Wild Child: Thirty years after her death, the spirit of the young, stylish, improbably beautiful Talitha Getty wafts through the spring collections in an aura of sandalwood and champagne. (WFashion Flash).

W, December, 2001 by West, Kevin

Today she would be 60, and no doubt still attractive, in the way that those rare women are who don't need the mere dew of youth in order to captivate. But in the late Sixties, Talitha Getty was an irresistible beauty with an antelope grace, almond-shaped eyes and a mercurial sense of style. She donned dramatic kimonos and shoulder-sweeping earrings to pad barefoot across the black-and-white marble floors of the Roman palazzo apartment she created with her husband, J. Paul Getty Jr., a son of Getty Oil founder John Paul Getty During their few years together, the young Gettys--with their dazzling combination of beauty, charm, money, style and notoriety--blew across Europe as the freest spirits in an age of free spirits.

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