Head Shot – Blog Tour

Synopsis:

A girl from a Yorkshire mining town is barely thirteen when her father kills himself – her brother finds him dying. At sixteen she’s spotted by a rock star and becomes an international Vogue model. Seven years later her brother kills himself in her New York apartment and her mother dies too. With no family left, her life is now one of extreme choices.

Fifty years later, Victoria confronts her past and takes her readers on an unflinching voyage through her experiences as a model and beyond. Speaking frankly about loss, love, friendship and ambition, Head Shot is a book of inspiration and purpose.

Packed with astonishing images by the photographers Victoria worked with, and the defiant fashions she wore throughout her career, it also bears witness to a time of unparalleled cultural energy and invention; it’s a story in which bags and shoes can, and do, sit right next to life and death.

Book Information:
Publication Date: August 8, 2019
Publisher: Unbound
PRICE: £16.99
ISBN: 978-1-78352-749-6
FORMAT: Hardback 

From the epicentre of Sixties glamour to a double family suicide: how a Vogue model persevered and rebuilt her life in the face of tragedy

My Review

If you’re prepared for a book about the glamorous life of modelling, stories of exotic shoots and juicy gossip. Well, aside from a couple of exotic shoots, you’re going to be surprised. Nixon has given us a book that focuses on her actual experiences, and not just as a model and its lifestyle on a photoshoot but what happens afterwards. It’s not all glitz and glamour, it’s making friendships with people you’ll rarely get to see, meeting tons of new people in general, and it’s seeing just how ‘okay’ you are with being alone/just with yourself some days.

I loved how honest and down to earth Victoria Nixon’s style was, she was brave enough to show her own failings in the spotlight and brave enough to share some of her deeper pain, and these things make you connect with her and want to know her story.

Nixon lost her whole family at such a young age, yet she was able to keep moving forward. And, her modelling career is not her whole life, so it was nice to hear about what happened after the photoshoots and let’s just say Nixon is one accomplished human. It’s obvious that no matter what, no matter the time that passes she still misses her family but she doesn’t shy away from that and once again, it really helps you as a reader connect with her on a very personal and emotional level.

Not to mention it’s refreshing hearing of someone so successful making the same mistakes as say myself, choosing the wrong lovers, thinking you can sometimes fix people when that isn’t actually the issue, and sometimes just saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and losing out on an opportunity because of it.

Nixon also isn’t afraid to share her lower points in life, not just in sadness but in her career, even her schooling in London. [Though I daresay Nixon had the last laugh in that case] And the way she talks about her mom is touching, it’s obvious they were close, and that she was close with her brother and father as well.

This isn’t the vapid and materialistic assumption that some are prone to make about models, this is about a real woman who is just telling her story. I loved it.

Thank you to Anne Cater and Unbound for a copy of this book and being part of the tour in exchange for my honest review.

About the Author

Victoria Nixon was eighteen when she was discovered by Helmut Newton, who photographed her for Vogue. This launched her international modelling career, which led to her being named the Daily Mail’s ‘Face of 1968’. After modelling, she went on to become an award-winning advertising copywriter, television producer and magazine editor. In the 1990s she opened the first deli in the UK to ban plastic packaging, and in 2002 her first book, Supermodels’ Beauty Secrets, was published, followed by Supermodels’ Diet Secrets in 2004. She is co- founder and managing director of a company which designs and manufactures humanitarian aid products used worldwide.

The Rest of the Blog Tour