For a long time I thought Edie Sedgwick was used by Andy Warhol, for her wealth, her connections to the upper class and her beautiful physical appearance, but after a deep dive into Edie’s life, my opinion changed. Andy Warhol was a user and may have used Edie to a certain extent. She introduced him to some very wealthy people, whom she convinced to buy some of his work and Edie’s appearance in his films Vynil and Horse generated so much interest, Andy decided Edie would be his ‘Superstar’, so she could attract more people to go and see his movies, but Edie did her utmost to be noticed by and involved with Warhol and she was the one who stepped out of Warhol’s Factory to be signed up by Bob Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman. So the relationship worked both ways, Edie Sedgwick whose real name was Edith Minturn Sedgwick was born in April 1943 in Santa Barbara, California. Her parents were Francis ‘Fuzzie’ Minturn Sedgwick, a philanthropist and Alice Delano de Forest.
She also inherited a large history of mental illnesses. Her brothers Minty and Bobby committed suicide after being in several mental hospitals, something Edie got deeply affected by and her father had a series of nervous breakdowns as well. On one occasion she walked in on him having sex with a neighbor which made her fly into a rage, but her father claimed Edie imagined it all as a result of her emotional problems and sent her to a mental hospital, of which Edie said: ‘Was the Sedgwick way of dealing with problems’. After this event Edie developed anorexia which carried on her entire life.
After she moved to New York, Edie appeared in Vogue as a ‘Youthquaker’ in august 1965 and Diana Vreeland, editor-in-chief at the time, discovered Edie as fashion model. She appeared in Vogue and Life magazine. In those days models were mostly beautiful socialites like Edie and Penelope Tree. Edie even became ‘The Girl of the Year’ and once was even dubbed as the ‘It Girl’ of the sixties.
In March 1965 she met Andy Warhol and began going to The Factory regularly with her friend Chuck Wein. After appearing in his movies Vinyl and Horse, Warhol decided Edie would be his superstar and started an intense work and private (non-physical) relationship with her. Edie in the meantime had devolved her own significant style: black leotards, ultra short dresses or sweaters, chopped and bleached blond hair with dark roots (inspired by Andy Warhol’s wigs) and her chandelier earrings. Edie asked Warhol to pay her for her acting work, but Warhol never paid anybody (!) and Edie got into severe financial problems. She called Diana Vreeland, asking her for a modeling job, but Vreeland told Edie she could no longer commission her, because she was considered vulgar by the public for her drug abuse and connections with The Factory. During her relationship with Neuwirth, Edie became increasingly dependent on barbiturates and in early 1967 Neuwirth could no longer cope with her drug abuse and erratic behavior, he broke off with her completely. Edie began shooting Ciao! Manhattan, an underground movie which was made over the course of 5 years. In the meantime Edie returned to her family in California, were she spent time in several psychiatric institutions. In 1969 she got arrested for drug offenses and in hospital she met another patient, Michael Brett Post, whom she married on July 24, 1971. Under his influence she stopped abusing alcohol and drugs for a short time. On the night of November 15, 1971, Edie went to a fashion show at the Santa Barbara Museum. At the party after the show, someone insulted her by calling her a heroin addict and repeatedly asserting her marriage would fail. Edie called Michael and when he arrived at the party she was already in total distress. He took her home and put her to bed after he gave her the medication prescribed for her. When he awoke the next morning, Edie Sedgwick was already dead. She was only 28 years old. The day she died, Warhol was asked how he felt about her death and he responded by telling he hardly knew her and Paul Morrissey, contributor to The Factory and friend of Warhol, responded with: ‘Edie who?”
Contributed by Sana Pirzada.
