 1974, the Met Gala “wasn't people dressed up for a fantasy," says Berenson. “In the old days it was just a fabulous event where everybody was beautifully dressed and you discovered great exhibits and met all the interesting people in New York." She attended that year’s gala with Berry (left) and Berry's husband, the actor Anthony Perkins (center).
Above, Berenson is pictured with Diana Vreeland at Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1975. The Vogue editor’s fondness for Berenson plunged her into a world where things moved faster and looser than they did at boarding school. Vreeland, who was friendly with Berenson’s grandmother, took the young model under her wing. “She said, ‘Marisa, through life you will need discipline in everything you do,’” recalls Berenson. “It’s the best advice, and I put it to everything. I came to consider her my godmother. She was my protector.”
Berenson put on a Madame Grès halter dress for the Los Angeles premiere of Barry Lyndon (1975). In Stanley Kubrick’s Academy Award-winning film, she dazzled as Lady Lyndon. She celebrated its opening with, from right, David Geffen, actress Marlo Thomas, and Barry Diller, who would go on to marry “my best friend, Diane von Furstenberg.”
In 1978, the Muppets invited Berenson to come on their show as a guest host. The running joke was that Miss Piggy wanted to be just like the gorgeous actress. “I had a wonderful relationship with Miss Piggy,” says Berenson. “If you have a chance to watch it with any children in your life, you should. My granddaughter is eight years old, and she loves it so much.”
In 1976, Berenson married her first husband, rivet manufacturer James Randall. “This is a picture that Warhol took in my bathroom, with my curlers on, as I was getting ready to get married in my house in Beverly Hills.” She’s pictured with one of her bridesmaids, Florence. “It was so wonderfully chaotic. Valentino was in the bathroom ironing my dress and I remember Liza Minnelli down on the floor, helping me get into my shoes.” Berenson and Randall welcomed their daughter, Starlite, the following year.
“At Studio 54, I was always having a great time.” Above, she’s pictured at the club in 1977, wearing a ruby and diamond pendant that Randall gave her. Around the time she was becoming a fixture of the jet set, Berenson traveled to India to study yoga and meditation. She ran into the Beatles at her ashram, and hung out with them at night while they played music. The lessons from that trip stuck. "I was always attracted to the light and the positive," she says. “I didn't want to go into the drug scene or the dark scene, because that's not who I am, and it scared me." Her drink of choice: “orange juice.”
For Berenson’s 34th birthday party, in February 1981, she, naturally, wore a dress with a heart-shaped bodice. “Valentine’s Day is my favorite day of the year, because it's the day of love, and I'm a romantic,” says Berenson, whose own Valentines have included the surfer-photographer-sugar heir Arnaud de Rosnay, the actor Sam Shepard, and the French scion David de Rothschild.
"Brilliant" is the word Berenson uses to describe Karl Lagerfeld, the longtime creative director of Chanel. “You could talk to him on any subject, because he had read every book,” she says. “He knew everything about everything.” He was also wickedly funny. “He always had such witty comments; there was side commentary to everything. In French, the word we have for that quality is dérision. It’s not the same thing in English — it’s more playful.” Above, Berenson (center) is pictured with the actress Lina Gray (left) and Lagerfeld after his Chanel runway show in March 1984.
In 1984, Berenson brought her daughter, Starlite, to a party at the nightclub Limelight that celebrated the publication of her book, Dressing Up, written for women who wanted to get ahead in the cutthroat work world of the early ’80s while still staying stylish. “At the time, women were thinking they had to look masculine and serious and be taken seriously, and so the fashion was quite meh,” says Berenson. Starlite is now a licensed therapist and mother to an eight year old girl who calls her glamorous grandmother “Misi Moo.”
Sins, a 1986 television adaptation of Judith Gould’s juicy novel about the 1980s jet set, only lasted one season but it made quite a splash. “I was in it with Lauren Hutton (third from right) and Ariel Don Boll (far right). We put on our shoulder pads and traveled to the most glamorous places. We filmed in Paris, Venice and Rome.” Berenson’s character, Luba Tcherina, was a high-ranking publishing executive whose mentor-turned-nemesis, Helene Junot, was played by Joan Collins (second from right). “Joan’s a fantastic woman. I love her. We had the best time.”
Above, Berenson is pictured with her late friend Iris Apfel, the interior designer and fashion icon, at a 2017 luncheon. “She was afraid of nothing, and she was a living work of art,” says Berenson. Her bold style served as a reminder to Berenson that fashion can be as expressive as a poem or oil painting. “When I look at Iris, and see how inventive and imaginative and daring she is willing to be, I feel free.”
Berenson was in no rush to capitalize on the collaboration craze, but when Zara approached her, it felt right. “I wanted to create moments and feelings, and the team was fantastic, because they were so open to creativity.” The 45-piece capsule collection, which includes everything from bikinis to sleep masks, “is the first real collaboration I’ve ever done,” says Berenson with a laugh. When brainstorming the collection, there was no question that caftans would be front and center. "You slip them on and you can go to the beach or go out at night,” she says. “They’re the ultimate in summery, luxurious ease."
