Chelita Secunda

Short Biography

Chelita Salvatori was born to a wealthy white Trinidadian family - her mother, Connie, was English, and her father’s family were from Corsican origin. As a girl, Chelita was sketched by Picasso, and was educated at the Lycee in South Kensington, London, and in Paris, from where she ran away because, as her childhood friend Barry Powell recalls, “she hated the nuns”. When she was 18, her father died from burns after his yacht had blown up. Returning to London in 1963, Chelita Salvatori was taken up by the photographer Norman Parkinson, a family friend whose introductions helped launch her into the fluid 1960s society: “It was like, ..Have you met John Lennon? And this is Princess Margaret’”, recalled the artist Kevin Whitney. Parkinson also introduced her to Harpers Bazaar, beginning a career in journalism during which she worked for IPC (as features editor for Woman), and as fashion editor of Nova.She also met and married the pop manager Tony Secunda. In 1966, when the designer Ossie Clark’s collection combined blue and green, “a radical breakthrough” according to Henrietta Rous, Secunda “dyed her hair blue to celebrate and became his PR”. She joined Ossie Clark and Alice Pollock’s venture, Quorum, as promoter of Clark’s designs, and would work with Sir Mark Palmer in his model agency, English Boy.Soon Chelita was on phone number terms with the Beatles and the Stones, and was responsible for hiring such models as Kari-Ann Jagger and Amanda Lear - later to become cover girls for Roxy Music, a band whose style owed something to Secunda’s own glamorous image. She pre- empted glam rock with her “mad rainbow eye make-up - green and orange, her cheeks highlighted in pink, and over that, reflective diamonds and sequins”.In 1970 Chelita was engaged by Marc Bolan’s wife June as PR for Bolan’s group T.Rex.As the producer Tony Visconti recalled, “Chelita saw that Marc was very pretty. It was her idea to take Marc round town and hit the women’s shops, getting him the feather boas and the beautifully embroidered jackets he wore. [She] was the first person to really make up Marc. She didn’t just put some eye make-up on him, she threw glitter on his cheeks.” In 1972 Chelita made a cameo appearance in Bolan’s film, Born To Boogie, dressed as a nun.She was Mickey’s lover during the heyday of the Rex and like Mickey...Chelita battled serious addiction to heroin for many years.In 1979 Chelita left London for Trinidad with the intention of “escaping the smack stigma and setting up a small hotel, ” And Chelita did recover, attending Narcotics Anonymous; in 1988 she went to the Wiltshire clinic “Clouds”, and kicked the habit. Like her friends Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull, “they all made their journeys in recovery in the same way, ” recalled Field, “Anita was a big inspiration to Chelita.”In the mid-1980s she became the London correspondent for the Parisian magazine City; and later performed the same role for the influentual Japanese magazine Hanatsubaki. Jarman gave her a part in his 1986 film Caravaggio.Chelita organised the Alternative Miss World competitions for Andrew Logan, who had known her since the early days. Logan’s 1987 portrait shows her clad in a bright yellow turban, with a heart containing a portrait of her daughter, Tallulah. Chelita had only recently moved to Marrakesh, where she had been working single- handedly to open a hotel, an effort which may have brought on the heart attack that killed her. “Chelita was one of the most dynamic people I’ve ever met, ” said Logan. Chelita was already a legend among her friends.