THE BIRTH OF THE LITERARY IT GIRL AESTHETIC

A new book brings Joan Didion, Eve Babitz, and their still-influential style into focus.

- Allie Rowbottom

In one of the most famous photographs of Joan Didion, she leans against a Corvette Stingray, one arm crossed over her torso, the other extended, as if caught mid-flick of the cigarette forked between her fingers. She wears a long dress, well-draped, modest. It covers her body so that her head, the site of her celebrated brain, becomes the focal point.

In the most famous photograph of Eve Babitz, she wears nothing at all. Seated naked before a chessboard, she’s opposite a fully dressed Marcel Duchamp, her face obscured by a sheet of hair. He is the artist; she is “a piece of ass.” This per the photographer, Julian Wasser, who was, coincidentally, also responsible for Didion’s famous portrait. “With a girl like Joan Didion, you just don’t tell her what to do,” Wasser told author Lili Anolik when she asked if he had styled the shoot.

These dueling images, and Wasser’s dichotomous responses to them, dwell at the heart of Anolik’s new book,