Happy Birthday Twiggy

Actor, singer, cultural icon and one of the first supermodels, Twiggy celebrates her 70th birthday today. Here she is in a 1967 image from the Ford archive, overshadowing the experimental Ford Comuta electric city car.

Born Lesley Hornby in Neasden, London, on September 19, 1949, Twiggy shot to fame after a photo of her sporting a trendy new crop haircut was spotted hanging in a fashionable London hairdresser.

A few weeks later, she was hailed as "The Face of '66", and just one year later she was the toast of America – her arrival in New York was covered in Life and Newsweek magazines, while the New Yorker devoted 100 pages to the Twiggy "phenomenon".

Twiggy’s status as a cultural icon cannot be understated – she appeared with David Bowie on the cover of his seventh album, Pin Ups, had her own TV shows, and endorsed a series of products including Twiggy pens, Twiggy lunch boxes, Twiggy lashes, and an assortment of Twiggy cosmetics.

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