The Pattie Chronicles: The Beginning

Over the next few entries, I will be doing a series on my #1 style icon Pattie Boyd. Covering almost every aspect of her life, I will be doing entries about her career, marriages, makeup & hair, and her enviable '60s wardrobe. I hope that they will inspire you to look towards Ms. Boyd because I think that she is truly as fabulous as her sense of style! Now, the beginning of "The Pattie Chronicles"...Have you stumbled across this page one way or another and are wondering who this Pattie Boyd is? Curious as to why the wife of two rock legends deserves such admirations from so many people over four decades? Well continue reading, my friend, because I will tell you.
Possessing a certain je n’ai se quoi, Pattie Boyd, dubbed the “most envied, most beautiful flower child of the 1960s,” has captivated the hearts and minds of many over the years. 16 Magazine once described her as a “today’s girl. She is the girl most girls want to look like. She is the beguiling, old-young mixture that most of today’s girls are – sweet and swinging, shy and sophisticated. And her big china-blue eyes, beneath a fine flaxen fringe, reflect today’s outlook – a ‘hip’ innocence.” People have deconstructed her outfits (whether they be ones she wore to premieres or the market), analyzed her voice inflection in her only line, “Prisoners?” from Hard Day’s Night, and mimicked the golden blonde hair and toothy naïve grin that made her the It-Girl of the 1960s.
But what is it about Pattie that made so many girls want to be her and so many more boys want to be with her? One Brit article about Boyd wrote that back in her heyday, “Legions of girls would have killed to swap places with her, an elegantly starved size eight who had two monumental rock stars fighting to be with her.” What, you ask, makes her different from any number of sixties dolly-birds or rock star waves? Despite her supermodel looks, cornflower-blue eyes, and inequitably long legs, Pattie had an accessibility that made others want to be around her all the time. She was the femme fatale with a childlike girl-next-door demeanor, not concerned with her own beauty; she loved to please and only desired for the love she gave to be reciprocated. She had a great respect for her friends and family, often putting the interests of others before her own. She carried herself with a quiet grace, and in a world full of conceited people, not an ounce of arrogance could be detected from Ms. Boyd.
You might be wondering what is inspirational about Pattie – sure she was a kind-hearted kid with a pretty face and great sense of style, but what warrants us to look up to her? I’ll tell you: Pattie, unlike the ugly misconceptions some dummies have about her, was not a groupie. Sure, she loved music, and based on her relationships, you could draw the ‘groupie’ conclusion, but this is far from the truth. When she met George, Pattie was already a successful model in England. After she met George, her career took off – some people conclude that it was because of her association with the most famous group in the world that she became popular, but I beg to differ. Certainly, her new friends helped give her exposure, but she was a rising model in London even before she met them. She did not “ride the coattails of the Beatles all the way to the top,” (which I actually read somewhere) but was slated to become an important model even with the Beatles. Her relationship with George simply coincided with her inevitable popularity. And she did not marry George for his money or to be close to the whole ‘scene.’ Modeling gave her an income of her own and it was something she loved to do, so even if she had never met George, she would have been financially set. Also, she was working with some of the industries most important photographers, models, musicians, designers, etc. so she was part of that ‘scene’ even without George. Some could even say she was more in that scene than he was.
Also, what many people don’t know about Ms. Boyd was that she came from an abusive childhood. After spending much of her childhood in Kenya, her mother moved Pattie and her siblings back to England and married the man that would become Pattie’s stepfather, a man often described as cruel and abusive. The fact that Pattie could rise from this family and create a name for herself as one of the most successful models of the sixties is quite incredible, but it is also so heartbreaking that the abusive relationship she had with her stepfather underscored the romantic relationships she would have in the future – particularly with her two husbands. She would spend the majority of her life loving men and only wanting her love returned. But their cold and often distant behavior caused her to always be seeking after their affection, and always coming up short.