Happy 70th Birthday, Jean 'The Shrimp' Shrimpton - We Salute You And Your Supermodel Peers (PICTURES)

PICTURES: Was Jean Shrimpton The Most Glamorous Supermodel Ever?
Jean Shrimpton
Jean Shrimpton
PA

Jean Shrimpton - 'The Shrimp - was, arguably, THE icon of Sixties' swinging London, with her huge eyes, dark brown hair and short, short skirt.

Her job was cool, appearing on the front of magazines and travelling all over the world as one of the very first supermodels. She caused a storm wherever she went, including the Melbourne Cup Race where, in 1965, her hemline made it to the national news. And her boyfriends were very cool, first the photographer David Bailey who treated her as his muse and photographed her to new heights of stardom, and then the film star Terence Stamp, joining her as the other half of London's most beautiful couple.

Is there any pair like this today? Jean Shrimpton and Terence Stamp

There were other faces around, too - including Twiggy, now more famous for M&S ads and 'Next Top Model' judging, Grace Coddington, who later went behind the camera to design the pages of Vogue, and Sandra Paul, more recently seen on the arm her husband, MP Michael Howard.

So what set the Shrimp apart from the other faces, so that she remains remembered as the ultimate face of the era? Perhaps it's her guileless aloofness. For years, she has eschewed the limelight to stay in Cornwall where she and her husband run a hotel, with none of the brand-building in lingerie sets, pillow cases or panel game appearances that seduced many of the models who followed.

It's her 70th birthday today, but there probably won't be a Simon Cowell/Sir Elton-sized party. But, for many fans of that special period, she remains the special one. Here, we salute her and her gamine contemporaries... do they make them like they used to? Plus some more stunning pictures of The Shrimp and Stamp...

Twiggy

1960s Supermodels

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