Ivy Nicholson grew up in Cypress Hills, New York. World magazine reported that she was "born to a humble working-class family". She started working as a model at 16. She first modeled in a Brooklyn department store, after winning a beauty contest. In her teens she settled in Greenwich Village and worked in the Garment District.
She appeared on the covers of major fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar,Life, Mademoiselle and Elle.
Nicholson moved to Italy and worked for fashion designers such as Irene Galitzine, Fernanda Gattinoni, the Sorelle Fontana, Simonetta, Alberto Fabiani and Emilio Pucci. Salvador Dalí painted her for Life Magazine.
According to a 1960 profile in Look Magazine, Nicholson was painted by Marc Chagall, Lucian Freud and her friend Bernard Buffet.
At the time of the Look article she was living in Paris, the wife of French writer and actor, Count Regis Ruyneau St. Georges de Poleon. Nicholson returned to the United States and entered into Andy Warhol's circle. “Andy was taken by her,” said Gerard Malanga, a poet and photographer who was part of the Warhol circle. “She became his first superstar.”
In 1963 she met and married John Palmer, a co-director of Warhol’s silent film Empire. During her first marriage she became a mother,
then the marriage failed followed by a series of other failed relationships.
By the 80's she was a mother of three, living in poverty and struggling with mental issues, alcoholism and occasional homelessness.
Once her children were grown up she would become a barfly at the nearest corner dive to whatever dingy apartment she was living in at the time.
Just another old barfly trying to convince anyone who would listen how she was once a model and friend of Andy Warhol (but no one believed her).
Nicholson died on October 25, 2021, at an assisted living facility in Bellflower, California. She was 88.
All source sounds taken from vhs home video recordings of Ivy telling her story.
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